CHAPTER IV
In the evening, before she went to sleep, Psyche sought the king.
A good hundred years old he was, his beard hung down to his girdle, and generally he sat reading the historical scrolls of the kingdom, which his ministers brought him every day.
But in the evening Psyche climbed on to his knees and nestled in his beard, or sat at his feet in the folds of his tabard, and the scroll fell to the ground, and crumpled up, and the withered hand of the mighty monarch stroked the head of his third child, the princess with the little wings.
“Father, dear,” asked Psyche once; “why have I wings, and cannot fly?”
“You need not fly, child; you are much safer with me than if you were a little bird in the air.”
“But why then have I wings?”
