devices for adding still further to the femininity of his effect, part of the mystery woven of the whiteness and the shadows and the precious stones which gives it such intriguing opportunities for surprise.

Yet, suggestive as are the outer walls of the tomb, there is something more subtle, more inexplicable in the heart of it.

As one passes through the doorway out of the sunshine one is in darkness as black as vault, nothing visible before one but the ghostly vagueness of the marble trellis that surrounds the tombs. Yet the gloom changes, slowly, to a soft clearness which seems at last as lucent as the outer air, and in which can perfectly be seen every shade of the precious stones, of the jasper, jade, topaz, and turquoise, malachite, lapis-lazuli, and cornelian, coral, onyx, and amethyst, with which the marble is so consummately inlaid. But, though the eye can grow familiar with the design and colour, the ear can make nothing of the reverberations that roll like the roar of the sea about the domed roof. Every sound made, not only in the central chamber but in the encircling but quite excluded corridor about it, is caught up and multiplied and harmonised by the roof, so that only when the shrine has been empty for some seconds is it completely silent. Then if a single note is sounded the strangeness of the echo may be heard; for not till the note has

almost died away does the deep-toned repetition come from the dome, with over-tones as clear as though they had been played on the pipes of an organ, each as it is sounded being echoed and over-toned in turn, the vibrations blending in harmonies ever more chromatic and interwoven, and growing higher and softer and fainter till the ear can hold them no more.