Lilith: A Romance

d that my father had had a peep into that m

ns were good people, and a night in their house would nowise have hurt me! They were doubtless strange, but it was faculty in which the one was peculiar, and beauty in which the other was marvellous! And I had not believed in them! had treated them as unworthy of my confidence, as harbouring a design against me! The more I thought of my behaviour to them, the more disgusted

A blackbird was singing on the lawn. I said to myself, "I will go and tell them I am ashamed, an

. It was nearly noon, and the sun would be a little higher than when first I came: I must raise the

there were the shapes of the former vision-distinguishable indeed, but tremulous like a lan

, until at last, in a great degree, so far as I was concerned, by chance, things came right between them,

tinually fancying afresh that I recognised something of the country; but I had come upon no forest, and now the sun was near the horizon, and th

ned to

t night," I said. "Will you take me with you

se, "My wife does not expect you to-night," he said. "She

may tell her how sorry

der their daisies-they all lie among the roots of the flowers of heaven-at the thought of your delight when the winter should be past, and the morning with its birds come:

Raven: is my father with you? Have y

hat was he you saw with his arm on

That I should have been

ack on him!" cor

ain down at onc

ur twice great-grandfather, both are up and away long ago. Your great-grandfather has been with us for many

OF CO

waking than you. No one who

t all under

erstand!" I held my peace.-But if I

her-is he also w

n the Evil Wood, f

vil Wood, that

wood. It is the place where those who will not sleep,

t unders

your face. When my wife and I do not understand our children, it is because the

u be so good as show me the nearest way home? There are mo

e indeed

, how to recogni

nderstand what we said. Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at h

I exclaimed. "I did not com

Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call rid

d worse!"

king themselves until you understand yourself. The universe is a rid

tell me what I am to

ll YOUR to-do, o

me, at least direct m

The beings most like yo

could see nothing but the se

ed-taken from my home, abandoned in a strange world, and ref

nd you declined my hospitality, you reached what you call

f myself, but had I not come with intent of atonement? My heart was sore, and in my brain was neither ques

hrew back his head, and something shot from his bill, cast high in the air. That moment the sun set, and the air at once grew very dusk, but the something open

n this much, however, I do with a continuous and abiding sense of failure, finding it impossible to present more than one phase of a multitudinously complicated significance, or one concentric sphere of a graduated embodiment. A single thing would sometimes seem to be and mean many things, with an uncertain identity at the heart of them, which kept constantly altering their look. I am indeed often driven to set down what I know to be but a clumsy and doubtful representation of the mer