Once more, as in the hour when he had first
looked down upon the valley brimming with a light "better than any
light that ever shone" he was at one with the imponderable things
which, always before, had just eluded him. Now, as then, the thought
of Olivia was the symbol for them all. So the two went on through
the winding galleries--silent, haunted--to the great staircase, and
below into the crowded court. And when they reached the threshold
of the audience-chamber they involuntarily stood still.
The hall was like a temple in its sense of space and height and
clear air, but its proportions did not impress one, and indeed one
could not remember its boundaries as one does not consider the
boundaries of a grove. It was amphitheatre-shaped, and about it ran
a splendid colonnade, in the niches of whose cornices were beautiful
grotesques--but Yaque seemed to be a land whose very grotesques had
all the dignity of the ultimate instead of crying for the indulgence
due a phase. The roof was inlaid with prisms of clear stone, and on
high were pilasters carved with the Tyrian sphinxes crucified upon
upright crosses, surmounted by parhelions of burnished metal.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230