darkness! At the touch of the fire the god started up, and beholding
the overthrow of her faith, quietly took flight from her embraces.

And Psyche, as he rose upon the wing, laid hold on him with her two
hands, hanging upon him in his passage through the air, till she
sinks to the earth through weariness. And as she lay there, the
divine lover, tarrying still, lighted upon a cypress tree which grew
near, and, from the top of it, spake thus to her, in great emotion.
"Foolish one! unmindful of the command of Venus, my mother, who had
devoted thee to one of base degree, I fled to thee in his stead. Now
know I that this was vainly done. Into mine own flesh pierced mine
arrow, and I made thee my wife, only that I might seem a monster
beside thee--that thou shouldst seek to wound the head wherein lay
the eyes so full of love to thee! Again and again, I thought to put
thee on thy guard concerning these things, and warned thee in loving-
kindness. Now I would but punish thee by my flight hence." And
therewith he winged his way into the deep sky.

Psyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as sight might
reach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and lamented; and when the
breadth of space had parted him wholly from her, cast herself down
from the bank of a river [77] which was nigh. But the stream,
turning gentle in honour of the god, put her forth again unhurt upon
its margin. And as it happened, Pan, the rustic god, was sitting
just then by the waterside, embracing, in the body of a reed, the
goddess Canna; teaching her to respond to him in all varieties of
slender sound. Hard by, his flock of goats browsed at will. And the
shaggy god called her, wounded and outworn, kindly to him and said,
"I am but a rustic herdsman, pretty maiden, yet wise, by favour of my
great age and long experience; and if I guess truly by those