Lilith

"And I neither to feel nor hear them!" I murmured.
"How could you−−far away in your dreary old house! You thought the dreadful place had you once more!
Now go and find them.−−Your parents, my child," he added, turning to Lona, "must come and find you!"
The hour of our departure was at hand. Lona went to the couch of the mother who had slain her, and kissed
her tenderly−−then laid herself in her father's arms.
"That kiss will draw her homeward, my Lona!" said Adam.
"Who were her parents?" asked Lona.
"My father," answered Adam, "is her father also."
She turned and laid her hand in mine.
I kneeled and humbly thanked the three for helping me to die. Lona knelt beside me, and they all breathed
upon us.
"Hark! I hear the sun," said Adam.
I listened: he was coming with the rush as of a thousand times ten thousand far−off wings, with the roar of a
molten and flaming world millions upon millions of miles away. His approach was a crescendo chord of a
hundred harmonies.
The three looked at each other and smiled, and that smile went floating heavenward a three−petaled flower,
the family's morning thanksgiving. From their mouths and their faces it spread over their bodies and shone
through their garments. Ere I could say, "Lo, they change!" Adam and Eve stood before me the angels of the
resurrection, and Mara was the Magdalene with them at the sepulchre. The countenance of Adam was like
lightning, and Eve held a napkin that flung flakes of splendour about the place.
A wind began to moan in pulsing gusts.
"You hear his wings now!" said Adam; and I knew he did not mean the wings of the morning.
"It is the great Shadow stirring to depart," he went on. "Wretched creature, he has himself within him, and
cannot rest!"
"But is there not in him something deeper yet?" I asked.
"Without a substance," he answered, "a shadow cannot be−−yea, or without a light behind the substance!"
He listened for a moment, then called out, with a glad smile, "Hark to the golden cock! Silent and motionless
for millions of years has he stood on the clock of the universe; now at last he is flapping his wings! now will
he begin to crow! and at intervals will men hear him until the dawn of the day eternal."
I listened. Far away−−as in the heart of an æonian silence, I heard the clear jubilant outcry of the golden
throat. It hurled defiance at death and the dark; sang infinite hope, and coming calm. It was the "expectation
of the creature" finding at last a voice; the cry of a chaos that would be a kingdom!
Then I heard a great flapping.
Lilith
Lilith 154