Lilith

"Where was that?"
"In this very room. You were quite a child, however!"
I could not be sure that I remembered him, but for a moment I fancied I did, and I begged him to set me right
as to his name.
"There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory in it," he remarked. "For my
name−−which you have near enough−−it used to be Raven."
I had heard the name, for marvellous tales had brought it me.
"It is very kind of you to come and see me," I said. "Will you not sit down?"
He seated himself at once.
"You knew my father, then, I presume?"
"I knew him," he answered with a curious smile, "but he did not care about my acquaintance, and we never
met.−−That gentleman, however," he added, pointing to the portrait,−−"old Sir Up'ard, his people called
him,−−was in his day a friend of mine yet more intimate than ever your grandfather became."
Then at length I began to think the interview a strange one. But in truth it was hardly stranger that my visitor
should remember Sir Upward, than that he should have been my great−grandfather's librarian!
"I owe him much," he continued; "for, although I had read many more books than he, yet, through the special
direction of his studies, he was able to inform me of a certain relation of modes which I should never have
discovered of myself, and could hardly have learned from any one else."
"Would you mind telling me all about that?" I said.
Lilith
"By no means−−as much at least as I am able: there are not such things as wilful secrets," he answered−−and
went on.
"That closet held his library−−a hundred manuscripts or so, for printing was not then invented. One morning I
sat there, working at a catalogue of them, when he looked in at the door, and said, `Come.' I laid down my
pen and followed him−−across the great hall, down a steep rough descent, and along an underground passage
to a tower he had lately built, consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it. The door of this room had a
tremendous lock, which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw. I had scarcely crossed the threshold after
him, when, to my eyes, he began to dwindle, and grew less and less. All at once my vision seemed to come
right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me. In a minute more he was the merest speck in the
distance, with the tops of blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky of paler blue. I recognised the
country, for I had gone there and come again many a time, although I had never known this way to it.
"Many years after, when the tower had long disappeared, I taught one of his descendants what Sir Upward
had taught me; and now and then to this day I use your house when I want to go the nearest way home. I must
indeed−−without your leave, for which I ask your pardon−−have by this time well established a right of way
through it−−not from front to back, but from bottom to top!"
"You would have me then understand, Mr. Raven," I said, "that you go through my house into another world,
heedless of disparting space?"
Lilith 25