W: LP: GRP: CSL: Till We Have Faces

I had read the novel, "Till We Have Faces", many decades ago, but I think it got lost in the 10's of thousands of pages of other fantasy reading imbibed at the time. I am now re-reading the story via audio format, and despite the plainness of the prose, there is a poignancy in how that prose is used that is just amazing. Here following is a quote from the story:

But in the reality (not in the dreams), with the horror came the inconsolable grief. For the world had broken to pieces and Psyche and I were not in the same piece. Seas, mountains, madness, death itself, could not have removed her from me to such a hopeless distance as this. Gods, and again gods, always gods...they had stolen her. They would leave us nothing. A thought pierced up through the crust of my mind like a crocus coming up in the early year. Was she not worthy of the gods? Ought they not to have her? But instantly great, choking, blinding waves of sorrow swept it away and, "Oh!" I cried. "It's not right. It's not right. Oh, Psyche, come back! Where are you? Come back, come back."

She had me in her arms at once. "Maia--sister," she said. "I'm here. Maia, don't. I can't bear it. I'll--"

"Yes...oh, my own child--I do feel you--I hold you. But oh--it's only like holding you in a dream. You are leagues away. And I..."

She led me a few paces further and made me sit down on a mossy bank and sat beside me. With words and touch she comforted me all she could. And as, in the center of a storm or even of a battle, I have known sudden stillness for a moment, so now for a little I let her comfort me. Not that I took any heed of what she was saying. It was her voice, and her love in her voice, that counted. Her voice was very deep for a woman's. Sometimes even now the way she used to say this or that word comes back to me as warm and real as if she were beside me in the room--the softness of it, the richness as of corn grown from a deep soil.

What was she saying?..."And perhaps, Maia, you too will learn how to see."