In the coppice she broke a strong stick for a staff. A lappet of her mantle she had drawn over her head as a hood. And with her staff and her hood, she looked like a pious pilgrim.
The solitary countryman who was coming down the rocky path, did not throw stones at her, but greeted her reverently.
She kept climbing up.
High in the air lay the castle, gloomy and inaccessible, a town of towers, a Babel of pinnacles; along it swept the clouds. As an innocent child, as a naked princess with wings, Psyche had lived there like a butterfly on a rock, had wandered along the dreadful parapets, had longed and hoped and dreamed. Oh! her longings of innocence, her hope to fly through the air to the opal islands, her dreams, pure as the doves that flew round about her . . . .!
She had wandered through clouds, through desert and wood, from the North to the South. She had loved the Chimera, had put questions to the Sphinx; she had been Queen of the Present and the beloved of Bacchus, and now . . . . now she came back, wingless, with a soul that burned her continually, like a scarlet
