CHAPTER VII
The low, deep music of a temple bell rolled down the hillside and echoed through the giant cryptomerias. It stirred to action the creatures of the early dawn and passed out with infinite sweetness to the red-rimmed east of another day.
The priests in the old temples chanted their prayers with weird monotony, while a single bird poured out his morning song of love at the door of his mate.
The old stone steps leading from temple to temple would have looked as they had a thousand other mornings, gray, grim, and mossy, save for a little figure that slowly took its way up a long and crooked flight.
Yuki San was on her way to make good her promise to the gods. Her wooden shoes clicked sharply in the quiet morning air, then hushed as she paused for rest on a broad step. Even the exertion of the long climb had failed to color her white cheeks, but her lips were carmine and her eyes luminous with purpose.
The one spot of color about her otherwise sober little figure was a bright-red furoshike held close, in which something was carefully wrapped.
A noisy waterfall leaped past her down the hillside in a perpetual challenge to race to the foot. Stern-faced images, grim of aspect, stared at her as she climbed, but Yuki San kept gravely on her way until she reached the open door of the great silent temple.
The faint light of the early morning had scarce penetrated the shadows that clung about the gorgeous hangings and rich symbols of this ancient place of worship. A white-robed priest, oblivious to all save his own meditations, paid little heed to the childlike figure as it knelt before the cold, calm, unchanging image of the great Buddha.
For a moment Yuki San moved her lips. Still kneeling, she drew from her sash the red furoshike and took from it a small morocco note- book.
With light steps she crossed to a brazier, and with a pair of small tongs lifted from it a glowing coal. With steady fingers she pushed aside the many sticks of incense in the great brass vessel before the shrine, and making a little grave among the ashes, she laid within the burning coal the little book.
The blue smoke, rising slowly, hung for a moment above the girl's head as a halo, then rose to the feet of Buddha as in supplication for mercy, and was finally lost in the darkness of the heavy roof.
The girl watched with wide eyes and parted lips. Clasping her hands, she lifted her face and from her heart came a fervent, whispered prayer.
"I make empty my heart of all wicked. Buddha or Christians' God, I no can know which. Please the more better speak into my lonely life the word of peace."
She turned from the silent temple on her homeward way. She paused by the clump of bamboo where so short a time before she had gleefully tied together two boughs in the name of Merrit and herself. Tiptoeing to reach the high boughs which Merrit had held for her to tie, she drew them downward to slip the thong that bound them. After holding them to her soft cheek a moment, she let them fly apart, while she closed her eyes and whispered softly:
"Good-by, beautiful love, good-by."