“And do you often have these nocturnal outings, you odd little girl?” Cheiron said, wonderingly.

“Not very.  I have to be so careful, you see—­and I only choose moonlight or starlight nights, and they are rare—­but when the summer comes I hope to enjoy many more of them.”

Then Mr. Carlyon’s old eyes looked away into distance and seemed to see a slender shape wrapped in a spotted fawn’s skin, its head crowned with leaves, joining the throng of those other early worshipers of Dionysus as they beat their weird music among the dark crags of Parnassus—­searching for communion with the spiritual beyond in the only way they knew of then to reach it, through a wild ecstasy of emotion.  Here was the same impulse, unconscious, instinctive.  The probing of nature to discover her secrets.  Here was a female thing with a soul unafraid in her pure innocence, alone in the night.

Halcyone did not interrupt his meditations, and presently they came to the broken gate close to the house.

Cheiron paused and leaned on the top bar.

“Is this the elves’ home?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered gravely.  “But so late in the day you cannot see them.  You must wait again until the sun is setting; and I expect when it is warm they come in the moonlight, too, but I have not been able to get a fine enough night—­as yet.  This avenue is the most beautiful of all, because a hundred years ago the La Sarthes had a quarrel with the Wendovers, whose land just touches at the end of it, and they closed the gate, and so the turf has covered the gravel.  And look at the tree—­you can see the fairy ring where they dance, and I always fancy they sup under the one with the very low branch at the side—­but I don’t believe I should like ‘marrow of mice,’ should you?”

“Not at all,” said Cheiron.

Then they wandered on.  Halcyone led him to each of the favorite points of view, and he became acquainted with the great serpent, and so vivid was her picturing that he almost fancied he saw the Golden Fleece, nailed to the tree beyond, and heard Orpheus’ exquisite melodies charming the reptile to sleep while Jason stepped over his slumbering coils.

“But I do not have Medea here,” she said; “I play her part myself, and I make her different.  She was too cunning and had wicked thoughts in her heart, and so the poor Heroes suffered.  If she had been good and true and had not killed Absyrtus, things might have had a different ending.  I never like to think of Absyrtus in any case—­because, do you know, I once hated my baby brother, and would have been glad if anyone had killed him.”

Her eyes became black as night with this awful recollection.  “It was very long ago, you understand—­when I was quite a little girl before I knew the wonderful things the wind and the flowers and the stars tell me.”

Cheiron did not ask the cause of this hate; he reserved the question for a future time, and encouraged her to tell him of her discoveries in wonderland.