Surely everything was a dream. How much he
had seemed to love her. And then unconsciously she started to her feet,
and strode away among the trees, forgetful of her companion--and Cheiron
sat and watched her, knowing she would come back and it was better to
let her overcome alone the agony which was convulsing her.

Yes, John Derringham had seemed to love her--not seemed--no--it was
real--he _had_ loved her. And she would never believe but that he loved
her still. This was only a wicked turn of those bad forces which she
knew were abroad in the world. Had she not seen evil once in a man's
face crouching in the bracken, as he set a trap for some poor hare one
dark and starry night? And she had passed on, and then, when she thought
he would be gone, she had returned and loosened the spring before it
could do any harm. That poacher had evil forces round him. They were
there always for the unwary, and had fastened upon John. She would never
doubt his love, and she herself could never change, and she would pour
upon him all her tender thoughts, and call to the night winds to help
her to do her duty.

So presently she remembered Cheiron, and turned round to see him far
away still, sitting quietly beneath a giant elm stroking his long,
silver beard.

"My dear, kind master!" she exclaimed to herself, and went rapidly back
to him.

"That is a charming girl--your young friend," he said to her, as he got
up to stroll to the gate; "full of life and common sense. There is
something wonderful in the vitality of her nation. They jar dreadfully
upon us old tired peoples in their worst aspects--but in their best we
must recognize a new spring of life and youth for the world. Yonder
young woman is not troubling about a soul, if she has one; she is a
fountain of living water. She has not taken on the shadows of our
crowded past. Halcyone, my dear, you and I are the inheritance of too
much culture. When I see her I want to cry with Epicurus: 'Above all,
steer clear of Culture!'" And then he branched from this subject and
plunged into a learned dissertation upon the worship of Dionysus, and
how it had cropped up again and again with wild fervor among the ancient
worlds whose senses and brains were wearied with the state religions,
and he concluded by analogy that this wild longing to return to youth's
follies and mad ecstasies, to get free from restraints, to seek
communion with the spiritual beyond in some exaltation of the
emotions-