They stopped at a tea-house open on all sides, and, sitting cross-legged on its _tatamé_, drank tea from earthenware pots that held only a small cupful, while they listened to a street minstrel beating on a tom-tom, and singing a mysterious song that seemed about to choke him. They fed a crisp rice-cake to a baby sagging from an urchin's shoulder. A doll was strapped to the baby's back. They peered into a Buddhist temple where a monotonous chant came from behind a blue-figured curtain. They went, laughing like two children, down the zigzag stone steps, past innumerable _uomitei_--crimson-benched "resting-houses," where grave Japanese pedestrians sat eating stewed eels and chipping hard-boiled eggs--to the rocky edge of the tide, which now rolled in with a measured, sullen booming. He pointed to a gloomy fissure which ran into the mountain, at a little distance. "O Maiden, journeying to Holy Ben-ten," he said, "behold her shrine!" "How disillusioning!" "People find love so, sometimes." She slowly shook her head. "Not all of them," she said softly. "I am old-fashioned enough not to believe that." Her brown eyes were wistful and a little troubled, and her voice was so adorable that he could have gone on his knees to her. "We will ask Ben-ten about it," he said. "Oh, but not '_we!_'" she cried. "I must go alone. Don't you know the legend? People quarrel if they go together." "I can't imagine quarreling with you. I'd rather quarrel with myself." "That would be difficult, wouldn't it?" "Not in some of my moods. Ask my head-boy. To-day, for instance--" "Well?" For he had paused. "I was meditating self-destruction when I met you." "By what interesting method, I wonder?" "I was about to search for a volcano to jump into." "I thought the nearest active crater is a hundred miles away." "So it is, but I'm an absent-minded beggar." She laughed. "May I ask what inspired to-day's suicidal mood?" "It was--a telegram." "Oh!" She colored faintly. "I--I hope it held no bad news." He looked into her eyes. "I hope not," he said. Something else was on his tongue, when "Look!" she exclaimed. "How strange the sea looks off there!" A sinister, whitish bank, like a mad drift of smoke, lay far off on the water, and a tense, whistling hum came from the upper air. A drop of water splashed on Daunt's wrist. "There's going to be a blow," he said. "The seaweed gatherers are all coming in, too. Ben-ten will have to wait, I'm afraid. See--even her High Priest is forsaking her!" From where they stood steps were roughly hewn into the rock, winding across the face of the cliff. Beside these, stone pillars were socketed, carrying an iron chain that hung in rusted festoons. Along this precarious pathway from the cavern an old man was hastily coming, followed by a boy with a sagging bundle tied in a white cloth. "That parcel, no doubt," said Daunt, "contains the day's offerings. Wait! You're not going?" For she had started down the steps.