e child. She had grown long-legged and was at the
fledgling stage when even a pretty girl sometimes looks plain, and she,
who had as yet no claim to beauty, was at her worst. She was quite aware
of it, with her intense soul-worship of all beautiful things. Some
unreasoned impulse made her keep away from her master during the first
day, but on the Sunday he summoned her, and, as once before, she came
and poured out the tea, but it was a cold and windy autumn afternoon,
and it was not laid out of doors. John Derringham had been for a walk,
and came in while she sat in a shadowy corner behind the table, teapot
in hand.

He was greatly changed, she thought, in the three years. He had grown a
beard! and looked considerably older, with his thin commanding figure
and arrogant head. He was not handsome now, but peculiarly
distinguished-looking. He could very well be Pericles, she decided at
once. As for him, he had almost forgotten her. Life had been so full of
many things; but, seeing a pale, slender, overgrown girl with
mouse-colored clouds of hair now confined in a demure pigtail, it came
to his mind that this must be the Professor's pupil again. Had she not
been called Hebe or Psyche--or Halcyone--some Greek name? And gradually
his former recollection of her came back, and of their morning in the
tree.

"Why, how do you do," he said politely, and Halcyone bowed without
speaking. She felt much as Hans Andersen's Ugly Duckling used to feel,
and when John Derringham had said a few ordinary things about her having
grown out of all likeness, he turned to the Professor again, and almost
forgot her presence.

His talk was most wonderful to listen to, she thought, his language was
so polished, and there was a courtesy added to the former vehemence.
They spoke of nothing but politics, which she did not understand, and
Cheiron chaffed him a good deal in his kindly cynical way. He was still
fighting his chimeras, it seemed, and fighting them successfully. As he
spoke, Halcyone, behind the teapot, thrilled with a kind of worship. To
be strong and young and manful, and to combat modern dragons, appeared
to her to be a god-like task.

In the midst of a heated argument she rose to slip away. Her comings and
goings were so natural to the Professor that he was unaware that she was
leaving the room until John Derringham broke off in the middle of a
sentence, to rise and open the door for her.

"Good-by," she said. "Aunt Roberta is not