“She lives at the end of that little path,” he tempted. “She is Nagy
N’Yang.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
He nodded again and went away. I turned down the side path after the
Laos girl....
There was a full moon that night. About the middle of the night we came
up the path to the temple again, the Laos girl and I.
“Come,” she had said to me when I had asked her for my heart’s desire,
“come to the temple, and I can prove it is folly.”
So we came. The temple door was open. The priests were gone—no one has
to watch a Naga temple at night. The dread of Siva is enough to protect
it.
A rift in the temple roof let in a shaft of white moonlight. It struck
upon the image of Siva. The image was seated on a white ox, carved of
some white stone. A sash around the image was made up of human heads; it
had six arms, each covered with carved snakes that were so lifelike they
seemed to writhe in the wavering light. In the middle of the god’s
forehead was the mark of the third eye—the scar of Siva.
We went slowly down toward the image. Before it was a huge chest. Nagy
N’Yang motioned me to sit on it. She sat beside me. Again I pleaded with
her for my heart’s desire.
She pushed me away.
“You are afraid to be near me,” I mocked.
“Hush,” she pleaded. “I am afraid—of yielding to you.”
I moved to clasp her, my heart leaping at her confession. She smote her
little hands sharply together. I heard a shuffling of softly shod feet
in the passage behind the image.
Wat Na Yang, chief priest of the temple, stood before us with his yellow
robes, his yellow skin, his hands calmly folded across his paunch. “What
seek ye, children?” he asked.
“The way of love,” I laughed. I plunged my hand into my robe and felt
the gold against my middle.
In the great chest on which we sat something awoke to life. I heard a
stir, a rustle, a noise as of straining.
“Nagy speaks,” the priest warned.