To the left of this jungle, on the side facing the lake, was a narrow, sandy beach. It was toward this beach that Florence made her way. There she hoped to spend an hour of quiet meditation as she promenaded the hard-packed sand of the beach. Vain hope. Some one was there before her.
* * * * * * * *
Petite Jeanne had entered many strange places. None was more strange nor more fantastically beautiful than the one she found within the four walls of that dragon-guarded building in the heart of a great city.
Playing the role of an American born Chinese lady, she passed the attendant and climbed two flights of stairs unmolested.
As she reached the top of the second flight she found her feet sinking deep in the thick pile of an Oriental rug. One glance about her and she gripped at her heart to still it.
“It is a dream!” she told herself. “There is no place like this.”
Yet she dared not distrust her senses. Surely the lovely Chinese ladies, dressed in curious Chinese garments of matchless silk, gliding silently about the place, were real; so, too, was the faint, fragrant odor of incense, and the lamps that, burning dimly, cast a shadow of purple and old rose over all.
“Dragons,” she murmured, “copper dragons looking as old as time itself. Smoke creeps from their nostrils as if within them burned eternal fire. Lamps made of three thousand bits of glass set in copper. Banners of silk. Pictures of strange birds. Who could have planned all this and brought it into being?
“And there,” she whispered, as she dared a few steps across the first soft-carpeted space, “there is an altar, an altar to a god wholly unknown to me. The ladies are kneeling there. Suppose they invite me to join them!” At once she felt terribly frightened. She sank deep in the shadows. She was playing the part of a Chinese lady, yet she knew nothing of their religion. And this appeared to be a temple.
She was contemplating flight when a sound, breaking in upon her attention, caused her to pause. From somewhere, seemingly deep down and far away, came the dong-dong of a gong. Deep, serene, melodious, it seemed to call to her. A simple, impulsive child of nature, she murmured: