The decanter was like a vase, ornamented with gold medallions covered with exquisite and precise engraving of great beauty and variety of design.

Serpents, men contending with lions, sacred trees and apes were chased in the gold, and the little cups of sard were engraved in pomegranates and segments of fruit and pendent acorns, and were set with cones of cornelian.

The cups were joined by a long cord of thick gold.
Amory set his hand to the little golden stopper, perhaps hermetically sealed, he thought idly, at about the time of the accidental discovery of glass itself by the Phoenicians.

Amory was not imaginative, but as he thought of the possible age of the wine, there lay upon him that fascination communicable from any link between the present and the living past.
"Solomon and Sargon," he said to himself, "the geese in the capitol, Marathon, Alexander, Carthage, the Norman conquest, Shakespeare and Miss Frothingham!" He smiled and twisted the carven stopper.
"And the girl is alive," he said almost wonderingly.

"There has been so much Time in the world, and yet she is alive now.