A little way inside they came to a small well, with a dipper and a rack of thin blue-and-white towels to cleanse the hands of worshipers. On a square pedestal stood a stone Buddha, curiously incrusted by drippings from the roof. Near it was a wooden booth, its front hung with pendents of twisted rice-straw and strips of white paper folded in diagonal notches. It held a number of tiny wooden torii strung with lighted candles, above each of which was nailed a paper prayer. A few copper coins lay scattered beneath them. Daunt thrust two of the candles into wooden holders and they slowly followed the narrowing fissure, guttered by the feet of centuries, between square posts bearing carven texts, and small images, coated with the spermy droppings from innumerable candles.
She held up her winking light toward his face. "What a desperate absorption!" she said laughingly. "You haven't said a thing for five minutes."
"I'm thinking we had better explain at once to Ben-ten that we're not lovers. Otherwise we may get the penalty. Perhaps we'd better just tell her it was an accident, and let it go at that? What do you think?"
"That might be the simplest."
"All right then, I'll say 'Ben-ten, dear, she wanted to come alone; she really did! We didn't intend it at all. So be a nice, gracious goddess and don't make her quarrel with me!'"
"What do you suppose she will answer?"
"She will say: 'Young man, in the same circumstances, I should have done exactly the same myself.'"
The passage had grown so low that they had to bend their heads, then all at once it widened into a concave chamber. The cannonading of the wind rumbled fainter and fainter. He took her hand and drew her forward. "There is Ben-ten," he said.
The Goddess of Love sat in a barred cleft of the rock, enshrined in a dull, gold silence. Beads of moisture spangled her robe, glistening like brilliants through the mossy darkness. "Poor deity!" said Barbara. "To have to live for ever in a sea-cavern! It's a clammy idea, isn't it?"
"That's—" He paused. "I could make a terrible pun, but I won't."