unmake herself, and
could not! she was a dead life! she could not cease! she must BE! In her
face I saw and read beyond its misery--saw in its dismay that the dismay
behind it was more than it could manifest. It sent out a livid gloom;
the light that was in her was darkness, and after its kind it shone. She
was what God could not have created. She had usurped beyond her share
in self-creation, and her part had undone His! She saw now what she had
made, and behold, it was not good! She was as a conscious corpse, whose
coffin would never come to pieces, never set her free! Her bodily eyes
stood wide open, as if gazing into the heart of horror essential--her
own indestructible evil. Her right hand also was now clenched--upon
existent Nothing--her inheritance!

But with God all things are possible: He can save even the rich!

Without change of look, without sign of purpose, Lilith walked toward
Mara. She felt her coming, and rose to meet her.

"I yield," said the princess. "I cannot hold out. I am defeated.--Not
the less, I cannot open my hand."

"Have you tried?"

"I am trying now with all my might."

"I will take you to my father. You have wronged him worst of the
created, therefore he best of the created can help you."

"How can HE help me?"

"He will forgive you."

"Ah, if he would but help me to cease! Not even that am I capable of! I
have no power over myself; I am a slave! I acknowledge it. Let me die."

"A slave thou art that shall one day be a child!" answered
Mara.--"Verily, thou shalt die, but not as thou thinkest. Thou shalt
die out of death into life. Now is the Life for, that never was against
thee!"

Like her mother, in whom lay the motherhood of all the world, Mara put
her arms around Lilith, and kissed her on the forehead. The fiery-cold
misery went out of her eyes, and their fountains filled. She lifted, and
bore her to her own bed in a corner of the room, laid her softly upon
it, and closed her eyes with caressing hands.

Lilith lay and wept. The Lady of Sorrow went to the door and opened it.

Morn, with the Spring in her arms, waited outside. Softly they stole in
at the opened door, with a gentle wind in the skirts of their garments.
It flowed and flowed about Lilith, rippling the unknown, upwaking sea of
her life eternal; rippling and to ripple it, until at length she who had
been but as a weed cast on the dry sandy shore to wither, should know
herself an inlet of the everlasting ocean,