en there about sixty times. If Coryndon wants
to see it, I'm thankful to let him go there with you."

Fitzgibbon, who had a craze for borrowing anything that he was likely
to want, had persuaded Prescott, the junior partner in a rice firm, to
lend him his car, and as he sat in the tonneau beside Coryndon, he
pointed out the places of interest. Their way lay first through the
residential quarter, and Hartley's guest saw the entrance gate and
gardens of Draycott Wilder's house.

"The most interesting and certainly the best-looking woman in Mangadone
lives there, a Mrs. Wilder. Hartley ought to have told you about her; he
is rather favoured by the lady. Her husband is a rising civilian. Mrs.
Wilder has bought Asia, and is wondering whether she'll buy Europe
next."

Coryndon hardly appeared impressed or even interested.

"So she is a friend of Hartley's?" he said carelessly. "I hadn't heard
that."

Fitzgibbon laughed.

"It's something to be a friend of Mrs. Wilder--that is, in Mangadone."

They sped on over the level road, and the car swung through the streets
that led towards the open space before the temple.

"That is the curio dealer's shop. Don't get any of your stuff there. The
man's a robber."

"Which shop?" asked Coryndon patiently.

"We're past it now, but it was the one with a dancing man outside of it,
a funny little effigy."

Coryndon's eyes were turned to the Pagoda, and he was evidently
inattentive.

"It strikes you, doesn't it?" asked Fitzgibbon, in the tones of a
gratified showman. "It always does strike people who haven't seen it
before."

"Naturally, when one has not seen it before," echoed his companion, as
the car drew up.

Coryndon stood for a moment looking at the entrance, and surveying the
huge plaster dragons with their gaping mouths and vermilion-red tongues.
They were ranged up a green slope, two on either side of the brown
fretted roof that covered the steep tunnel that led up a flight of more
than a hundred steps to the flat plateau, where the golden spire towered
high over all, amid a crowd of lesser minarets.

Surrounded by baskets of roses and orchids, little silk-clothed Burmese
girls sat on the entrance steps, and sold their wares. Fitzgibbon would
have hurried on, but Coryndon, in true tripper fashion, stopped and
bought an armful of blossoms.

"What am I to do with these things?" he asked helplessly.

"Oh, you'd better leave them before one of the _Gaudamas_, and acq