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 open her lips. It made her sad, and Eros saw her sadness, and often asked her what it was that disturbed the equanimity of her soul. She said “Nothing,” and embraced him and declared that she was happy. But when the lark warbled and the nightingale’s sweet notes were heard, when Eros sang to the lyre and the brook murmured gently, Psyche always heard, between the pleasant sounds, the impudent tunes of the reeds, short and long. She tried not to hear, but she always heard them. They sounded saucily and merrily, like the sounds of a little bird in a wood calling something to her from afar; she heard, but did not yet understand what.

One day, when he stood in the same place blowing lustily with puffed-out cheeks, Psyche, indignant, rose with her lips closely pressed together. She put her veil on and wound it tightly round her loins, without waking the boys. Then, with a firm step and innocently, she crossed a little slope, and came into a valley, a valley of grass; there the brook flowed away between multitudes of irises and narcissi. The goat, leering and laughing, tripped nimbly down the hill on his hoofs to meet her.