Marise stood on the high terrace which looked towards the rose-and-gold gulf of the Canyon. Gazing out, between the dark slim trunks of pines, she saw the sunlight moving slowly from rock to rock. "It's like stray sheep of the golden fleece," she thought, "being herded by an invisible shepherd to join the flock." Yes, the moving gleams were all massed together now. But they were travelling on. Suddenly they had ceased to be a flock of sheep. They were shining bricks, built into a citadel. "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately palace dome decree," Marise quoted to herself. How astonishing that so marvellous a place had existed for thousands upon thousands of years, and she had hardly heard of it, until John Garth had brought her to this house of his! "Vision House" was the right name for it. Garth hadn't meant it like that--or if he had, he'd not told her so!--but one _had_ visions here. One couldn't think little ordinary, foolish thoughts. Life seemed to be upon its highest plane, and whether one wished to do so or not, one had to try and reach that plane. One wanted to be at one's best, to be "in the picture"--and the best must be very good. It must even be noble. Whoever had designed Vision House and chosen its furnishings had felt that. There were great windows bowed out in generous eagerness towards the Canyon. There were wide loggias, upheld by clear-cut, pale stone pillars. In the rooms were no brilliant colours to jar with the rainbow glory just beyond the delicate green veil of pines. The curtains of grey or cream fell in soft, straight lines that framed a glowing picture--rocks of every fantastic form and flaming colour, under the blue of heaven: rocks like castles carved of coral and studded with lapis lazuli: statue rocks of transparent amethyst, or emerald, glittering where the sun touched them or fading to the smoky blue of star-sapphires as the shadows crept up from the bottom of the vast bowl. There was an organ in one of the rooms. Garth had thought that the finest piano in the world would be too tinkling a thing so near the thrilling silence of the Canyon. He could play the great instrument himself. She wouldn't have believed it, if she had not heard the music as she walked alone on the terrace by moonlight, and had gone to peep in at the long, open window. _How_ he could play!--though he said casually, when she asked him, "Oh, I wanted to do it, so I taught myself. I hear things in my head. I like to make them come out." A queer fellow!