"Certainly! All in the course of business."
"How do you know that it is dark, sir?"
"Perfectly fair. 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?"