Psyche awoke, and the cupids with her. Eros approached and led her away. The air grew dark, and the next moment the summer storm burst forth, dark sky, lightning, rain, and thunder rapidly rolling on. It lasted only for a time; then the sky became blue again, the flowers recovered their breath and raised their drooping heads, shaking with fresh rain.
Chapter XIV
Next day, when Psyche was sleeping again by the brook, the dark head with the leering eyes of jet appeared again on the horizon. For a long time the eyes leered, full of lust. Then the head rose up higher like a dark sun, behind the hill-slope in the sky.
It was a face tanned by the sun, with coal-black hair; round the temples a wreath of vine leaves, and from the wreath protruded two horns like those of a young goat.
The eyes looked lustful and young, as though they were jet and gold. The lips laughed in the curly beard, and the sharp teeth were dazzling white; the pointed ears stood up.
Then the dark face became perfectly visible in the light; the shoulders rose brown and naked, and two brown hands with long fingers lifted to the lips a pipe of short and long reeds. The pipe played a fanfare, a march of very quick notes. Then it stopped, and the gold-jet eyes leered. Psyche moved in her sleep. Then the pipe sounded again, and Psyche opened her eyes. Astonished, she listened to the notes of the pipe, as they rose and fell so as she had never heard before, lively and wanton, quick and playful. She sat up, leant on her arm, and looked....
She started. There, on the horizon, like a dark sun, she saw the brown face and the lips in the curly beard blowing the reeds, short and long. Psyche started and looked on trembling. Then the pipe stopped again, and roguishly the head nodded to her. Psyche was frightened; she woke the boys. She fled away. From the palace Eros came to meet her.
At first she meant to speak, but he kissed her; and why, she did not know, but she spoke not. Then she made up her mind to tell Eros that night, but in her husband’s arms she lacked the courage to speak. She did not tell him. The next morning she resolved not to repose again in the moss by the brook. But that afternoon she played with the cupids, and tired, fell asleep in the same place. The pipe awoke her; on the horizon, the brown face stood out against the sun, and roguishly nodded to her.
Psyche, indignant, looked up.