The voice rang valiant and clear in the summer hush. It crossed the still lane and entered a window where, in a temple loft, a man sat still and gray and quiet, his hands clenched in his kimono sleeves:
"We humbly dedicate it to Thee, in the memory of one for the saving of whose soul Thou wert lifted upon the Cross."
The man in the loft threw himself on his face with a terrible cry.
"My child!" he cried in a breaking voice. "My little, little child, whom they have robbed me of—whom I have never known in all these weary years! You have grown away from me—I shall never have you now! Never ... never!"
Behind him the unfinished image of Kwan-on the All-Pitying, tossed the sunlight about the room in golden-lettered flashes, and beneath his closed and burning lids these seemed to blend and weave—to form bossed letters which had stared at him from the rim of the rose-window:
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.
CHAPTER XXIX
DAUNT LISTENS TO A SONG
The day had dawned sultry, with a promise of summer humidity, and Daunt was not surprised to find the barometer performing intemperate antics. "Confound it!" he muttered irritably, as he dressed. "If it was a month later, one would think there was a typhoon waltzing around somewhere in the China Sea."