The atmosphere seemed heavy with secret sin; Alan felt that in those rooms unnameable crimes and cruelties had been committed for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, and that the place was yet haunted by the ghosts of them.

At any rate it struck a chill to his healthy blood, more even than had that Hall of the Dead and of heaped-up golden treasure.
"Does my house please you ?" the Asika asked of him.
"Not altogether," he answered, "I think it is dark." "From the beginning my spirit has ever loved the dark, Vernoon.

I think that it was shaped in some black midnight." They passed through the chief entrance of the house which had pillars of woodwork grotesquely carved, down some steps into a walled and roofed-in yard where the shadows were even more dense than in the house they had left.

Only at one spot was there light flowing down through a hole in the roof, as it did apparently in that hall where Alan had found the Asika sitting in state.

The light fell on to a pedestal or column made of gold which was placed behind an object like a large Saxon font, also made of gold.