One second they saw his dark puzzled eyes—the next they themselves were out of the temple and seated as before, one on either side of Mr. Sheston.
The white mist blotted out everything in front of the window.
“That was Dinocrates. He had come back after hundreds of years, hadn’t he?” cried Rachel.
“Oh, do explain about him,” begged Diana. “Why did he point to the columns like that? Why did he have his hair cut off? What is he going to do now?”
Mr. Sheston laughed softly. “I’ll take one question at a time,” he began.
But it was Rachel who answered the first question after all.
“I know, I know,” she exclaimed. “When he looked at the pillars he was sort of remembering, wasn’t he? Remembering that a long time ago he made something like them.”
“Yes, that’s a good guess. He was. He felt that somehow or other he was as you say, ‘mixed up’ with that temple.”
“And about his hair?” enquired Diana.
“Well, that was just a ceremony, meaning that he was dedicated to, or put under the special protection of the goddess. Boys at a certain age had their hair cut off and offered to Diana in the temple to show that they were her worshippers. And in the case of Dinocrates this was especially true, for he became, perhaps, the most celebrated of the worshippers of Diana.