The chamber widened out from the portal in what seemed to be the arc
of an immense circle. The shining walls held a perceptible curve, and
from this curvature I estimated that the roof was fully three hundred
feet above us.
The floor was of smooth, mosaic-fitted blocks of a faintly yellow
tinge. They were not light-emitting like the blocks that formed the
walls. The radiance from these latter, I noted, had the peculiar
quality of _thickening_ a few yards from its source, and it was this
that produced the effect of misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the
seven columns of rays streaming down from the crystalline globes high
above us waned steadily; the glow within the chamber lost its
prismatic shimmer and became an even grey tone somewhat like moonlight
in a thin cloud.
Now before us, out from the wall, jutted a low terrace. It was all of
a pearly rose-coloured stone, slender, graceful pillars of the same
hue. The face of the terrace was about ten feet high, and all over it
ran a bas-relief of what looked like short-trailing vines, surmounted
by five stalks, on the tip of each of which was a flower.
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