Page:Psyche (1908).djvu/10

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Psyche

In clear weather there loomed behind the horizon always another horizon. They circled one another endlessly, they were lost in the dissolving mists, and suddenly their silhouette became more sharply defined.

Over the lofty towers stretched away at times an expanse of variegated clouds, but below rushed a torrent, which fell like a cataract into a fathomless abyss, that made one dizzy to look at.

So it seemed as if the castle rose up to the highest stars and went down to the central nave of the earth.

Along the battlements, higher than a man, Psyche often wandered, wandered round the castle from tower to tower, from wall to wall, with a dreamy smile on her face, then she looked up and stretched out her hands to the stars, or gazed below at the dashing water, with all the colours of the rainbow, till her head grew dizzy, and she drew back and placed her little hands before her eyes. And long she would sit in the corner of an embrasure, her eyes looking far away, a smile on her face, her knees drawn up and her arms entwining them, and her tiny wings spread out against the mossy stone-work, like a butterfly that sat motionless.

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