The female was the smaller. Her legs were more slender and handsome, and there was a kind of rough, heavy gracefulness in the curves of her neck. The male was fierce and stiff; his left wing did not fold properly; he had injured it at the time he had fought other males for his mate.
There was steepness on three sides of their nest. Above it was the wide expanse of the sky. Around, about, and beneath it lay bones washed and whitened by the rain. The nest itself was made of stones and mud, and overspread with down.
The female always sat in the nest.
The male hummed to himself on the end of a root that was suspended over the steep, alone, peering far into the distance around and below him with his heavy, pensive eyes; perched with his head sunk deep into his shoulders and his wings hanging heavily down.
II
These two great birds had met here, not far from the ravine, one evening at twilight.
It was spring; the snow was thawing on the slopes, whilst in the forest and valleys it became grey and mellow; the pine-trees exhaled a pungent odour; and the brook at the bottom of the ravine had awakened.
The sun already gave warmth in the daytime. The twilight was verdurous, lingering, and resonant with life. Wolf-packs were astir, and the males fought each other for the females.
This spring, with the sun and the soft breeze, an unwonted heaviness pervaded the male-bird's body. Formerly he used to fly or roost, croak or sit silent, fly swiftly or slowly, because there were causes both around and within him: when hungry he would find a hare, kill, and devour it; when the sun was too hot or the wind too keen, he would shelter from them; when he saw a crouching wolf, he would hastily fly away from it.
Now it was no longer so.