The palace was set on the west of the gentle slope to which the mountain-top had been artificially leveled.  The terrace led up on three sides from the marge of the height to the great portals.  Over everything hung that imponderable essence that was clearer and purer than any light—­“better than any light that ever shone.”  In its glamourie, with that far ocean background, the palace of pale stone looked unearthly, a sky thing, with ramparts of air.  The principle of the builders seemed not to have been the ancient dictum that “mass alone is admirable,” for the great pile was shaped, with beauty of unknown line, in three enormous cylinders, one rising from another, the last magnificently curved to a huge dome on whose summit burned with inconceivable brilliance the light which had been a beacon to the longing eyes turned toward it from the deck of The Aloha.  In the shadow of the palace rose two high towers, obelisk-shaped from the pure white stone.  Scattered about the slope were detached buildings, consisting of marble monoliths resting upon double bases and crowned with carved cornices, or of truncated pyramids and pyramidions.  These had plinths of delicately-coloured stone over which the light diffused so that they looked luminous, and the small blocks used to fill the apertures of the courses shone like precious things.  Adjacent to one of the porches were two conical shrines, for images and little lamps; and, near-by, a fallen pillar of immense proportions lay undisturbed upon the court of sward across which it had some time shivered down.

But if the palace had been discovered to be the preserved and transported Temple of Solomon it could not have stayed St. George for one moment of admiration.  He was off up the slope, seeing only the great closed portals, and with Amory beside him he ran boldly up the long steps.  It was a part of the unreality of the place that there seemed absolutely no sign of life about the King’s palace.  The windows glowed with the soft light within, but there were no guards, no servants, no sign of any presence.  For the first time, when they reached the top of the steps, the two men hesitated.

“Personally,” said Amory doubtfully, “I have never yet tapped at a king’s front door.  What does one do?”

St. George looked at the long stone porches, uncovered and girt by a parapet following the curve of the facade.

“Would you mind waiting a minute?” he said.

With that he was off along the balcony to the south—­and afterward he wondered why, and if it is true that Fate tempts us in the way that she would have us walk by luring us with unseen roses budding from the air.