“Nay, you must know,” said Lilith, with soft persistence. “Every unit of life in every planet is bound to know its Cause and Final Intention. All is clear to me, and will be so to you, hereafter. You ask me of these things—I tell you,—but you do not believe me;—you will never believe me till—the end.”
“Beware the end!” The words echoed themselves so distinctly in El-Râmi’s mind that he could almost have fancied they were spoken aloud in the room. “What end?” he asked eagerly.
But to this Lilith answered nothing.
He looked at the small sensitive hand he held, and, stroking it gently, was about to lay it back on her bosom, when all at once she pressed her fingers closely over his palm, and sat upright, her delicate face expressive of the most intense emotion, notwithstanding her closed eyes.
“Write!” she said in a clear penetrating voice that sent silvery echoes through the room—“write these truths to the world you live in. Tell the people they all work for Evil, and therefore Evil shall be upon them. What they sow, even that shall they reap,—with the measure they have used, it shall be measured to them again. O wild world!—sad world!—world wherein the pride of wealth, the joy of sin, the cruelty of avarice, the curse of selfishness, outweigh all pity, all sympathy, all love! For this God’s law of Compensation makes but one return—Destruction. Wars shall prevail; plague and famine shall ravage the nations;—young children shall murder the parents who bore them; theft and rapine shall devastate the land. For your world is striving to live without God,—and a world without God is a disease that must die. Like a burnt-out star this Earth shall fall from its sphere and vanish utterly—and its sister-planets shall know it no more. For when it is born again, it will be new.”
The words came from her lips with a sort of fervid eloquence which seemed to exhaust her, for she grew paler and paler, and her head began to sink backward on the pillow. El-Râmi gently put his arm round her to support her, and, as he did so, a kind of supernatural light irradiated her features.
“Believe me, O my belovëd, believe the words of Lilith!” she murmured. “There is but one law leading to all Wisdom. Evil generates Evil, and contains within itself its own retribution. Good generates Good, and holds within itself the germ of eternal reproduction. Love begets Love, and from Love is born Immortality!”
Her voice grew fainter,—she sank entirely back on her pillow; yet once again her lips moved and the word “Immortality!” floated whisperingly like a sigh. El-Râmi drew his arm away from her, and at the same instant disengaged his hand from her clasp. She seemed bewildered at this, and for a minute or two felt in the air as though searching for some missing treasure,—then her arms fell passively on each side of her, seemingly inert and lifeless. El-Râmi bent over her half curiously, half anxiously,—his eyes dwelt on the ruby-like jewel that heaved gently up and down on her softly rounded bosom,—he watched the red play of light around it, and on the white satiny skin beneath,—and then,—all at once his sight grew dazzled and his brain began to swim. How lovely she was!—how much more than lovely! And how utterly she was his!—his, body and soul, and in his power! He was startled at the tenor of his own unbidden thoughts,—whence, in God’s name, came these new impulses, these wild desires that fired his blood? ... Furious with himself for what he deemed the weakness of his own emotions, he strove to regain the mastery over his nerves,—to settle his mind once more in its usual attitude of cold inflexibility and indifferent composure,—but all in vain. Some subtle chord in his mental composition had been touched mysteriously, he knew not how, and had set all the other chords a-quivering,—and he felt himself all suddenly to be as subdued and powerless as when his mysterious visitor, the monk from Cyprus, had summoned up (to daunt him, as he thought) the strange vision of an Angel in his room.
Again he looked at Lilith;—again he resisted the temptation that assailed him to clasp her in his arms, to shower a lover’s kisses on her lips, and thus waken her to the full bitter-sweet consciousness of earthly life,—till in the sharp extremity of his struggle, and loathing himself for his own folly, he suddenly dropped on his knees by the side of the couch and gazed with a vague wild entreaty at the tranquil loveliness that lay there so royally enshrined.
“Have mercy, Lilith!” he prayed half aloud, and scarcely conscious of his words. “If you are stronger in your weakness than I in my strength, have mercy! Repel me,—distrust me, disobey me—but do not love me! Make me not as one of the foolish for whom a woman’s smile, a woman’s touch, are more than life, and more than wisdom. O let me not waste the labour of my days on a freak of passion!—let me not lose everything I have gained by long study and research, for the mere wild joy of an hour! Lilith, Lilith! Child, woman, angel!—whatever you are, have pity upon me! I dare not love you! ... I dare not!”