very well to-day, so I must
not be late. Good night, Cheiron"--and she went out and closed the door.

"But it is quite dark!" exclaimed John Derringham. "Is there a servant
waiting? She can't go all alone!"

The Professor leaned back in his chair.

"Don't disturb yourself," he said. "Halcyone is accustomed to the
twilight. It is a strange night-creature--leave it alone."

John Derringham sat down again.

"She is not nearly so attractive-looking as she used to be. If I
remember, she was rather a weirdly pretty child."

"Just a chrysalis now," grunted the professor between [**TR Note: was
betwen in original; typesetter's error.] puffs of smoke. "But there is
more true philosophy and profound knowledge of truth in that little head
than either you or I have got in ours, John."

"You always thought the world of her, Master--you, with your
ineradicable contempt for women!"

"She is not a woman--yet. She is an intelligence and a brain--and a
soul."

"Oh, she has a soul, then!" and John Derringham smiled. "I remember once
you said when I should meet a woman with a soul I should meet my match!
I do not feel very alarmed."

One of the Professor's penthouse brows raised itself about half an inch,
but he did not speak.

"In which school have you taught her?" John Derringham asked--"you who
are so much of a cynic, Master. Does she study the ethics of Aristotle
with you here in this Lyceum, or do you reconstruct Plato's Academy? She
is no sophist, apparently, since you say she can see the truth."

Mr. Carlyon looked into the fire.

"She is almost an Epicurean, John, in all but the disbelief in the
immortality of the soul. She has evolved a theory of her own about that.
It partakes of Buddhism. After I have discussed metaphysical
propositions with her over which she will argue clearly, she will
suddenly cut the whole knot with a lightning flash, and you see the
naked truth, and words become meaningless, and discussion a jest."

"All this, at fifteen!" John Derringham laughed antagonistically, and
then he suddenly remembered her words to himself upon honor in the tree
that summer morning three years ago, and he mused.

Perhaps some heaven-taught beings were allowed to come to earth after
all, now and then as the centuries rolled on.

"She knows Greek pretty well?" he asked.

"Fairly, for the time she has learnt. She can read me bits of Lucian.
She would stumble over the tragedies. I read them to her." Then he
cont