The answer was more like a sigh than an assent.
“Can you repeat what you said?”
Lilith stretched her fair arms out with a gesture of weariness.
“I said I was tired—” she murmured—“Tired of the search through Infinity for things that are not. A wayward will bids me look for evil—I search, but cannot find it;—for Hell, a place of pain and torment,—up and down, around and around the everlasting circles I wend my way, and can discover no such abode of misery. Then I bring back the messages of truth,—but they are rejected, and I am sorrowful. All the realms of God are bright with beauty save this one dark prison of Man’s fantastic Dream. Why am I bound here? I long to reach the light!—I am tired of the darkness!” She paused—then added—“This is what I said to one who is my friend.”
Vaguely pained, and stricken with a sudden remorse, El-Râmi asked:
“Am not I your friend, Lilith?”
A shudder ran through her delicate limbs. Then the answer came distinctly, yet reluctantly:
“No!”
El-Râmi dropped her hands as though he had been stung;—his face was very pale. The monk touched him on the shoulder.
“Why are you so moved?” he asked—“A spirit cannot lie;—an angel cannot flatter. How should she call you friend?—you, who detain her here solely for your own interested purposes?—To you she is a ‘subject’ merely,—no more than the butterfly dissected by the naturalist. The butterfly has hopes, ambitions, loves, delights, innocent wishes, nay, even a religion,—what are all these to the grim spectacled scientist who breaks its delicate wings? The Soul of Lilith, like a climbing flower, strains instinctively upward,—but you (for a certain time only)—according to the natural magnetic laws which compel the stronger to subdue the weaker, have been able to keep this, her ethereal essence, a partial captive under your tyrannical dominance. Yes—I say ‘tyrannical,’—great wisdom should inspire love,—but in you it only inspires despotism. Yet with all your skill and calculation you have strangely overlooked one inevitable result of your great experiment.”