It was not made of marble as she might have expected, but of a special precious stone that had been quarried in the Urals and was so rare and so beautiful that it reminded her immediately of the petals of a star orchid.
The Prince drew her inside and she saw that in the centre of the pavilion was a large room with only three walls and where the fourth should have been there was only the night.
Below it was a sheer drop to the sea and the vista in front was of the horizon merging with the sky and it was impossible to know where one began and the other ended.
For the moment Lokita was spellbound by what she saw in front of her. Then she realised that the room, like the one where they had dined, was decorated with white flowers, but these were not orchids but roses and tuberoses, the flowe
