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      ‘But the maids of honour?’

      ‘Oh no! They won’t start, they’re grown-up!’

      ‘And you’re just half-way between, so it’s all right?’

      Philylla suddenly got shy and couldn’t answer him; she thought that was it, but didn’t want to say so. He was a grown-up too!

      Again Panteus came to the rescue: ‘May I look at your arrows?’ he said. She handed them over silently. ‘You don’t always hit the mark, do you?’ She shook her head and he picked out three or four of the arrows. ‘These aren’t straight,’ he said. ‘Look. Where did you get them?’

      She was almost crying but could not bear them to see; she took the arrows and broke them across her bare knee, ducking her head over them so as to hide her eyes.

      ‘Who made them?’ said Panteus again.

      ‘I did,’ she said at last, scraping her finger hard along the bowstring.

      Panteus was really unhappy; she was so like a boy, standing there among her broken things. ‘One always makes a few crooked ones at first,’ he said. ‘I did. There’s nothing to cry about.’

      ‘I’m not crying,’ said Philylla indignantly, and turned round to the King. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I want to tell you—if I can ever help you, do say! The Queen—she said I might speak if I saw you—and—she told me what you’re doing, how everything’s going to be splendid again! Some of them don’t like it, but I do, and—I do wish I could help.’

      ‘You may yet, Philylla,’ said the King gravely, ‘and thank you. We shall want every true heart. Now, run on and tell the Queen we are coming.’

      ‘I will,’ she said, and ran, her thick cloak in one hand, dragging out behind her, strongly, like a flag. Her heart was full of mixed pleasure at her own daring in speaking to the King and getting that answer from him, and shame at having made bad arrows, and the man thinking she was crying. Yet he was a good man, he hadn’t laughed; and the King had looked tired. She had noticed that; she was beginning to know about grown-ups. Only, did he think she was crying …? Hot and cold, hot and cold, Philylla ran down the goat-path, back to the Queen, whom she loved.

      But those last words of hers had sent the King and Panteus racing back to the overwhelming thrill of their plans. Only first Panteus had asked who the child was, ‘because she seems like part of the new things.’

      ‘Philylla, daughter of Themisteas,’ the King answered. ‘My wife chose her. In three years she will be breaking hearts all round her.’

      ‘She doesn’t think of that yet,’ said Panteus, and then again they looked at each other secretly, flashingly, because in three years Sparta was to be all different!

      The King sighed a little, saying to his friend: ‘I wish Sphaeros was here. He should have got my letter.’

      Philylla found them all out in the courtyard, and stopped a moment, feeling it all so poised that she must not break into it, however gently. The King’s mother, Kratesikleia, was sitting on the step, telling stories to her grandchildren; she had been very tall as a young woman, but now she was much bent, though it was somehow softly, as though less with age than with much stooping over cradles. Her hair was done high in a shining silver knot; below it the skin was finely wrinkled over the strong bones of her face. Her eyes were black and bright like a bird’s, and her hands very small; she used them a great deal in talking, and they always impressed her hearers. Even now the children were looking at them rather than at her face, as though the story came from them. There was a great red cushion behind her, and she leant forward from it as if she were going to leap out of the picture, or so it seemed to Philylla, into that tremendous, obsessing future that they all kept at the back of their minds.

      The two youngest children sat crouched beside her, listening hard. The baby girl was quite still except for her cheeks and lips sucking at her finger, and a rhythmical curving and straightening of her toes, as if some current of thick air were passing over them. The five-year-old boy had a hovering smile and his dark eyes looked far out, as though he were meditating some mischief—again for the future! Those two were like their father and grandmother, but the eldest, who was almost more than a child, who was nearly eight and would go to his class—if—if the classes were started again!—he was like his mother, with thick, silky-soft hair, lighter than his sunbrowned skin, and clear grey eyes, and lips that shut firmly over any secret. He saw Philylla coming in and smiled at her silently; they were great friends.

      But it was his mother that Philylla turned to. There was almost twenty years between them, but yet the girl felt there was no separation for them, none of the natural aloofness between two generations. It had all flowered in this last six months; the Queen was more to her now than her own mother could ever be again, or her own sister for that matter. The thing had happened completely.

      Agiatis was standing sideways to the others, with a piece of embroidery in her hands, the edge of a purple soldier’s cloak for her husband. She was still one of the most beautiful women in Sparta; perhaps it was partly this that made the twenty years seem such a small thing. Her hair, that Philylla loved to comb and plait when it was her turn, was almost covered by a close net of blue and silver cords. She wore the Dorian dress of plain wool, summer-bleached white, her own weaving. There were no ornaments at all; even the shoulder brooches were only silver, worked in a dullish pattern, and her ear-rings the same. Philylla admitted to herself dispassionately that Agiatis had very little eye for clothes, but then they didn’t interest her nowadays—why should they?—and it didn’t matter, for she was the right height and figure to look splendid in these simple things. Only: the child wondered for the hundredth time why they had ever called her Agiatis the Merry-minded. If one knew her well, of course—but just to see her and speak with her, it was the last thing one would say. Fifteen years ago she might have seemed very different, but surely not so different as all that! She stood there now, in her own house, looking at her own beautiful children; and yet she looked sad. Sad, but not minding it, Philylla thought again, and then suddenly jumped and shook herself, and ran into the court with her message.

      The picture broke at once into movement and noise and the present, but Agiatis was smiling now, the special, very soft smile she had for Philylla, that deepened again into something even more essential when the child spoke of her husband and Panteus. ‘And I told him!’ she said, her eyes bright and cheeks pink with running, ‘about wanting to help. I think he was pleased.’

      ‘I’m sure he was,’ said the Queen; ‘there aren’t so many to say it. Not among the women, at least.’

      ‘No,’ said Philylla slowly, thinking of the other maids of honour, ‘they are silly, aren’t they. I don’t know why.’

      The Queen smiled at her. ‘You will though, Philylla. When things turn simple, women have to give up much more than men. Because they live in shadow, by mystery.’

      ‘I see,’ said Philylla doubtfully, not seeing, ‘but they won’t be when I’m grown up, will they? I don’t like it!’ And unconsciously she moved further out towards the middle of the court, full into the winter sunlight.

      It was not every day she could go out into the fields and be a Spartan in her own way. The next morning she had to be indoors, with the others, weaving. She did not like this much; for one thing Agiatis always wanted them all to sing the old weaving-songs while they worked, but none of them liked to except Philylla, and she had an uncertain ear and more uncertain voice; so she was never allowed to sing. They talked instead, the elder ones about love and clothes, and occasionally politics, the younger ones about food and lessons and games and one another. And both the sets had, of course, that particular source of interest or annoyance, Agiatis, the Queen. The thing she was trying to do now was to train them for the dances again: as if anyone wanted even to think about those horrible, dim gods now! Two or three of the older girls were talking about that now, under cover of their looms, all rather horrified. ‘What does she think the good of them is if they aren’t real!’ That was Deinicha, a pretty, spoilt girl of sixteen, with fluffy hair and her finger-nails pink and polished.

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