She did not know that as she thought these things guilt stood manifest in her face.
Nikander caught her arm, roughly, asking the thing he did not want to know—the thing he had been suspecting for many days.
“Theria, your Athenian oracle—Great Zeus in Olympos, have you deceived in all your oracles?”
She sank in a heap on the floor.
“Father, Father; the need! It was such bitter need—and no ecstasy would come. The Athenians—the—the——” Her weeping choked her speech.
Nikander was too horrified to answer. With hand before his eyes he kept repeating: “Great heaven! great heaven!” Suddenly he lifted his head again. “If the oracle is not from the god, why, in Zeus’s name, this pother about it—the words of a girl?”
“Father—but it is important. The Athenians will offer true sacrifice to the winds. They will be hopeful in their prayers, in their fighting. The oracle gladdens the fighters.”
But Nikander’s mind had never left his sons.
“Theria, who told you this vile tale about your brothers?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you. I——”