Mr. Sheston’s voice died away, and at this moment Martha came in with a lamp; the room was all at once lighted up, and the old man glanced at the clock.
“I must take you back at once,” he said. “Aunt Hester will be getting anxious.”
He rose quickly, and Rachel knew without being told that she mustn’t ask him any questions. He had become the kind, ordinary old gentleman he seemed to most people—not at all the same person who in the firelight had looked so mysterious and had told her the whole long story to which she had just listened, as though he were reading it from a book!
As she lay in bed that night, Rachel’s mind was full of the great statue and the great siege, and in imagination she saw the sun-god proudly guarding the harbour of “Cleon’s” brave island.
“I do wish there hadn’t been an earthquake,” was her waking reflection.
FOURTH WONDER
THE TEMPLE OF DIANA
Lessons always began for Rachel with a chapter in the Bible which she read to Miss Moore. She was allowed to choose her own chapter, and one morning, as she opened her Bible at random, the word Ephesus struck her. She wondered why this name immediately reminded her of Mr. Sheston and the story of Rhodes, for at first they seemed to have nothing to do with one another. Then she remembered that on the map—(why it was actually seven days ago since he had shown her that map)—she had seen the town Ephesus marked on the coast of Asia Minor.