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.