Suppose that Mrs. Benoit stood behind your
curtain there, and that you had never seen her; how could you
know that she has a dark skin?"
"Why, I could not."
"Yes, you could — if there were rents in the curtain."
"But what are you talking of, sir?"
"Only telling you, in answer to your question, how I know the
sun to be a dark body."
"But there is no curtain over the sun."
"That proves you are no philosopher, Daisy. If you were a
philosopher, you would not be so certain of anything. There is
a curtain over the sun; and there are rents or holes in the
curtain sometimes, — so large that we can see the dark body of
the sun through them."
"What is the curtain? Is _that_ the light?"
"Now you are coming pretty near it, Daisy," said the doctor.
"The curtain, as I call it, is not light, but it is what the
light comes from."
"Then what _is_ it, Dr. Sandford?"
"That has puzzled people wiser than you and I, Daisy. However,
I think I may venture to say, that it is something like an
ocean of flame, surrounding the dark body of the sun."
"And there are holes in it?"
"Sometimes."
"But they must be very large holes to be seen from this
distance?"
"Very," said the doctor.
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