“Psyche,” said he, gently, “will the Sphinx give me an answer to my question this morning?”
She cast down her eyes.
“Psyche,” he went on, “I have drunk your tears; I respect your grief, too great for your little heart. But may I suffer it with you? O Psyche, little Psyche, little, in the great desert, now your father is dead, now the Chimera is away, now you are all alone.... O Psyche, now come with me! Oh, let me now love you! O Psyche, come now with me! Psyche, alone in the desert, a little butterfly in a sandy plain—Psyche, oh, come with me! I will give you a summer-house to live in, a garden to play in, and all my love to comfort you. Don’t despise them. All that I have will I give! Small is my palace and small my garden round it, but greater than the desert and the sky is my great love. O Psyche, come with me now! Then you will suffer cold and hunger and thirst no more, and the grief that your heart now suffers, Psyche, ... we will bear together.”
He stretched out his arms. She smiled, tired and pale from weeping, slid from the foot of the Sphinx, and nestled to his heart.
“Eros,” she murmured, “I suffer. I pine. I weep. I gave away all that I had. I have nothing more than my grief. Can grief ... be happiness in the Present?”
He smiled.
“From grief ... comes happiness,” he answered. “From grief will come happiness, not in the Present, but ... in the Future!”
She looked at him inquiringly.
“What is that?” she asked. “Future...! It is a very sweet word.... I do not know what it is, but I have heard it before.... Father sometimes spoke of it with an affected voice.... It seems to be something far away, far, far away.... From grief will come ... in the Future ... happiness!
“Far behind me lies the Past.... Then I was a child. Now I am a woman.... A woman.... Now I am, Eros, a woman, a woman, who has wept and suffered, and asked of the silent Sphinx.... Now I am no longer a princess, but a woman, a queen ... of the Present....!”