Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
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unknown to me. Now appeared a woman, with glorious eyes looking out of a skull; now an armed figure on a<br />
skeleton horse; now one now another of the hideous burrowing phantasms. I could trace no order and little<br />
relation in the mingling and crossing currents and eddies. If I seemed to catch the shape and rhythm of a<br />
dance, it was but to see it break, and confusion prevail. With the shifting colours of the seemingly more solid<br />
shapes, mingled a multitude of shadows, independent apparently of originals, each moving after its own free<br />
shadow−will. I looked everywhere for the princess, but throughout the wildly changing kaleidoscopic scene,<br />
could not see her nor discover indication of her presence. Where was she? What might she not be doing? No<br />
one took the least notice of me as I wandered hither and thither seeking her. At length losing hope, I turned<br />
away to look elsewhere. Finding the wall, and keeping to it with my hand, for even then I could not see it, I<br />
came, groping along, to a curtained opening into the vestibule.<br />
Dimly moonlighted, the cage of the leopardess was the arena of what seemed a desperate although silent<br />
struggle. Two vastly differing forms, human and bestial, with entangled confusion of mingling bodies and<br />
limbs, writhed and wrestled in closest embrace. It had lasted but an instant when I saw the leopardess out of<br />
the cage, walking quietly to the open door. As I hastened after her I threw a glance behind me: there was the<br />
leopardess in the cage, couching motionless as when I saw her first.<br />
The moon, half−way up the sky, was shining round and clear; the bodiless shadow I had seen the night<br />
before, was walking through the trees toward the gate; and after him went the leopardess, swinging her tail. I<br />
followed, a little way off, as silently as they, and neither of them once looked round. Through the open gate<br />
we went down to the city, lying quiet as the moonshine upon it. The face of the moon was very still, and its<br />
stillness looked like that of expectation.<br />
The Shadow took his way straight to the stair at the top of which I had lain the night before. Without a pause<br />
he went up, and the leopardess followed. I quickened my pace, but, a moment after, heard a cry of horror.<br />
Then came the fall of something soft and heavy between me and the stair, and at my feet lay a body,<br />
frightfully blackened and crushed, but still recognisable as that of the woman who had led me home and shut<br />
me out. As I stood petrified, the spotted leopardess came bounding down the stair with a baby in her mouth. I<br />
darted to seize her ere she could turn at the foot; but that instant, from behind me, the white leopardess, like a<br />
great bar of glowing silver, shot through the moonlight, and had her by the neck. She dropped the child; I<br />
caught it up, and stood to watch the battle between them.<br />
What a sight it was−−now the one, now the other uppermost, both too intent for any noise beyond a low<br />
growl, a whimpered cry, or a snarl of hate−−followed by a quicker scrambling of claws, as each, worrying<br />
and pushing and dragging, struggled for foothold on the pavement! The spotted leopardess was larger than<br />
the white, and I was anxious for my friend; but I soon saw that, though neither stronger nor more active, the<br />
white leopardess had the greater endurance. Not once did she lose her hold on the neck of the other. From the<br />
spotted throat at length issued a howl of agony, changing, by swift−crowded gradations, into the long−drawn<br />
CRESCENDO of a woman's uttermost wail. The white one relaxed her jaws; the spotted one drew herself<br />
away, and rose on her hind legs. Erect in the moonlight stood the princess, a confused rush of shadows<br />
careering over her whiteness−−the spots of the leopard crowding, hurrying, fleeing to the refuge of her eyes,<br />
where merging they vanished. The last few, outsped and belated, mingled with the cloud of her streamy hair,<br />
leaving her radiant as the moon when a legion of little vapours has flown, wind−hunted, off her silvery<br />
disc−−save that, adown the white column of her throat, a thread of blood still trickled from every wound of<br />
her adversary's terrible teeth. She turned away, took a few steps with the gait of a Hecate, fell, covered afresh<br />
with her spots, and fled at a long, stretching gallop.<br />
The white leopardess turned also, sprang upon me, pulled my arms asunder, caught the baby as it fell, and<br />
flew with it along the street toward the gate<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
CHAPTER XXVII. THE SILENT FOUNTAIN<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 86