'What do you suppose he is carrying in that vase?' Vida asked; 'or is that some trophy?'
'No, no, it's the long drinking cup—to the expert eye that is added evidence of his high degree of civilization. But think, you know, a man like that walking the earth so long before the Greeks! And here. This courtly train looking on at the games. What do you say to the women!'
'Why, they had got as far as flouncing their gowns and puffing their sleeves! Their hair!'—'Dear me, they must have had a M. Raoul to ondulé and dress it.' 'Amazing!—was there ever anything so modern dug out of the earth before?' 'No, nothing like it!' he said, holding the pictures up again between the glass and his kindling eye. 'Ce sont vraiment des Parisiennes!'
Over his shoulder the modern woman looked long at that strange company. 'It is nothing less than uncanny,' she said at last. 'It makes one vaguely wretched.'
'What does?'
'To realize that so long ago the world had got so far. Why couldn't people like these go further still? Why didn't their sons hold fast what so great a race had won?'
'These things go in cycles.'
'Isn't that a phrase?'—the woman mused—'to cover our ignorance of how things go—and why? Why should we be so content to go the old way to destruction? If I were "the English" of this splendid specimen of a Cretan, I would at least find a new way to perdition.'
'Perhaps we shall!'