Through the diamond lenses she saw sun systems, spirals of fire, shrivel up through the illimitableness of the universe.... But she kept gazing, for behind those sun systems, she knew, were other spheres, other heavens, and there farther still, illimitably far, was the Mystic Rose, which she could never see....
Sometimes, when Psyche wandered round the castle, she knocked nervously, inquisitively at Astra’s door, who graciously allowed her to enter. When Astra stood before the board and reckoned out long sums, Psyche looked very earnestly at her sister’s star, which glistened on her head, in her coal-black hair. Or she went on to the terrace and peeped through the telescope, but she saw nothing but very bright light, which made her eyes ache....
Chapter IV
In the evening, before she went to sleep, Psyche sought the king.
A good hundred years old he was, his beard hung down to his girdle, and generally he sat reading the historical scrolls of the kingdom, which his ministers brought him every day.
But in the evening Psyche climbed on to his knees and nestled in his beard, or sat at his feet in the folds of his tabard, and the scroll fell to the ground, and crumpled up, and the withered hand of the mighty monarch stroked the head of his third child, the princess with the little wings.
“Father, dear,” asked Psyche once; “why have I wings, and cannot fly?”
“You need not fly, child; you are much safer with me than if you were a little bird in the air.”