s that strained her
soul, for the shameful, hideous fate that the gods had dealt her.

All night, until her worn-out body could no longer feel, her worn-out
mind think, and kind sleep came to bring her oblivion, Psyche faced
the horror for the sake of her father and of his people, that she knew
she could not avoid. When morning came, her handmaids, white-faced and
red-eyed, came to deck her in all the bridal magnificence that
befitted the most beautiful daughter of a king, and when she was
dressed right royally, and as became a bride, there started up the
mountain a procession at sight of which the gods themselves must have
wept. With bowed heads the king and queen walked before the litter
upon which lay their daughter in her marriage veil of saffron colour,
with rose wreath on her golden hair. White, white were the faces of
the maidens who bore the torches, and yet rose red were they by the
side of Psyche. Minstrels played wedding hymns as they marched
onwards, and it seemed as though the souls of unhappy shades sobbed
through the reeds and moaned through the strings as they played.

At length they reached the rocky place where they knew they must leave
the victim bride, and her father dared not meet her eyes as he turned
his head to go. Yet Psyche watched the procession wending its way
downhill. No more tears had she to shed, and it seemed to her that
what she saw was not a wedding throng, but an assembly of
broken-hearted people who went back to their homes with heavy feet
after burying one that they loved. She saw no sign of the monster who
was to be her bridegroom, yet at every little sound her heart grew
sick with horror, and when the night wind swept through the craggy
peaks and its moans were echoed in loneliness, she fell on her face in
deadly fear and lay on the cold rock in a swoon.

Yet, had Psyche known it, the wind was her friend. For Eros had used
Zephyrus as his trusty messenger and sent him to the mountain top to
find the bride of him "whom neither man nor god could resist."
Tenderly--very tenderly--he was told, must he lift her in his arms,
and bear her to the golden palace in that green and pleasant land
where Eros had his home. So, with all the gentleness of a loving nurse
to a tired little child Zephyrus lifted Psyche, and sped with her in
his strong arms to the flowery meadows behind which towered the golden
palace of Eros, like the sun behind a sky of green and amber and blue
and rose. Deeply,