Notwithstanding their fanciful nicknames, and exceptional surroundings and circumstances, Psyche and Eros were as thoroughly human in their thoughts and emotions as if they had lived in the most commonplace of country villages, and, although they had always been together, their temperaments were as wide asunder as the poles. Psyche was imaginative, dreamy, and sensitive to both mental and physical impressions; her gentle brown eyes would fill with tears at the lightest touch of pity or pathos, and the delicate bloom in her cheeks would fade and her girlish figure droop after but an hour's illness. Yet she was entirely wholesome and healthy both in mind and body, and though her voice was low and soft, and her manner tender and appealing, she had a strength and courage in the cause of right and truth such as a son of Anak might have envied. Eros, on the other hand, took practical views of life, and prided himself upon his solid common sense. Being now on the verge of his twenty-first birthday, he affected a manly and dogmatic tone, as of one who knew the world, and had arrived at the maturity of his judgment. He was a red-cheeked, fair-haired, blue-eyed youth; sturdy, vigorous, and jocund. Psyche loved him devotedly, and took every occasion to persuade herself that he was the wisest as well as the dearest of mankind. But she could not help suspecting sometimes that he was not always quite amenable to reason, and would feel very guilty when the conviction was occasionally forced upon her that she had taken a higher view of this or that question than he had. On the whole, however, she continued to maintain the sense of her own inferiority unimpaired, and the more inferior she felt the better was she pleased. Now it so happened that Eros would come of age on Christmas Day; and as if the falling together of these two celebrations were not enough, it had been decided to enhance their joyfulness by the addition of a third--which was to be neither more nor less than the young people's wedding! Here, surely, was bliss enough to be crowded into one short twenty-four hours; and moreover, as Psyche observed, looking into her lover's blue eyes with the frank shyness of her own brown ones, "What Christmas present could we make to each other so appropriate as the surrender of ourselves into each other's keeping?"