. It was lit by the round street lamps, the luminous
globules with Chinese letters on them which had pleased Geoffrey first
at Nagasaki. The road entered a gorge between two precipices, the
kind of cleft into which the children of Hamlin had followed the Pied
Piper.

"I would not like to come here alone," said Yae, clinging tighter.

"It looks peaceful enough," said Geoffrey.

"There is a little temple just to the left, where a nun was murdered
by a priest only last year. He chopped her with a kitchen knife."

"What did he do it for?" asked Geoffrey.

"He loved her, and she would not listen to him; so he killed her. I
think I would feel like that if I were a man."

They passed under an enormous gateway, like a huge barn door with no
barn behind it. Two threatening gods stood sentinel on either hand.
Under the influence of the moonlight the carved figures seemed to
move.

Yae led her big companion along a broad-flagged path between a
pollarded avenue. Geoffrey still did not know what they had come so
far to see. Nor did he care. Everything was so dreamy and so sweet.

The path turned; and suddenly, straight in front of them, they saw the
God--the Great Buddha--the immense bronze statue which has survived
from the days of Kamakura's sovereignty. The bowed head and the broad
shoulders were outlined against the blue and starry sky; against
the shadow of the woods the body, almost invisible, could be dimly
divined. The moonlight fell on the calm smile and on the hands palm
upwards in the lap, with finger-tips and thumb-tips touching in the
attitude of meditation. That ineffably peaceful, smiling face seemed
to look down from the very height of heaven upon Geoffrey Barrington
and Yae Smith. The presence of the God filled the valley, patient and
powerful, the Creator of the Universe and the Maintainer of Life.

Geoffrey had never seen anything so impressive. He Stooped down
towards his little companion, listening for a response to his own
emotion. It came. Before he could realize what was happening he felt
the soft kimono sleeves like wings round his neck, and the girl's
burning mouth pressing his lips.

"Oh, Geoffrey," she whispered.

He sat down on a low table in front of a shuttered refreshment bar
with Yae on his knee, his strong arm round her, even as she had
dreamed. The Buddha of Infinite Understanding smiled down upon them.

Geoffrey was too little of a prig to scold the girl, and too much of
a man not t