A door was opened.

She shrank closer to the wall, but the seconds became minutes, and no one appeared.
At last she fancied she heard the moving of benches or seats, and many voices together shouting she knew not what.

Then again a door creaked on its hinges, and after that all was so still that she could have heard a needle drop on the floor; and this alarming silence continued till presently a deep, resonant man's voice was audible.
The singular manner in which this voice gave every word its full and equal value suggested to her fancy that something was being read aloud.
She could distinctly hear the sentence with which the speech or reading began.

After a short pause it was repeated somewhat more quickly, as though the speaker had this time uttered it from his own heart.
It consisted of these six simple words, "The fullness of the time was come"; and Melissa listened no more to the discourse which followed, spoken as it was in a low voice, for this sentence rang in her ears as if it were repeated by an echo.
She did not, to be sure, understand its meaning, but she felt as though it must have some deep significance.

It came back to her again and again, like a melody which haunts the inward ear against our will; and her meditative fancy was trying to solve its meaning, when Diodoros returned to tell her that the street was quite empty.