The choosing of laws, the unexpected setting aside of old laws which in this new land were found to be ill-fitted, the keeping of the council high purposed and pure. These were her duties. Theria did not sit with the council, but her advice was paramount. As former priestess of Apollo and seer of a vision, she exercised a power which as mere woman she could never have attained. And strangely enough, her poet quality did not suffer in this public activity, but, as is frequent with the Greek, rather thrived and flowered in it. Late in the winter her first child was born. The colonists thought it was misfortune that the child should be a girl. But Eëtíon took this dispensation of the gods with good heart. He lifted the darling creature in his arms, gazing into the tiny face which, from its first hour, knew how to smile. Then, smiling himself, he draped the little thing in a long, old-fashioned string of pearls and laid her softly beside her mother. “But what is this?” asked Theria. “In what strange fashion have you decked my child?” He laughed with happiness. “Do you not recognize them, dear Theria? The jewels of my freedom which your eldest daughter must wear. Did I not purchase them from Apollo and bring them over seas in hope of her?” And Theria realized how Eëtíon loved his little girl. In the second spring came a shipload of Athenians to join the colony. They gave the town a new impress from the first moment of arrival. For who should arrive with them but Nikander himself. Theria was sitting crooning happily to her child when he stepped over her high threshold as casually and unannounced as though he had come from next door. Theria came near fainting at such unlooked-for joy. Absence in those days was deathlike in its completeness and disconnection. It seemed to Theria as though her dear father had come from the dead. Then with what happy tears and soft laughter did she lift up the baby Theria to show him. With what pride did she lead her father out into her town. Eëtíon met them at the doorway. Then with what seriousness and pride did the two lead Nikander about the new streets, to the market place, to their pure Castalian spring, to their Akropolis. Here was the temple, Eëtíon’s own. It stood unfinished, without cella or roof, with distant Ætna and the violet horizon of sea glimpsing between the white new columns. It seemed a spirit thing, not yet quite of this earth. Indeed it was never to be other than a heavenly, unbelievable beauty. In Eëtíon’s workshop stood his clay Apollo watching as with wistful, marvelling eyes while the craftsmen brought him to life in bronze. Beside it was another model at sight of which Nikander exclaimed aloud with pleasure. “It is a Victory,” explained Eëtíon, “which I made after our battle with the Catanans.”