This fire pleased Kathlyn mightily.

While it burned brightly the lion would not prowl in her immediate vicinity.
She wondered where this huge cat had come from, since she knew her natural history well enough to know that African lions did not inhabit this part of the globe.

Doubtless it had escaped from some private menagerie.
The fire, then, giving her confidence, she did not get into the sarcophagus, but wandered about, building in her fancy the temple as it had stood in its prime.

The ceilings had been magnificently carved, no two subjects alike; and the walls were of marble and jasper and porphyry.

A magic continent this Asia in its heyday.