.

I would have thrown my arms about her, but Mara stopped me.

"You cannot go near her," she said. "She is far away from us, afar in
the hell of her self-consciousness. The central fire of the universe is
radiating into her the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of what
she is. She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows
that she is herself the fire in which she is burning, but she does not
know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire. Her torment is
that she is what she is. Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No
gentler way to help her was left. Wait and watch."

It may have been five minutes or five years that she stood thus--I
cannot tell; but at last she flung herself on her face.

Mara went to her, and stood looking down upon her. Large tears fell from
her eyes on the woman who had never wept, and would not weep.

"Will you change your way?" she said at length.

"Why did he make me such?" gasped Lilith. "I would have made myself--oh,
so different! I am glad it was he that made me and not I myself!
He alone is to blame for what I am! Never would I have made such a
worthless thing! He meant me such that I might know it and be miserable!
I will not be made any longer!"

"Unmake yourself, then," said Mara.

"Alas, I cannot! You know it, and mock me! How often have I not agonised
to cease, but the tyrant keeps me being! I curse him!--Now let him kill
me!"

The words came in jets as from a dying fountain.

"Had he not made you," said Mara, gently and slowly, "you could not even
hate him. But he did not make you such. You have made yourself what you
are.--Be of better cheer: he can remake you."

"I will not be remade!"

"He will not change you; he will only restore you to what you were."

"I will not be aught of his making."

"Are you not willing to have that set right which you have set wrong?"

She lay silent; her suffering seemed abated.

"If you are willing, put yourself again on the settle."

"I will not," she answered, forcing the words through her clenched
teeth.

A wind seemed to wake inside the house, blowing without sound or impact;
and a water began to rise that had no lap in its ripples, no sob in its
swell. It was cold, but it did not benumb. Unseen and noiseless it came.
It smote no sense in me, yet I knew it rising. I saw it lift at last and
float her. Gently it bore her, unable to resist, and left rather than
laid her on the settle. Then it