'I've got something here really rather wonderful,' Lord Borrodaile went on, with that infrequent kindling of enthusiasm. He had taken one of the unmounted photographs from between its two bits of cardboard and was holding it up before his eyeglass. 'Yes, he's an extraordinary beggar!'--which remark in the ears of those who knew his lordship, advertized his admiration of either some man of genius or 'Uebermensch' of sorts. Before he shared the picture with his companion he told her of what was not then so widely known--details of that most thrilling moment perhaps in all the romance of archaeology--where the excavators of Knossos came upon the first authentic picture of a man belonging to that mysterious and forgotten race that had raised up a civilization in some things rivalling the Greek--a race that had watched Minoan power wane and die, and all but the dimmest legend of it vanish, before the builders of Argos and Mycenae began laying their foundation stones. Borrodaile, with an accent that for him was almost emotion, emphasized the strangeness to the scholar of having to abandon the old idea of the Greek being the sole flower of Mediterranean civilization. For here was this wonderful island folk--a people standing between and bridging East and West--these Cretan men and women who, though they show us their faces, their delicate art and their stupendous palaces, have held no parley with the sons of men, some say for three and thirty centuries. 'But wait! They'll tell us tales before those fellows have done! I wouldn't mind hearing what this beggar has to say for himself!' At last he shared the picture. They agreed that he was a beggar to be reckoned with--this proud athlete coming back to the world of men after his long sleep, not blinded by the new day, not primitive, apologetic, but meeting us with a high imperial mien, daring and beautiful. 'What do you suppose he is carrying in that vase?' Vida asked; 'or is that some trophy?' 'No, no, it's the long drinking cup--to the expert eye that is added evidence of his high degree of civilization. But _think_, you know, a man like that walking the earth so long before the Greeks! And here. This courtly train looking on at the games. What do you say to the women!' 'Why, they had got as far as flouncing their gowns and puffing their sleeves! Their hair!'--'Dear me, they must have had a M. Raoul to ondule and dress it.' 'Amazing!--was there ever anything so modern dug out of the earth before?' 'No, nothing like it!' he said, holding the pictures up again between the glass and his kindling eye. 'Ce sont vraiment des Parisiennes!' Over his shoulder the modern woman looked long at that strange company. 'It is nothing less than uncanny,' she said at last. 'It makes one vaguely wretched.' 'What does?' 'To realize that so long ago the world had got so far. Why couldn't people like these go further still? Why didn't their sons hold fast what so great a race had won?' 'These things go in cycles.'