“There,” I exclaimed. “Nemausea of the golden amphitheatre! What do you think of yourself?”
Her face flushed up as she looked.
“You have made a pagan of me,” she said—“or the stones have. Perhaps they shall hold you excused for the little freedoms you have taken. But how clever you are, mon ami; and—and how forgiving to me!”
There was a queer little sound in her voice, and she turned away rather hurriedly. I said nothing; but when, having disposed and repocketed my effects, I got up and joined her, the signs of some emotion were still visible on her face.
“Are all the ruins about here of this lovely colour?” she asked, though with an effort, I could see.
“Throughout Provence,” I answered. “The sunset of dead Rome lingers upon them all. They stand up in its afterglow, very old and very quiet, the last great witnesses to the glory of its past.”
“The glory!” she murmured, rather awfully. “But think of the things that were done here! O, how could they! To build it—this, for just a human shambles, and make it beautiful—one huge great torture chamber, and open to the sky—and God!”
“No, that it was not,” I said. “There are the sockets for its awning-poles still existing. Come, and I will show them to you.”
“I should not like to stand here in the moonlight,” she said, not noticing me. “It makes me think of the Towers of Silence. Felix, have you ever seen, or read about them?”
“No. What are they?”