The terrace led up on three sides from the marge of the height to the great portals.

Over everything hung that imponderable essence that was clearer and purer than any light--"better than any light that ever shone." In its glamourie, with that far ocean background, the palace of pale stone looked unearthly, a sky thing, with ramparts of air.

The principle of the builders seemed not to have been the ancient dictum that "mass alone is admirable," for the great pile was shaped, with beauty of unknown line, in three enormous cylinders, one rising from another, the last magnificently curved to a huge dome on whose summit burned with inconceivable brilliance the light which had been a beacon to the longing eyes turned toward it from the deck of _The Aloha_.

In the shadow of the palace rose two high towers, obelisk-shaped from the pure white stone.

Scattered about the slope were detached buildings, consisting of marble monoliths resting upon double bases and crowned with carved cornices, or of truncated pyramids and pyramidions.