“What?” he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. “Who says—? What was that? A couple of centuries!”
“Yes,” said the man with the red beard. “Two hundred years.”
Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
“Two hundred years,” he said again, with the figure of a great gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, “Oh, but—!”
They said nothing.
“You—did you say—?”
“Two hundred years. Two centuries of years,” said the man with the red beard.
There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had heard was indeed true.
“But it can’t be,” he said querulously. “I am dreaming. Trances. Trances don’t last. That is not right—this is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me—some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of Cornwall—?”
His voice failed him.