"You reason well, fair nymph," he said gallantly; he was frankly amused. "What may your age be? A thousand years more or less will not make any difference!"
"You may laugh at me if you like," said Halcyone, and she smiled; his gayety was infectious, "but I am not so very young. I shall be thirteen in October, the seventh of October."
John Derringham appeared to be duly impressed with this antiquity, and went on gravely:
"So you and the Master discuss these knotty points of honor and expediency together, do you, as a recreation from the Greek syntax? I should like to hear you."
"The Professor does not believe in men much," Halcyone said. "He says they are all honorable to one another until they are tempted—and that they are never honorable to a woman when another woman comes upon the scene. But I do not know at all about such things, or what it means. For me there is nothing towards other people; it only is towards yourself. You must be honorable to yourself."
And suddenly it seemed to John Derringham as if all the paltry shams of the world fell together like a pack of cards, and as if he saw truth shining naked for the first time at the bottom of the well of the child's pure eyes.
An extraordinary wave of emotion came over him, finely strung as he was, and susceptible to all grades of feeling. He did not speak for a minute; it was as if he had quaffed some elixir. A flame of noble fire seemed to run in his veins, and his voice was changed and full of homage when at last he addressed her.
"Little Goddess of Truth," he said, "I would like to be with you always that you might never let me forget this point of view. And you believe it would have won for Jason in the end—if he had been true to himself? Tell me—I want greatly to know."
"But how could there be any doubt of that?" she asked surprised. "Good only can bring good, and evil, evil."
At this moment, out from the copse the soft head of a doe appeared, and at the thrilling sight Halcyone slipped her hand into her companion's, and held his tight lest he should move or rustle a leaf.