Orpheus in the Underworld to rework the story of Orphée (Orpheus) and Eurydice – who, despite being husband and wife, hate each other – into a moral tale for the ages. However, she has her work cut out for her: Eurydice is in love with the shepherd, Aristée (Aristaeus), who lives next door ("La femme dont le coeur rêve"), and Orphée is in love with Chloë, a shepherdess. When Orphée mistakes Eurydice for her, everything comes out, and Eurydice insists they break the marriage off. However Orphée, fearing Public Opinion's reaction, torments her into keeping the scandal quiet using violin music, which she hates.
The Stress of Her Regard beings as having qualities of vampires, succubi, incubi, Lamia, fairies, and jinn. Not only predators but sometimes benefactors of humans, they are the basis for both the Muses and the Graeae. The novel's title is taken from the poem "Sphinx and Medusa" by Clark Ashton Smith ("...Yet thought must see/That eve of time when man no longer yearns,/Grown deaf before Life's Sphinx, whose lips are barred;/When from the spaces of Eternity,/Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns/On the lost world the stress of her regard."). The story begins shortly before the wedding of Michael Crawford, a doctor. The night before he marries