LILITH A Fantasy Novel By George MacDonald - online book

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MY FATHER'S MANUSCRIPT                   53
old-fashioned and neglected, but, notwithstanding its ordinary seeming, the eagle, perched with outstretched wings on the top, appeared threatful.
'As a mirror,'' said the librarian, (it has grown dingy with age; but that is no matter: its doorness depends on the light.'
' Light !' I rejoined ; ' there is no light here !'
He did not answer me, but began to pull at a little chain on the opposite wall. I heard a creaking: the top of the chamber was turning slowly round. He ceased pulling, looked at his watch, and began to pull again.
' We arrive almost to the moment I' he said ; (it is on the very stroke of noon ! '
The top went creaking and revolving for a minute or so. Then he pulled two other chains, now this, now that, and returned to the first. A moment more and the chamber grew much clearer: a patch of sunlight had fallen upon a mirror on the wall opposite that against which the other leaned, and on the dust I saw the path of the reflected rays to the mirror on the ground. But from the latter none were returned ; they seemed to go clean through ; there was nowhere in the chamber a second patch of light !
' Where are the sunrays gone ? ' I cried.
' That I cannot tell,' returned Mr. Baven; 'back, perhaps, to where they came from first. They now belong, I fancy, to a sense not yet developed in us.'
He then talked of the relations of mind to matter, and of senses to qualities, in a way I could only a little understand, whence he went on to yet stranger things which I could not at all apprehend. He spoke much about dimensions, telling me there were many more
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