The ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted her and she went nearer. Beyond the hedge she could see a portion of its garden. Reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt, open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered.
Before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, gray gravel. On one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms of deep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and striped ground-bamboo. Beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sides clambered an irregular pathway, set with tall shinto lanterns and large stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. Here and there the flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose, and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to be powdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies.
Barbara had seen many photographs of Japanese gardens, but they had either lacked color or been over-tinted. This lay chromatic, visualized, braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed glories of a tropic spring. For a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picture for ever on her brain.
She opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings of the ancient structure. Its shoji had been noiselessly drawn open, and a man stood there looking fixedly at her.
CHAPTER XXI
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
It was the man she had seen that morning at the entrance to the little park.
Barbara realized instantly and uneasily that she was an intruder. Yet she felt an intense interest, mixed of what she had heard and of what she had imagined. His outré street-costume had now been laid aside; he wore Japanese dress, with dark gray houri and white cleft sock. His iron-gray head was bare. The expression of his face was conscious and alert, with a sort of savage shyness.
"I am afraid I am intruding," she said. "I ought to have known the garden was private."