Was he still grinding at his report, she wondered, looking like a bronze figure? The simile pleased her, and she smiled. Yes, bronze was the right word to use, for his face and hands and arms were tanned almost to the colour of his khaki with exposure, so that he sometimes looked all of a piece, except for the close-clipped dark moustache and keen, intense blue eyes.
Then as she looked she saw some movement in the camp. A boy appeared, apparently in answer to a call, and stood a moment receiving directions. Then the tall figure itself appeared, stood a moment to give an order, and strode down towards the little gate. She sat up, and her breath came a little unevenly. Was he really coming at last? Had he, after all, been seriously delayed?
No; outside the gate, without one glance towards the tents on the hill-side, he turned to the left and disappeared in the direction of the Acropolis Hill.
So there was nothing further to hope for. He would never come now. It was the end.
She got up, feeling suddenly a new tiredness, and wishing vaguely that they were leaving on the morrow. Perhaps it would be possible to persuade her father to do so without exciting much comment. Diana was already a little bored with their camping-place and ready to be off, and she ... without daring to probe too deeply, Meryl felt, for the sake of her own peace of mind, it would be wiser to go quietly away from a presence so likely to disturb her peace.
Yes, she would ask her father to plan a move as soon as he came in, and in the meantime she must do something herself to pass the next hour more helpfully than sitting alone in the shade.
The greyness had rolled away now, and the evening grown exceptionally lovely, with clear skies overhead and great banks of pearly tinted clouds on the horizons. Where should she go? Only two ways lay open. Either she must follow Diana and Stanley up the valley, or she must stroll down to the temple alone. The third route lay to the Acropolis Hill, and that was formidably closed by the presence of the man who should have been her companion. Finally she decided on the temple, and tying on the large grey hat that blended so charmingly with her eyes and the soft tints of her skin, she walked along the little footpath skirting the police-camp vegetable-garden to the western entrance.
Inside the temple walls all was very peaceful and still, while the sunshine made a network of gold through the leafy trees upon the antique masonry. Yet as she looked around upon the empty desolation her heart grew sad with a nameless sorrow; that old, old ache, and old, old tiredness, for the utter futility of work and of striving, that sometimes seems to fill the human heart, when in a depressed mood it looks upon the ruins of something that has once had strength and greatness. Meryl carried in her hand a little pocket edition of Omar, but she did not open the leaves nor read the lines. In a vague way it was enough to have it with her; it was like having in her hand the hand of a friend who understood. For of all poets the world has known, perhaps none have so perfectly voiced the cry of the human heart when it questions the why and the wherefore and the worthwhileness of its own mysterious existence. So she sat very still in the ancient temple, and pondered the old questions that live from age to age—unanswered.
And because Sorrow seemed for the moment to have her in his keeping, all her thoughts were tinged with sadness. She looked around upon the broken walls, and it seemed to be brought home to her with sudden force, how little time was given to each one to play his part before he must make room for another.
The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly, and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.