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 down below rose up town after town; river after river meandered along, mountain-ranges rose up one after the other, now only slightly elevated, then rising arabesquely through the plains. Then there were great waters like oceans, and Psyche saw nothing but white foaming sea. But on the other side of it began again the strand, the land, the wood, the meadows, the mountains, and so on endlessly. . ..

“How much farther away are the opal islands, the streaks of light I see in the distance, my beloved Chimera?”

“We have already passed them. . . .”

She raised her head, bent over his streaming neck, and gazed about her.

“But I do not see them any longer!” she said, astonished. “I see wood and meadow, towns and mountains. . . . Is the world, then, the same everywhere? Where are the opal islands?”

“Behind us. . . .”

“But I do not see them. . . . Have we passed them without my seeing them? O naughty Chimera, you did not tell me!”

“And where are the luminous streaks of the far-off land?”