You may stretch your hands out towards me.
Ah! you will—I know not when.
I shall nurse my love, and keep it
Faithfully for you till then.
A. A. Proctor.
Lilith found her new home a safe enough retreat. Let any young woman go into a strange house, in a strange city, under the circumstances in which Lilith entered the Widow Downie’s, and if she feel compelled to observe a strict silence concerning her own past life, she need not tell her story. Her neighbors will make up one to fit her, and, what is more, will believe in it.
Try to get at the origin of such a story, and you may trace it to “They say,” but no farther.
The advent of Lilith in the boarding-house of Mrs. Downie caused a great deal of gossip, in which, strange to say, there was not a word of ill-nature, of criticism, or of adverse reflection upon the young creature.
She was so child-like, so pretty, and so desolate, that the hearts of all her fellow-lodgers were drawn towards her.
By “putting this and that” together, by unconsciously exaggerating all they heard, and by involuntarily drawing upon their imaginations, they had formed a theory, which they took for fact, in regard to Lilith.