It was all of fifty feet wide and now, in daylight, glistened faintly as though overlaid with some vitreous coating.

It narrowed abruptly into a wedged way that stopped at the threshold of Norhala's door.
Diminishing through the distance, it stretched straight as an arrow onward and vanished between perpendicular cliffs which formed the frowning gateway through which the night before we had passed upon the coursing cubes from the pit of the city.

Here, as then, a mistiness checked the gaze.
Ruth with us, we made a brief inspection of the surroundings of Norhala's house.

It was set as though in the narrowest portion of an hour-glass.

The precipitous walls marched inward from the gateway forming the lower half of the figure; at the back they swung apart at a wider angle.
This upper part of the hour-glass was filled with a park-like forest.