Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/334

 hotel—English, American, German—came out to see us start, predicting that if we came back the car wouldn't, or if it came back, it would be—so to speak—over our dead bodies. Aunt Mary was so much impressed by these dark prophecies that she refused to accompany us, and engaged one of the odd little carriages from the ancient town of Girgenti bristling on the height above our hotel. Thus it came about that I had my Goddess to myself, and in her congenial company I hardly knew whether the road was rough or no. Certainly the good Napier did not complain, and as for the tyres, the roads of Central Sicily had made them callous.

I thought then that never was such a day in the memory of man; but several days have come and gone since—also with her, and a man's opinion changes. I knew that in the society of no one else would there have hovered such a glamour over the ruins of Greek glory. Five noble temples they are, my Montie, of which two are almost perfect; the others pathetic relics of past grandeur, with their heaped, fallen columns. There they stand—or lie prone with here and there a majestic pillar pointing skyward—in a stately row between the brilliant blue sea and the billowing flower-starred plain on the one side, the hills and the grim city, like a crow's nest, on the other. Their sandstone columns hold oyster and scallop shells from prehistoric ages, while here and there a broken vein of coralline stains the dun surface as if with blood. Below the towering temples are shimmering olive trees, silver-green as they quiver in the warm breeze, and on this day of ours a