Presently the boat rounded into a little cove and stopped. The brief but eventful journey was over, and the party stepped from the boat to a flight of marble-flagged steps, leading up to shining floors, out of which arose columns supporting a light roof in Pagoda style. Easy swinging seats, with hammocks and tables, with a few racks and stands, completed the pretty “Rest” for the landing, and the party began to look about for the path of ascent.
Suddenly a tinkling sound was heard, and, softly as if it fell from the clouds, a car, sumptuously carpeted, cushioned, and canopied, appeared before them. It was, evidently, meant for the accommodation of the party, and one by one they stepped in. Morning was the last to follow, and as he came aboard and closed the plate-glass door, it shut with a tinkle, and the car arose, moving proportionately aslant as the grade of the terrace—which had been fashioned and grown in the short space of two years—inclined.
“My invention works like a charm,” Morning was heard to mutter to the outer air, as they neared the summit and surveyed the height. The awe-filling overhanging crags, thousands of centuries old, had been blasted and chiseled and coaxed into shelves, and steps, and nooks, and resting-places, softly carpeted with moss, and decorated with growing ferns and lichens. The wind came down the river and shook the leaves above their heads, and stirred the birds into a flood of song, and larks sat upon the twigs and warbled with joy.
“Only two years,” said Miss Winters, as they stepped from the car; “’tis not so long in which to make a beautiful world.”
“It is much more difficult to people it with the right sort,” mused Morning.
“The first builders had to try that two or three times, if my memory serves me,” remarked the doctor.
“Are these people of the right sort?” asked Mrs. Thornton significantly.
The baroness shot a quick glance at Morning, and looked over at her rather too loquacious maternal.
“I am too much of an ingrate to answer for them,” said Morning, undismayed. “I only know that I owe them my life, and that I have never had the grace to come and thank them.”
They had now arrived at the main entrance to the grounds, and the scene presented was one of indescribable beauty and splendor. The dazzling proportions of the structure rose into the air with such exceeding lightness and grace of outline, melting away against the silvery softness of the clouds, that it seemed swinging in the ambient air, and only for the cornices and columns and spires and turrets of onyx and agate which defined the outlines against the sky, one would look to see it float away like dissolving views of the Celestial City. The magnificent dome was rounded with bent and many-colored glasses, the eloquent figures storying events of history both classic and local, in pigments not known since the days of Donatello, who went mad because his figure could not speak. And there, upon its pedestal of purest alabaster, stood the chaste statue of Psyche, just as Morning had hewn it out of his captious fancy so long ago, and Cupid opposite, half eager, half evasive, and restless. Ah, well! and he looked into the deep, appreciative eyes of the woman by his side, and said not a word.