“To take away my song! It wasn’t fair. No! To take away my song!”
Nikander spoke passionately: “Theria, this was the happiest day of my life and you have made it the most sorrowful.”
“Father!” she cried. “Father!”
She stood instantly still. Tears were running down her face. “Oh, I was sorry the minute I had done it. There was no use to tell and it only gave pain to everyone.”
Wistfully she tried to take his hand. Like most children, she had never told him how intensely she loved him.
“I cannot understand, Theria, why you would give your song to Dryas and then at a crucial moment snatch it back again. Dryas has done wrong, but your wrong is sheer cruelty.”
“But, Father——” she began. Then she stopped. She had done enough harm for one day.
She could not tell him that she had never given the song, but that Dryas had taken it against her will. Dryas had come to her one morning with a song of his own. Theria knew at once that it would never win the prize. They had talked it over, trying to mend it.
That afternoon her own song had flashed upon her. It was, as such flashes are apt to be, the culmination of long striving and dreaming. And for days afterward she had worked and perfected it. Then a week before the Pythian festival she had taken the song to Dryas and had sung it for him. Of course she was willing to give it to him. It did not occur to her but that Dryas would share with her the honour of it, at least in their own home. This Dryas had refused to do. They had quarrelled, and, at the end, Dryas had flatly told her that since she taught him the song he would take it for his own, whether she willed or no. He had thought she would never dare to tell. But now she had told, and the result was this misery.
“Theria,” said her father wearily, “how did it ever occur to you to write a song?”