Lilith

She was lying as I had left her. The heat had not brought her to life, but neither had it developed anything to
check farther hope. I got a few boulders out of the channel, and arranged them at her feet and on both sides of
her.
Running again to the wood, I had not to search long ere I found some small boughs fit for my
purpose−−mostly of beech, their dry yellow leaves yet clinging to them. With these I had soon laid the floor
of a bridge−bed over the torrent. I crossed the boughs with smaller branches, interlaced these with twigs, and
buried all deep in leaves and dry moss.
When thus at length, after not a few journeys to the forest, I had completed a warm, dry, soft couch, I took the
body once more, and set out with it for the cave. It was so light that now and then as I went I almost feared
lest, when I laid it down, I should find it a skeleton after all; and when at last I did lay it gently on the
pathless bridge, it was a greater relief to part with that fancy than with the weight. Once more I covered the
body with a thick layer of leaves; and trying again to feed her with a grape, found to my joy that I could open
the mouth a little farther. The grape, indeed, lay in it unheeded, but I hoped some of the juice might find its
way down.
After an hour or two on the couch, she was no longer cold. The warmth of the brook had interpenetrated her
frame−−truly it was but a frame!−−and she was warm to the touch;−−not, probably, with the warmth of life,
but with a warmth which rendered it more possible, if she were alive, that she might live. I had read of one in
a trance lying motionless for weeks!
In that cave, day after day, night after night, seven long days and nights, I sat or lay, now waking now
sleeping, but always watching. Every morning I went out and bathed in the hot stream, and every morning
felt thereupon as if I had eaten and drunk−−which experience gave me courage to lay her in it also every day.
Once as I did so, a shadow of discoloration on her left side gave me a terrible shock, but the next morning it
had vanished, and I continued the treatment−− every morning, after her bath, putting a fresh grape in her
mouth.
I too ate of the grapes and other berries I found in the forest; but I believed that, with my daily bath in that
river, I could have done very well without eating at all.
Lilith
Every time I slept, I dreamed of finding a wounded angel, who, unable to fly, remained with me until at last
she loved me and would not leave me; and every time I woke, it was to see, instead of an angel−visage with
lustrous eyes, the white, motionless, wasted face upon the couch. But Adam himself, when first he saw her
asleep, could not have looked more anxiously for Eve's awaking than I watched for this woman's. Adam
knew nothing of himself, perhaps nothing of his need of another self; I, an alien from my fellows, had learned
to love what I had lost! Were this one wasted shred of womanhood to disappear, I should have nothing in me
but a consuming hunger after life! I forgot even the Little Ones: things were not amiss with them! here lay
what might wake and be a woman! might actually open eyes, and look out of them upon me!
Now first I knew what solitude meant−−now that I gazed on one who neither saw nor heard, neither moved
nor spoke. I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man−−that he is but a need, and
therefore a possibility. To be enough for himself, a being must be an eternal, self−existent worm! So superbly
constituted, so simply complicate is man; he rises from and stands upon such a pedestal of lower physical
organisms and spiritual structures, that no atmosphere will comfort or nourish his life, less divine than that
offered by other souls; nowhere but in other lives can he breathe. Only by the reflex of other lives can he
ripen his specialty, develop the idea of himself, the individuality that distinguishes him from every other.
Were all men alike, each would still have an individuality, secured by his personal consciousness, but there
would be small reason why there should be more than two or three such; while, for the development of the
differences which make a large and lofty unity possible, and which alone can make millions into a church, an
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