Chapter V.

A voice accosted me—­a very quiet and very musical key of voice—­in a language of which I could not understand a word, but it served to dispel my fear.  I uncovered my face and looked up.  The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself to call him man) surveyed me with an eye that seemed to read to the very depths of my heart.  He then placed his left hand on my forehead, and with the staff in his right, gently touched my shoulder.  The effect of this double contact was magical.  In place of my former terror there passed into me a sense of contentment, of joy, of confidence in myself and in the being before me.  I rose and spoke in my own language.  He listened to me with apparent attention, but with a slight surprise in his looks; and shook his head, as if to signify that I was not understood.  He then took me by the hand and led me in silence to the building.  The entrance was open—­indeed there was no door to it.  We entered an immense hall, lighted by the same kind of lustre as in the scene without, but diffusing a fragrant odour.  The floor was in large tesselated blocks of precious metals, and partly covered with a sort of matlike carpeting.  A strain of low music, above and around, undulated as if from invisible instruments, seeming to belong naturally to the place, just as the sound of murmuring waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the warble of birds to vernal groves.

A figure in a simpler garb than that of my guide, but of similar fashion, was standing motionless near the threshold.  My guide touched it twice with his staff, and it put itself into a rapid and gliding movement, skimming noiselessly over the floor.  Gazing on it, I then saw that it was no living form, but a mechanical automaton.  It might be two minutes after it vanished through a doorless opening, half screened by curtains at the other end of the hall, when through the same opening advanced a boy of about twelve years old, with features closely resembling those of my guide, so that they seemed to me evidently son and father.  On seeing me the child uttered a cry, and lifted a staff like that borne by my guide, as if in menace.  At a word from the elder he dropped it.  The two then conversed for some moments, examining me while they spoke.  The child touched my garments, and stroked my face with evident curiosity, uttering a sound like a laugh, but with an hilarity more subdued that the mirth of our laughter.  Presently the roof of the hall opened, and a platform descended, seemingly constructed on the same principle as the ‘lifts’ used in hotels and warehouses for mounting from one story to another.

The stranger placed himself and the child on the platform, and motioned to me to do the same, which I did.  We ascended quickly and safely, and alighted in the midst of a corridor with doorways on either side.