"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."