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"Right here!" replied Jock, and he slapped his pocket, "and here," he pointed to his head. "Two spots so vital that they make old Achilles's heel seem armor-plated. Ben Griebler is one of the show-me kind. He wants value received for money expended, and while everybody knows that he has a loving eye on the Berg, Shriner crowd, he won't sign a thing until he knows what he's getting.
A man seated at a table across the room looked up. For a minute the two men looked at each other the one short and square and red; the other thin as a reed, with dark, clear eyes. The short man spoke first. "What do you know about this?" His hand pressed a heap of papers upon the desk before him and his eyes searched the dark face. Achilles's glance rested on the papers then it lifted itself.
The sun warm as Athens shone down, waiting, while the boy turned slowly on his side... his eyes had grown dark. "I try remember" His voice was half a whisper, " but it runs away!" The eyes seemed to be straining to see something beyond them through a veil. Achilles's hand passed before them and shut them off. "Don't try, Alcie. Never mind it's all right. Don't mind!"
On the bas relief representing Marius's victory, one might fancy the most high born and athletic of Achilles's Myrmidons in the full "tug of war;" whereas the swarms of crawling pigmies which burlesque the triumph of Severus might be supposed the original Myrmidon rabble, just hatched, as the fable reports, from their native ant-hills, and basking in the sun like so many tadpoles.
Only something in the poise of Achilles's head, a look in his eyes, held the hinge waiting a grudging minute while he spoke. He lifted his head a little; the look in his eyes deepened. "I am called Miss Elizabeth Harris and her mother to see," he said, simply. The door paused a little and swung back an inch. He might be a great savant... some scholar of parts an artist.
The breath of a sigh escaped Achilles's lips as he stood back surveying the stall. Something very like homesickness was in his heart. He had almost fancied for a minute that he was back once more in Athens. He raised his eyes and gave a quick, deep glance up and down the street soot and dirt and grime, frowning buildings and ugly lines, and overhead a meagre strip of sky.
The president was on her feet, introducing Mr. Achilles Alexandrakis, who, in the unavoidable absence of Professor Trent, had kindly consented to speak to them on the traditions and customs of modern Greek life. Achilles's eyes fell gently on the lifted faces. "I like to tell you about my home," he said, simply. "I tell you all I can." The look of strain in the faces relaxed.
Suddenly Achilles's foot slackened its swift pace. His eye dropped to the silver tag on the music-roll in his hand, and lifted itself again to a gleaming red-brown house at the left. It rose with a kind of lightness from the earth, standing poised upon the shore of the lake, like some alert, swift creature caught in flight, brought to bay by the rush of waters.
Did not what's his name, one of the Agamemnons, fight with that paultry rascal Paris? and Diomede with what d'ye call him there? and Hector with I forget his name, he that was Achilles's bosom-friend; and afterwards with Achilles himself? Nay, and in Dryden's Virgil, is there anything almost besides fighting?" "You are a man of learning, colonel," cries the doctor; "but "
And as they threaded the streets into drays and past clanging cars and through the tangle of wheels and horses and noise and she told him the story, shouting it above the rumble and hurry of the streets, into the dark ear that bent beside her. The look in Achilles's face deepened, but its steady quiet did not change.
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