Halcyone laughed. She seldom asked questions herself. If the Professor wished to tell her anything about the ladies he would do so—she was dying to hear! Presently a set of disjointed sentences flowed from her master's lips between his puffs of smoke.
"Girl—worth something—showy—honest—sure of herself—clever—pretty—on her own roots—not a graft."
"Girl"—who was the girl? Halcyone wondered. But Cheiron continued his laconic utterances.
"Woman—beautiful—determined—thick—roots of the commonest—grafting of the best—octopean, tenacious—dangerous—my poor devil of a John!"
"And did you give the apple to either, Cheiron?" Halcyone asked with a gleam of fine humor in her wise eyes. "Or, one of the trio being absent, did you feel yourself excused?"
Mr. Carlyon glanced at her sharply, and then broke into a smile.
"Young woman, I do not think I have ever allowed you to read the Judgment of Paris," he said. "Wherefore your question is ill-timed and irrelevant."
Then they laughed together. How well they knew one another!—not only over things Greek. And presently they began their reading. They were in the middle of Symonds' "Renaissance," and so forgot the outer world.
But after Halcyone had gone in the dusk through the park, the Professor sat in the firelight for a while, and did not ring for lights. He was musing deeply, and his thoughts ran something in this line:
"John must dree his weird. Nothing anyone could say has ever influenced him. If he marries this woman she will eat his soul; having only a sham one of her own, she will devour his. She'll do very well to adorn the London house and feed his friends. He'll find her out in less than a year—it will kill his inspirations. Well, Zeus and all the gods cannot help a man in his folly. But my business is to see that he does not ensnare the heart of my little girl. If he had waited he could have found her—the one woman with a soul."