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 she thought inhumanly because she had no soul. Soulless she was and hard as stone, but she was powerful, the mightiest ruler of the world. She ruled with a movement, she condemned with a look, she could kill with a smile; if she spoke a word, it was terrible; if she appeared in public there was disaster; and if she rode through her kingdom in a triumphal chariot, then everything was scorched by her lustre and crushed under her triumph.

At last she spoke, motionless like a spider in her web of glittering rays, and her voice sounded like an oracle in a screeching incantation.

“Psyche, fled from her father’s house, fallen from all princely dignity, dethroned Princess of the Present, immoral Bacchante, corrupt and wingless, weeping tears of scarlet sin—listen!

“Psyche, who wandered frivolously to purple streaks of sky, who longed for the nothingness of azure and of light, who loved a horse, who forsook her husband, who wandered and sought and asked, in desert and in wood—wander, seek, and ask!

“Wander, seek, and ask, till you find!