Achilles moved with quick, gliding step, taking orders, filling bags,
making change--always with his dark eyes seeking, a little wistfully,
something that did not come to them.... It was all so different--this
new world. Achilles had been in Chicago six months now, but he had
not yet forgotten a dream that he had dreamed in Athens. Sometimes he
dreamed it still, and then he wondered whether this, about him, were
not all a dream--this pushing, scrambling, picking, hurrying, choosing
crowd, dropping pennies and dimes into his curving palm, swearing softly
at slow change, and flying fast from street to street. It was not thus
in his dream. He had seen a land of new faces, turned ever to the West,
with the light on them. He had known them, in his dream--eager faces,
full of question and quick response. His soul had gone out to them and,
musing in sunny Athens, he had made ready for them. Each morning when
he rose he had lifted his glance to the Parthenon, studying anew the
straight lines--that were yet not straight--the mysterious, dismantled
beauty, the mighty lift of its presence. When they should question him,
in this new land, he must not fail them. They would be hungry for the
beauty of the ancient world--they who had no ruins of their own. He
knew in his heart how it would be with them--the homesickness for the
East--all its wonder and its mystery. Yes, he would carry it to them.
He, Achilles Alexandrakis, should not be found wanting. This new
world was to give him money, wealth, better education for his boys, a
competent old age. But he, too, had something to give in exchange. He
must make himself ready against the great day when he should travel
down the long way of the Piraeus, for the last time, and set sail for
America.

He was in America now. He knew, when he stopped to think, that this was
not a dream. He had been here six months, in the little shop on Clark