The setting sun shot its sheaf of rays through the openings between the trunks, consecrating, it seemed, with a heavenly benediction, the silent and expectant company assembled in the depths of the forest; and, between the tree-tops, roseate evening clouds looked down in ever-growing luminousness, as though, floating out from the blue ether, a second assembly were gathering, recruited from the hosts of heaven.
The temple building, with its black and crumbling walls, absorbed this farewell blaze of sunshine, as a broken-down old man quaffs a rejuvenating draught. Beneath the magic of the red-gold lights and the purple shadows, its masses grew wonderfully animated. The jagged edges of the fluted pillars sparkled, the corners flashed, the snails curled themselves up, the stone waves foamed with froth of gold, the carven foliage grew. Along the stair-like projections of the lofty substructure, round about plinths and capitals, on the beams, and on the terraces of the dome-like roof—everywhere—a confused medley of strange and mystical forms seemed to be in motion. Gods came forth in a halo of glory, many-headed and many-armed figures with all-too-luxuriant and, often, greatly mutilated limbs, the one stretching out four headless necks, the next waving eight stumps of arms. Breasts and hips of the voluptuously limbed
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