"MacDONALD, George - The Day Boy and the Night Girl (The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris)" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

knew what out meant; out of one room into another, where there was not even a
dividing door, only an open arch, was all she knew of the world. But suddenly
she remembered that she had heard Falca speak of the lamp going out: this must
be what she had meant? And if the lamp had gone out, where had it gone? Surely
where Falca went, and like her it would come again. But she could not wait. The
desire to go out grew irresistible. She must follow her beautiful lamp! She must
find it! She must see what it was about!
Now, there was a curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of her toys
and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain Watho and Falca
always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they came out of solid wall,
she had not an idea, all up to the wall was open space, and all beyond it seemed
wall; but clearly the first and only thing she could do was to feel her way
behind the curtain. It was so dark that a cat could not have caught the largest
of mice. Nycteris could see better than any cat, but now her great eyes were not
of the smallest use to her. As she went she trod upon a piece of the broken
lamp. She had never worn shoes or stockings, and the fragment, though, being of
soft alabaster, it did not cut, yet hurt her foot. She did not know what it was,
but as it had not been there before the darkness came, she suspected that it had
to do with the lamp. She kneeled therefore, and searched with her hands, and
bringing two large pieces together, recognized the shape of the lamp. Therefore
it flashed upon her that the lamp was dead, that this brokenness was the death
of which she had read without understanding, that the darkness had killed the
lamp. What then could Falca have meant when she spoke of the lamp going out?
There was the lamp -- dead indeed, and so changed that she would never have
taken it for a lamp, but for the shape! No, it was not the lamp anymore now it
was dead, for all that made it a lamp was gone, namely, the bright shining of
it. Then it must be the shine, the light, that had gone out! That must be what
Falca meant -- and it must be somewhere in the other place in the wall. She
started afresh after it, and groped her way to the curtain.
Now, she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not know how; but
instinctively she began to move her hands about over one of the walls behind the
curtain, half expecting them to go into it, as she supposed Watho and Falca did.
But the wall repelled her with inexorable hardness, and she turned to the one
opposite. In so doing, she set her foot upon an ivory die, and as it met sharply
the same spot the broken alabaster had already hurt, she fell forward with her
outstretched hands against the wall. Something gave way, and she tumbled out of
the cavern.


IX. Out
BUT alas! out was very much like in, for the same enemy, the darkness, was here
also. The next moment, however, came a great gladness -- a firefly, which had
wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow
pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing
nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying,
and the light seemed the source of its own motion.
``My lamp! my lamp!'' cried Nycteris. ``It is the shiningness of my lamp, which
the cruel darkness drove out. My good lamp has been waiting for me here all the
time! It knew I would come after it, and waited to take me with it.''
She followed the firefly, which, like herself, was seeking the way out. If it