troubled countenance. "Ye come in season," she cried; "I pray you,
find for me Psyche. It must needs be that ye have heard the disgrace
of my house." And they, ignorant of what was done, would have
soothed her anger, saying, "What fault, Mistress, hath thy son
committed, that thou wouldst destroy the girl he loves? Knowest thou
not that he is now of age? Because he wears his years so lightly
must he seem to thee ever but a child? Wilt thou for ever thus pry
into the [79] pastimes of thy son, always accusing his wantonness,
and blaming in him those delicate wiles which are all thine own?"
Thus, in secret fear of the boy's bow, did they seek to please him
with their gracious patronage. But Venus, angry at their light
taking of her wrongs, turned her back upon them, and with hasty steps
made her way once more to the sea.

Meanwhile Psyche, tost in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested
not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she
might not sooth his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least
to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a
certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, "Who knows
whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?" Thither,
therefore, she turned her steps, hastening now the more because
desire and hope pressed her on, weary as she was with the labours of
the way, and so, painfully measuring out the highest ridges of the
mountain, drew near to the sacred couches. She sees ears of wheat,
in heaps or twisted into chaplets; ears of barley also, with sickles
and all the instruments of harvest, lying there in disorder, thrown
at random from the hands of the labourers in the great heat. These
she curiously sets apart, one by one, duly ordering them; for she
said within herself, "I may not neglect the shrines, nor the holy
service, of any god there be, but must rather [80] win by