Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/156

 At that, his glance swept away from her quickly, and he pointed down the coast to their left. "The first Greeks landed just there," he said; and he told her of the storm that had driven the mariners back down the strait and forced this landing. She hung upon his story, never looking away from him, while Mrs. Ambler and Miss Orbison produced embroideries and plied their needles, listening, too, in the dreamy manner of sewing ladies. He talked of antique peoples as if they were human and comprehensible, not dried data of a dried historian; and, having one so intently gazing a listener as never before inspired him, he told her of the Greek fighting down the coast, of the coming of the war fleets of Alcibiades, sweeping the sea before them, of the perishing of that navy and of the strange death of Archimedes, and of Plato's sailing back to Athens after his wicked last repartee to the tyrant Dionysius.

"How lovely!" Claire cried at this, and she clasped her hands together, delighted with the ancient witticism. "I always thought Plato must be about the same as the square of the hypotenuse, or metempsychosis—until this afternoon. I'd never have believed there was anybody in the world who could make me wish I'd known him, Mr. Orbison!"