The priest listened with bowed head. Once or twice he nodded assent, and when the interpreter finished, he looked at Eleanor More with slow, kind eyes.
He folded the map and handed it back and pointed to a little house among the trees. Then he spoke to the interpreter in a low tone and motioned to the figure of the god cut in the rock above, and entered the temple.
An old man, half-asleep before his door, roused himself. He listened to the interpreter and shook his head. His face was as motionless as the plank it leaned against.
The interpreter spoke again, sharply, and the old eyes turned to him with slow, incurious look.
The interpreter flung one hand upward, toward the seated Buddha towering above; and the old gaze followed it unsteadily—up—up to the great gilded face.
For a long minute he gazed at the god in the face of the mountain. Then he rose slowly and entered the darkened house.
They heard a sound of scraping within and a creaking, as if a door opened, then silence.... The city was very quiet about them—a gentle intoning from the temple and a rustling of leaves on the mountainside.
For a long time they waited in the silence before the half-swung door. The old man appeared and beckoned to them and they passed into the cool quiet.
They traversed a passage and crossed a court and entered a low room.
The room was empty except for two objects on the right as they entered—a shrine to Buddha revealed through the half-open doors the god within; and across the room on a raised platform facing the shrine stood a red-and-black lacquered coffin.