But Theria could not eat. She was sitting hopeless at the little table in the court when, with quiet suddenness, the door opened and Eëtíon was there. She rose, trembling, paler than ever. She did not move. Eëtíon ran to her. “You are ill, darling? Why did you send for me? Ah, Theria, Theria, to see you, to see you!” And he kissed her again and again, so that she had no time to answer. He had been out hunting, Eëtíon told her. He had returned to find the slave with her message. Oh, why had she given him this unlooked-for joy? Then brokenly, trying not to plead either in voice or look, Theria told him of the colony and that her father wished to make her _oekist_—the leader of the colony. “We must not go unless you wish to go, Eëtíon,” she finished. “It will mean hardships again for you, pioneer life away from your art and the beautiful things that are your very life. It would put you far from Hellas when you have had to wander so many years.” For his sake she saw Inessa as it really was—a ruin on a desolate shore, a struggle for mere subsistence, a fight with Nature and with human foes. But Eëtíon noted only one thing. “You would be _oekist_?” he asked, amazed. “Yes, you and I together.” “They would place that great task in your hands? Would the priests really do that?” “Yes,” she breathed. “Oh,” he broke out. “It is better than anything I ever hoped for you. It is——” She glanced up at him with such sudden relief that her eyes filled with tears. “Look here, you little child,” spoke Eëtíon quickly. “What have you been thinking?” “I thought——” Theria stopped. “You thought I might take away your gift? That I, your lover, your betrothed, and therefore your lawful master, would snatch your freedom away?” He took her right hand, holding it against his breast, now bending to kiss it. “Theria,” he said soberly, “you haven’t begun to understand my love, not even begun to understand it.” “Do you mean that you really wish me to reach out—to—to find joy in something beyond my home and children—beyond you, you, too?” Eëtíon paused a moment in a sort of amazed impatience with her. “Isn’t that what I have been telling you in as many ways as I knew how, ever since I first caught sight of you?” he inquired. “I didn’t believe you.” “Do you now?” She looked, her eyes so deep with gratitude that he caught his breath. “It will never be beyond you, Eëtíon. My whole life goes to you and there rests.” “And you gave me my freedom. It’s there that my love rests.” “But that was so easy to do. Who would not have done it?” “Nobody but you, Theria. And with what quickness you did it, so spontaneously, so effectively—just you, you! Darling, I would live my life on a frozen coast if that were the only way to give you, too, the gift of freedom.” “But you must be happy,” she insisted. “Can’t you see I cannot be glad unless——”