Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
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The princess did not answer. Mara put the question again, in the same soft, inviting tone.<br />
Still there was no sign of hearing. She spoke the words a third time.<br />
Then the seeming corpse opened its mouth and answered, its words appearing to frame themselves of<br />
something else than sound.−−I cannot shape the thing further: sounds they were not, yet they were words to<br />
me.<br />
"I will not," she said. "I will be myself and not another!"<br />
"Alas, you are another now, not yourself! Will you not be your real self?"<br />
"I will be what I mean myself now."<br />
"If you were restored, would you not make what amends you could for the misery you have caused?"<br />
"I would do after my nature."<br />
"You do not know it: your nature is good, and you do evil!"<br />
"I will do as my Self pleases−−as my Self desires."<br />
"You will do as the Shadow, overshadowing your Self inclines you?"<br />
"I will do what I will to do."<br />
"You have killed your daughter, <strong>Lilith</strong>!"<br />
"I have killed thousands. She is my own!"<br />
"She was never yours as you are another's."<br />
"I am not another's; I am my own, and my daughter is mine."<br />
"Then, alas, your hour is come!"<br />
"I care not. I am what I am; no one can take from me myself!"<br />
"You are not the Self you imagine."<br />
"So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I<br />
would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own<br />
thought of myself is me. Another shall not make me!"<br />
"But another has made you, and can compel you to see what you have made yourself. You will not be able<br />
much longer to look to yourself anything but what he sees you! You will not much longer have satisfaction in<br />
the thought of yourself. At this moment you are aware of the coming change!"<br />
"No one ever made me. I defy that Power to unmake me from a free woman! You are his slave, and I defy<br />
you! You may be able to torture me−−I do not know, but you shall not compel me to anything against my<br />
will!"<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 126