He had expected to contend with her, to endeavor some evidence, however, her answer was so brief and clear, so strong in its genuineness, so liberated from the grandiloquence with which the vast majority of his inquiries had been welcomed, that he was convinced by it and could consider nothing to say. What she had said animated a sensation of bitterness in him, and he would, in general, compare truth and pity. Like most great Frenchmen, he figured, he didn’t trust in bliss, or rather he accepted that nothing glad could be significant. “What’s that? I wonder,” she said, highlighting the opening in the divider, at the dark, quickly moving thing that showed up once in a while on the marble plain.”I’ve no thought.” “I need to see.” She jumped down from the square of marble and set out around the lake toward the opening in the divider. Hesitantly he followed. He had, he understood, been expecting to kiss her, and since the outcome appeared to be distant.
The apparatus that lay without the sinkhole was functionless, free pinion wheels and structures, pinions and poles, a lot of it tumbled about like the disposed of toys of a colossal youngster, however, a few pieces were joined by bolts with heads the size of serving platters, hence making straightforward mechanical models. Overhead, a monstrous, skewed mirror mirrored gleaming light descending from some undetectable source. Like twilight, Beheim thought, and he contemplated whether there probably won’t be an arrangement of mirrors diverting evening glow down from the fortifications of the palace. Past the apparatus, the plain of white marble inclined up for a few hundred feet toward a divider punctured by twelve curved entryways, and banging across it, bringing down its head and charging at some nonexistent close companion, then, at that point trotting off, halting to gaze at Alexandra and Beheim as they drew nearer, was a dark steed. A two-year-old, maybe. Completely develop, yet at the same time frisky in its conduct.
“It’s wonderful!” Alexandra said as the steed jogged away, feigning exacerbation at them. Its skin looked oiled. Sparkles illustrated the play of its muscles. It was wonderful in its energy and sexual force, a living motor of blood and smooth skin and bone. A good ways off, standing frozen in place with the slant behind it, it may have been a seal stepped into the white marble. “What could it do here?” Alexandra inquired. Beheim said, “Possibly it’s anything but a pony.” “What else could it be?” “Old Kostolec, maybe. Or on the other hand, a foe on whom he’s done magic. Here, it very well may be anything.”
Yet, the pony was actually what it gave off an impression of being, for—like a genuine pony — it would not permit them to approach and contact it, detecting their weirdness, showing outrageous dread each time they had a go at, whinnying and moving farther away. Beheim thought about how conceivable it is that it very well maybe, as had been the demise of the youngster at Kostolec’s hands, a sort of exercise, set here to help them to remember their unnatural life, of their hunter’s tendencies, thus ruin any figment of routineness they may wish to possess. That, at any rate, appeared to be the proportion of its impact on Alexandra. She developed morose, silent, and when Beheim attempted to kiss her when he put his hands on her midriff and fitted his mouth to hers, she reacted to him briefly, however then, at that point slipped from his grip and disclosed to him that she was not, at this point sure of what she needed
Different rooms of the upper levels, similar to the cave and the marble plain, came total with inhabitants whose presence appeared to be an element of the plan, or who essentially had all the earmarks of being in plain view. In one of these, they experienced a forlorn elderly person affixed to a divider, encircled by pieces of gristly meat and heaps of excrement, who might break into a cheerful hogwash tune at whatever point they came extremely close to him, and would unexpectedly stop his singing when they moved farther away than ten feet, as though an inner caution were set off by this accurate vicinity. In another they tracked down a dark mastiff with an emblem of red gold about its neck who gazed at them and gasped; in another, a lion dozed underneath a rose tree whose petals were green glass and whose sprouts were cut of carnelian. In a room with a long rectangular pool loaded up with brilliant water and paintings on the dividers portraying pale violet skies and far off snow tops and effortless structures with Doric segments and peristyles, there were three excellent ladies so engaged with a Sapphic tryst that not even Beheim’s yells could acquire their consideration.