Nat and I protested against this, and
offered ourselves; but he cut us short. He had his reasons, he said.
It must have been two or even three hours later that I awoke at the
touch of his hand on my shoulder. I stared up through the boughs at
the setting moon, and around me at my comrades asleep in the grasses.
He signed to me not to awake them, but to rise and follow him softly.
Passing through the screen of ilex, we came to a gap in the stone
wall of the garth, and through this, at the base of the hillside
below the forest, to a second screen of cypress which opened suddenly
upon a semicircle of turf; and here, bathed in the moon's rays that
slanted over the cypress-tops, stood a small Doric temple of
weather-stained marble, in proportions most delicate, a background
for a dance of nymphs, a fit tiring-room for Diana and her train.
Its door--if ever it had possessed one--was gone, like every other
door in this strange village. My father led the way up the white
steps, halted on the threshold, and, standing aside lest he should
block the moonlight, pointed within.
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