Hanging Waters by Keith West

PAI MEI knelt, very much alone, before the great image of Buddha. The only human figure in that vast room she seemed to typify the futility of man in the face of the eternal gods. But, in actual fact, little Pai Mei was conscious, at the back of her praying mind, of a strange and irrepressible doubt which assailed her. Was it really of any avail, this mewing one's sorrows, like a cat with earache, in the conjectured hearing of an image? Did Buddha really hear--did Buddha take the slightest interest in her little affairs?

Then orthodoxy descended like a pitiless heel on the small insect of her doubt, and Pai Mei prayed the more fervently because she did not quite believe.