A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

overshadowed by the past, and even the story of Arethusa knocks
loudly at the well-barricaded doors of twentieth-century incredulity.
The beautiful Arethusa was a nymph in Diana's train, and many a time
in the chase did she thread her way through the dim woodland, as a
stream flows down through the forest from the mountains to the sea.
But to her, at last, there came a day when she was no longer the
huntress but the hunted.
The flaming wheels of the chariot of Apollo had made the whole land
scintillate with heat, and the nymph sought the kind shelter of a wood
where she might bathe in the exquisite coolness of the river that still
was chilled by the snows of the mountain. On the branch of a tree that
bent over the stream she hung her garments, and joyously stepped into
the limpid water. A ray of the sun glanced through the leaves above her
and made the soft sand in the river's bed gleam like gold and the
beautiful limbs of the nymph seem as though carved from pure white
marble by the hand of Pygmalion himself. There was no sound there
but the gentle sound of the stream that murmured caressingly to her as
it slowly moved on through the solitude, and so gently it flowed that
almost it seemed to stand still, as though regretful to leave for the
unknown forest so beautiful a thing as Arethusa.
"The Earth seemed to love her And Heaven smiled above her."
But suddenly the stillness of the stream was ruffled. Waves, like the
newly-born brothers of the billows of the sea, swept both down-stream
and up-stream upon her, and the river no longer murmured gently, but
spoke to her in a voice that thrilled with passionate longing. Alpheus,
god of the river, had beheld her, and, beholding her, had loved her once
and forever. An uncouth creature of the forest was he, unversed in all
the arts of love-making. So not as a supplicant did he come to her, but
as one who demanded fiercely love for love. Terror came upon
Arethusa as she listened, and hastily she sprang from the water that had
brought fear upon her, and hastened to find shelter in the woodlands.
Then the murmur, as of the murmur of a river before a mighty flood
comes to seize it and hold it for its own, took form in a voice that pled
with her, in tones that made her tremble as she heard.