She gazed: there was the Present....
There Eros would be, mourning for his naughty Psyche!
There he would presently forgive her....
Oh, how she hoped, how she longed!.... She longed; she stretched out her arms and dared cry in a plaintive voice:
“Eros!”
The wind blew through bush and shrub and sang the approach of winter. The violet curtains of mist were drawn aside. The sad autumn morning appeared. There, now visible, lay the Present....
And Psyche gazed, screening her eyes with her hand....
There she saw her happiness of days gone by, destroyed. In a dead, withered garden, a ruin: crystal pillars crumbling to pieces. And between the pillars, spiders’ webs; all over the garden spiders’ webs, web upon web, and in them spiders with bloated bodies and lazy-moving feet....
Then she saw that Emeralda was reigning!
Then she felt that Eros was dead!