“By Hermes, Melantho, I do like the youth. He quitted Argos because he is too loyal a Hellene to stay there. I like that. Timon knew the young man’s father, says the family is one of the most upright in Argos. The boy shows his race. Beautiful fellow, astonishingly beautiful.” (The Greek could not but dwell on beauty whenever he met it.) “The children of such a youth would be glorious children.”
“But, Father, must I—must I marry an Argive?”
Nikander threw back his head with laughter. It had been weeks since Theria had heard him laugh.
“No, Theria, your children would be glorious, but they would not be legitimate. Eëtíon has purchased citizenship in Delphi, but he is still metic, a foreigner. Of course, you will not marry him.”
Nikander voiced the pride that was in every Greek citizen—the pride and the isolation. No man could take full citizenship in a city not his own. No marriage with a foreigner (born say fifty miles distant) was counted legal by any government. This fact, instinctive in Theria’s mind, had steeled her heart against the Argive. Oh, what right had he to come to the house even as her father’s guest? She dared not object. She was not supposed to know of his coming.
The dinner guests assembled early. Theria and her mother had their supper upstairs. Then Theria went off to bed so as not to hear anything of the feast. But she could not sleep. She did not want the youth to hear her song. She tossed and tossed on her hot couch. What must they be doing now at the feast? Talking of the war? Ah, yes, that surely. They would not be singing songs in these war-troubled days, even at symposia. If she had only dared to ask Dryas not to sing. But was he singing? Oh, if she only knew.
Impatiently she rose and crept to her father’s room. Here came up the mingled voices and laughter from the men’s court. Oh, what was that? Why were they suddenly silent? That lyre, tuning. Then clear and fateful came the sound of Dryas’s singing,
“Fair, fair on the mountain the feet of Apollo striding.”
The thing always thrilled her; so intimately hers. “I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your heart it will go to mine.” The Argive’s saying was ringing back upon her. He was down there now, listening, close to the singer. Almost she could see the listening in his face. And oh, the song was giving him what she did not want to give—her intimate, sweetest thought. He would grasp it all. Had he not asserted that he would?
She clapped hands upon her ears and fairly ran back to her room. He had no right, that Argive foreigner, to read her soul that way. No right!