"Oh, politics!" The General shrugged and made a little half-turn with his fingers, dismissing politics like so much dust. "Every one must have a label. Almost any label will do." Megan felt too languid to continue. Beauty rising from the grove and from the figures carved in the rock seemed to coil like delicate smoke through her brain. They sat without speaking for several moments and then by unspoken agreement got up and walked farther along till they came to the temple, containing a vast wooden Buddha whose head touched the ceiling. Priests were chanting in voices pitched on a low note which mounted and descended as in a Catholic vespers. One sounded, at intervals, a little muffled drum. A young acolyte brought them tea, which they drank on a wooden bench against the temple wall. They wandered afterward into a dusty hall full of gilded lohan standing in rows in the gloom. But there was little beauty in the temple, the great Buddha or the lohan, and Megan's eyes returned to the hill outside, feathery with bamboos and mounded with graves. Soft white clouds rested on it. The temple lacked utterly what she had already found in the grove, a sense of mystery. They walked slowly back to their waiting car, and as they drove along the General pointed to an island in the lake. "To-morrow if I am free we must visit that island. There are pools and pools of lotus there, crossed by red causeways. I will have them forbid the landing of any visitors for the whole day and we will take tea undisturbed in one of the pavilions. You will imagine that you are in old China, not the China of temples but the China of gardens." "What a delicious phrase!" and she repeated it in a whisper. "'The China of gardens!' You must not think," she said dreamily, "that I don't realize what charm your life had at its best. The truth is I scarcely dare to think of it. The faintest fragrance of it would seduce any imagination." Megan looked toward the island the General had indicated and thought of a red pavilion over pools of still lotus, and she suddenly thought of the tea the General would pour for her as having the power to steal away the soul. A slight shock as if something had fallen seemed to vibrate warningly through her nerves. She turned to look curiously at the General. He returned her look blandly, a little absently. Perhaps he also was thinking of the pavilion. Megan's eyebrows gathered in a frown. "But the trouble with that life was," she said severely, "it was enjoyed by far too few. Such a tiny per cent of your countless millions ever knew it."