And the mountains caused Halcyone a yet deeper emotion than the sea had done.  Nature here talked to her in a voice of supreme grandeur, and bade her never to be cast down but to go on bearing her winter with heroic calm.

She often stayed out the entire night and watched the stars fade and the dawn come—­Phoebus with his sun chariot!  Somehow Switzerland, although it was not at all the actual background, seemed to bring to her the atmosphere of her “Heroes.”  The lower hill near their village could certainly be Pelion, and one day she felt she had discovered Cheiron’s cave.  This was a joy—­and that night, when it rained and she and the Professor sat before their wood fire in the little inn parlor, with Aphrodite lying near them in her silken folds, she coaxed her old master into telling her those moving tales of old.

“You are indeed Cheiron, Master,” she said—­and then her eyes widened and she looked into the glowing ashes.  “And you have one pupil, who, like Heracles in his fight with the Centaurs, has accidentally wounded you.  But I want you not to let the poison of the arrow grow in your blood; the wound is not incurable as his was.  Master, why do you never speak to me now of Mr. Derringham?”

Cheiron frowned.  One of his eyebrows had grown in later years at least an inch long and seemed to bristle ready for battle when he was angry.

“I think he has behaved as no gentleman should,” he growled, “and I would rather not mention him.”

“You know of things perhaps with which I am not acquainted,” said Halcyone, “but from my point of view, there is nothing to judge him for.  Whatever he may have done in becoming engaged to marry this lady—­because she is rich—­we do not know the forces that were compelling him.  It hurts me, Cheiron, that you take so stern a view—­it hurts me, Master.”

Mr. Carlyon put out his hand and stroked her soft hair as she sat there on a low stool looking up at him.

“Oh, my dear,” he said, and could articulate no more because a lump grew in his throat.

“Everything is so simple when we know of it,” she went on, “but everyone has not had the fortune to learn nature and the forces which we must encourage or guard against.  And Mr. Derringham, who had to mix with the world, ran many dangers which could not come to you and me at La Sarthe Chase.  Ah, Cheiron!  Even you do not know of the ugly things which creep away out of sight in the night—­my night that I love!  And they could sting one if one did not know where to put one’s feet.  And so it must be with him—­he did not always see where just to put his feet, so we must not judge him, must we?” she pleaded.

“Not if you do not wish,” Mr. Carlyon blurted out.  And then he began to puff wreaths of smoke from his long old pipe.

“Indeed, I do not wish, Cheiron,” she said.  “Perhaps he is very unhappy now—­we do not know—­so we should only send him good thoughts to cheer him.  I dream of him often,” she went on in a far-off voice, as though she had almost forgotten the Professor’s presence, “and he cries to me in pain.  And I could not bear it that you should be thinking badly of him, and so I had to speak because thoughts can help or injure people—­and now he wants all the gentle currents we can send him to take him through this time.”