"Waku hyoryu kokai
Ryūgyo Shokinan
Nembi Kwan-on riki
Harō funōmotsu."
(He who is beset with perils of dragon and great fish—who drifts on an endless sea—if he offer petition to Kwan-on, waves will not destroy him.)
Thorn crossed the room and leaning his elbows on the window-ledge, looked out. Through the odor of incense the monotonous intonation of the liturgy rose with the grandeur of a Gregorian chant:
"Shūjō kikon-yaku
Muryōku hisshin
Kwan-on myochiriki
Nōku sekenku."
(He who is in distress—when immeasurable suffering presses on him—Kwan-on, all-wise and all-powerful, can save him from the world's calamity.)
Once, while the quiet yard echoed back the slow cadences of the antique tongue, the watcher's eyes turned to the image on the pedestal, then came back to an object that drew them—had drawn them for many days against his will!—the white cross of the Chapel. A last glow of refracted light touched it now, as red as blood, a symbol of the infinite passion and pain. A long time he stood there. The twilight deepened, the chant ceased, lights sprang up along the lane, night fell with its sickle moon and crowding stars, but still he stood, his face between his hands.
At length he turned, and groping for the cloth, threw it over the Kwan-on and lit a lamp swinging from a huge brass censer. Unlocking an alcove, he took out a fleece-wrapped bundle and sweeping the tools to one side, set it on the table. He carefully closed the window and thrust a bar through the staple of the door before he unwrapped it.
When the fleece was removed, he propped the image it had contained upright on the table. He poured into a shallow plate a few drops of the liquid heating over the fire-bowl—under the lamplight it gleamed and sparkled like molten gold—and with a small brush, using infinite care, began to lay the lacquer on its carven surface.
Once, at a sound in some room below—perhaps the movement of a servant—he stopped and listened intently. It was as if he worked by stealth, at some labor self-forbidden, to which an impulse, overmastering though half-denied, drove him in secret.
It was a crucifix with a dead Christ upon it.