Far out from land, where the wide floating nets were spread, lights were scattered like constellations. The foreland was clearly visible, with the high woods which clothed its summit. But the farther end of the beach faded into an uneven string of lights, soft and spectral as will-o'-the-wisps. Warmth rose from the sleeping earth; and a breeze blew in from the sea, making a strange metallic rustling, which to Japanese ears is the sweetest natural music, in the gaunt sloping pine-trees, whose height in the semi-darkness was exaggerated to monstrous and threatening proportions. Geoffrey felt a little hand in his, warm and moist. "Shall we go and see _Dai-Butsu_?" said Yaé. Geoffrey had no idea who _Dai-Butsu_ might be, but he gladly agreed. She fluttered on beside him with her long kimono sleeves like a big moth. Geoffrey's head was full of wine and waltz tunes. They dived into a narrow street with dwellings on each side. Some of the houses were shuttered and silent. Others were open to the street with a completeness of detail denied by our stingy window-casements--women sitting up late over their needlework, men talking round the firebox, shopkeepers adding up their accounts, fishermen mending their tackle. The street led inland towards abrupt hills, which looked like a wall of darkness. It was lit by the round street lamps, the luminous globules with Chinese letters on them which had pleased Geoffrey first at Nagasaki. The road entered a gorge between two precipices, the kind of cleft into which the children of Hamlin had followed the Pied Piper. "I would not like to come here alone," said Yaé, clinging tighter. "It looks peaceful enough," said Geoffrey. "There is a little temple just to the left, where a nun was murdered by a priest only last year. He chopped her with a kitchen knife." "What did he do it for?" asked Geoffrey. "He loved her, and she would not listen to him; so he killed her. I think I would feel like that if I were a man." They passed under an enormous gateway, like a huge barn door with no barn behind it. Two threatening gods stood sentinel on either hand. Under the influence of the moonlight the carved figures seemed to move. Yaé led her big companion along a broad-flagged path between a pollarded avenue. Geoffrey still did not know what they had come so far to see. Nor did he care. Everything was so dreamy and so sweet.