as in the freedom of my house; and again I give you greeting."
He said the words, putting his hand upon an ivory knob in the floor beside him, when of a sudden the hundred silver lanterns about him slowly waxed radiant with a soft rose light that fell upon us and lit the scarlet and the gold of the tapestries so wonderfully wrought. I knew not until that time how large that chamber was, and I fell to wondering what sort of house it was which possessed such an apartment, and where it lay. But I had small opportunity to wonder, for at the lanterns' light there was the sound of distant music, and a surpassing strange sensation of singers and dancers near to me, yet all invisible. I was conscious only of a movement of the warm and perfumed air and of the presence of women surpassingly lovely, though unseen by me. The spirit-music, too, was entrancing beyond all music that I have heard—harmonious in its discordance, message-bearing, sensuous music, by which the walls of cities might have been built. Again, it was a sensation, and not a grasp of mathematical sound. I heard, and was not sure that I heard; I shut my ears, and yet was moved; hearkened for melody, and yet took none to me. But the delight was transcendent, indescribable; and I lay ravished, troubled as a woman in the ecstasy of her love. And he who had made the sign watched me, inhaling a thin vapor from the amber bowl, drinking of the cup which was at his hand.
