"What is it? What is it, God?" she asked of the sky. But no answer came, and at last she went out into the park and towards the tree. She had made all her simple preparations--everything that she must take had been put into a small bag and was safely waiting in the secret passage, ready for her to fetch on the morrow. Cheiron, she knew, had gone to London. Had they not said good-by on the evening before? And his last words had made her smile happily at the time. "Things are changing, Halcyone," he had said, with the whimsical raising of his left penthouse brow. "Perhaps you will not want to learn Greek much longer with your crabbed old Cheiron in his cave." And she had flung her arms round his neck and buried her face in his silver beard, and assured him she would always want to learn--all her life. But now she felt a twinge of sadness--she would indeed miss him, her dear old master, and he, too, would be lonely without her. Then she fought with herself. Feelings of depression were never permitted to stay for a moment, and she looked away into the trees for comfort--but only a deathly stillness and a sullen roll of distant thunder answered, and left her uncomforted. And then some force stronger than her will seemed to drive her back to the house, and to the long gallery, and just at the very moment when she had passed beyond her lover's sight it was as if something chased her, so that she ran the last few yards, and paused not until she stood in front of Aphrodite's shrine. It would be difficult to carry the marble head with the other few things she proposed to take, but none the less was the necessity imperative. She could not be married without the presence of her beloved mother to bless her. As she lifted her goddess out, with her silken wrappings, the first flash of the nearing storm lit up the dark room with lurid flame. Halcyone shivered. It was the one aspect of Nature with which she was out of harmony. When thunder rolled and lightning quivered, her vitality seemed to desert her and she experienced what in her came nearest to fear. "Ah! someone has angered God greatly," she whispered aloud; and then she carried the head to the secret door, knowing full well she would be unwatched in her entry there--on such a day, with thunder pealing, not a servant would have ventured into the long gallery. Another and louder rumble reached her with muffled sound, as she made her way in the dark underground, and as she came to the place where there was the contrived gleam of light and outer air, the lightning turned the narrow space into a green dusk.