'Eros's bow and arrows lay on the floor beside the bed. Psyche was so knocked all of a heap by her luck that she hardly knew if it was Easter or Christmas. Still in a swoon, she picked up one of the arrows and tried it on her finger. The point drew a bead of blood, and instantly the yen she felt to cuddle up alongside the slightly snoring young man redoubled. But wounding herself with the arrow caused her to jerk the oil lamp and a drop of the hot oil fell on Eros's shoulder.
'He started awake, yelling: "Murder! Fire! Thieves! Rape!" Then he realized that his little nitwit had ignored the warnings that he had been at such great pains to instil into her. Sadly he told her that she had bitched the whole shooting match, and that now they must part for ever. His wings sprouted from his shoulders and he took off. At the same instant the enchanted palace vanished, lock, stock and barrel, and Psyche found herself back on the barren mountain top.
'After a bit she began to scramble down. Coming to a river, and being by then cuckoo with despair, she chucked herself into it. But she was washed ashore further down, and I suppose someone took her in, gave her some clothes and sent her on her way. Her sisters handed her the frozen mitt. Instead of condoling with her, they both hurried up to the mountain top, hoping that Eros would take a good view of them; but a mist came down, so they walked over a precipice and broke their necks. That served them right, but it didn't do Psyche any good; and for quite a time she wandered all over the place, distractedly seeking a way to make contact with Eros.
'He had winged it like smoke back to Olympus, yelling blue murder about his tiny little burn; but perhaps he had a very delicate skin. At all events he tearfully begged his beautiful mama to nurse him well again, although he refused to tell her how he had come by his burn.
'Aphrodite then put her Intelligence Service on the job, and a little bird brought her a report of her son's affair with Psyche. The goddess was absolutely furious; largely, I suppose, because it was Psyche at whom people had deserted her temples to go and stare. All the same, I think she behaved very unreasonably in being beastly to her son just because he had had fun with a mortal, when she was practically on the Dilly herself.'
'What does "on the Dilly" mean?'
Robbie smiled. 'Oh, it's an old-fashioned expression I happened to see in a book, for the girls who used to saunter up and down Piccadilly on the look-out for chaps they could persuade to come home with them for the night as paying guests; although, of course, Aphrodite never took money for that sort of thing. Generally, she was a very kind and easy-going goddess, but evidently in this case she felt that her supremacy as the Queen of Beauty was being challenged; so she pursued Psyche like a she-wolf after a ewe lamb.
'She persuaded Zeus to send Hermes down to proclaim that anyone who took Psyche in would suffer the wrath of the gods, and offered seven kisses from her own lips to anyone who would give up her mortal rival. As you can imagine, down on earth poor Psyche was having a very thin time; so thin, in fact, that after a while she decided to hand in her checks.
'That didn't do her any good at all. No sooner had she given herself up at one of Aphrodite's temples than she was hauled before the goddess by her golden hair, beaten, made into a slave and given all sorts of impossible tasks to perform.
'First Aphrodite mixed up a great heap of wheat, barley, millet, peas and beans, told Psyche to sort them out by evening, then went off in her latest creation to a wedding feast. Of course, Psyche hadn't a hope; but a kind little ant came on the scene, then brought all his pals to help; so when Aphrodite came back, trying to smother occasional burps from the amount of champagne she had drunk, she found that the job had been done.
'Next morning the goddess took her hated daughter-in-law to the bottom of a rocky hill and pointed out to her a thicket at its top, in which was feeding a flock of sheep with golden fleeces. She told Psyche that they were as fierce as lions, but she must go and get her a good handful of their golden wool. Again Psyche knew that she just was not up to it, so she decided to make an end of herself by taking a header into a deep pool that lay close by. But the nymph who was the tenant of the pool popped up just in time and said:
4 "Hi, you! I don't want your body going rotten and making a nasty smell in my water. Have some sense and the job you've been given will be easy. While those vicious rams are playing tag with the sheep among the bushes, you have a nap down here. By afternoon they will be tired out and want a nap, too. Then you can go up the hill without their seeing you, and pick off the golden wool they have left on the thorns."
'Naturally Psyche took this advice; but even the lapful of golden wool she brought Aphrodite did not appease the goddess. She gave the wretched girl other impossible tasks to do, but one way or another Psyche was always helped out with them.
Then at last Eros felt well enough to come downstairs, and he discovered that Psyche was sleeping under the scullery sink or some place like that. When he heard of all she had suffered on his account he loved her more than ever, and rushed off to beg Zeus to make his mother stop being so beastly to his beloved.
'Zeus, never having seen anything against a god uniting with a mortal, lent a sympathetic ear and summoned a Council of the Gods, ordering Aphrodite to bring Psyche with her. His Address from the Throne amounted to: "You all know that I've never been altogether sold on true love myself, but I admire it in others; so it is my intention to bless the banns of these two young people. What is more, since we can't have outsiders as members of the Club, I'm going to make the bride an Immortal." Then he beckoned to Psyche and, holding out a beaker of nectar to her, added: "Come here, my dear. Take a sup of this, and it will do the trick."
'When Psyche got her breath back everyone was queueing up to kiss her; and when Aphrodite saw how deliriously happy Eros looked, her mother's heart softened and she promised to love Psyche, too. Then they held the biggest-ever wedding feast. Hephaestus cooked fabulous dishes, Dionysus got up the best bottles from the cellar, the Seasons produced wonderful flowers, the Muses sang their sweetest songs, Ganymede went round filling all their goblets with nectar-'
'I thought Hebe was the Cupbearer of the Gods,' Stephanie put in.
Robbie hesitated a second. 'Well, she was at one time, but she lost her job. As I think I've told you, the Immortals were distinctly prudish when they were in company. I suppose the truth is that Hebe had been lifting the elbow herself too frequently. Anyhow, one night when they were feasting, she tripped up, and she can't have been wearing much in the way of undies because, as she fell, everyone saw all there was to see. Apparently they were so shocked by this that Zeus gave her the sack and brought in handsome young Ganymede to do butler instead.'
'I see. And did Eros and Psyche live happily ever after?'
'Yes. They never seem to have become tired of one another, and they had a beautiful daughter whom they named Joy.'
'Well, I am glad about that,' Stephanie said, getting up. 'And now it really is time for us to dress and go up for lunch.'
Late in the afternoon they had a ramble on their own round the ruins and it was on their return from it that they heard more about the submarine. During their stay at Navplion the weather had been good, so they had spent nearly the whole of every day out of doors. In consequence, they had not exchanged more than a few words with any of their fellow guests. Here, too, at Olympia, they had kept themselves very much to themselves; but there was one English couple who had the next table to theirs in the dining room, and with them they had become on casual conversation terms. The name of the couple was Jackson. He was middle-aged and a partner in a well-known firm of London auctioneers; his wife, a smart and pretty woman, was some years younger.