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.

"Hear me, Arethusa!" it said. "I am Alpheus, god of the river that now
thou hast made sacred. I am the god of the rushing streams--the god of
the thundering cataracts. Where the mountain streams crash over the
rocks and echo through the shadowy hollows of the hills, I hold my
kingship. Down from Etna I come, and the fire of Etna is in my veins.
I love thee! I love but thee, and thou shalt be mine, and I thine
forever."

Then Arethusa, in blind panic, fled before the god who loved her.
Through the shadowy forest she sped,