they should question him, in this new land, he must not fail them.  They would be hungry for the beauty of the ancient world—­they who had no ruins of their own.  He knew in his heart how it would be with them—­the homesickness for the East—­all its wonder and its mystery.  Yes, he would carry it to them.  He, Achilles Alexandrakis, should not be found wanting.  This new world was to give him money, wealth, better education for his boys, a competent old age.  But he, too, had something to give in exchange.  He must make himself ready against the great day when he should travel down the long way of the Piraeus, for the last time, and set sail for America.

He was in America now.  He knew, when he stopped to think, that this was not a dream.  He had been here six months, in the little shop on Clark Street, but no one had yet asked him of the Parthenon.  Sometimes he thought that they did not know that he was Greek.  Perhaps if they knew that he had been in Athens, had lived there all his life from a boy, they would question him.  The day that he first thought of this, he had ordered a new sign painted.  It bore his name in Greek characters, and it was beautiful in line and colour.  It caused his stand to become known far and wide as the “Greek Shop,” and within a month after it was put up his trade had doubled—­but no one had asked about the Parthenon.

He had really ceased to hope for it now.  He only dreamed the dream, a little wistfully, as he went in and out, and his thought dwelt always on Athens and her beauty.  The images stamped so carefully on his sensitive brain became his most precious treasures.  Over and over he dwelt on them.  Ever in memory his feet climbed the steps to the Acropolis or walked beneath stately orange-trees, beating a soft rhythm to the sound of flute and viol.  For Achilles was by nature one of the lightest-hearted of children.  In Athens his laugh had been quick to rise, and fresh as the breath of rustling leaves.  It was only here, under the sooty sky of the narrow street, that his face had grown a little sad.

At first the days had been full of hope, and the face of each newcomer had been scanned with eager eyes.  The fruit, sold so courteously and freely, was hardly more than an excuse for the opening of swift talk.  But the talk had never come.  There was the inevitable and never-varying, “How much?” the passing of coin, and hurrying feet.  Soon a chill had crept into the heart of Achilles.  They did not ask of Athens.  They did not know that he was Greek.  They did not care that his name was Achilles.  They did not see him standing there with waiting eyes.  He might have been a banana on its stem, a fig-leaf against the wall, the dirt that gritted beneath their feet, for all that their eyes took note....  Yet they were not cruel or thoughtless.  Sometimes there came a belated response—­half surprised, but cordial—­to his gentle “good day.”  Sometimes a stranger said, “The day is warm,” or, “The breeze from the Lake is cool to-day.”  Then the eyes of Achilles glowed like soft stars in their places.  Surely now they would speak.  They would say, “Is it thus in Greece?” But they never spoke.  And the days hurried their swift feet through the long, dirty streets.