She joined him before the yamen and once more got into the car of which she had a faint remembrance of having driven in from the station. It was very elaborately fitted with green enamel vanity case and smoking set, the windows garlanded with chenille fringes. Two gray-clad soldiers armed with Mausers rode standing on the running-board. They drove in silence and Megan watched the lake with its fleets of islands strung together darkly. There was a light mist, the young leaves of some of the trees had a reddish flush, almost like the first bronzing of autumn, and the low key of all the colors, the milky air, would have given a late autumnal melancholy to the landscape if it had not been for a few fruit trees that bloomed with poignant freshness. They turned into the hills and stopped before a great gate. "Would you like to get out?" asked the General. "This temple is very interesting. I want to show it to you." They walked up an avenue of huge camphor trees and turned off at the left before a curious mound of rock, fretted and hollowed out by water. In the depressions were carved half-relief figures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The General led her into narrow caves and passages in the rock, where water dripped and dim Indian faces sculptured in low relief looked down from the walls. "But this can't be Chinese!" she exclaimed. There was a closeness, a secrecy about the place and the faces had a quality of emotional life that did not seem to her Chinese. "The monk who founded this temple came from India. This hill reminded him of India, so he called it 'the hill that flew over.'"