SoOCoOuhe HAT “GO LTO: SLEEP’ 73 
it will be dark and black again, but it is not dark 
and black just now, whilst the red fire is burning. 
Or it may be a dark night, very dark and stormy, 
so dark that it is difficult for people who are out in 
it to find their way, whilst people who only look 
out of the window, say that it is a pitch-dark night. 
But now the rain is beginning to fall, and it comes 
down faster and faster, and there is a muttering in 
the dull sky, and, all at once, a flash of lightning 
leaps out of the darkness, cutting it as though with 
a red, jagged knife, and for an instant it is day, 
and you see the leaves on the trees, and the rain- 
drops falling through the air, and the fields with 
haystacks standing in them, or rivers winding through 
them, and the distant hills, and the line where the 
earth meets the heavens. Then, all in a moment 
—almost before you can say “Oh,” and quite 
before the great clap of thunder that follows the 
lightning-flash—it is night—deep, dark, black night 
—again. The night in which there is a storm like 
that is a dark night, but it is not dark when the 
lightning is leaping and flashing. 
It is the same with this Black Bird of Paradise. 
At first when you look at him, all his plumage is 
of a deep, dark, velvety black, a lovely black, a 
beautiful, smooth, glossy black, a black that seems 
almost to gleam and to sparkle as if it were jewellery 
