The unremitting diligence he was called upon to exercise every day of the week between the hours of eight and seven, to which was added a degree of mental travail which none of the remorseless task-masters about him could even suspect, began, ere the first month had run its course, to tell visibly upon his physical powers. As night after night he crept back silently into the little room, with his cheeks paler and more hollow, his forehead more scarred, his eyes more sunken, and at every one of these joyless returns a heavier hue of tragedy upon his face, a keener pang would be born in the heart of the aged man who was there to await him. “You ask no questions now, beloved one,” his father would say mournfully. “And you read no longer in the ancient authors. Can it be, Achilles, that already you are well enough found in knowledge?” “I begin to believe, my father,” said the boy, “that my knowledge is already too great.” His tone was such that his father had never heard before from his lips. “I seem to know already, my father, that I am not of the blood royal,” he said, with his speech falling thick; “I begin to feel that I shall never be admitted into that most high company that holds festival with Zeus. I am the craven-hearted one, my father; for such as me there is no place in the great world out of doors.” The boy laid his tired eyes to the wood of the table with a gesture of despair. “Courage, beloved one,” said his father, laying his hands about his shoulders with a woman’s tenderness. “Every strong soul now in Hades had its moment of repining. These mighty ones were often in tears.” No words, however, would bring consolation to the boy. “There is no place in the great world out of doors for the craven-hearted,” he would say continually at this time. Upon the evening of the last day of the fourth week his father proposed to him that he should spare a frame that by now seemed no more than a reed. “I think I must tell you, Achilles,” he said, “that our little room is in no immediate danger of being taken from us. I have been thinking that perhaps it were better that you rested from your too-great labours for a while.” “No, no, my father,” said the boy almost fiercely for one of such strange gentleness, “I was fearing that you would speak to me thus.” “Other labours might be found for you,” said his father; “labours, my noble Achilles, more consonant to your quality.” “No, no, my father,” said the boy, “I would not have you speak thus to a flesh that is frail with its weakness. And pray mock me with the name of Achilles no more.” “Is it a mockery, beloved one, to call a hero by the name he has always borne?” said his father. The boy rose from the table with haggard cheeks.