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 Psyche blushed exceedingly. Her naked limbs blushed, her wings blushed.

“Prince,” said she hesitatingly and looked bashfully at her father, “you do me much honour. But my sisters are more beautiful and wiser than I. And my father would miss me if I went with you to the kingdom of the Present.”

“But tell me, Psyche, what conditions do you impose upon me?”

Psyche hesitated. She was about to exclaim joyfully: “Catch me the Chimera, bind him in a meadow to graze, and give me power over him, that I may mount his back and fly through the air as I like.”

But she durst not before the whole court and her father. And so she only stammered: “None, prince. . . .”

“Could you love me?”

“I don’t know, prince. . . .”

Psyche was shy. She kept blushing, and all at once began to tremble and weep.

And she looked round to the king, fled to his arms, hid her face in his beard and sobbed.

“Prince Eros,” said the king, “forgive her. You see she is a child. Seek for Emeralda’s Jewel, or seek for Astra the Glass which