Halfway between them and us Norhala and Ruth drifted; I could catch no hint of voluntary motion on their part and knew that they were not walking, but were being borne onward by some manifestation of that same force which held us motionless.
I forgot them in my contemplation of the Disk.
It was oval, twenty feet in height, I judged, and twelve in its greatest width.

A broad band, translucent as sun golden chrysolite, ran about its periphery.
Set within this zodiac and spaced at mathematically regular intervals were nine ovoids of intensely living light.

They shone like nine gigantic cabochon cut sapphires; they ranged from palest, watery blue up through azure and purple and down to a ghostly mauve shot with sullen undertones of crimson.
In each of them was throned a flame that seemed the very fiery essence of vitality.
The--BODY--was convex, swelling outward like the boss of a shield; shimmering rosy-gray and crystalline.

From the vital ovoids ran a pattern of sparkling threads, irised and brilliant as floss of molten jewels; converging with interfacings of spirals, of volutes and of triangles into the nucleus.
And that nucleus, what was it?
Even now I can but guess--brain in part as we understand brain, certainly; but far, far more than that in its energies, its powers.
It was like an immense rose.

An incredible rose of a thousand close clustering petals.