"I can't sleep," he complained in loud whispers; "let's go outside or do something. It's too quiet here."
Nancy told him in low tones to follow. There was a moon outside. The two children looked like ghosts as they moved with slippered feet across the rough marble pavement of the courtyard. The back door was unbolted and slightly ajar so that its creaking was barely audible as they slipped through. They were in a weed-tangled grove of young trees, but the few yards of path were easy to follow. Under the brow of the cliff which set definite limits to the foothold of the temple they saw the tomb of some forgotten abbot, a domelike structure with a ringed pinnacle. It was in deep shadow. They gave an exclamation of dismay and hurried to the side where the path led up a short flight of steps to the top of the wall and ended abruptly in a little rickety platform of wood that gave high views of the ravine.
Nancy's heart was ripe for mystical adventure. The night was cool but she felt no bodily chill through her thin garments. She was inordinately sad, uneasy, desirous of some change, some intrusion to match the hopeless beauty of the night. A waning moon, halfway done with its short flight from mountain to mountain, illuminated the stream far below and gave luminous surface to the rocks with its tranquil light, but left the shadowy parts a pitchy blackness which hid them like a veil. Wistfully Nancy surveyed the scene and looked at the crumbling watchtower on the ridge opposite. Her reading had made her curiously unmodern. Her thoughts dwelt on phantom armies of the past, of princes masterly at falconry losing their way in the wilderness, of old cries and alarms which she could not reconcile herself to believing had long since ceased. She ached to help these poor lost mortals of the past, to be their heroine, their desire. How could she tell such dreams to Edward, dear, stupid, faithful boy that he was?
"What can you see?" asked the brother, surprised at her intent gaze.
"Lots of things," was Nancy's cryptic answer.
"Well, that's more than I can see."
"Ah, but you haven't my eyes."
Another fifteen minutes of this purposeless staring, this obstinate silence, was all that Edward could bear.
"Are you going to stand there looking at nothing all night?" he demanded. "I'm getting sleepy and, besides, it's cold."
"Go in and sleep then," said Nancy.