Before them was a lowly structure of old rubble, four square, and a narrow door, at which the path, with a sudden dip, came to an end.
"Will you go in?" he said, standing aside.
Katrine entered, and he followed. The place was as simple within as without. The floor seemed to be of beaten earth; the single room, or cella, was lighted by a small window, and it contained only two or three cinerary urns of dark red clay, which leaned against the wall opposite the door. Above these, in brown letters on a tablet of white marble, was an inscription set there by the Academy of France.
The pair stood silent for a minute, Katrine reading the tablet, and Jack, his head bared, standing beside her. As she turned her head she caught for a second time his glance. She colored, and moved quickly to the small window.
"Isn't the view wonderful!" she said, as if she had caught at the first words that came into her mind.
"Yes," he returned absently. "Fine, isn't it?"
She looked a moment out of the window, and then, avoiding his eyes, she turned back to the Latin distich cut in the tablet, and by tradition assigned to Vergil himself:—
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.
"You'll think I am unspeakably stupid," she said, "but I confess I cannot make it out. 'Mantua gave me birth,' I can read that."