"You will meet Eros where we are going," returned the strange friend, gently, taking her hand in his own. "If not this Eros whom you have known here, then another and a worthier one than he." "Oh, not another," whispered Psyche, entreatingly; "it must be this Eros--my own dear Eros whom I have always loved. I have lived with him, and our hearts are grown together. He is better and nobler than he seems." "It is not for me to decide," was the answer. "But do you speak to him, Psyche. If he loves you, he will lay your words to heart." Psyche rose from her chair, and, stepping somewhat feebly, crossed to where Eros sat, and stood before him, her hands clasped. The room had become more dusky, so that the three figures appeared rather like shadows than beings of flesh and blood. For a moment or two there was silence, and only Psyche's beseeching attitude seemed to speak. "Eros," she said at length, "I feel that I must go--I must go with this friend of ours. Do you know him, Eros? He is your friend as well as mine. You might have gone with us; but that was not to be. We shall not know marriage here, and we shall seem to be separated for a time. But if your love for me has been as great as mine for you, the memory of it, and the faith in what is to come, will heal the worst of the parting. Oh, my love, say it shall be so!" "You are crazy--both of you!" cried Eros, wrestling with the fear that beset him, and striving to speak in an assured and masterful tone. "What has Mortimer to do with you, Psyche? You are mine, and whoever pretends to take you from me is my enemy!" "Eros--Eros!" exclaimed the girl, with passionate earnestness, "it is you who are crazy, my poor darling. Mortimer is dead; and the letter which he wrote--the letter that I alone read and touched--had in it the contagion of the pestilence. It was the message of my death; and now my death has come." "Death shall not have you!" cried Eros, starting to his feet; and such was the vehemence of his rebellious anger that he felt ready to defy even Omnipotence. "What have I done that I should lose you? I have loved you truly and faithfully--why should not my love have its rightful fulfilment? It shall not go for naught and end in dust and ashes! As for this future you talk about, what is it? a misty possibility--an indefinite surmise--nothing! I say it is unjust and tyrannical, and I will not submit! Come to me, Psyche!" He reached towards her through the dusk, but she seemed to falter backwards from him, and when he would have followed, the tall form of the mysterious guest rose between, and beneath that mighty and majestic gaze the eyes of Eros wavered, though the rebellion in him was unconquered still. "You must yield her to me," said those deep, reverberating tones; "yet it is not I that parts you. True lovers can be parted only through want of faith. Upon yourself alone, therefore, does it depend whether she leaves you for a time or for ever."