Lilith
Lilith
Lilith
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Then he returned to my side the old librarian, looking sad and worn, and furtively wiping tears from his eyes.<br />
CHAPTER XXX. ADAM EXPLAINS<br />
"We must be on our guard," he said, "or she will again outwit us. She would befool the very elect!"<br />
"How are we to be on our guard?" I asked.<br />
"Every way," he answered. "She fears, therefore hates her child, and is in this house on her way to destroy<br />
her. The birth of children is in her eyes the death of their parents, and every new generation the enemy of the<br />
last. Her daughter appears to her an open channel through which her immortality−−which yet she counts<br />
self−inherent−−is flowing fast away: to fill it up, almost from her birth she has pursued her with an utter<br />
enmity. But the result of her machinations hitherto is, that in the region she claims as her own, has appeared a<br />
colony of children, to which that daughter is heart and head and sheltering wings. My Eve longed after the<br />
child, and would have been to her as a mother to her first−born, but we were then unfit to train her: she was<br />
carried into the wilderness, and for ages we knew nothing of her fate. But she was divinely fostered, and had<br />
young angels for her playmates; nor did she ever know care until she found a baby in the wood, and the<br />
mother−heart in her awoke. One by one she has found many children since, and that heart is not yet full. Her<br />
family is her absorbing charge, and never children were better mothered. Her authority over them is without<br />
appeal, but it is unknown to herself, and never comes to the surface except in watchfulness and service. She<br />
has forgotten the time when she lived without them, and thinks she came herself from the wood, the first of<br />
the family.<br />
"You have saved the life of her and their enemy; therefore your life belongs to her and them. The princess<br />
was on her way to destroy them, but as she crossed that stream, vengeance overtook her, and she would have<br />
died had you not come to her aid. You did; and ere now she would have been raging among the Little Ones,<br />
had she dared again cross the stream. But there was yet a way to the blessed little colony through the world of<br />
the three dimensions; only, from that, by the slaying of her former body, she had excluded herself, and except<br />
in personal contact with one belonging to it, could not re−enter it. You provided the opportunity: never, in all<br />
her long years, had she had one before. Her hand, with lightest touch, was on one or other of your muffled<br />
feet, every step as you climbed. In that little chamber, she is now watching to leave it as soon as ever she<br />
may."<br />
"She cannot know anything about the door!−−she cannot at least know how to open it!" I said; but my heart<br />
was not so confident as my words.<br />
"Hush, hush!" whispered the librarian, with uplifted hand; "she can hear through anything!−−You must go at<br />
once, and make your way to my wife's cottage. I will remain to keep guard over her."<br />
"Let me go to the Little Ones!" I cried.<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong><br />
"Beware of that, Mr. Vane. Go to my wife, and do as she tells you."<br />
His advice did not recommend itself: why haste to encounter measureless delay? If not to protect the children,<br />
why go at all? Alas, even now I believed him only enough to ask him questions, not to obey him!<br />
"Tell me first, Mr. Raven," I said, "why, of all places, you have shut her up there! The night I ran from your<br />
house, it was immediately into that closet!"<br />
"The closet is no nearer our cottage, and no farther from it, than any or every other place."<br />
<strong>Lilith</strong> 96