“Oh, will he give one to me?” she asked, her hands clasping suddenly close to her breast. “If I make a prayer to him and a sacrifice—a big, big sacrifice like Father’s? A sheep, and burn it all up with leaping flame till it smells so good—so good?” Her baby nose sniffed deliciously and all the men laughed. “And where will you get your big sheep?” teased one. “Nay, do not spoil her hope,” spoke Pindar quickly. He drew the lyre toward her and instantly her chubby hand reached out to touch the strings, sounding them lovingly, softly. Pindar watched her, absorbed. “The god will give you your song, darling. Apollo’s answer is already in your eyes and fingers.” “Do you think so, Pindar?” asked Nikander, amused. “Yet even so the child must not stop our feast. Medon, will you carry her back to her nurse?” Nikander expected that she would cry and struggle, but she leaned over and kissed the lyre, then went away with Medon, quite satisfied. Ever from that time Theria awakened at the first sound of Pindar’s lyre. She would steal down as near as she dared. If the door were shut she would press her ear against it in her eagerness to hear. If it were open she would crouch in its shadow. The slaves passing to and fro with the feast never told. Theria was a favourite with them. It was Pindar’s habit to bring his songs to Nikander when they were glowing new. Nikander, a poet who had never written himself forth, had the keenest sense of poetic values and Pindar was glad of his judgments. Sometimes an ode would be sung again and again before both pronounced it right. Then Pindar would go out into the Delphic starlight humming the altered, perfected refrain: “Harken, for once more we plough the field of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes,” or “In anywise to slake my thirst for song, The ancient glory of thy forefathers summoneth me,” or he would address his own songs, calling them “My lords of lute, My feathered arrows of sweet song, My golden pillars of sweet song——” These were the familiars of Theria’s childhood and entered into the fabric of her mind. Pindar, as he strode singing away, little recked of the girl-listener drinking at his fountain and transmuted in all her being by his supreme expression. CHAPTER VII WHAT GIFTS THE GUESTS BROUGHT It was through a guest that Theria first came to visualize those distant colonies of the west which gave so many gifts to Delphi and played so important a part in Delphi’s life. He was a simple-seeming guest, this young man from far-away Elea in Italy. But child though Theria was, she could not but note his face. It shone with an almost startling quietness, a robust and heavenly calm. The soul of the man had been dipped deep and deep again in abstract thought. Earthly things were washed away. The “Parmenidean Countenance of Peace” was soon to be recognized throughout Hellas, for even the disciples of Parmenides acquired this same look.