Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
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"You cannot go near her," she said. "She is far away from us, afar in the hell of her self−consciousness. The<br />
central fire of the universe is radiating into her the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of what she is.<br />
She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire in which she is<br />
burning, but she does not know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire. Her torment is that she is what<br />
she is. Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No gentler way to help her was left. Wait and watch."<br />
It may have been five minutes or five years that she stood thus−−I cannot tell; but at last she flung herself on<br />
her face.<br />
Mara went to her, and stood looking down upon her. Large tears fell from her eyes on the woman who had<br />
never wept, and would not weep.<br />
"Will you change your way?" she said at length.<br />
"Why did he make me such?" gasped <strong>Lilith</strong>. "I would have made myself−−oh, so different! I am glad it was<br />
he that made me and not I myself! He alone is to blame for what I am! Never would I have made such a<br />
worthless thing! He meant me such that I might know it and be miserable! I will not be made any longer!"<br />
"Unmake yourself, then," said Mara.<br />
"Alas, I cannot! You know it, and mock me! How often have I not agonised to cease, but the tyrant keeps me<br />
being! I curse him!−−Now let him kill me!"<br />
The words came in jets as from a dying fountain.<br />
"Had he not made you," said Mara, gently and slowly, "you could not even hate him. But he did not make<br />
you such. You have made yourself what you are.−−Be of better cheer: he can remake you."<br />
"I will not be remade!"<br />
"He will not change you; he will only restore you to what you were."<br />
"I will not be aught of his making."<br />
"Are you not willing to have that set right which you have set wrong?"<br />
She lay silent; her suffering seemed abated.<br />
"If you are willing, put yourself again on the settle."<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
"I will not," she answered, forcing the words through her clenched teeth.<br />
A wind seemed to wake inside the house, blowing without sound or impact; and a water began to rise that had<br />
no lap in its ripples, no sob in its swell. It was cold, but it did not benumb. Unseen and noiseless it came. It<br />
smote no sense in me, yet I knew it rising. I saw it lift at last and float her. Gently it bore her, unable to resist,<br />
and left rather than laid her on the settle. Then it sank swiftly away.<br />
The strife of thought, accusing and excusing, began afresh, and gathered fierceness. The soul of <strong>Lilith</strong> lay<br />
naked to the torture of pure interpenetrating inward light. She began to moan, and sigh deep sighs, then<br />
murmur as holding colloquy with a dividual self: her queendom was no longer whole; it was divided against<br />
itself. One moment she would exult as over her worst enemy, and weep; the next she would writhe as in the<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 128