The whole scene suddenly vanished in total darkness; only again in one direction a gleam of light appeared, and guided us to a portal through which we entered another long and narrow passage, terminating in a second vestibule before a door of emerald crystal, brilliantly illuminated by a light within.  Here, again, our steps were arrested.  The door was guarded by two sentries, in whom I recognised Initiates of the Order, wearers of the silver sash and star.  The password and sign, whispered to me as we left the Hall of the Novitiate, having been given, the door parted and exposed to our view the inmost chamber, a scene calculated to strike the eye and impress the mind not more by its splendour and magnificence than by the unexpected character it displayed.  It represented a garden, but the boundaries were concealed by the branching trees, the arches of flowering creepers, the thickets of flowers, shrubs, and tall reeds, which in every direction imitated so perfectly the natural forms that the closest scrutiny would have been required to detect their artificiality.  The general form, however, seemed to be that of a square entered by a very short, narrow passage, and divided by broad paths, forming a cross of equal arms.  At the central point of this cross was placed on a pedestal of emerald a statue in gold, which recalled at once the features of the Founder.  The space might have accommodated two thousand persons, but on the seats—­of a material resembling ivory, each of them separately formed and gathered in irregular clusters—­there were not, I thought, more than four hundred or five hundred men and women intermingled; the former dressed for the most part in green, the latter in pink or white, and all wearing the silver band and star.  At the opposite end, closing the central aisle, was a low narrow platform raised by two steps carved out of the natural rock, but inlaid with jewellery imitating closely the variegated turf of a real garden.  On this were placed, slanting backward towards the centre, two rows of six golden seats or thrones, whose occupants wore the golden band over silver robes.  That next the interval, but to the left, was filled by Esmo, who to my surprise wore a robe of white completely covering his figure, and contrasting signally the golden sash to which his star was attached.  On his left arm, bare below the elbow, I noticed a flat thick band of plain gold, with an emerald seal, bearing the same proportion to the bracelet as a large signet to its finger ring.  What struck me at once as most remarkable was, that the seats on the dais and the forms of their occupiers were signally relieved against a background of intense darkness, whose nature, however, I could not discern.  The roof was in form a truncated pyramid; its material a rose-coloured crystal, through which a clear soft light illuminated the whole scene.  Across the floor of the entrance, immediately within the portal, was a broad band of the same crystal, marking the formal threshold of the