Lilith: A Romance

t only was plain-that I saw nothing I knew. Imagining myself involved in a visual illusion, and that touch would correct sight, I stretched my arms and fe

el from such a one struck me, and I turned again, overwhelmed with bewilderment, not unmingled with fear. Had I wandered into a region where both the material and psychical relations of our world had ceased to h

apparently aloud, for the que

door," replied an od

place no confidence either in my senses or my consciousness? The same instant I knew it was the raven that had spoken, for he stood look

st choice I can make of word or phrase is but an adumbration of what I would convey. I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind. Already I have set down statements I would gladly change did I know how to substitute

a man must have the right of a man to a civil a

ch, but his voice was not disagreeable, and what he said,

through any do

h my own ancient eyes!" asserted the ra

any door!"

ny-were doors in; here you came upon a door out! The strange thing to you," he went o

y telling me

hereness. The only way to come to know where

that where everyt

ng some

ha

r! for until you are at home, you will find i

d it too easy to get in; onc

y, stumble out again. Whether you have

ever go o

f-baked sort of place, it is at once so childish and so self-satisfied-in

presuming that a man i

s in generalising, but take man or bird as we find h

hts," I replied, "in the

d. "Tell me, then, who you

knowing? I am mys

lse; but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are no

h to determine that I was one and not another. As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of no consequence here. I

e said, "and te

er a raven, but a man above the middle height with a stoop, very thin, an

sir," I said, feeling foo

ned. "Did you ever see yourself behind? You have nev

"I believe you were once the librarian o

ou beg my

said-seeing him before me as plain

he knows that he IS, and then what HIMSELF is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody. There is more in it than you can see now, but not more than you need to see. You have, I fear, got into this region too soon, but none the less you must get

did not appear to have changed, only to have taken up hi

; but whether distance hid him, or he dis

d the grave? and must I wander about seeking my place in it? How was I to find myself at home? The raven s

ly I saw a wood of tall slender pine-trees, and turned toward it. The

d ground, vibrant like the smitten chords of a musical instrument. What it was grew no plainer as I went nearer, and when I came close up, I ceased to see it, only the form and colour of the trees beyond seemed strangely uncertain. I would have p

e on the winding stair: the house had grown strange to me! something was about to leap upon me from behind! I darted down the spiral, struck against the wall and fell, rose and ran. On the next floor I lost my way

ious dwellers, one or other of whom might any moment appear in the library where I sat! I was nowhere safe! I would let, I would sell the dreadful place, in which an a?rial portal stood ever open to creatures whose life was othe

e of a certain undertone of contemptuous humour in it; but suddenly

tell what it is even now generating?-what thought it may present me the next moment, the next month, or a

n put it to me in-at-"Where in?-where at?" I said, and gav

r I could not carry discovery. Beginnings of lines were visible on the left-hand page, and ends of lines on the other; but I could not, of course, get at the beginning and end of a single line, and was unable, in what I could read, to make any guess at the sense. The mere words, however, woke in me feelings which to describe was, from their strangeness, impossible. Some dreams, some poems, some musical phra

f the lines, but without the least success. The only thing I gained in the effort was

horror of the empty ga