permitted to help: but if one follows them, that shows the way. You may
be in that land yet on your way hither. It was very hard to understand
at first," said the painter; "there are some sketches I could show you.
No one has ever made a picture of it, though many have tried; but I
could show you some sketches--if you wish to see."

To this the little Pilgrim's look was so plain an answer that the
painter laid down his pallet and his brush, and left his work, to show
them to her as he had promised. They went down from the balcony and
along the street until they came to one of the great palaces, where
many were coming and going. Here they walked through some vast halls,
where students were working at easels, doing every kind of beautiful
work: some painting pictures, some preparing drawings, planning houses
and palaces. The Pilgrim would have liked to pause at every moment to
see one lovely thing or another, but the painter walked on steadily till
he came to a room which was full of sketches, some of them like pictures
in little, with many figures--some of them only a representation of a
flower, or the wing of a bird. "These are all the master's," he said;
"sometimes the sight of them will be enough to put something great into
the mind of another. In this corner are the sketches I told you of."
There' were two of them hanging together upon the wall, and at first it
seemed to the little Pilgrim as if they represented the flames and fire
of which she had read, and this made her shudder for the moment. But
then she saw that it was a red light like a stormy sunset, with masses
of clouds in the sky, and a low sun very fiery and dazzling, which no
doubt to a hasty glance must have looked, with its dark shadows and high
lurid lights, like the fires of the bottomless pit. But when you looked
down you saw the reality what it was. The country that lay beneath was
full of tropical foliage, but with many stretches of sand and dry
plains, and in the foreground was a town, that looked very prosperous