CHAPTER II
One evening, as she was hardly awake and thought of continuing her dream, because a long streak of yellow daylight still flowed behind the darkness of the forest, her attention was attracted by the sound of the reeds near her and she saw the apparition of a Swan.
The beautiful bird was as white as a woman, splendid as the light and gleaming like a cloud. It seemed to be like a midday sky, its form and its winged spirit. That is why it was called Dzeus.
Lêda knew it to be looking at her as it flew and walked in turn. It circled around the nymph at a distance and looked sidelong at her. Even when it was almost touching her it still continued to approach, and rising on its red feet it stretched its graceful and undulating neck as high as possible before her young thighs.
Lêda’s astonished hands carefully grasped its little head and caressed it. The bird fluttered all its feathers, with its soft and feathery wings it gripped her naked legs and bent them; Lêda let herself fall upon the ground.
She covered her face with her two hands. She experienced neither fear nor shame but inexpressible joy and a beating of the heart which made her breasts tremble.
She did not realize or understand what was about to happen. She did not even understand why she was happy. She felt along her arms the supple neck of the Swan.
Why had it come? What had she done that it should come to her? Why had it not flown away like the other swans on the river or fled like the satyrs into the forest? From her earliest recollection she had always lived alone. For that reason her ideas were very limited and the events of that night were so disconcerting. This Swan she had neither called nor seen, for she was asleep. It had come.
She neither dared to look nor move lest it should fly away. She felt upon her flushed cheeks the freshness of the beating of its wings.
Soon it seemed to recoil and its caresses changed. She felt between her cool knees the warmth of the bird’s body.
She uttered a long sigh of bounteous delight, let fall backward with closed eyes her fevered head, and plucked the grass with convulsive fingers.
Then for a long while she remained motionless. At her first gesture her hand met the Swan’s beak. She sat up and saw the reflection of the great bird in the river. She wished to rise but the bird prevented her.
She wished to take a little water in the palm of her hand and moisten her flesh, but the Swan prevented her with its wing.
She clasped the bird in her arms and covered its thick feathers with kisses, making it set them up with her embraces. Then she stretched herself upon the river-bank and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning at daybreak a new sensation awakened her with a start: something seemed to become detached from her body. A large blue egg rolled in front of her and shone like a sapphire.
She wanted to take it and play with it or else cook it in the warm ashes as she had seen the satyrs do; but the Swan picked it up in its beak and placed it under a tuft of overhanging reeds. It stretched out its wings over the egg with its gaze fixed upon Lêda, and then with a movement of the wings slowly soared straight up into the sky to disappear in the growing daylight with the last white star.