The Sphinx was silent.
The Sphinx, with stony eyes, looked away into the night of diamond stars. Her basalt lips remained closed.
And Psyche wept. Then she cast a look at the stars.
“Sacred Stars,” she murmured, “I am alone. My father is dead. The Chimera has gone. The Sphinx is silent. I am alone, and afraid and tired. Sacred Stars, watch over me. See my tears no longer flow; for this night they are exhausted.... I can cry no more. I will go to sleep, here, between the feet of the Sphinx. She speaks not, it is true; but—perhaps she is not angry, and if she wants to crush me with her foot, I care not. But yet I will go to sleep between her powerful feet. In your looks of living diamond, I feel compassion thrill.... Sacred Stars, I will go to sleep; watch over me....”
She lay down between the feet of the Sphinx, against the breast of the Sphinx. And she was so little and the Sphinx so great, that she was like a butterfly sitting near a tower.
Then she fell asleep.
The night was very still. Far, far away in the boundless desert, a mist drifted horizonlessly along, and lit up the darkness. The stream of Psyche’s tears meandered, like a silver thread, far away from whence she had come. She herself slept. The Sphinx, with staring eyes and closed mouth, looked out high into the night. The stars twinkled and watched.
Chapter XI
Without a cloud arose on the horizon the first dawn of day, the round, rosy-coloured morning glimmer. And in the dawn appeared the horizon, and bordered the sandy plain.