So he left her. Nikander’s mind was strangely divided between relief and disappointment. Only a woman, after all. Evidently Timon’s heroics were all misplaced. She cared only for home and loved ones. What young man but would have leaped to the task, seen the honour, joyed in the responsibility? And what should he say to the priests? How they would laugh! He could hear Melas’s gibes. Timon would get the brunt of it for proposing her name. Well, after all, they both deserved it for believing such high things of a mere girl. Yet as Nikander composed himself to sleep he was amazed at his curious sense of relief, an escape out of sorrow. How lovingly she had flung herself into his arms, and what an actual protection he had felt in that love of hers—protection from loneliness, old age ... greyness of life. * * * * * Thus strangely did Theria receive the news of her freedom. Like a bird born in a cage, she did not recognize the open door. This amazing proposal had come to Theria at the most sentimental hour of her life, when the bride leaving her old home looks with vivid tenderness upon it. These days the dear old home did not imprison Theria. And the new one! With what intense hope and wonder did that draw her on! Perhaps she had not been fully awake talking with her father. But surely she was awake now. She began to toss and toss upon her bed. She was a little hurt that her father should so easily plan her departure from Delphi. “I thought he knew how I loved the Oracle,” she reflected. “But he does not know. Because I am not Dryas, nor Timon—because I am not a man, Father thinks I cannot feel as he does. But I do, I do.” She sat up in bed, gazing into the dark. “I have helped Delphi,” she murmured, rather miserably. “At least I thought I had helped Delphi by my oracles. Shall I not love my city that I have helped?” The miraculous saving of Delphi after days of danger, Theria’s vision on the mountain—all had intensified her already ardent love of home. Even her god Apollo was locally peculiar to his shrine. Gods were never quite the same when worshipped in distant temples. Apollo of Delphi was nearer to Theria than Apollo anywhere else. No, no, how strange of her father to propose her going away. And he wanted her to found a city! The greatness of the task appalled her. She lay back with a sigh.