“It was just as I told in the singing, Father. I was spinning alone in the spinning-room and the Muse struck across my mind. She would not let me go. The words hurried before I could catch up with them; a new chord waited for every chord I struck.”
Nikander was for a moment awed. He believed in the Muse; no mere poetic figment was she. She was an accepted goddess, and even thus was she wont to act.
“But you must have studied and worked,” he said. “You must have had help.”
“Medon has helped me a little. He taught me the scales, and I have taken your book rolls and made him show me how to read. Do not be angry with Medon. He is only a slave and I commanded him. It was really myself did it. I worked very hard.”
Suddenly it seemed to her that some invisible door, which ever for her, a girl, had always stood ajar, had quietly and irrevocably closed. She had the instinct to turn this way and that for escape. But there was no escape.
“What shall I do?” she moaned. “Oh, what shall I do?” It seemed as though her father, so intelligent, so quick to help all comers to the Oracle, surely he would know some help for her.
“My dear Theria,” said Nikander, “there is much for you to do here at home. You have everything, why are you unhappy?”
She bowed her head without answer. There was so much to say that she could say nothing at all.
“Theria,” he went on kindly, “I must tell you that only yesterday by your mother’s advice I did something for you. I see now how necessary it was.”