Narcissus pauses in his dance, and looks inquiringly at the pleading figure at his feet. For once his attention is distracted from himself. He stoops and raises the drooping Echo, gazing into her face. She returns look for look. The interest of Narcissus is aroused: he continues to forget himself, as Echo stimulates his curiosity. He takes pleasure in her, perhaps because in the ardent gaze which she fixes upon him he finds himself reflected.
But the watching nymphs are quickly roused to jealousy. Though Echo seeks to hold him, they tear Narcissus from his new-found pleasure. Derisively they declare that Echo’s love is but a mockery. Incapable of expressing any feeling of her own, she can but repeat the last words and gestures of those who choose to challenge her. Narcissus listens, astonished at so strange a tale. The nymphs, with jealous malice, urge him to test the truth of what they say. Nothing loth, Narcissus advances towards the sorrowful Echo. He dances a few gay steps, and pauses. Falteringly poor Echo repeats the last of them. Again Narcissus dances: again, on the instant that he pauses, the luckless nymph is constrained to imitate his final movements. Narcissus tries her with gestures—and unfailingly he sees, each time he pauses, his last motions repeated before his eyes.
It is true, then—this odd circumstance which the other nymphs related! Much amused, Narcissus breaks into a gleeful dance, and with all the heartless merriment of a wanton boy, indulges the whim of the moment. As he foots it round the hapless Echo he puts her, with unthinking cruelty, to every test
that his nimble wit can devise. In mute agony Echo responds to his pranks. Does he interrupt the dance to pause before her on tip-toes? She too, must raise herself into that attitude. Does he wave his arms around his head? She must copy the very gesture. So the cruel play goes on until at length Narcissus, wearying of the jest, merrily dances away in quest of some new sport. With him trip the eager nymphs. The peasant youths and maidens follow, and Echo is left to indulge her despair in solitude.
Unhappy Echo! Better to be dumb than condemned in this fashion to play the empty mime, a sport for idle moments. In gloomy abandonment to grief the hapless nymph unbraids her hair. The long black tresses fall about her shoulders, and thus, distraught in spirit, disordered in her looks, she flings herself in abasement before the shrine of the goddess. The mockery of her companions still rings in her ears, and in the first fury of a woman slighted she calls upon the deity to avenge her wounded pride. From the depths of her tortured soul she prays that Narcissus may learn something of the agony to which she is doomed, by giving his love where it can never be returned. The sacred grove darkens, the lightning flashes, and Echo, the bitterness with which her heart is overburdened thus discharged, goes mournfully forth.
The light returns, the cool recesses of the leafy glade invite retirement from the heat of afternoon. Narcissus, weary of his sportive play, returns alone to rest his tired limbs. He is thirsty, and the shining surface of the pool is grateful to his eye. He approaches, stretches his limbs in lassitude upon the sloping bank, and stoops to drink.
But his lips do not touch the water. He remains poised above the glassy surface, staring intently downwards. Out of the limpid depth he sees regarding him a fair and radiant face. Narcissus had never thought that such beauty existed on earth. He cannot remove his eyes, he is entranced. He raises his head—the beautiful image retreats. He stoops—and it comes nearer. He stoops lower—he would kiss the vision. But at the very moment when his lips meet those others, a ripple breaks across the still surface of the pool, the image is distorted, almost vanishes.
The prayer of Echo has been answered. The doom of Narcissus has been pronounced, and he loves where his love can never be returned. He scrambles to his knees, he stands erect. Out of the again placid mirror of the pool his own image smiles upward at him. He makes passionate protestations of love: his image answers him gesture for gesture. He seeks to fascinate by his grace and beauty: grace and beauty not less than his fascinate him in turn. Yet the vision, to his dismay, remains remote. It will not come to him, and though when he seeks to approach, it draws near in welcome, the moment of union brings catastrophe.