I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror, stood the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty, She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one what God had intended her to be, the other what she had made herself. The rest of the night she lay motionless altogether. With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to Mara, and said, in prideful humility, “You have conquered. Let me go into the wilderness and bewail myself.” Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real. She looked at her a moment, and returned: “Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong.” “I know not how,” she replied--with the look of one who foresaw and feared the answer. “Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go.” A fierce refusal seemed to struggle for passage, but she kept it prisoned. “I cannot,” she said. “I have no longer the power. Open it for me.” She held out the offending hand. It was more a paw than a hand. It seemed to me plain that she could not open it. Mara did not even look at it. “You must open it yourself,” she said quietly. “I have told you I cannot!” “You can if you will--not indeed at once, but by persistent effort. What you have done, you do not yet wish undone--do not yet intend to undo!” “You think so, I dare say,” rejoined the princess with a flash of insolence, “but I KNOW that I cannot open my hand!” “I know you better than you know yourself, and I know you can. You have often opened it a little way. Without trouble and pain you cannot open it quite, but you CAN open it. At worst you could beat it open! I pray you, gather your strength, and open it wide.” “I will not try what I know impossible. It would be the part of a fool!” “Which you have been playing all your life! Oh, you are hard to teach!” Defiance reappeared on the face of the princess. She turned her back on Mara, saying, “I know what you have been tormenting me for! You have not succeeded, nor shall you succeed! You shall yet find me stronger than you think! I will yet be mistress of myself! I am still what I have always known myself--queen of Hell, and mistress of the worlds!” Then came the most fearful thing of all. I did not know what it was; I knew myself unable to imagine it; I knew only that if it came near me I should die of terror! I now know that it was LIFE IN DEATH--life dead, yet existent; and I knew that Lilith had had glimpses, but only glimpses of it before: it had never been with her until now.