You paid for me, when I came by your wish, by this
terror of madness that you have since known. Only one wish is
free."
"And that wish is ,"
"The last," she said. "Shall I wish?"
"Yes wish," they said, all of them.
"I wish, then," said Lord Yalding's lover, "that all the magic this
ring has wrought may be undone, and that the ring itself may be no
more and no less than a charm to bind thee and me together for
evermore."
She ceased. And as she ceased the enchanted light died away, the
windows of granted wishes went out, like magic-lantern pictures.
Gerald's candle faintly lighted a rudely arched cave, and where
Psyche's statue had been was a stone with something carved on it.
Gerald held the light low.
"It is her grave," the girl said.
Next day no one could remember anything at all exactly. But a
good many things were changed. There was no ring but the plain
gold ring that Mademoiselle found clasped in her hand when she
woke in her own bed in the morning. More than half the jewels in
the panelled room were gone, and those that remained had no
panelling to cover them; they just lay bare on the velvet-covered
shelves. There was no passage at the back of the Temple of Flora.
Quite a lot of the secret passages and hidden rooms had
disappeared. And there were not nearly so many statues in the
garden as everyone had supposed.
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