“Women like you ain’t got no house. Now get along with you.” He was shutting the doors. Desperately she laid her hand in the crack. “I pray you, I pray you,” she cried. Then she tore off the himation which wrapped her head. “Judge you whether I have a house or no”—lifting her face—“I am a Nikander.”
“Great gods in Olympos!” quoth the keeper. “Ye sure be.”
He opened the doors slowly, hesitating even yet. The guard fell back.
“Line for line an’ feature for feature,” murmured the keeper of the keys. “That daughter of Nikander’s. It’s crazy she is. I’ve heard o’ her.”
Theria slipped through the narrow opening.
She was within! Locked into a wilderness of beauty. Multitudes of little temples, red, blue, and gold; multitudes of statues, some of hoary eld, some glossy new; statues of wood, marble, bronze, standing under graceful porticoes, or standing bareheaded by the wayside looking out dreamily from life-like eyes.
And over all the still holiness of the morning the unearthly light whose steady increase affected her spirit like a joyous, irresistible call.
A child set free in fairyland? Oh, Theria was more than that. A soul set in heaven, if ever heaven came down to earth; and, in sooth, it sometimes does. Theria’s soul leaped up from its depths. Suddenly she could not see for the tears which filled her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. She must not waste one moment of her seeing.
Right at hand stood the Athenian Gift after Marathon—statues of Athenian gods and heroes standing so friendly, mortal with immortal together in their portico.
“Ah, Athena, thou art dreaming of thine own hill in Athens,” she cried, moving closer. “No, thou must not. Be happy here, dear Athena.” Bred in the worship of images, Theria quite forgot that all these were not alive.