Theos, following, watched his movements with a strange affection, —­every turn of his head, every gesture of his hand seemed fraught with meanings as yet inexplicable.  The grass beneath their feet was soft as velvet and dotted with a myriad wild flowers,—­the ascent was gradual and easy, and in a few minutes they had reached the summit, where Sah-luma, throwing himself indolently on the smooth turf, pulled Theos gently down by his side.  There they rested in silence, gazing at the magnificent panorama laid out before them,—­a panorama as lovely as a delicately pictured scene of fairy-land.  Above, the sky was of a dense yet misty rose-color,—­the sun, low on the western horizon appeared to rest in a vast, deep, purple hollow, rifted here and there with broad gashes of gold,—­long shafts of light streamed upwards in order like the waving pennons of an angel-army marching,—­and beyond, far away from this blaze of splendid color, the wide ethereal expanse paled into tender blue, whereon light clouds of pink and white drifted like the fluttering blossoms that fall from apple-trees in spring.

Below, and seen through a haze of rose and amber, lay the city of Al-Kyris,—­its white domes, towers and pinnacled palaces rising out of the mist like a glorious mirage afloat on the borders of a burning desert.  Al-Kyris the Magnificent!—­it deserves its name, Theos thought, as shading his eyes from the red glare he took a wondering and gradually comprehensive view of the enormous extent of the place.  He soon perceived that it was defended by six strongly fortified walls, each placed within the other at long equal distances apart, so that it might have been justly described as six cities all merged together in one,—­and from where he sat he could plainly discern the great square where he had rested in the morning, by reason of the white granite obelisk that lifted itself sheer up against the sky, undwarfed by any of the surrounding buildings.

This gigantic monument was the most prominent object in sight, with the exception of the sacred temple, which Sah-luma presently pointed out,—­a round, fortress-like piece of architecture ornamented with twelve gilded towers from which bells were now clashing and jangling in a storm of melodious persistency.  The hum of the city’s traffic and pleasure surged on the air like the noise made by swarming bees, while every now and then the sweet, shrill tones of some more than usually clear girl’s voice, crying out the sale of fruit or flowers, soared up song-wise through the luminous, semi-transparent vapor that half-veiled the clustering house-tops, tapering spires and cupolas in a delicate, nebulous film.