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16 LILITH |
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have taken up his shadow. I know this seems nonsense, but I cannot help it.
I gazed after him until I saw him no more ; but whether distance hid him, or he disappeared among the heather, I cannot tell.
Could it be that I was dead, I thought, and did not know it ? Was I in what we used to call the world beyond the grave ? and must I wander about seeking my place in it ? How was I to find myself at home ? The raven said I must do something: what could I do here?—And would that make me somebody? for now, alas, I was nobody !
I took the way Mr. Raven had gone, and went slowly after him. Presently I saw a wood of tall slender pine-trees, and turned toward it. The odour of it met me on my way, and I made haste to bury myself in it.
Plunged at length in its twilight glooms, I spied before me something with a shine, standing between two of the stems. It had no colour, but was like the translucent trembling of the hot air that rises, in a radiant summer noon, from the sun-baked ground, vibrant like the smitten chords of a musical instrument. What it was grew no plainer as I went nearer, and when I came close up, I ceased to see it, only the form and colour of the trees beyond seemed strangely uncertain. I would have passed between the stems, but received a slight shock, stumbled, and fell. When I rose, I saw before me the wooden wall of the garret chamber. I turned, and there was the mirror, on whose top the black eagle seemed but that moment to have perched.
Terror seized me, and I fled. Outside the chamber |
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