Then as in fever he ran hither and yon searching; found, now a broken twig, now a footprint. He began to call, “Theria! Theria!” He lost time here for he was so sure she would stay hiding in the wood. But at the last some god led him out upon the upland where he caught a glimpse of a fluttering yellow garment on the ground. He ran to it and at last saw her, slender and prone, her hair lying in soft dark billows upon the rock and hiding her face. With a sob he knelt, lifted her in his arms and tenderly put back her locks. Then he saw her death-whiteness and the terrible gash upon her forehead where she had hit the rock in her fall. He was too wild at first to help her, kissing her, calling her, feeling her cold hands, holding his lips against hers to make sure if any breath was there. But when she responded not at all Eëtíon grew more careful. He brought out the wine but could not give it between the set lips. Then he gathered her in his arms to carry her up to a spring which he remembered in the heights. He was too frightened now to feel any emotion. He only knew that he was carrying Theria away from Delphi, away from the bitterness and mishandling. It was right that he should do so. She belonged to him, to nobody else in all the world! Away in some colony over seas they could be truly wedded and live the years. He even forgot her Apolline priesthood and the sacrilege of loving such a one. Meanwhile, perhaps she was dying in his arms. In the upper slope among the firs he found his spring. He laid the dear burden on the ground, bathed her white face, bathed the wound and poured the wine into it. At last life, like a visible prayer, came back into her face and the colour of life was there. Then indeed did Eros, the tall youth, earliest of all the gods, send power into Eëtíon’s heart, filling it with a strange uplifting worship—that invisible power with which the son of Chaos holds the cosmos together, Eros the mighty one. Now Theria opened her eyes. They were like black lakes and lonely as the stars. “Theria, darling, darling Theria. No harm shall come to you now, Theria!” But she looked straight into his face without a spark of recognition. “It is I—Eëtíon,” he said, taking her face between his hands. “Kiss me, my maiden!” “Apollon,” she murmured. “Apollon.” She did not close her eyes again, but kept them fixed upon Eëtíon’s face in a way that froze his spirit. Eëtíon was not skilled in Apollo’s ways; he knew nothing of mantic power by which men with their natural eyes see things unseen. He could only recognize that Theria’s spirit was farther from his than the farthest planet. “Apollon,” she said again. She was in that far serenity that knows not time nor change, the indifference that comes of too great knowledge from the gods. Of a certainty she was going to die, and that very soon.