“Nymphs, nymphs....! This is the fire that nothing can extinguish—no, never.... This is remorse....”
The nymphs understood her not; they rocked her and sang in a low, soft voice.
Chapter XIX
That morning she wandered about in the rosy autumn dawn—a mist between the trees stripped of leaves. Along the path she trod; on a skin she found a satyr and a Bacchante lying in a drunken sleep, tight in each other’s arms; a cup lay on the ground, a broken thyrsus, pressed-out grapes. She hastened on and sought the most lonely spots. The foliage became scantier, the trees grew farther apart, the wood ended in a plain and, violet misty, a perspective of very low hills.
Psyche walked on over the plain and climbed the hills.
The autumn wind blew and howled between shrubs and bushes, and sang the approach of winter. But Psyche felt not the cold, for her naked limbs glowed: her soul was all on fire.
On the highest hill-top she looked out, her hand above her eyes, gazing into the violet mist.... Unconscious to herself, she hoped for something vague and impossible: that she might see Eros, that he would come to her, that she would fall at his feet, that he would forgive her tenderly, and take her away with him. Impossible. “What was impossible? Could not everything be possible? Had he not followed the track of her tears? had he not found her in the arms of the Sphinx?” Oh, she hoped, she hoped, she hoped more definitely! Her remorse-burned soul longed for the balsam of his love in the palace of crystal, for the sounds of his lyre, for the tender words in the garden of the Present.
She hoped, she gazed....
In the pale glow of the morning sun, the violet mist cleared up, and parted like violet curtains....