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something she was going to see someday. She was young enough not to think this in any way strange. Her mother had moved on ahead, and for some reason it seemed to Kassandra that it would disturb the Queen if she spoke again about the ships she had seen and could not see now. She hurried after her mother, her legs aching as she strained up the steps.
    The Temple of Apollo Helios the Sun Lord stood more than halfway to the summit of the hill upon which was built the great city of Troy. It was overlooked only by the great height of the Temple of Maiden Athene far above; but it was itself the most beautiful of the Temples of the city. It was built of shining white marble, with tall columns at either side, on a foundation of stonework set up—so Kassandra had been told more than once—by Titans before even the oldest men in the city were born. The light was so fierce that Kassandra shaded her eyes with her hands. Well, if this was the very home of the Sun God, what would be its nature if not strong and perpetual light?
    In the outer court, where merchants were selling all manner of things—animals for sacrifice, small clay statues of the God, various foods and drinks—her mother bought her a slice of sweet melon. It slid deliciously down her throat, dry from the long and dusty climb. The area under the portico of the next court was cool and shadowy; there a number of priests and functionaries recognized the Queen and beckoned her forward.
    “Welcome, Lady,” said one of them, “and the little princess too. Would you like to sit here and rest for a moment until the priestess can speak with you?”
    The Queen and the princess were shown to a marble bench in the shade. Kassandra sat quietly beside her mother for a moment, glad to be out of the heat; she finished her melon and wiped her hands on her underskirt, then looked about for a place to put the rind; it did not seem quite right to throw it on the floor under the eyes of the priests and priestesses. She slid down from the bench and discovered a basket where there was a quantity of fruit rinds and peelings, and put her rind inside it with the others.
    Then she walked around the room slowly, wondering what she would see, and how different the house of a God would be from the house of a King. This, of course, was only His reception room, where people waited for audience; there was a room like this in the palace where petitioners came to wait when they wanted to ask a favor of the King or bring him a present. She wondered if He had a bedroom or where He slept or bathed. And Kassandra peered through into the main room which, she thought, must be the God’s audience chamber.
    He was there. The colors in which He was painted were so lifelike that Kassandra was not really aware for a moment that what she was seeing was a statue. It seemed reasonable that a God should be a little larger than life, rigidly upright, smiling a distant but welcoming smile. Kassandra stole into the room, to the very foot of the God, and for a moment she thought she had actually heard Him speak; then she knew it was only a voice in her mind.
    “Kassandra,” He said, and it seemed perfectly natural that a God should know her name without being told, “will you be My priestess?”
    She whispered, neither knowing nor caring if she spoke aloud, “Do you want me, Lord Apollo?”
    “Yes; it is I who called you here,” he said. The voice was great and golden, just what she imagined that a God’s voice would be; and she had been told that the Sun Lord was also the God of music and song.
    “But I am only a little girl, not yet old enough to leave my father’s house,” she whispered.
    “Still, I bid you remember, when that day comes, that you are Mine,” said the voice, and for a moment the motes of golden dust in the slanting sunshine became all one great ray of light through which it seemed that the God reached down to her and touched her with a burning touch . . . and then the brightness was gone