“Stranger, how little courtesy you show! Silent and thankless even for a gift.”
“I remember another ring more beautiful than this,” I answered.
Her eyes lit up with that intensity which in its lesser forms mortals call greed.
“Be content with what you get,” she remarked. “Those stones are priceless—millions could scarcely buy them; your stones are the dross of that little planet, Earth—bought, perhaps, with trumpery silver.”
I was then silent, and together we went up the steps.
The entrance was barred with gates of gold. They were like the iron ones that protect churches. Inside these gates was a high arched door. It was like the door of some cathedral—covered with knobs. But they were not of rusted iron; they glowed like carbuncles in a carved setting, which was itself in substance like black oak.
At her touch the heavy gates drew back, the gloomy door flew open.
Beyond was an arched space like the central aisle of some large temple.
And as we stood upon the threshold I looked in upon the dim, dark grandeur. Blood-red lighted censers swung from the golden fluted roof. They lit up the fluted pillars that branched out into the most delicate arches eye could wish.
Here was the sound of organ music beautiful to hear, yet to my ears it came like a paining memory of long ago.