This, she said, was the altar of offerings.
I asked her what offerings, and she replied with a smile: "Only wine, to signify the spirit of life, and flowers to symbolise its fragrance," and she laid her finger on a cup-like depression, still apparent in the marble, into which the wine was poured.
Indeed, I gathered that there was nothing coarse or bacchanalian about this worship of a prototype of Aphrodite; on the contrary, that it was more or less spiritual and ethereal.

We sat down on the altar stone.

I wondered a little that she should have done so, but she read my thought, and answered: "Sometimes we change our faiths, Humphrey, or perhaps they grow.

Also, have I not told you that sacrifices were offered on this altar ?" and she sighed and smiled.
I do not know which was the sweeter, the smile or the sigh.
We looked at the water glimmering in the crater beneath us on the edge of which we sat.

We looked at heaven above in which the great moon sailed royally.