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.