Yet this very calmness oppressed him heavily,—like a cold hand laid on a fevered brow it chilled his blood even while it soothed his pain. He was conscious of a sense of irreparable loss,—and moreover he felt he had been a coward,—a coward physically and morally. For, instead of confronting the Supernatural, or what seemed the Supernatural, calmly, and with the inquisitorial research of a scientist, he had allowed himself to be overcome by It, and had fled back to the consideration of the merely human, with all the delirious speed of a lover and fool. Nevertheless he had his Lilith—his own Lilith,—and, holding her jealously to his heart, he presently turned his head tremblingly and in doubt to where the roses nodded drowsily in their crystal vase;—only the roses now were there! The marvellous Wingëd Brightness had fled, and the place it had illumined seemed by contrast very dark. The Soul,—the Immortal Self—had vanished;—the subtle Being he had longed to see, and whose existence and capabilities he had meant to “prove”; and he, who had consecrated his life and labour to the attainment of this one object, had failed to grasp the full solution of the mystery at the very moment when it might have been his. By his own weakness he had lost the Soul,—by his own strength he had gained the Body, or so he thought, and his mind was torn between triumph and regret. He was not yet entirely conscious of what had chanced to him—he could formulate no idea,—all he distinctly knew was that he held Lilith, warm and living, in his arms, and that he felt her light breath upon his cheek.
“Love is enough!” he murmured, kissing the hair that lay in golden clusters against his breast—“Waken, my Lilith!—waken!—and in our perfect joy we will defy all gods and angels!”
She stirred in his clasp,—he bent above her, eager, ardent, expectant,—her long eyelashes trembled,—and then,—slowly, slowly, like white leaves opening to the sun, the lids upcurled, disclosing the glorious eyes beneath, eyes that had been closed to earthly things for six long years,—deep, starry violet-blue eyes that shone with the calm and holy lustre of unspeakable purity and peace,—eyes that in their liquid softness held all the appeal, hope, supplication and eloquent love, he had seen (or fancied he had seen) in the strange eyes of the only half-visible Soul! The Soul indeed was looking through its earthly windows for the last time, had he known it,—but he did not know it. Raised to a giddy pinnacle of delight as suddenly as he had been lately plunged into an abyss of grief and terror, he gazed into those newly-opened wondrous worlds of mute expression with all a lover’s pride, passion, tenderness and longing.
“Fear nothing, Lilith!” he said—“It is I! I whose voice you have answered and obeyed,—I, your lover and lord! It is I who claim you, my belovëd!—I who bid you waken from death to life!”
Oh, what a smile of dazzling rapture illumined her face!—it was as if the sun in all his glory had suddenly broken out of a cloud to brighten her beauty with his purest beams. Her childlike, innocent, wondering eyes remained fixed upon El-Râmi,—lifting her white arms languidly she closed them round about him with a gentle fervour that seemed touched by compassion,—and he, thrilled to the quick by that silent expression of tenderness, straightway ascended to a heaven of blind, delirious ecstasy. He wanted no word from her ... what use of words!—her silence was the perfect eloquence of love! All her beauty was his own—his very own! ... he had willed it so,—and his will had won its way,—the iron Will of a strong wise man without a God to help him!—and all he feared was that he might die of his own excess of triumph and joy! ... Hush! ... hush! ... Music again!—that same deep sound as of the wind among trees, or the solemn organ-chord that closes the song of departing choristers. It was strange,—very strange!—but, though he heard, he scarcely heeded it; unearthly terrors could not shake him now,—not now, while he held Lilith to his heart, and devoured her loveliness with his eyes, curve by curve, line by line, till with throbbing pulses, and every nerve tingling in his body, he bent his face down to hers, and pressed upon her lips a long, burning, passionate kiss! ...
But, even as he did so, she was wrenched fiercely out of his hold by a sudden and awful convulsion,—her slight frame writhed and twisted itself away from his clasp with a shuddering recoil of muscular agony—once her little hands clutched the air, ... and then, ... then, the brief struggle over, her arms dropped rigidly at her sides, and her whole body swerved and fell backward heavily upon the pillows of the couch, stark, pallid and pulseless! ... And he,—he, gazing upon her thus with a vague and stupid stare, wondered dimly whether he were mad or dreaming? ...
What ... what was this sudden ailment? ... this ... this strange swoon? What bitter frost had stolen into her veins? ... what insatiable hell-fire was consuming his? Those eyes, ... those just unclosed, innocent lovely eyes of Lilith, ... was it possible, could it be true that all the light had gone out of them?—gone, utterly gone? And what was that clammy film beginning to cover them over with a glazing veil of blankness? ... God! ... God! ... he must be in a wild nightmare, he thought! ... he should wake up presently and find all this seeming disaster unreal,—the fantastic fear of a sick brain ... the “clangour and anger of elements” imaginative, not actual, ... and here his reeling terror found voice in a hoarse, smothered cry—
“Lilith! ... Lilith! ...”
But stop, stop! ... was it Lilith indeed whom he thus called? ... That? ... that gaunt, sunken, rigid form, growing swiftly hideous! ... yes—hideous, with those dull marks of blue discoloration coming here and there on the no longer velvety fair skin!
“Lilith! ... Lilith!”