The procession started, Melantho behind the chariot carrying the marriage torches whose ruddy burning sent aloft the mystic smoke. Out from the house into the silvery radiance of the moon-lit road poured forth the youths and maidens, singing, shouting:
“Ho Hymen! Hymen Hymenæos. Io!”
Up the Delphi highroad they danced toward the little house beyond the Precinct, which Nikander had given to the pair. A mad and merry rout, they followed the jolting car. One played the sounding pipes, and behind him a boy clashed aloft the thin, glittering cymbals. In a burst of joyous music they stopped at the bridegroom’s door.
There stood Baltè with torches to receive them. Eëtíon’s mother should have been the one to hold that welcoming torch. No doubt she guessed this in her dark house of Hades and wept with tearless eyes to be near her son upon his marriage night.
Now Eëtíon lifts his bride from the chariot, carries her carefully over the high threshold that no stumble of her foot may bring ill luck. And they go into the marriage chamber. The door is shut and Eëtíon with reverent hand lifts the bridal veil to behold at last the wondering, half-frightened, yet happy face for which he has longed these many days.
Soberly he gives to her the quince, symbolic food of those who are to be the mothers of men. Her hands, as she eats, tangle in the long enmeshing veil, and with a quick breath Eëtíon sweeps it off upon the floor. Her comely head is liberate, her shoulders and arms free.
Suddenly he catches her away from ritual into a high shining reality. He folds her in his arms, kissing her forehead and mouth.
“Oh, be free,” he whispers. “Your hands to act, your eyes to see, my Theria, giver of my freedom.”
Meanwhile, the guests outside the closed door make merry, chanting the epithalamion, calling rudely to the bridal pair as the ancient custom is, but they—they hear it not.