“And now to return to my own history.
“Fourteen years after the death of this unhappy queen, I bore my master, Alexander, into yonder city of Halicarnassus, as a conqueror. He had fought and defeated the sovereign then reigning in Caria, and all the inhabitants of this country did him homage. How well I remember the morning he rode out to see with his own eyes this very tomb of which he had heard so much.
“It was a morning such as this. The sun, just as you see it now, had newly risen, and then, as now, the marble pillars, the chariot group, the statues stood out white as sea-foam against a sky, every whit as deep and blue as you behold.
“Alexander stood transfixed with admiration, and I could not refrain from a glance of pride at my own image, four times repeated on the summit of the building.
“‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘when she ordered those marble horses to be carved by the greatest sculptor of her time, little did Queen Artemisia guess that the model from which they were designed would one day gallop proudly into her city, bearing upon his back the conqueror of her kingdom.’ It was a sad and overwhelming reflection, and, as I gazed upwards at the statue of Artemisia herself, I half expected her to descend in wrath from her chariot to punish my insolence. But, after all, it was Alexander, not I, who had taken Halicarnassus, as I made haste to assure myself, and I turned my head to look in the face of my beloved master. He was gazing sadly at the tomb, and I fancied that, conqueror though he was, he thought with sorrow and pity of the unhappy queen. For as generous as brave was my dear master, Alexander the Great.”
Quite a long silence followed the last words, and it was a silence which somehow the children had no wish to break, for they both felt a little dreamy and disinclined to speak.
“Presently,” thought Rachel, “we’ll ask him to let us go up that splendid staircase and get inside the temple where Mausolus is buried. There must be all sorts of lovely things there.” But at the moment she felt it was enough just to sit still and gaze at the outside of the tomb, at the burning blue of the sky behind it, at the sparkling bay beyond, about which the flat-roofed white houses of the city clustered.
“It will be awfully interesting to walk about in Halicarnassus,” she reflected. “I wonder whether we shall see Queen Artemisia? We might. Anything of course could happen. And it’s all just as real as—as though it was real,” she added, at a loss how to put it to herself. It was just when she had made this half-dreamy reflection that she saw the tomb of Mausolus beginning to totter. It swayed for a moment right and left before her eyes—and then was gone. So also was the city. She had a flashing glimpse of mounds of earth, and of a plain scattered over with stones, before Grayson stood putting a can of hot water upon the wash-stand.
“Time to get up, Miss Rachel,” she observed, cheerfully.