A strange thing happened to Halcyone that morning.  She had made up her mind to keep away from her usual visit to Cheiron on the Monday and Tuesday when John Derringham had announced he might bring over his hostess to see the Professor.  She did not wish to cause complications with her aunts by making Mrs. Cricklander’s acquaintance, and underneath she had some strange reluctance herself.  Her unerring instincts warned her that this woman might in some way trouble her life, but she thought Saturday would be perfectly safe and was preparing to start, when some vague longing came over her to see her goddess.  She had felt less serene since the day before, and John Derringham and his words and looks absorbed her thoughts.  The home of Aphrodite was now in a chest in the long gallery, of which she kept the key, and as this old room was always empty—­none of the servants, not even Priscilla, caring about visiting it—­haunted, it was, they said—­she had plenty of time to spend what hours she liked with her treasure without having to do so by stealth, as in the beginning.  For any place indoors she loved the long gallery better than any other place.  The broken window panes had been mended when the turn for the better came for the whole house, and now she herself kept it all dusted and tidy and used it as a sitting-room and work-room as well; and, above all, it was the temple of the goddess wherein was her shrine.

This day when Aphrodite was uncovered from her blue silk wrappings, her whole expression seemed to be one of appeal; however Halcyone would hold her, in high or low light, the eyes appeared to be asking her something.

“What is it, sweet mother and friend?” she said.  “Do you not want me to leave you to-day?  If so, indeed I will not.  What are you telling me with those beautiful, sad eyes?  That something is coming into my existence that you promised me always, and that it will cause me sorrow, and I must pause?”—­and she shivered slightly and laid her cheek against the marble cheek.  “I am not afraid, and I want whatever it must be, since it is life.”  Then she put the head back, and started upon her walk.  But first one thing and then another delayed her, until last of all she sat down under the oak near the gap in the hedge and asked herself if all these things could be chance.  And here she took to dreaming and watching the young rabbits come out of their holes, and to wondering what Fate held in store for her in the immediate future.  What was going to be her life?  That nothing but good could happen she always knew, because since the very beginning God—­the same personal kindly force that she had always worshiped, unaltered by her deep learning, unweakened by any theological dissertations—­was there manifesting the whole year round His wonderful love for the world.

And so she sat until the clock of the church at Sarthe-under-Crum struck one, and she started up, realizing that she was too late now to go on to Cheiron’s and would only just have time to return for lunch with her aunts.  She must go instead in the afternoon.  So she walked briskly to the house, with a strange feeling of relief and joy, which she was quite unable to account for in any explicable way.