At last, when she stood tall and tearless and he stood trembling in spite of effort to keep steady, he said: “Daughter, this is not for your present act alone. It is for your year-long disobedience. I believe now that you will obey.” She stood like a straight reed, so still, so horror struck. And in that stillness her father left her. * * * * * An hour later Theria was roused from her apathy by the sound of beautiful music. It was in the street, and she curiously stole forward to her father’s room to look out of the little window there. She was in time to see Dryas borne along the way on the shoulders of his friends. The full moon of the festival made the street as bright as day and the torches of the procession twinkled like jewels in the white light. Pindar walked in the procession chanting a strophe in Dryas’s honour. A chorus of youths followed singing the antistrophe, and behind these a boy played the cymbals upon which the glitter of sound met the lovely glitter of the moonlight. Leaning out of the window, Theria suddenly exulted. “It is _my_ song Pindar is praising. All those words are for me and it is Pindar, Pindar!” In a burst of joyous music they passed within the house door below her, and Theria heard the pleasant confusion as they took their seats at the board and the scurry of the slaves beginning to serve them. Then after a time came a faint tuning of a lyre, a pause, and Dryas started once more to sing his song—her song. He faltered. Oh, would her rumpus of the afternoon make him fail? She was in a panic—family pride, family affection were strong in the Nikander household—but after a little flickering Dryas’s flame burned bright. He even imitated his sister’s dramatic singing of the afternoon. Theria could not hear Pindar’s exclamation of wonder that the lad should sing the song this evening with an entirely new meaning. She heard only the hand clappings, the mingled voices, the chitter of the silver cups—cups treasured many a year by successive Nikander housewives. A wave of loneliness swept over her—a Wave of fear, remembering her father’s purpose. And shrinking back from the window she made her way through the darkness to her room and bed. BOOK II A CHILDHOOD IN DELPHI CHAPTER III THERIA, SEVEN YEARS OLD A little girl in an ancestral house—a slender, vivid, flashing little girl whom yet the rich traditions of her line filled to the brim with dreams—such had been Theria in her childhood. The town in which she was born had not grown haphazard, had not been founded for trade nor for its nearness to some natural wealth. Its central life was the god, the god of light and of enlightenment, of beauty and judicial fairness. Apollo was its source of happiness and its livelihood as well. He moulded the daily life. The focus of all Delphi was the shrine where, from a windy cleft beneath the temple, Apollo spoke, answering the wistful questions of men.