The building faced him, running north and south across the clearing. They were standing close together nearly opposite the central point.
“Well, have you looked enough?” the man asked. “You’ll have plenty of chance to look at it in the next ten days or so.”
“I’d like to go along the side of it once,” Hi said. “I’d like to pace it.”
“Pace away,” the man said. “It’s 120 yards, but you’ll want to know for yourself, I suppose.”
“Have you measured it, then?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’d like just to pace it and see it close to.”
He turned south from the man along the line of gods to the end of the temple, which had not been cleared of creepers; the forest came to it and cloaked it there. He turned here to look along the line of the building. What struck him most was its silence, its blood-red colour where the facings had fallen, and the fact that every inch of it bore life of some sort. The man was watching him and playing with his rifle; he was sitting on the stone trough which contained the tools, much as a cat, having a mouse in a shelterless space, will drop him, withdraw a few paces, look at the sky and lick her fur. Hi pretended to examine the carving: he felt that the man must know what was passing in his mind. “I must start pacing,” he thought.
He lifted his eyes towards the other end of the building. Dudley Wigmore was standing there, facing him, with his right hand upon the building, and with his left beckoning to him to come. It was very strange: he was there and yet he was not there: he certainly saw him: then lost him: then knew that someone sad was there who wanted him to go there. “Right, I’ll go,” he thought; so he set out, pacing and counting.
When he came to the central door, abreast of the man, he was hailed. “You needn’t go any further, chum. The other half is exactly the same, another sixty yards.”