ating perfumes
that even the unimaginative were constrained to sit idle, "thinking
delicate thoughts." There never was a fairer temple of romance, a
very temple of Young Love's Plaisaunce; and since the coming of St.
George and Amory all the cavernous chambers and galleries were
become homes of hope that the king would be found and all would yet
be well.

To the main part of the palace there were storey after storey, all
octagons and pentagons and labyrinths, so that incredulity and
amazement might increase with every step. How they had ever raised
those massive blocks of stone to that great height no one can
guess unless, indeed, Amory's theory were correct and the palace
had originally been built upon level ground and had had its
surroundings blasted neatly away to make a mountain. At all events
there were the walls of the great airy rooms made of the naked
stone, exquisitely beveled and chiseled, and frescoed with the
planetary deities--Eloti, the Moon with her chariot drawn by white
bulls, the Sun and his four horses, with his emblem of a column in
the form of a rising flame--types taken from the heavens and from
the abyss. There were roofs of sound fir and sweet cedar, carven
cornices, cave-like window embrasures with no glass, and little
circular rooms built about shrines in which sat broken images of
Baal the sun god, of a sandaled Astarte, and a ravening Melkarth,
with the lion's skin.

From a great upper corridor there went a stairway, each deep step
of which was placed on the back of a stone lion of increasing
size, until the tallest lion's head extended close to the painted
ceiling, and there were comfortable benches cut in his gigantic
paws. Many of the rooms were without furnishing, some were filled
with vague, splendid stuff mouldering away, and others with most
luxuriously-devised ministries to beauty and comfort. The palace
was curiously and wonderfully an habitation of more than two
thousand years ago, furnished with a taste and luxury in advance
of this moment's civilization of the world. The heart of that
elder world beat strangely in one of the upper chambers where they
came upon a little work-shop, strewn with unknown metals and tools
and empty crucibles, and in their midst a rectangular metallic
plate partly traced with a device of boughs, appearing, in one
light, slightly fluorescent.

"It is the work of the Princess Simyra, adon," said Jarvo. "She was
the daughter of King Thabion, and when