"We must be on our guard,"he said,"or she will again outwit us.
She would befool the very elect!"
"How are we to be on our guard?"I asked.
"Every way,"he answered."She fears,therefore hates her child,and is in this house on her way to destroy her.The birth of children is in her eyes the death of their parents,and every new generation the enemy of the last.Her daughter appears to her an open channel through which her immortality--which yet she counts self-inherent--is flowing fast away:to fill it up,almost from her birth she has pursued her with an utter enmity.But the result of her machinations hitherto is,that in the region she claims as her own,has appeared a colony of children,to which that daughter is heart and head and sheltering wings.My Eve longed after the child,and would have been to her as a mother to her first-born,but we were then unfit to train her:she was carried into the wilderness,and for ages we knew nothing of her fate.But she was divinely fostered,and had young angels for her playmates;nor did she ever know care until she found a baby in the wood,and the mother-heart in her awoke.
One by one she has found many children since,and that heart is not yet full.Her family is her absorbing charge,and never children were better mothered.Her authority over them is without appeal,but it is unknown to herself,and never comes to the surface except in watchfulness and service.She has forgotten the time when she lived without them,and thinks she came herself from the wood,the first of the family.
"You have saved the life of her and their enemy;therefore your life belongs to her and them.The princess was on her way to destroy them,but as she crossed that stream,vengeance overtook her,and she would have died had you not come to her aid.You did;and ere now she would have been raging among the Little Ones,had she dared again cross the stream.But there was yet a way to the blessed little colony through the world of the three dimensions;only,from that,by the slaying of her former body,she had excluded herself,and except in personal contact with one belonging to it,could not re-enter it.You provided the opportunity:never,in all her long years,had she had one before.Her hand,with lightest touch,was on one or other of your muffled feet,every step as you climbed.In that little chamber,she is now watching to leave it as soon as ever she may.""She cannot know anything about the door!--she cannot at least know how to open it!"I said;but my heart was not so confident as my words.
"Hush,hush!"whispered the librarian,with uplifted hand;"she can hear through anything!--You must go at once,and make your way to my wife's cottage.I will remain to keep guard over her.""Let me go to the Little Ones!"I cried.
"Beware of that,Mr.Vane.Go to my wife,and do as she tells you."His advice did not recommend itself:why haste to encounter measureless delay?If not to protect the children,why go at all?
Alas,even now I believed him only enough to ask him questions,not to obey him!
