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.