“What has the circumstance, the external, to do with the abiding me, the eternal?” he murmured. Then he looked again from the corner of his eye toward the tourists.
She had stopped and was standing by the water’s edge, gazing across toward the other shore. He saw her mild, wondering eyes animated with the delight of the garden, the broad, low brow above them, the lines of a sweet, firm mouth parted in a smile, the gleam of white teeth, and then behind her, what he had not noticed before, a great-framed youth with tow hair and a frank, kindly face bronzed with a tropical sun. And as the girl gazed across the little lake the youth gazed at the girl.
Caswell brought his eyes back to his book of verses. His philosophy suddenly seemed to have grown more effective. He smiled inwardly, for an Occidental sense of humor slumbered in the ashes of his old self. Then he became grave again. “Am I a thistledown upon the breeze?” he muttered. He repeated one of the mental formulas which the Buddhists of his sect used to compose the mind and open its doors to the all-pervasive soul.
The party of tourists came on and mounted the balcony. They passed him before they noticed him, for he was in the corner at the end. The girl looked at the view and the young man furtively watched the girl, but the older woman spied Caswell sitting on the floor with his feet under him, an open book in his lap, gazing stolidly across the lake. Her curiosity was aroused.
“Who is that?” she said to the fat Japanese boy.
The Japanese boy sucked in his breath and bowed low.
“Yais, sank you,” he said laboriously; “he is, what you say, temple man.”
“Do you mean a priest?” asked his interrogator.
“Sank you, ah, no, not priest,” sucking his breath again. “I sink perhaps priest, some day.”
“Be careful, Auntie,” suggested the girl, in a low tone. “You know so many of them speak English.”