Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
embrace of a friend whom her soul hated, and laugh like a demon. At length she began what seemed a tale<br />
about herself, in a language so strange, and in forms so shadowy, that I could but here and there understand a<br />
little. Yet the language seemed the primeval shape of one I knew well, and the forms to belong to dreams<br />
which had once been mine, but refused to be recalled. The tale appeared now and then to touch upon things<br />
that Adam had read from the disparted manuscript, and often to make allusion to influences and<br />
forces−−vices too, I could not help suspecting−−with which I was unacquainted.<br />
She ceased, and again came the horror in her hair, the sparkling and flowing alternate. I sent a beseeching<br />
look to Mara.<br />
"Those, alas, are not the tears of repentance!" she said. "The true tears gather in the eyes. Those are far more<br />
bitter, and not so good. Self−loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in<br />
the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more<br />
account. It will be so with her."<br />
She went nearer and said,<br />
"Will you restore that which you have wrongfully taken?"<br />
"I have taken nothing," answered the princess, forcing out the words in spite of pain, "that I had not the right<br />
to take. My power to take manifested my right."<br />
Mara left her.<br />
Gradually my soul grew aware of an invisible darkness, a something more terrible than aught that had yet<br />
made itself felt. A horrible Nothingness, a Negation positive infolded her; the border of its being that was yet<br />
no being, touched me, and for one ghastly instant I seemed alone with Death Absolute! It was not the absence<br />
of everything I felt, but the presence of Nothing. The princess dashed herself from the settle to the floor with<br />
an exceeding great and bitter cry. It was the recoil of Being from Annihilation.<br />
"For pity's sake," she shrieked, "tear my heart out, but let me live!"<br />
With that there fell upon her, and upon us also who watched with her, the perfect calm as of a summer night.<br />
Suffering had all but reached the brim of her life's cup, and a hand had emptied it! She raised her head, half<br />
rose, and looked around her. A moment more, and she stood erect, with the air of a conqueror: she had won<br />
the battle! Dareful she had met her spiritual foes; they had withdrawn defeated! She raised her withered arm<br />
above her head, a pæan of unholy triumph in her throat−−when suddenly her eyes fixed in a ghastly<br />
stare.−−What was she seeing?<br />
I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror, stood the reflection of herself, and beside it<br />
a form of splendent beauty, She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one what God<br />
had intended her to be, the other what she had made herself.<br />
The rest of the night she lay motionless altogether.<br />
With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to Mara, and said, in prideful humility, "You have<br />
conquered. Let me go into the wilderness and bewail myself."<br />
Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real. She looked at her a moment, and returned:<br />
"Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong."<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 129