“And you don’t care for any of those girls?”
“Why, you see,” said Narcissus, “when all the girls one knows call one beautiful, there’s no reason why I should care for one more than another. They all seem alike when they are all always saying just the same thing. Ah! I do wish I could see myself, so that I could tell if it was really true. I would marry the girl who could give me the wish of my heart—to see myself as other people see me. But as nobody can make me do that, why, I suppose I shall get on very well without marrying anybody at all.”
Looking-glasses had not been invented in those days, so that Narcissus had really never seen even so much of himself as his chin.
“What!” cried Echo, full of hope and joy; “if I make you see your own face, you will marry me?”
“I said so,” said he. “And of course what I say I’ll do, I’ll do.”
“Then—come with me!”
Echo took him by the hand and led him to the edge of a little lake in the middle of the wood, full of clear water.
“Kneel down, Narcissus,” said she, “and bend your eyes over the water-side. That lake is the mirror where Diana comes every morning to dress her hair, and in which, every night, the moon and the stars behold themselves. Look into that water, and see what manner of man you are!”
Narcissus kneeled down and looked into the lake. And, better than in any common looking-glass, he saw the reflected image of his own face—and he looked, and looked, and could not take his eyes away.
But Echo at last grew tired of waiting. “Have you forgotten what you promised me?” asked she. “Are you content now? Do you see now that what I told you is true?”