three-headed dog, the remaining piece of honey bread, and to Charon the remaining piece of money. But now she fell into a great danger. The voice in the tower had warned her not to look into the box; but she was tempted by a strong desire, and so she opened it, that she might see and use for herself the beauty of the gods. But when she opened the box it was empty, save of a vapour of sleep, which seized upon Psyche, and made her as if she were dead. In this unhappy state, brought upon her by the vengeance of Aphrodite, she would have been lost for ever, but Eros, healed of the wound caused by the burning oil, came himself to her help, roused her from the death-like sleep, and put her in a place of safety. Then Eros flew up into the abode of the gods, and besought Zeus to protect Psyche against his mother Aphrodite; and Zeus, calling an assembly of the gods, sent Hermes to bring Psyche thither, and then he declared her immortal, and she and Eros were wedded to each other; and there was a great feast in Olympus. And the sisters of Psyche, who had striven to ruin her, were punished for their crimes, for Eros appeared to them one after the other in a dream, and promised to make each of them his wife, in place of Psyche, and bade each throw herself from the great rock whence Psyche was carried into the beautiful valley by Zephyrus; and both the sisters did as the dream told them, and they were dashed to pieces, and perished miserably. Now this is the story of Eros and Psyche, as it is told by Apuleius, in his book of _Metamorphoses_, written nearly two thousand years ago. But the story was told ages before Apuleius by people other than the Greeks, and in a language which existed long before theirs. It is the tale of Urvasi and Pururavas, which is to be found in one of the oldest of the Vedas, or Sanskrit sacred books, which contain the legends of the Aryan race before it broke up and went in great fragments southward into India, and westward into Persia and Europe. A translation of the story of Urvasi and Pururavas is given by Mr. Max-Muller,[3] who also tells what the story means, and this helps us to see the meaning of the tale of Eros and Psyche, and of many other myths which occur among all the branches of the Aryan family; among the Teutons, the Scandinavians, and the Slavs, as well as among the Greeks. Urvasi, then, was an immortal being, a kind of fairy, who fell in love with Pururavas, a hero and a king; and she married him, and lived with him, on this condition--that she should never see him unless he was dressed in his royal robes. Now there was a ewe, with two lambs, tied to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas; and the fairies--or Gandharvas, as the kinsfolk of Urvasi were called--wished to get her back amongst them; and so they stole one of the lambs. Then Urvasi reproached her husband, and said, "They take away my darling, as if I lived in a land where there is no hero and