and to me it was as if the old man 's voice , and the temple , and i myself and my journey , were all things in such a story ; for he was telling the very history of our istra , of psyche herself - how talapal ( that 's the essurian ungit ) was jealous of her beauty and made her to be offered to a brute on a mountain , and how talapal 's son ialim , the most beautiful of the gods , loved her and took her away to his secret palace .