And now, what would you say to a Black Bird of Paradise? For there is one--yes, and such a splendid bird. "Oh, but," you will say, "if he is black he cannot be so _very_ beautiful, for he cannot be of all sorts of beautiful colours like the other ones." But have you not heard of a black diamond? That is black, but _in_ its blackness all sorts of wonderful colours are lying asleep, and sometimes they wake up and flash out of it, as the sun's rays do out of a dark, stormy cloud, and then they go back into it again and are lost, as the sun's rays are lost when the sun goes in. Yes, they are asleep, those colours, and whilst they are asleep the diamond is really black, but when they wake up and begin to gleam and flash, and sparkle, and shoot about, then it is not a _black_ diamond any more, although we may call it so. And there may be a dark, deep cavern, so dark and so deep that you would be quite afraid to go into it, especially at night. But some gipsies, who were not afraid, have gone into it and have lighted a fire, and the flames leap up and glimmer through the smoke, and then sink for a moment and shoot up again, and fall on the sides and roof of the cavern, and make a deep glow in its mouth, and flicker on the leaves of the trees outside, and send out long tongues of flame that make a red light in the air and lick the darkness off everything that they touch. That cavern _was_ dark and black before the fire was lighted in it, and when the fire goes out 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.