“God forbid,” spoke Nikander, then added piously, “unless the god demand you, Theria.”
“But he will not demand me. Oh, Father, he will not?”
Again she was in the hollow of his arm and again felt safe even from the god Dionysos himself.
“No, my daughter,” he said, looking into the sane little face. “I do not believe he will.”
CHAPTER VI
THE GUESTS
So throughout the winter months Dionysos, that god who came from far Asia into Greece, held sway in Delphi. Apollo was gone on his distant mysterious journey to the land of the Hyperboreans, those happy, luxurious folk who live on the farther side of the north wind. Theria felt keenly this absence of her god: more keenly perhaps than she would have felt the absence of any person in the household.
For with Apollo’s going the Oracle was silenced. No pilgrims came to consult it. The pure, ordered songs of Apollo, the throbbing lyre, the announcing trumpets were stilled. Instead sounded the nervous wailing of Dionysos pipes. On quiet evenings Theria could hear them, and Baltè told her of the furious satyr dances in the Precinct. And now the absence of Apollo brought the rains and the cold. Yes, in the winter Theria missed her god.
When, therefore, in the spring Apollo returned, the whole heart of the little girl went forth to him in love. Theria knew well how her god must look. Every vase and kylix in the house bore pictures of Apollo. And long ago her child mind had selected, from among the beautiful youths she had seen come by on pilgrimage, one who seemed to her like the god himself. Always at the word “Apollo” Theria saw again that fresh-hearted happy boy moving, flushed and expectant, toward the Precinct, and on his face that same look of dear surprise, youth’s first response to life.