The next few hours showed us a continuous amazing panorama. The marble temple proved to be but one of a series connected by long and graceful colonnades; and in the central structures, the Ionic and Doric architecture were curiously mingled with a type that seemed scarcely Grecian at all, since it admitted of all variety of arches and curves unknown to the builders of classical Hellas. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, were the gorgeously ornamented vases--some of them six or eight feet in height--which were of a style akin to those excavated from the ruins of old Ilium. But what caught my eye even more strikingly were the statues that occasionally appeared in niches along the marble galleries or in alcoves of the temples--statues that would surely not have been unworthy of a Praxiteles, since even Praxiteles could not have surpassed the symmetry of form and the unstrained reality of pose and expression with which these unknown artists had depicted their wrestling heroes and dancing fauns and stern-browed old men and queenly maidens and gracious youths. For one who had been nurtured on modern art, these busts and marbles were as old paintings would be to him who had known only sketches in black and white; there was none of that snowy coldness or bronze severity of hue which are so common in sculpture today, but all of the statues had been skilfully tinted with the complexion of life, and such was the verisimilitude, that several times I started in surprise on beholding what I took to be a living man but which proved to be only an image of stone. I was interested, moreover, to note that none of the sculptured features had that peculiar hardness and selfish keenness so common among the men I had known, but that all seemed suffused with a clear and tranquil spirituality; and every lyric impulse within me was awakened when I observed on many of the faces of the women that same unearthly Madonna look which had graced the butterfly-gowned dancing maiden. But, of course, Rawson and I did not allow our pleasure in the statuary to keep our minds from more vital subjects. Above all, we maintained a constant lookout for the inhabitants of these queer regions, for we could no longer suppress the suspicion that unseen furtive eyes were peeping out at us from behind every pillar and wall. For my own part, I had more than one qualm that I did not care to admit, and secretly wished myself back on the X-111; and as for Rawson--I found that youth afflicted with far too much imagination for an adventurer, and repeatedly begged him to keep his fantastic fears to himself.