We went now for a long time over grass, gently but steadily upward, making for a ridge so high and so near that the true Mountain was quite out of sight. When we topped it, and stood for a while to let the horse breathe, everything was changed. And my struggle began.
We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak). Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. The Mountain, far greater yet also far further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags did not look like a solid thing. Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count. To left and to right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea (though it was not to be compared with the Great Sea of the Greeks).
There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness. And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like a frolic or insolence there came as if it were a voice- no words- but if you made it into words it would be,
"Why should your heart not dance?"
It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?” I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the king, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar as soon as my father died- for who knew what Glome would do then? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind.
The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after another to the world’s end. The freshness all about me (I had seen nothing but drought and withered things for many months before my sickness) made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly…
...when the heart meets delight?
-C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces : A novel of Cupid and Psyche