Once, while the quiet yard echoed back the slow cadences of the antique tongue, the watcher's eyes turned to the image on the pedestal, then came back to an object that drew them--had drawn them for many days against his will!--the white cross of the Chapel. A last glow of refracted light touched it now, as red as blood, a symbol of the infinite passion and pain. A long time he stood there. The twilight deepened, the chant ceased, lights sprang up along the lane, night fell with its sickle moon and crowding stars, but still he stood, his face between his hands. At length he turned, and groping for the cloth, threw it over the Kwan-on and lit a lamp swinging from a huge brass censer. Unlocking an alcove, he took out a fleece-wrapped bundle and sweeping the tools to one side, set it on the table. He carefully closed the window and thrust a bar through the staple of the door before he unwrapped it. When the fleece was removed, he propped the image it had contained upright on the table. He poured into a shallow plate a few drops of the liquid heating over the fire-bowl--under the lamplight it gleamed and sparkled like molten gold--and with a small brush, using infinite care, began to lay the lacquer on its carven surface. Once, at a sound in some room below--perhaps the movement of a servant--he stopped and listened intently. It was as if he worked by stealth, at some labor self-forbidden, to which an impulse, overmastering though half-denied, drove him in secret. It was a crucifix with a dead Christ upon it. CHAPTER VI THE BAYING OF THE WOLF-HOUND Barbara stood in her room at the Embassy. It was spacious and airy, the high walls paneled in ivory-white, with draperies of Delft blue. The bed and dressing-table were early Adams. A generous bay-window set with flower-boxes filled a large part of one side, and its deep seat was upholstered in blue crepe, the tint of the draperies, printed with large white chrysanthemums. The floor was laid with thin matting of rice-straw in which was braided at intervals a conventional pattern in old-rose. Opposite the bay-window stood a Sendai chest on which was a small Japanese Buddha of gold-lacquer, Amida, the Dweller-in-Light, seated in holy meditation on his lotos-blossom. At first sight this had recalled to Barbara a counterpart image which she had unearthed in a dark corner of the garret in her pinafore days, and which for a week had been her dearest possession.