CUFID AND PSYCHE 
317 
He listened to the low murmurs which escaped from 
the opening rosebuds of her lips, and he heard her pray 
to be wedded to a love that might never perish, to an 
essence that could never know decay ; were it but a mov- 
ing shadow of immortality she cared not, if even she 
never beheld the substance of the divinity she loved. 
“Make me but the remotest point,’’ sighed Psyche in 
her sleep, “ that forms a portion of the starry circle which 
the star eternally shines upon, the furthest that is lighted 
by the radiance on which it waits, feeling itself, never- 
theless, as if a portion of that star, although only admitted 
these like a worshipper on whom the bright effulgence 
falls. Let me become a part of the lightest down that 
feathers the edge of an immortal wing, so that I may but 
feel that I am a part of that immortality; or if I must 
perish, give me a brief career of beauty, crowd the space of 
a year into a single day, and, like the butterfly, send me 
forth winged, a divinity floating above the flowers, that 
I may before I die taste of the existence of the gods, and 
catch, like them, the ethereal air, which hath never beaten 
upon the bosom of the earth.” 
Love knelt down beside her, and breathing between the 
parted honey of her lips, in kisses whispered that her 
prayer was answered; and from that hour she was a par- 
taker of the divinity of Love. 
“And this power shalt thou possess,” continued Love, 
“ so long as thou canst withhold thine eyes from mine ; 
for if once my image is mirrored in the floating orbs of 
thy beauty, from that moment shaft thou again become 
mortal, and subject to that death which overtakes the 
daughters of the earth : for such was the doom uttered by 
the Thunderer on Olympus on all who should covet an 
immortal love. So fondly do I adore thee,” continued 
Love, “ that I will bear thee away to a cave where Jupiter 
once sheltered a fair mortal like thyself from the jealous 
eyes of Juno ; where it shall ever be light as noonday 
when I am absent, but dark as the hollow of a mountain, 
into which the air of heaven never breathed, when I visit 
thee in all the immortality of my love.” 
Love bore her away to the beautiful cavern which had 
opened at the bidding of Jupiter, under one of the moun- 
tains of Arcadia; and went arching far beneath it: the 
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