"Psyche, stay!" said Bacchus entreatingly.

"No, no, let me alone!"

"With you goes all joy from the feast; Psyche, stay!"

"I will not always sing, dance, drink. No, no, let me alone!"

She pushed him away from her; she pushed the satyrs away from her; she broke the round dance of the Bacchantes, who, drunken, shouted with drunken eyes and wide-open, screaming mouths.

"Psyche! Psyche!" screamed all.

She laughed loudly and coquettishly, like a spoilt child.

"I will come back to-morrow, when you are sober!" she said with a mocking laugh. "Your voices are hoa.r.s.e, your song is out of tune, your last grapes were sour! I will only have the sweet of your feast, and the bitter I will leave to you. Spread out your panther skins; go and sleep off your drunkenness. If your feast has to last till winter, you need rest--rest for your hoa.r.s.e throats, rest for your drunken legs, rest for your heads, muddled with wine.... I will come back to-morrow, when you are sober!"

She gave a loud, mocking laugh, and rushed into the wood. It was a moonlight night; in the pale moonbeams she left the wild feast behind. The jealous Bacchantes danced round Bacchus, and embraced him.

Psyche hastened on. Her temples throbbed, her heart beat, and her bosom heaved. When she was far enough away, she stopped, pressed both her hands to her bosom, and gave a deep sigh. More slowly she went on to the stream. Fresh was the autumn night, but burning were her naked limbs!

The wood was still, save that in the top-most branches the wind moaned. Like a silvery ship the moon sailed forth from the luminous, ethereal sea, and the rushing mountain-stream foamed like snow on the rocks. With a longing desire for coolness and water, Psyche stepped down to the flags on the bank; with her hands she put aside the irises, and made her way through the ferns and plunged her foot into the water.

Then the nymphs dived up.

"Psyche! Psyche!" cried they joyously, "Psyche with the splendid wings!"

Psyche smiled. She threw herself into the water, and the snow-white foam dashed up.

"Let me be with you a moment," entreated Psyche. "Let me cool myself in your stream."

The nymphs pressed round her and carried her on their arms. She lay down at full length.

"Cool my forehead, cool my cheeks, cool my heart!" she cried imploringly. "Dear nymphs, oh, cool my soul! Everything burns on me and in me; fire scorches my lips, fire scorches my brain.... O dear nymphs, cool me!"

The nymphs sprinkled water on her; Psyche put her arm round the neck of one of them.

"Your water-drops hiss on my forehead as on burning metal. Your flakes of foam evaporate on the fire in my breast. And on my soul, O dear nymphs, you cannot sprinkle your coolness!"

The nymphs filled their stream-urns and poured them over Psyche.

"Pour them all out! Pour them all out!" cried Psyche entreatingly. "But although my hair is dripping, and my wings and my limbs too, my lips are scorched, my poor forehead burns, and within me, O nymphs...! within me, my soul is consumed as in h.e.l.l-fire...!"

The nymphs took her gently in their arms; they dived with her below, they came up again; they kept diving up and down.

"Oh, bathe me, bathe me!" cried Psyche imploringly. "Benevolent nymphs, bathe me! Some coolness still hangs about my body ... but my soul, oh, my soul you can never cool!" She wept, and the nymphs caught up her tears in mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.ls.

"Are you collecting my tears? Oh, no, they are not worth it. Once I wept a brook full; once they were drunk, drunk by Love; once they were pearls, and Love crowned me with them! Now, now they are like drops of wine, drops of fire, and though they should congeal and become rubies or topazes, they may never crown me more. Henceforth my tears I shall always shed ... for Emeralda!"

In the sh.e.l.ls the nymphs saw glistening pearls, and they understood not.... But all their urns they poured out upon Psyche's eyes.

"My eyes are getting cool, O beloved nymphs; many tears I shall never shed again; never again shall I weep a brook full.... But cool my soul, extinguish deep within me the burning flames!"

"We cannot, Psyche...."

"No, no, you cannot, O nymphs! Let me lie still, then, still in your arms. Let me rock quietly to and fro on your white-foaming water, then let me sleep quietly.... But in my sleep my soul keeps burning; in my dreams I see it flame up, high up as out of a hole in h.e.l.l.... Oh!"

She uttered a cry, as of pain.... The nymphs rocked her in their entwined arms, as in a cradle of lilies, and softly sang a song....

"Nymphs, nymphs....! This is the fire that nothing can extinguish--no, never.... This is remorse...."

The nymphs understood her not; they rocked her and sang in a low, soft voice.

CHAPTER XIX

That morning she wandered about in the rosy autumn dawn--a mist between the trees stripped of leaves. Along the path she trod; on a skin she found a satyr and a Bacchante lying in a drunken sleep, tight in each other's arms; a cup lay on the ground, a broken thyrsus, pressed-out grapes. She hastened on and sought the most lonely spots. The foliage became scantier, the trees grew farther apart, the wood ended in a plain and, violet misty, a perspective of very low hills.

Psyche walked on over the plain and climbed the hills.

The autumn wind blew and howled between shrubs and bushes, and sang the approach of winter. But Psyche felt not the cold, for her naked limbs glowed: her soul was all on fire.

On the highest hill-top she looked out, her hand above her eyes, gazing into the violet mist.... Unconscious to herself, she hoped for something vague and impossible: that she might see Eros, that he would come to her, that she would fall at his feet, that he would forgive her tenderly, and take her away with him. Impossible. "What was impossible? Could not everything be possible? Had he not followed the track of her tears? had he not found her in the arms of the Sphinx?" Oh, she hoped, she hoped, she hoped more definitely! Her remorse-burned soul longed for the balsam of his love in the palace of crystal, for the sounds of his lyre, for the tender words in the garden of the Present.

She hoped, she gazed....

In the pale glow of the morning sun, the violet mist cleared up, and parted like violet curtains....

She gazed: there was the Present....

There Eros would be, mourning for his naughty Psyche!

There he would presently forgive her....

Oh, how she hoped, how she longed!.... She longed; she stretched out her arms and dared cry in a plaintive voice:

"Eros!"

The wind blew through bush and shrub and sang the approach of winter. The violet 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....