Lilith

"That is the door I spoke of," he said, pointing to an oblong mirror that stood on the floor and leaned against
the wall. I went in front of it, and saw our figures dimly reflected in its dusty face. There was something
about it that made me uneasy. It looked old−fashioned and neglected, but, notwithstanding its ordinary
seeming, the eagle, perched with outstretched wings on the top, appeared threatful.
"As a mirror," said the librarian, "it has grown dingy with age; but that is no matter: its doorness depends on
the light."
"Light!" I rejoined; "there is no light here!"
He did not answer me, but began to pull at a little chain on the opposite wall. I heard a creaking: the top of
the chamber was turning slowly round. He ceased pulling, looked at his watch, and began to pull again.
"We arrive almost to the moment!" he said; "it is on the very stroke of noon!"
The top went creaking and revolving for a minute or so. Then he pulled two other chains, now this, now that,
and returned to the first. A moment more and the chamber grew much clearer: a patch of sunlight had fallen
upon a mirror on the wall opposite that against which the other leaned, and on the dust I saw the path of the
reflected rays to the mirror on the ground. But from the latter none were returned; they seemed to go clean
through; there was nowhere in the chamber a second patch of light!
"Where are the sunrays gone?" I cried.
"That I cannot tell," returned Mr. Raven; "−−back, perhaps, to where they came from first. They now belong,
I fancy, to a sense not yet developed in us."
He then talked of the relations of mind to matter, and of senses to qualities, in a way I could only a little
understand, whence he went on to yet stranger things which I could not at all comprehend. He spoke much
about dimensions, telling me that there were many more than three, some of them concerned with powers
which were indeed in us, but of which as yet we knew absolutely nothing. His words, however, I confess,
took little more hold of me than the light did of the mirror, for I thought he hardly knew what he was saying.
Suddenly I was aware that our forms had gone from the mirror, which seemed full of a white mist. As I gazed
I saw, growing gradually visible beyond the mist, the tops of a range of mountains, which became clearer and
clearer. Soon the mist vanished entirely, uncovering the face of a wide heath, on which, at some distance, was
the figure of a man moving swiftly away. I turned to address my companion; he was no longer by my side. I
looked again at the form in the mirror, and recognised the wide coat flying, the black hair lifting in a wind
that did not touch me. I rushed in terror from the place.
CHAPTER IX. I REPENT
I laid the manuscript down, consoled to find that my father had had a peep into that mysterious world, and
that he knew Mr. Raven.
Lilith
Then I remembered that I had never heard the cause or any circumstance of my father's death, and began to
believe that he must at last have followed Mr. Raven, and not come back; whereupon I speedily grew
ashamed of my flight. What wondrous facts might I not by this time have gathered concerning life and death,
and wide regions beyond ordinary perception! Assuredly the Ravens were good people, and a night in their
house would nowise have hurt me! They were doubtless strange, but it was faculty in which the one was
peculiar, and beauty in which the other was marvellous! And I had not believed in them! had treated them as
unworthy of my confidence, as harbouring a design against me! The more I thought of my behaviour to them,
Lilith 27