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wung open before them and they went into the great hall--up the long stairway that echoed only vacant softness, and into the library with its ranging rows of perfect books. She motioned him before her. "_I_ must tell them," she said. She passed through the draperies of another door and the silence of the great house settled itself about the man and waited with him. XI TWO MEN FACE EACH OTHER He looked about the room with quiet face. It was the room he had been in before--the day he spoke to the Halcyon Club--the ladies had costly gowns and strange hats, who had listened so politely while he told them of Athens and his beloved land. The room had been lighted then, with coloured lamps and globes--a kind of rosy radiance. Now the daylight came in through the high windows and filtered down upon him over brown books and soft, leather-covered walls. There was no sound in the big room. It seemed shut off from the world and Achilles sat very quiet, his dark face a little bent, his gaze fixed on the rug at his feet. He was thinking of the child--and of her face when she had lifted it to him out of the crowded street, that first day, and smiled at him... and of their long talks since. It was the Child who understood. The strange ladies had smiled at him and talked to him and drank their tea and talked again... he could hear the soft, keen humming of their voices and the flitter of garments all about him as they moved. But the child had sat very still--only her face lifted, while he told her of Athens and its beauty... and he had told her again--and again. She would never tire of it--as he could never tire. She was a child of light in the great new world... a child like himself--in the hurry of the noise. A sound came to him in the distant house--people talking--low voices that spoke and hurried on. The house was awake--quick questions ran through it--doors sounded and were still. Achilles turned his face toward the opening into the long wide hall, and waited. Through the vista there was a glimpse of the stairway and a figure passing up it--a short, square man who hurried. Then silence again--more bells and running feet. But no one came to the library--and no one sought the dark figure seated there, waiting. Strange foreign faces flashed themselves in the great mirror and out. The outer door opened and closed noiselessly to admit them--uncouth figures that passed swiftly up the stairway, glancing curiously about them--
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