ame to the
city where her two envious sisters lived with the princes whom they had
married. She stayed with them only long enough to tell the story of her
unbelief and its penalty. Then she set out again to search for Love.

As she wandered one day, travel-worn but not hopeless, she saw a lofty
palace on a hill near by, and she turned her steps thither. The place
seemed deserted. Within the hall she saw no human being,--only heaps
of grain, loose ears of corn half torn from the husk, wheat and barley,
alike scattered in confusion on the floor. Without delay, she set to
work binding the sheaves together and gathering the scattered ears of
corn in seemly wise, as a princess would wish to see them. While she
was in the midst of her task, a voice startled her, and she looked up
to behold Demeter herself, the goddess of the harvest, smiling upon her
with good will.

"Dear Psyche," said Demeter, "you are worthy of happiness, and you may
find it yet. But since you have displeased Venus, go to her and ask her
favor. Perhaps your patience will win her pardon."

These motherly words gave Psyche heart, and she reverently took leave of
the goddess and set out for the temple of Venus. Most humbly she offered
up her prayer, but Venus could not look at her earthly beauty without
anger.

"Vain girl," said she, "perhaps you have come to make amends for the
wound you dealt your husband; you shall do so. Such clever people can
always find work!"

Then she led Psyche into a great chamber heaped high with mingled grain,
beans, and lentils (the food of her doves), and bade her separate them
all and have them ready in seemly fashion by night. Heracles would have
been helpless before such a vexatious task; and poor Psyche, left alone
in this desert of grain, had not courage to begin. But even as she sat
there, a moving thread of black crawled across the floor from a crevice
in the wall; and bending nearer, she saw that a great army of ants in
columns had come to her aid. The zealous little creatures worked in
swarms, with such industry over the work they like best, that, when
Venus came at night, she found the task completed.

"Deceitful girl," she cried, shaking the roses out of her hair with
impatience, "this is my son's work, not yours. But he will soon forget
you. Eat this black bread if you are hungry, and refresh your dull mind
with sleep. To-morrow you will need more wit."

Psyche wondered what new misfortune could be in store f