ng the path into the hill.
It was still dark, except for the lights that they carried and the
stars that shone up through the water. And these were not the
reflection of any stars in the sky, for there was no sky to be seen
over them now--only rocks. Then there was a pale violet light shining
on the walls of the passage ahead of them. Then, as Kathleen looked
down at the water again, to see if she were really walking on it, she
saw that there were no more stars, but the water was of a faint,
shining yellow, and in a moment she was not walking on water any more,
but on a floor, that seemed to her to be all of gold.

She could do nothing now but stand still and look around at the
wonderful sight. All around her were walls of silver, so bright that
they reflected everything in the great hall, and she could not tell at
all how large it was. But she made out that in the middle was a great
dome, held up by the most wonderful gleaming columns of gold and
silver, first a column of gold and then a column of silver, and these
she saw again and again in the walls all about. She could not see the
top of the dome from where she stood, it was so high, but all around
the sides of it she saw great diamonds and rubies and emeralds, some
of them as big as her head, that poured down soft white and red and
green lights, and these she saw, too, shining up, a little dimmer,
from the gold of the floor, which was almost as good a mirror as the
walls.

The sides of the dome, in which the jewels were set, were all of bands
and lines and ribbons of gold and silver, wonderfully woven together
into shapes and patterns which she could not follow or trace out with
her eyes, because they seemed to be always slowly moving--turning and
twisting and winding and wreathing about, never for a moment the same,
but always new and always beautiful. And when this was reflected in
the golden floor it was like the wavering shapes in water that is
almost still, but yet has little waves that dance and break up every
reflection that is seen in it.

And still, although she saw no lamps except the great white and red
and green gems, there came from somewhere--perhaps from the top of the
dome, she thought--that violet light that she had seen first on the
walls of the passage, and it filled the whole hall, like the glow of a
glorious sunset that never faded. And all this was inside a hill that
Kathleen had known all the years of her life, and she had never seen
anyt