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.
And of such an idealizing force it is true, that while it affects the community as a whole, it gives to certain individuals a heaped-up gift. Such a gift was upon this child, peculiar to her in Nikander’s house. Delphi had imprinted that expression on her baby face, that unmistakable look of spiritual life which had been the life of her fathers for at least four hundred years. So many traditions, so many prides, upliftings, adventures, poetries, and faiths, entering into the heart of a little girl. Nikander’s sons were just hearty, playful Greek boys. Theria was a Delphian.
One spring morning, when all Delphi was joyous with an awakening sky and earth, it happened that Theria was seven years old. She came tripping down the stairway of the inner court, fresh-washed from the hands of her nurse, fresh-dressed in a single garment which did not reach her knees.
“Now be good,” the old nurse had admonished her as she gave the last touch to her dark curls. “Your twin brother is playin’ that sweet down in the aula. Don’t ye go now and stir him up with your mischievous ways.”
And here in the court sure enough Dryas was playing “that sweet.” He had made a circle of pebbles and stones and was marching around and around it chanting some childish, made-up thing—perfectly absorbed, unseeing. Sunbeams slanted across the court leaving him in a sort of magic, refracted light; small rain-pools here and there among the worn pavement-flags gave back the blue, or wrinkled suddenly from the unseen breeze. In the corner the old, old tiny altar, upon which many generations of Nikanders had sacrificed, breathed yet the smoke of the morning rite. The place smelt sweet of wood-smoke. Now Theria was aware of a shadow moving across the court and looking up saw an eagle swoop down the sunlit air.
In after years Theria—a woman and far away—was to recall this scene cut clear and deep by the love she bore her home, but now she tripped recklessly down the unbalustered stair and scattered Dryas’s circle of stones with her foot.
“Let’s play,” she announced.
“Am playin’—threshin’-floor,” responded Dryas, breathless from circling.
“You don’t play threshing-floor now. That’s past.”