curtains of mist were drawn aside. The sad autumn morning appeared. There, now visible, lay the Present. . . .
And Psyche gazed, screening her eyes with her hand. . . .
There she saw her happiness of days gone by, destroyed. In a dead, withered garden, a ruin: crystal pillars crumbling to pieces. And between the pillars, spiders’ webs; all over the garden spiders’ webs, web upon web, and in them spiders with bloated bodies and lazy-moving feet. . . .
Then she saw that Emeralda was reigning!
Then she felt that Eros was dead!
She had murdered him!
Oh, how her limbs glowed, how her soul burned! Oh, the burning pain within her, deep within—a pain which no grape-juice could allay, which no mad dance could deaden and the nymphs could not cool, though they poured over her all their urns! Oh, that hell in her soul, for the irretrievable desolation, for the murdered one, past recall! Oh, that suffering, not for herself, but for him—for another! that repentance, that burning remorse! . . . .
She fell to the ground and sobbed.
