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.