Parnasso in festa great command of musical expression. Orpheus however is still inconsolable at the loss of his beloved wife Eurydice. He had descended into the underworld to rescue her after her death, but lost her for a second time when he could not restrain himself, as he had been instructed by the god of the underworld, from looking at her until they were back in the land of the living. Apollo and the muses tell Orpheus that his love for Eurydice will inspire all future generations, and the love of the royal couple Peleus and Thetis will bless the whole earth. Apollo
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