“I have done no wrong,” she asserted. “How can you think I have done wrong?”
“But you have. You are almost a woman. You cannot receive my guests.”
“My guest he is, this Sophocles,” she answered with frightened face but steady voice. “We have been talking together about Homer and Pindar. Surely that is no harm. Where is our wrong?”
A low exclamation came from the corner of the room. Pindar himself was there with Sophocles’s father.
The boy spoke, blushing, “I am the one to blame. I came in here to push the swing—not thinking.”
“There is no blame,” repeated the girl passionately. “Don’t call it blame.”
Had Nikander been an ordinary Greek father, Theria would undoubtedly have received her whipping at this time.
“Go to your room, Daughter,” said Nikander quietly. “I cannot talk with you here.”
And Theria fled in an agony of shame.
Pindar’s voice broke the silence.