The bishop went quickly through the crowd to a gap under the great gables, where the beams had been sawed through and the rubbish shoveled to one side, making a difficult way into the interior. The enormous span of the roof had sunk sidewise, splitting its supporting beams and bending the walls outward, but its great ridge had remained intact and it now stretched, a squat, ungainly lean-to, over what had been the altar. The space was strewn with brasses, fragments of fretted and carven doors, and splintered beneath a mass of tiling lay a great image of Kwan-on. The daylight came dimly in through the chinks in the ruin. The air was warm and close and had a smell of pulverized plaster, of stale incense and rotting wood. A group of priests stood on the altar platform beside a huddle of wadded mats and brocaded draperies, on which a man was lying, his open eyes upturned to the painted monsters on the twisted tangle of rafters. The bishop hesitated, then came close. The man's head turned toward him--for an instant he seemed to shrink into the cushions; then in his eyes, dark with the last shadow, came a swift yearning. He spoke to the priests and they drew back. "Arthur," he said, "don't you know me?" A gasping sound came from the leaning bishop. "John! John Fairfax!" he cried, composure dropping from him, and fell on his knees. "After these years!" The other lifted his hand and touched the bishop's pale, smooth-shaven face. "I am going, Arthur," he said. "I never intended to speak, though I've seen you often.... I thought it was best. Did she--did my wife never tell you?" "Never a word, John! I have never known!" cried the bishop, in a shaken voice. "It was my fault. All mine! I--never believed as she did, Arthur, and here in the East what was breath and bread to her, to me came to seem all mumbo-jumbo. I had had a hard life, and I wanted comfort--for her. Then I found out about the gold-lacquer." He paused to gather the strength that was fast ebbing. "I got the formula from a crazy priest, and I began in a small way--the idol-making, I mean. I had a shop at Saga. At first it was only for the mandarins in the China trade, and ... no one knew. But the lacquer grew famous, and within a year I was shipping to Rangoon and Thibet. I made all sorts of praying-tackle. Then--then I quarreled with my agent, and--he told my wife. She didn't believe it, but one day ... he brought her to where I was at work. I was modeling an Amida for a temple in Nagasaki!" He threw an arm across his face and moaned. "She left me that night. A ship was in the harbor. I ... never saw her again. I never knew I had a daughter till a week ago!... I never knew!" There was a silence. "I have seen her. She must never guess, Arthur! She thinks I ... died in Nagasaki. It's better so. Promise me!" "I promise, John," said the bishop. "I promise."