We pass within the _ita-gaki_, and the landlord, the _kurumaya_, the crowd of other worshippers are left behind. Before us rises the low fence of the “jewelled hedge,” which encloses the sacred shrine itself. Again before the gateway there is a pause. The minor priests, even our authoritative young friend, do not enter here. It is explained to us that the “honourable interior” must not pass within the temple. She is a woman, but it is permitted to her, as the wife of the most “honourable one,” to look into the shrine from a room above the gateway. The High Priest removes his sandals, we our shoes, and over the rounded, water-washed, grey pebbles, hot as burning plough-shares, we enter the holy court. A long, low wooden building is the temple, primæval in its form, the broad ends of its roof-tree sticking up like pointed anchors through the roof. Six feet around it on every side the pebbles stop, and the space is filled with the whitest, smoothest sand. All those who go up to the god leave the mark of their feet behind. Within the temple there is nothing; bare space, dim, obscure; but the High Priest, reverently kneeling on the matting, creates the god. And into that narrow empty space the shadow of the Eternal Presence comes. Slowly the splash of the breaking waves drifts into the stillness, faint as the whisper of God in the heart of man, a still, small voice. Over the temple there is peace, the peace of two thousand years, unbroken, sacred. And the dreamy ripple grows a sound in the silence. Faint, faint, faint, is it the song of the limitless sea, the voice of the peace and the stillness, or a broken murmur of the beyond that the listening pilgrim hears? Half a memory, half a dream, it dies at the gate of the shrine, where the stir of the world grows loud; yet the soul has heard, has believed. * * * * * Out in the sunlit court beyond the “jewelled hedge” the little group of priests still wait. And as we come slowly over the hot round stones, our shoes once more upon our feet, they greet us with an added respect. Even the “honourable interior,” whose sacredness is but indirect, transmitted through a space of court and two open _shōji_, has become a personage.