hat must be dreadful."

John Derringham smiled, and his face lost the _insouciante_ arrogance
which irritated his enemies so. His smile, rare enough, was singularly
sweet.

"I don't think about it," he said. "It is best not to when anything is
disagreeable."

"Cheiron and I often tell one another things like that."

"Cheiron--who is Cheiron?" he asked.

This seemed a superfluous question to Halcyone.

"The Professor, of course. He is just like the picture in my 'Heroes,'"
she answered, "and I often pretend we are in the cave on Pelion. I
thought you would perhaps be like one of the others since you were his
pupil, too, but I cannot find which. You are not Heracles--because you
have none of those great muscles--or AEneas or Peleus. Are--are you Jason
himself, perhaps--" and her voice sounded glad with discovery. "We do
not know, he may not have had a Greek face."

John Derringham laughed. "Jason who led the Argonauts to find the Golden
Fleece--it is a good omen. Would you help me to find the Golden Fleece
if you could?"

"Yes, I would, if you were good and true--but the end of the story was
sad because Jason was not."

"How must I be good and true then? I thought Jason was a straight enough
sort of a fellow and that it was Medea who brought all the
trouble--Medea, the woman."

Halcyone's grave eyes never left his face. She saw the whimsical twinkle
in his but heeded it not.

"He should not have had anything to do with Medea--that is where he was
wrong," she said, "but having given her his word, he should have kept
it."

"Even though she was a witch?" Mr. Derringham asked.

"It was still his word--don't you see? Her being a witch did not alter
his word. He did not give it because she was or was not a witch--but
because he himself wanted to at the time, I suppose; therefore, it was
binding."

"A man should always keep his word, even to a woman, then?" and John
Derringham smiled finely.

"Why not to a woman as well as a man?" Halcyone asked surprised. "You do
not see the point at all it seems. It is not to whom it is you give your
word--it is to you it matters that you keep it, because to break it
degrades yourself."

"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