ht
magnified ten times."

So it was. The whole place was filled with a soft radiance, equal to
that of the sun at noon, but gentler and without heat.

"Where does it come from?" I whispered to Yva.

"Oh!" she replied, as I thought evasively. "It is the light of the
Under-world which we know how to use. The earth is full of light, which
is not wonderful, is it, seeing that its heart is fire? Now look about
you."

I looked and leant on her harder than ever, since amazement made me
weak. We were in some vast place whereof the roof seemed almost as far
off as the sky at night. At least all that I could make out was a dim
and distant arch which might have been one of cloud. For the rest, in
every direction stretched vastness, illuminated far as the eye could
reach by the soft light of which I have spoken, that is, probably for
several miles. But this vastness was not empty. On the contrary it was
occupied by a great city. There were streets much wider than Piccadilly,
all bordered by houses, though these, I observed, were roofless, very
fine houses, some of them, built of white stone or marble. There were
roadways and pavements worn by the passage of feet. There, farther on,
were market-places or public squares, and there, lastly, was a huge
central enclosure one or two hundred acres in extent, which was filled
with majestic buildings that looked like palaces, or town-halls; and, in
the midst of them all, a vast temple with courts and a central dome. For
here, notwithstanding the lack of necessity, its builders seemed to have
adhered to the Over-world tradition, and had roofed their fane.

And now came the terror. All of this enormous city was dead. Had it
stood upon the moon it could not have been more dead. None paced its
streets; none looked from its window-places. None trafficked in its
markets, none worshipped in its temple. Swept, garnished, lighted,
practically untouched by the hand of Time, here where no rains fell and
no winds blew, it was yet a howling wilderness. For what wilderness is
there to equal that which once has been the busy haunt of men? Let
those who have stood among the buried cities of Central Asia, or of
Anarajapura in Ceylon, or even amid the ruins of Salamis on the coast
of Cyprus, answer the question. But here was something infinitely more
awful. A huge human haunt in the bowels of the earth utterly devoid of
human beings, and yet as perfect as on the day when these ceased to be.

"I do not