Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
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<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
I got up and went through one narrow street after another, gradually filling with idlers, and was not surprised<br />
to see no children. By and by, near one of the gates, I encountered a group of young men who reminded me<br />
not a little of the bad giants. They came about me staring, and presently began to push and hustle me, then to<br />
throw things at me. I bore it as well as I could, wishing not to provoke enmity where wanted to remain for a<br />
while. Oftener than once or twice I appealed to passers−by whom I fancied more benevolent−looking, but<br />
none would halt a moment to listen to me. I looked poor, and that was enough: to the citizens of Bulika, as to<br />
house−dogs, poverty was an offence! Deformity and sickness were taxed; and no legislation of their princess<br />
was more heartily approved of than what tended to make poverty subserve wealth.<br />
I took to my heels at last, and no one followed me beyond the gate. A lumbering fellow, however, who sat by<br />
it eating a hunch of bread, picked up a stone to throw after me, and happily, in his stupid eagerness, threw,<br />
not the stone but the bread. I took it, and he did not dare follow to reclaim it: beyond the walls they were<br />
cowards every one. I went off a few hundred yards, threw myself down, ate the bread, fell asleep, and slept<br />
soundly in the grass, where the hot sunlight renewed my strength.<br />
It was night when I woke. The moon looked down on me in friendly fashion, seeming to claim with me old<br />
acquaintance. She was very bright, and the same moon, I thought, that saw me through the terrors of my first<br />
night in that strange world. A cold wind blew from the gate, bringing with it an evil odour; but it did not chill<br />
me, for the sun had plenished me with warmth. I crept again into the city. There I found the few that were still<br />
in the open air crouched in corners to escape the shivering blast.<br />
I was walking slowly through the long narrow street, when, just before me, a huge white thing bounded<br />
across it, with a single flash in the moonlight, and disappeared. I turned down the next opening, eager to get<br />
sight of it again.<br />
It was a narrow lane, almost too narrow to pass through, but it led me into a wider street. The moment I<br />
entered the latter, I saw on the opposite side, in the shadow, the creature I had followed, itself following like a<br />
dog what I took for a man. Over his shoulder, every other moment, he glanced at the animal behind him, but<br />
neither spoke to it, nor attempted to drive it away. At a place where he had to cross a patch of moonlight, I<br />
saw that he cast no shadow, and was himself but a flat superficial shadow, of two dimensions. He was,<br />
nevertheless, an opaque shadow, for he not merely darkened any object on the other side of him, but rendered<br />
it, in fact, invisible. In the shadow he was blacker than the shadow; in the moonlight he looked like one who<br />
had drawn his shadow up about him, for not a suspicion of it moved beside or under him; while the gleaming<br />
animal, which followed so close at his heels as to seem the white shadow of his blackness, and which I now<br />
saw to be a leopardess, drew her own gliding shadow black over the ground by her side. When they passed<br />
together from the shadow into the moonlight, the Shadow deepened in blackness, the animal flashed into<br />
radiance. I was at the moment walking abreast of them on the opposite side, my bare feet sounding on the flat<br />
stones: the leopardess never turned head or twitched ear; the shadow seemed once to look at me, for I lost his<br />
profile, and saw for a second only a sharp upright line. That instant the wind found me and blew through me:<br />
I shuddered from head to foot, and my heart went from wall to wall of my bosom, like a pebble in a child's<br />
rattle.<br />
CHAPTER XXIII. A WOMAN OF BULIKA<br />
I turned aside into an alley, and sought shelter in a small archway. In the mouth of it I stopped, and looked<br />
out at the moonlight which filled the alley. The same instant a woman came gliding in after me, turned,<br />
trembling, and looked out also. A few seconds passed; then a huge leopard, its white skin dappled with many<br />
blots, darted across the archway. The woman pressed close to me, and my heart filled with pity. I put my arm<br />
round her.<br />
"If the brute come here, I will lay hold of it," I said, "and you must run."<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 76