It was the unwritten law of the house: Stella's room was sacrosanct. An invisible spirit guarded the threshold and forbade entrance to anything evil or mean or sordid or even sorrowful, and had inscribed on the portal in unseen, but compelling, characters
Never harm nor spell nor charm
Come our lovely lady nigh.
Whence came the spirit, from Stella herself or from the divine lingering in the faulty folks who made her world, who can tell? There never was an invisible spirit guarding doors and opening hearts, since the earth began, who had not a human genesis. From man alone, in this myriad-faceted cosmos, can a compassionate God, in the form of angels and ministering spirits, he reflected. Perhaps the radiant spirit of the child herself, triumphing over disastrous circumstances, instilled a sacred awe in those who surrounded her; perhaps the pathos of her lifelong condemnation stirred unusual depths of pity. At all events, the unwritten law was irrefragable. Outside Stella's door the wicked must cast their evil thoughts, the gloomy shed their cloak of cloud, and the wretched unpack their burden of suffering. Whether it was for the ultimate welfare of Stellamaris to live in this land of illusion is another matter.
“Save her from knowledge of pain and from suspicion of evil,” John Risca would cry, when discussing the matter. “Let us make sure of one perfect flower in this poisonous fungus garden of a world.”
“Great High Belovedest,” Stellamaris would say when they were alone together, “what about the palace to-day?”
And the light would break upon the young man's grim face, and he would tell her of the palace in which he dwelt in the magic city of London.
“I have got a beautiful new Persian carpet,” he would say, “with blues in it like that band of sea over there, for the marble floor of the vestibule.”
“I hope it matches the Gobelin tapestry.”
“You couldn't have chosen it better yourself, Stellamaris.”