account with the _nats_ and
such guarding spirits as may be; and their just pay is taken always in
due course."

"Do they ask more than thee for a daughter? Thy payment was the highest
market rate, at least--But again I say, stand aside. I weary of thee,
Moung Poh Sin."

But Moung Poh Sin did not move.

"There is not much longer to wait," he said, neither grim nor humorous,
simply unvarying. "The sun already has dipped. Soon the big bell speaks
when all will be paid."

And in fact it became clear to Cloots that this affair would have to be
solved on the spot. He was not minded to stand any more of it nor to
leave Moung Poh Sin in train to repeat such performances. He had lost
that perfectly ripping new love toy of a girl. A very jolly evening had
been ruined for him, and his confident balance most inexplicably and
painfully shaken. And here this insignificant relic of a discarded past
was undertaking to block his steps. This flute-toned, slab-faced little
heathen was presuming to threaten him, to name the moment when a
superior white, with his strength and his vision, with his civilized
capacity for perceptions and enjoyments, should suddenly cease to be....

He shifted both fists easily to his belt and took a watchful survey of
the figure by the doorway--and he did some rapid calculating.

Outside on the platform between west and east, between flame and dark,
Shway Dagohn showed now like one cutting from a jasper opal. Each flake
and streak of coloring had mellowed. And, with that, all sounds seemed
mellower too, as if they came more resonantly on the burdened air.
Everywhere, all about, the pagoda bells were ringing: bells of bronze
and silver and gold, bells hammered by devout and lusty celebrants,
bells insistently jangled by begging priests, bells that tinkled and
sighed to any stray breeze. And the whole tide of color and of sound was
drawing to an end, a definite climax: presently the tropic night would
fall like a curtain, and presently the huge central bell, Mahah Ganda,
"the great sweet voice" which is the voice of a continent, would bestir
itself ever so slightly for an instant at the touch of its monstrous
battering-ram and wake brazen thunder far and wide.

* * * * *

Cloots reckoned that he had perhaps five minutes before the stated
limit. It was to be a sort of test, as he saw and accepted. He would
have to decide how well, after all, he did understand the ancient