We passed along the terrace. It turned in an abrupt curve. I heard a
hail, and there, fifty feet away, at the curving end of a wall
identical with that where we stood, were Larry and Marakinoff.
Obviously the left side of the chamber was a duplicate of that we had
explored. We joined. In front of us the columned barriers ran back a
hundred feet, forming an alcove. The end of this alcove was another
wall of the same rose stone, but upon it the design of vines was much
heavier.
We took a step forward--there was a gasp of awe from the Norseman, a
guttural exclamation from Marakinoff. For on, or rather within, the
wall before us, a great oval began to glow, waxed almost to a flame
and then shone steadily out as though from behind it a light was
streaming through the stone itself!
And within the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood
for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The
shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering
points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and
once more withdrew themselves--and as they did so the shadows
thickened--and suddenly there before us stood two figures!
One was a girl--a girl whose great eyes were golden as the fabled
lilies of Kwan-Yung that were born of the kiss of the sun upon the
amber goddess the demons of Lao-Tz'e carved for him; whose softly
curved lips were red as the royal coral, and whose golden-brown hair
reached to her knees!
And the second was a gigantic frog--A _woman_ frog, head helmeted with
carapace of shell around which a fillet of brilliant yellow jewels
shone; enormous round eyes of blue circled with a broad iris of green;
monstrous body of banded orange and white girdled with strand upon
strand of the flashing yellow gems; six feet high if an inch, and with
one webbed paw of its short, powerfully muscled forelegs resting upon
the white shoulder of the golden-eyed girl!
Moments must have passed as we stood in stark amazement, gazing at
that incredible apparition.
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