Lilith

Morn, with the Spring in her arms, waited outside. Softly they stole in at the opened door, with a gentle wind
in the skirts of their garments. It flowed and flowed about Lilith, rippling the unknown, upwaking sea of her
life eternal; rippling and to ripple it, until at length she who had been but as a weed cast on the dry sandy
shore to wither, should know herself an inlet of the everlasting ocean, henceforth to flow into her for ever,
and ebb no more. She answered the morning wind with reviving breath, and began to listen. For in the skirts
of the wind had come the rain−−the soft rain that heals the mown, the many−wounded grass−−soothing it
with the sweetness of all music, the hush that lives between music and silence. It bedewed the desert places
around the cottage, and the sands of Lilith's heart heard it, and drank it in. When Mara returned to sit by her
bed, her tears were flowing softer than the rain, and soon she was fast asleep.
CHAPTER XL. THE HOUSE OF DEATH
The Mother of Sorrows rose, muffled her face, and went to call the Little Ones. They slept as if all the night
they had not moved, but the moment she spoke they sprang to their feet, fresh as if new−made. Merrily down
the stair they followed her, and she brought them where the princess lay, her tears yet flowing as she slept.
Their glad faces grew grave. They looked from the princess out on the rain, then back at the princess.
"The sky is falling!" said one.
"The white juice is running out of the princess!" cried another, with an awed look.
"Is it rivers?" asked Odu, gazing at the little streams that flowed adown her hollow cheeks.
"Yes," answered Mara, "−−the most wonderful of all rivers."
"I thought rivers was bigger, and rushed, like a lot of Little Ones, making loud noises!" he returned, looking
at me, from whom alone he had heard of rivers.
"Look at the rivers of the sky!" said Mara. "See how they come down to wake up the waters under the earth!
Soon will the rivers be flowing everywhere, merry and loud, like thousands and thousands of happy children.
Oh, how glad they will make you, Little Ones! You have never seen any, and do not know how lovely is the
water!"
"That will be the glad of the ground that the princess is grown good," said Odu. "See the glad of the sky!"
"Are the rivers the glad of the princess?" asked Luva. "They are not her juice, for they are not red!"
"They are the juice inside the juice," answered Mara.
Odu put one finger to his eye, looked at it, and shook his head.
"Princess will not bite now!" said Luva.
"No; she will never do that again," replied Mara. "−−But now we must take her nearer home."
"Is that a nest?" asked Sozo.
"Yes; a very big nest. But we must take her to another place first."
"What is that?"
Lilith
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