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 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.”