"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
that. Tell me."

Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
couple of centuries."

"_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