s had been preserved. The
place seemed a fairy tangle of white and purple lilacs, gold-dripping
laburnums, acacias with festoons of pearl, roses looping from orange
tree to mimosa, and a hundred gorgeous tropical flowers like painted
birds and butterflies. In shadowed nooks under dark cypresses, glimmered
arum lilies, sparkling with the diamond dew that sprayed from carved
marble fountains, centuries old; and low seats of marble mosaiced with
rare tiles stood under magnolia trees or arbours of wistaria. Giant
cypresses, tall and dark as a band of Genii, marched in double line on
either side the avenue as it straightened and turned towards the house.

White in the distance where that black procession halted, glittered the
old Arab palace, built in one long facade, and other facades smaller,
less regular, looking like so many huge blocks of marble grouped
together. Over one of these blocks fell a crimson torrent of
bougainvillaea; another was veiled with white roses and purple clematis;
a third was showered with the gold of some strange tropical creeper that
Stephen did not know.

On the roof of brown and dark-green tiles, the sunlight poured, making
each tile lustrous as the scale of a serpent, and all along the edge
grew tiny flowers and grasses, springing out of interstices to wave
filmy threads of pink and gold.

The principal facade was blank as a wall, save for a few small,
mysterious windows, barred with _grilles_ of iron, green with age; but
on the other facades were quaint recessed balconies, under projecting
roofs supported with beams of cedar; and the door, presently opened by
an Arab servant, was very old too, made of oak covered with an armour of
greenish copper.

Even when it had closed behind Stephen and Nevill, they were not yet in
the house, but in a large court with a ceiling of carved and painted
cedar-wood supported by marble pillars of extreme lightness and grace.
In front, this court was open, looking on to an inner garden with a
fountain more delicate of design than those Stephen had seen outside.
The three walls of the court were patterned all over with ancient tiles
rare as some faded Spanish brocade in a cathedral, and along their
length ran low seats where in old days sat slaves awaiting orders from
their master.

Out from this court they walked through a kind of pillared cloister, and
the facades of the house as they passed on, were beautiful in pure
simplicity of line; so white, they see