THE HUMAN CHORD

 BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

 1910

_To those who hear. _

Chapter I

I

As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to believein the living reality of his creations: for everybody and everything hefound names--real names. Inside him somewhere stretched immenseplaygrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and lawns of his father'sestate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas deep enough to floatthe planets like corks, and "such tremendous forests" with "trees liketall pointed hilltops. " He had only to close his eyes, drop his thoughtsinwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and--see. 

His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in these worldsbecame alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name wasthe breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it. 

Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little man he hadcreated would come through her window at night and weave a peaked cap forhimself by pulling out all her hairs "that hadn't gone to sleep with therest of her body, " he took characteristic measures to protect her fromthe said depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn beneathher window to watch, believing firmly that what his imagination had madealive would come to pass. 

She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the little manhad died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And, for a boy of eight, those cold and haunted hours must have seemed endless from ten o'clock tofour in the morning, when he crept back to his own corner of the nightnursery. He possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and imagination. 

Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable than "Winky!"

"You might have known he wouldn't hurt you, Teresa, " he said. "Any onewith that name would be light as a fly and awf'ly gentle--a regular dickysort of chap!"

"But he'd have pincers, " she protested, "or he couldn't pull the hairsout. Like an earwig he'd be. Ugh!"

"Not Winky! Never!" he explained scornfully, jealous of his offspring'sreputation. "He'd do it with his rummy little fingers. "

"Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!" she insisted; for noamount of explanation could persuade her that a person named Winky couldbe nice and gentle, even though he were "quicker than a second. " Sheadded that his death rejoiced her. 

"But I can easily make another--such a nippy little beggar, and twice ashoppy as the first. Only I won't do it, " he added magnanimously, "becauseit frightens you. "

For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out some distanceinto his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in a certain commandingway, and instantly its owner would run up to claim it. Names describedsouls. To learn the name of a thing or person was to know all about themand make them subservient to his will; and "Winky" could only have been avery soft and furry little person, swift as a shadow, nimble as amouse--just the sort of fellow who _would_ make a conical cap out of agirl's fluffy hair . .. And love the mischief of doing it. 

And so with all things: names were vital and important. To address beingsby their intimate first names, beings of the opposite sex especially, wasa miniature sacrament; and the story of that premature audacity of Elsawith Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in aname?" for him, was a significant question--a question of life or death. For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly wasto miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best avitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much inhis childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had "discovering" thecorrect appellations for some of the queerer animals. .. . 

As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he neverquite lost the sense of reality in names--the significance of a truename, the absurdity of a false one, the cruelty of mispronunciation. Oneday in the far future, he knew, some wonderful girl would come into hislife, singing her own true name like music, her whole personalityexpressing it just as her lips framed the consonants and vowels--and hewould love her. His own name, ridiculous and hateful though it was, wouldsing in reply. They would be in harmony together in the literal sense, asnecessary to one another as two notes in the same chord. .. . 

So he also possessed the mystical vision of the poet. What helacked--such temperaments always do--was the sense of proportion and thecareful balance that adjusts cause and effect. And this it is, no doubt, that makes his adventures such "hard sayings. " It becomes difficult todisentangle what actually did happen from what conceivably might havehappened; what he thinks he saw from what positively _was_. 

His early life--to the disgust of his Father, a poor countrysquire--was a distressing failure. He missed all examinations, muddledall chances, and finally, with £50 a year of his own, and no one tocare much what happened to him, settled in London and took any odd jobof a secretarial nature that offered itself. He kept to nothing forlong, being easily dissatisfied, and ever on the look out for the "job"that might conceal the kind of adventure he wanted. Once the work ofthe moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it andsought another. And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless, for theadventure he sought was not a common kind, but something that shouldprovide him with a means of escape from a vulgar and noisy world thatbored him very much indeed. He sought an adventure that should announceto him a new heaven and a new earth; something that should confirm, ifnot actually replace, that inner region of wonder and delight hereveled in as a boy, but which education and conflict with a prosaicage had swept away from his nearer consciousness. He sought, that is, an authoritative adventure of the soul. 

To look at, one could have believed that until the age of twenty-five hehad been nameless, and that a committee had then sat upon the subject andselected the sound best suited to describe him: Spinrobin--Robert. For, had he never seen himself, but run into that inner prairie of his andcalled aloud "Robert Spinrobin, " an individual exactly resembling himwould surely have pattered up to claim the name. 

He was slight, graceful, quick on his feet and generally alert; tooklittle steps that were almost hopping, and when he was in a hurry gavehim the appearance of "spinning" down the pavement or up the stairs;always wore clothes of some fluffy material, with a low collar andbright red tie; had soft pink cheeks, dancing grey eyes and looselyscattered hair, prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. Hishands and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favoriteattitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails slightlyspread and flapping, head on one side and hair disordered, talking inthat high, twittering, yet very agreeable voice of his, it wasimpossible to avoid the conclusion that here was--well--Spinrobin, BobbySpinrobin, "on the job. "

For he took on any "job" that promised adventure of the kind he sought, and the queerer the better. As soon as he found that his presentoccupation led to nothing, he looked about for something new--chiefly inthe newspaper advertisements. Numbers of strange people advertised in thenewspapers, he knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters tothem; and Spinny--so he was called by those who loved him--was a diligentstudent of the columns known as "Agony" and "Help wanted. " Whereupon itcame about that he was aged twenty-eight, and out of a job, when thethreads of the following occurrence wove into the pattern of his life, and "led to something" of a kind that may well be cause for question andamazement. 

The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:--

"WANTED, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with courage andimagination. Tenor voice and some knowledge of Hebrew essential; single;_unworldly_. Apply Philip Skale, "--and the address. 

Spinrobin swallowed the bait whole. "Unworldly" put the match, and heflamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications;for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering ofHebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the fine, high-sounding names of deities and angels to be found in that language. Courage and imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and inthe gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's oddadvertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may prove anadventure. While there's change, there's hope. " For he was very fond ofturning proverbs to his own use by altering them, and the said diary waspacked with absurd misquotations of a similar kind. 

II

A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser explainedwith reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him in certainexperiments in sound, that a particular pitch and quality of voice wasnecessary (which he could not decide until, of course, he had heard it), and that the successful applicant must have sufficient courage andimagination to follow a philosophical speculation "wheresoever it maylead, " and also be "so far indifferent to worldly success as to considerit of small account compared to spiritual knowledge--especially if suchknowledge appeared within reach and involved worldly sacrifices. " Hefurther added that a life of loneliness in the country would have to befaced, and that the man who suited him and worked faithfully should findcompensation by inheriting his own "rather considerable property when thetime came. " For the rest he asked no references and gave none. In aquestion of spiritual values references were mere foolishness. Each mustjudge intuitively for himself. 

Spinrobin, as has been said, bit. The letters, written in a finescholarly handwriting, excited his interest extraordinarily. He imaginedsome dreamer-priest possessed by a singular hobby, searching for thingsof the spirit by those devious ways he had heard about from time to time, a little mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to himbig, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of smallstature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It all attracted himhugely with its promise of out-of-the-way adventure. In his own phrase it"might lead to something, " and the hints about "experiments in sound" setchords trembling in him that had not vibrated since the days of hisboyhood's belief in names and the significance of names. The salary, besides, was good. He was accordingly thrilled and delighted to receivein reply to his last letter a telegram which read: "Engage you month'strial both sides. Take single ticket. Skale. "

"I like that 'take single ticket, '" he said to himself as he spedwestwards into Wales, dressed in his usual fluffy tweed suit andanarchist tie. Upon his knees lay a brand new Hebrew grammar which hestudied diligently all the way to Cardiff, and still carried in his handswhen he changed into the local train that carried him laboriously intothe desolation of the Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approvedof me already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does mostpeople. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"

He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the station in thedusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by adonkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in thehills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strodedown the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master andannounced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small, foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarilydeprived him of speech. 

"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale. "

The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep and vibrating;but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with difficulty from thenetwork of beard and moustaches, was winning and almost gentle incontradistinction to the volume of that authoritative voice. Spinrobinfelt slightly bewildered--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too manyimpressions through his brain for any particular one to be seized andmastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather, shaking his, in a capacious grasp as though it were some small indiarubber ball to besqueezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it away, he felt the shock upthe whole length of his arm to the shoulder. His first impressions, hedeclares, he cannot remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that heliked both smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, thelatter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-being. Neverbefore had he heard his name pronounced in quite the same way; it soundeddignified, even splendid, the way Mr. Skale spoke it. Beyond this generalimpression, however, he can only say that his thoughts and feelings"whirled. " Something emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhatenveloping and took him off his feet. The keynote of the man had beenstruck at once. 

"How do you do, sir? This _is_ the train you mentioned, I think?"Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as it were, ofinstinctive apology that he should have put such a man to the trouble ofcoming to meet him. He said "sir, " it seemed unavoidable; for there wasnothing of the clergyman about him--bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, butno suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in hispresentment he felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of theincongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together. Thevigorous open-air life of the mountaineer spoke in the great muscularbody with the broad shoulders and clean, straight limbs; but behind thebrusqueness of manner lay the true gentleness of fine breeding. 

And even here, on this platform of the lonely mountain station, Spinrobindetected the atmosphere of the scholar, almost of the recluse, shotthrough with the strange fires that dropped from the large, lambent, blueeyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with aneffect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left nosingle, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps, mostvividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes, their luminosity, their far-seeing expression, their kindliness. They were the eyes of thetrue visionary, but in such a personality they proclaimed the mystic whohad retained his health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely avisionary, but just as surely a wholesome man of action--probably ofterrific action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him. 

"It is not unpleasant, I trust, " the other was saying in his deeptones, "to find some one to meet you, and, " he added with a geniallaugh, "to counteract the first impression of this somewhat melancholyand inhospitable scenery. " His arm swept out to indicate the drearylittle station and the bleak and lowering landscape of treeless hillsin the dusk. 

The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of lonelinessalready dissipated in part by the unexpected welcome. And they fell toarrangements about the luggage. "You won't mind walking, " said Mr. Skale, with a finality that anticipated only agreement. "It's a short fivemiles. The donkey-cart will take the portmanteau. " Upon which theystarted off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he couldpossibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark, " explained the other, striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my housekeeper, will have teaready and waiting for us. " Spinrobin followed, panting, thinking vaguelyof the other employers he had known--philanthropists, bankers, ambitiousmembers of Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace individuals to aman; and then of the immense and towering figure striding just ahead, shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of power and whirlwind, touched so oddly here and there with a vein of gentleness that was almostsweetness. Never before had he known any human being who radiated suchvigor, such big and beneficent fatherliness, yet for all the air ofkindliness something, too, that touched in him the sense of awe. Mr. Skale, he felt, was a very unusual man. 

They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily. Spinrobinfelt "taken care of. " Usually he was shy with a new employer, but thisman inspired much too large a sensation in him to include shyness, or anyother form of petty self-consciousness. He felt more like a son than asecretary. He remembered the wording of the advertisement, the phrases ofthe singular correspondence--and wondered. "A remarkable personality, " hethought to himself as he stumbled through the dark after the object ofhis reflections; "simple--yet tremendous! A giant in all sorts of waysprobably--" Then his thought hesitated, floundered. There was somethingelse he divined yet could not name. He felt out of his depth in someentirely new way, in touch with an order of possibilities larger, morevast, more remote than any dreams his imagination even had yet envisaged. All this, and more, the mere presence of this retired clergyman pouredinto his receptive and eager little soul. 

And very soon it was that these nameless qualities began to assertthemselves, completing the rout of Spinrobin's moderate powers ofjudgment. No practical word as to the work before them, or the duties ofthe new secretary, had yet passed between them. They walked alongtogether, chatting as equals, acquaintances, almost two friends mighthave done. And on the top of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, theyrested for the first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trouserstucked up and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beardflattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits of hiswaistcoat as he looked keenly about him over the darkening landscape. Treeless and desolate hills rose on all sides. A few tumbled-downcottages of grey stone lay scattered upon the lower slopes among patchesof shabby and forlorn cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ranskywards into somber and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed toand fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds thatseemed to drop weighted shadows among the peaks. 

III

And it was here that Mr. Skale stopped abruptly, looked about him, andthen down at his companion. 

"Bleak and lonely--this great spread of bare mountain and fallingcliff, " he observed half to himself, half to the other; "but fine, very, very fine. " He exhaled deeply, then inhaled as though the great draughtof air was profoundly satisfying. He turned to catch his companion'seye. "There's a savage and desolate beauty here that uplifts. It helpsthe mind to dwell upon the full sweep of life instead of getting dwarfedand lost among its petty details. Pretty scenery is not good for thesoul. " And again he inhaled a prodigious breastful of the mountain air. "This is. "

"But an element of terror in it, perhaps, sir, " suggested the secretarywho, truth to tell, preferred his scenery more smiling, and who, further, had been made suddenly aware that in this somber setting ofbleak and elemental nature the great figure of his future employerassumed a certain air of grandeur that was a little too awe-inspiring tobe pleasant. 

"In all profound beauty there must be that, " the clergyman was saying;"fine terror, I mean, of course--just enough to bring out the littlenessof man by comparison. "

"Perhaps, yes, " agreed Spinrobin. His own insignificance seemedpeculiarly apparent at that moment in contrast to Mr. Skale who hadbecome part and parcel of the rugged landscape. Spinrobin was a lost atomwhirling somewhere outside on his own account, whereas the other seemedoddly in touch with it, almost merged and incorporated into it. Withthose deep breaths the clergyman absorbed something of this latent powerabout them--then gave it out again. It broke over his companion like awave. Elemental force of some kind emanated from that massive humanfigure beside him. 

The wind came tearing up the valley and swept past them with a rush asof mighty wings. Mr. Skale drew attention to it. "And listen to that!"he said. "How it leaps, singing, from the woods in the valley up tothose gaunt old cliffs yonder!" He pointed. His beard blew suddenlyacross his face. With his bare head and shaggy flying hair, his big eyesand bold aquiline nose, he presented an impressive figure. Spinrobinwatched him with growing amazement, aware that an enthusiasm scarcelywarranted by the wind and scenery had passed into his manner. In his ownperson, too, he thought he experienced a birth of something similar--alittle wild rush of delight he was unable to account for. The voice ofhis companion, pointing out the house in the valley below, againinterrupted his thoughts. 

"How the mountains positively eat it up. It lies in their very jaws, "and the secretary's eyes, traveling into the depths, made out a clusterof grey stone chimneys and a clearing in the woods that evidentlyrepresented lawns. The phrase "courage and imagination" flashed unbiddeninto his mind as he realized the loneliness of the situation, and for thehundredth time he wondered what in the world could be the experimentswith sound that this extraordinary man pursued in this isolated oldmansion among the hills. 

"Buried, sir, rather, " he suggested. "I can only just see it--"

"And inaccessible, " Mr. Skale interrupted him. "Hard to get at. No onecomes to disturb; an ideal place for work. In the hollows of these hillsa man may indeed seek truth and pursue it, for the world does not enterhere. " He paused a moment. "I hope, Mr. Spinrobin, " he added, turningtowards him with that gentle smile his shaggy visage sometimes wore, "Ihope you will not find it too lonely. We have no visitors, I mean;nothing but our own little household of four. "

Spinrobin smiled back. Even at this stage he admits he was exceedinglyanxious to suit. Mr. Skale, in spite of his marked peculiarities, inspired him with confidence. His personal attraction was growing everyminute; that vague awe he roused probably only increased it. He wonderedwho the "four" might be. 

"There's nothing like solitude for serious work, sir, " replied theyounger man, stifling a passing uneasiness. 

And with that they plunged down the hillside into the valley, Mr. Skaleleading the way at a terrific pace, shouting out instructions andwarnings from time to time that echoed from the rocks as though voicesfollowed them down from the mountains. The darkness swallowed them, theyleft the wind behind; the silence that dwells in the folded hills fellabout their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied, gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the clatter oftheir boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of the clergyman'svoice shouting instructions from time to time, broke the stillness. Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in front of him as best he could, stumbling frequently. With countless little hopping steps he dodged alongfrom point to point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling feetsaving him from many a tumble. 

"All right behind there?" Mr. Skale would thunder. 

"All right, thanks, Mr. Skale, " he would reply in his thin tenor, "I'm coming. "

"Come along, then!" And on they would go faster than before, till in duecourse they emerged from the encircling woods and reached the more openground about the house. Somehow, in the jostling relations of the walk, afreedom of intercourse had been established that no amount of formal talkbetween four walls could have accomplished. They scraped their dirtyboots vigorously on the iron mat. 

"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly. 

"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more, " was the reply. He looked upat the square mass of the house looming dark against the sky, and thenoise his companion made opening the door--the actual rattle of the ironknob did it--suddenly brought to him a clear realization of two things:First, he understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale hadbeen watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him, though by waysand methods so subtle that they had escaped his observation at the time;secondly, that he was already so caught in the network of thispersonality, vaster and more powerful than his own, that escape if hedesired it would be exceedingly difficult. Like a man in a boat upon theupper Niagara river, he already felt the tug and suction of the currentbelow--the lust of a great adventure drawing him forward. Mr. Skale'shand upon his shoulder as they entered the house was the symbol of_that_. The noise of the door closing behind him was the passing of thelast bit of quiet water across which a landing to the bank might stillhave been possible. 

Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear reached him eventhen and left their vague, undecipherable signatures upon the surface ofhis soul. The forces that vibrated so strangely in the atmosphere of Mr. Skale were already playing about his own person, gathering him in like agarment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it. Was he not already losingsomething of his own insignificant and diminutive self?

IV

The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door, shutting out thedarkness, and now led the way across a large, flagged hall into a room, ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls lined thickly with books, furnishedcozily if plainly. The laden tea table, and a kettle hissing merrily onthe hob, were pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gazeof the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap andapron--evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs. " Mawle--whostood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and wrinkledcountenance there lay an indefinable touch of something that hitherto hehad seen only in pictures of the saints by the old masters. Whatattracted his attention, and held it so arrestingly, was this singularexpression of happiness, aye, of more than mere happiness--of joy andpeace and blessed surety, rarely, if ever, seen upon a human face alive, and only here and there suggested behind that mask of repose which deathleaves so tenderly upon the features of those few who have lived theirlives to noblest advantage. 

Spinrobin caught his breath a little, and stared. Aged and lined as itunquestionably was, he caught that ineffable suggestion of radiance aboutit which proclaimed an inner life that had found itself and was inperfect harmony with outer things: a life based upon certain knowledgeand certain hope. It wore a gentle whiteness he could find only one wordto describe--glory. And the moment he saw it there flashed across him therecognition that this was what Mr. Skale also possessed. That giant, athletic, vigorous man, and this bent, worn old woman both had it. Hewondered with a rush of sudden joy what produced it;--whether it mightperhaps one day be his too. The flame of his own spirit leapt within him. 

And, so wondering, he turned to look at the clergyman. In the softerlight of fire and lamp his face had the appearance of forty rather thansixty as he had first judged; the eyes, always luminous, shone withhealth and enthusiasm; a great air of youth and vitality glowed abouthim. It was a fine head with that dominating nose and the shaggy tangleof hair and beard; very big, fatherly and protective he looked, a quiteinexpressible air of tenderness mingled in everywhere with the strength. Spinrobin felt immensely drawn to him as he looked. With such a leader hecould go anywhere, do anything. There, surely, was a man whose heart wasset not upon the things of this world. 

An introduction to the housekeeper interrupted his reflections; it didnot strike him as at all out of the way; doubtless she was more motherthan domestic to the household. At the name of "Mrs. " Mawle(courtesy-title, obviously), he rose and bowed, and the old woman, looking from one to the other, smiled becomingly, curtseyed, put her capstraight, and turned to the teapot again. She said nothing. 

"The only servant I have, practically, " explained the clergyman, "cook, butler, housekeeper and tyrant all in one; and, with her niece, the onlyother persons in the house besides ourselves. A very simple _ménage_, yousee, Mr. Spinrobin. I ought to warn you, too, by-the-by, " he added, "thatshe is almost stone deaf, and has only got the use of one arm, as perhapsyou noticed. Her left arm is"--he hesitated for a fraction of asecond--"withered. "

A passing wonder as to what the niece would be like accompanied theswallowing of his buttered toast and tea, but the personalities of Mr. Skale and his housekeeper had already produced emotions that preventedthis curiosity acquiring much strength. He could deal with nothing morejust yet. Bewilderment obstructed the way, and in his room before dinnerhe tried in vain to sort out the impressions that so thickly flooded him, though without any conspicuous degree of success. The walls of hisbedroom, like those of corridor and hall, were bare; the furniture solidand old-fashioned; scanty, perhaps, yet more than he was accustomed to;and the spaciousness was very pleasant after the cramped quarters ofstuffy London lodgings. He unpacked his few things, arranged them withneat precision in the drawers of the tallboy, counted his shirts, socks, and ties, to see that all was right, and then drew up an armchair andtoasted his toes before the comforting fire. He tried to think of manythings, and to decide numerous little questions roused by the events ofthe last few hours; but the only thing, it seems, that really occupiedhis mind, was the rather overpowering fact that he was--with Mr. Skaleand in Mr. Skale's house; that he was there on a month's trial; that thenature of the work in which he was to assist was unknown, immense, singular; and that he was already being weighed in the balances by hisuncommon and gigantic employer. In his mind he used this very adjective. There was something about the big clergyman--titanic. 

He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration about "Knowledgeof Hebrew--tenor voice--courage and imagination--unworldly, " and soforth, when a knock at the door announced Mrs. Mawle who came to informhim that dinner was ready. She stood there, a motherly and pleasantfigure in black, and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr. Spinrobin will please to come down, " she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr. Skale is always _quite_ punctual. " She always spoke thus, in the thirdperson; she never used the personal pronoun if it could be avoided. Shepreferred the name direct, it seemed. And as Spinrobin passed her on theway out, she observed further, looking straight into his eyes as she saidit: "and should Mr. Spinrobin have need of anything, _that_, " indicatingit, "is the bell that rings in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Mawle can seeit wag, though she can't hear it. Day or night, " she added with a faintcurtsey, "and no trouble at all, just as with the other gentlemen--"

So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries! He thanked her witha nod and a smile, and hurried pattering downstairs in a neat blue suit, black silk socks and a pair of bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having toldhim not to dress. The phrase "day or night, " meanwhile, struck him assignificant and peculiar. He remembered it later. At the moment he merelynoted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused hisbewilderment. 

V

Before he had gone very far, however, there came another--crowninglyperplexing. For he was halfway down the darkened passage, making for thehall that glimmered beyond like the mouth of a cave, when, without thesmallest warning, he became suddenly conscious that something attractiveand utterly delicious had invaded the stream of his being. It came fromnowhere--inexplicably, and at first it took the form of a naked sensationof delight, keen as a thrill of boyhood days. There passed into him veryswiftly something that satisfied. "I mean, whatever it was, " he says, "Icouldn't have asked or wanted more of it. It was all there, complete, supreme, sufficient. " And the same instant he saw close beside him, inthe comparative gloom of the narrow corridor, a vivid, vibrating pictureof a girl's face, pale as marble, of flower-like beauty, with darkvoluminous hair and large grey eyes that met his own from behind awavering net of eyelashes. Down to the shoulders he saw her. 

Erect and motionless she stood against the wall to let him pass--thisslim young girl whose sudden and unexpected presence had so electrifiedhim. Her eyes followed him like those of a picture, but she neither bowednor curtseyed, and the only movement she made was the slight turning ofthe head and eyes as he went by. It was extraordinarily effective, thissilent and delightful introduction, for swift as lightning, and withlightning's terrific and incalculable surety of aim, she leapt into hisheart with the effect of a blinding and complete possession. 

It was, of course, he realized, the niece--the fourth member of thehousehold, and the first clear thought to disentangle itself from theresultant jumble of emotions was his instinctive wonder what her namemight be. How was this delightful apparition called? This was thequestion that ran and danced in his blood. In another minute he felt surehe would discover it. It must begin (he felt sure of that) with an M. 

He did not pause, or alter his pace. He made no sign of recognition. Their eyes swallowed each other for a brief moment as he passed--andthen he was pattering with quick, excited steps down the passage beyond, and the girl was left out of sight in the shadows behind him. He did noteven turn back to look, for in some amazing sense she seemed to move onbeside him, as though some portion of her had merged into his being. Hecarried her on with him. Some sweet and marvelous interchange they hadundergone together. He felt strangely blessed, soothed inwardly, madecomplete, and more than twice on the way down the name he knew mustbelong to her almost sprang up and revealed itself--yet never quite. Heknew it began with M, even with Mir--but could get nothing more. Therest evaded him. He divined only a portion of the name. He had seen onlya portion of her form. 

The first syllable, however, sang in him with an exquisitely sweetauthority. He was aware of some glorious new thing in the penetralia ofhis little spirit, vibrating with happiness. Some portion of himself sangwith it. "For it really did vibrate, " he said, "and no other worddescribes it. It vibrated like music, like a string; as though when Ipassed her she had taken a bow and drawn it across the strings of myinmost being to make them sing. .. . "

"Come, " broke in the sonorous voice of the clergyman whom he foundstanding in the hall; "I've been waiting for you. "

It was said, not complainingly nor with any idea of fault-finding, butrather--both tone and manner betrayed it--as a prelude to something ofimportance about to follow. Somewhat impatiently Mr. Skale took hiscompanion by the arm and led him forwards; on the stone floor Spinrobin'sfootsteps sounded light and dancing, like a child's. The clergymanstrode. At the dining room door he stopped, turning abruptly, and at thesame instant the figure of the young girl glided noiselessly towardsthem from the mouth of the dark corridor where she had been waiting. 

Her entry, again, was curiously effective; like a beautiful thought in adream she moved into the hall, and into Spinrobin's life. Moreover, asshe came wholly into view in the light, he felt, as positively as thoughhe heard it uttered, that he knew her name complete. The first syllablehad come to him in the passageway when he saw her partly, and the feelingof dread that "Mir--" might prove to be part of "Miranda, " "Myrtle, " orsome other enormity, passed instantly. These would only have been grossand cruel misnomers. Her right name--the only one that described hersoul--must end, as it began, with M. It flashed into his mind, and at thesame moment Mr. Skale picked it off his very lips. 

"Miriam, " he said in deep tones, rolling the name along his mouth so asto extract every shade of sound belonging to it, "this is Mr. Spinrobinabout whom I told you. He is coming, I hope, to help us. "

VI

At first Spinrobin was only aware of the keen delight produced in him bythe manner of Skale's uttering her name, for it entered his consciousnesswith a murmuring, singing sound that continued on in his thoughts like amelody. His racing blood carried it to every portion of his body. Heheard her name, not with his ears alone but with his whole person--amelodious, haunting phrase of music that thrilled him exquisitely. Next, he knew that she stood close before him, shaking his hand, and lookingstraight into his eyes with an expression of the most complete trust andsympathy imaginable, and that he felt a well-nigh irresistible desire todraw her yet closer to him and kiss her little shining face. Thirdly--though the three impressions were as a matter of fact almostsimultaneous--that the huge figure of the clergyman stood behind them, watching with the utmost intentness and interest, like a keen and alertdetective eager for some betrayal of evidence, inspired, however, not bymistrust, but by a very zealous sympathy. 

He understood that this meeting was of paramount importance in Mr. Skale's purpose. 

"How do you do, Mr. Spinrobin, " he heard a soft voice saying, and thecommonplace phrase served to bring him back to a more normal standard ofthings. But the tone in which she said it caused him a second thrillalmost more delightful than the first, for the quality was low and fluty, like the gentle note of some mellow wind instrument, and the caressingway she pronounced his name was a revelation. Mr. Skale had known how tomake it sound dignified, but this girl did more--she made it sound alive. "I will give thee a new name" flashed into his thoughts, as somememory-cell of boyhood discharged its little burden most opportunely andproceeded to refill itself. 

The smile of happiness that broke over Spinrobin's face was certainlyreflected in the eyes that gazed so searchingly into his own, without thesmallest sign of immodesty, yet without the least inclination to drop theeyelids. The two natures ran out to meet each other as naturally as twonotes of music run to take their places in a chord. This slight, blue-eyed youth, light of hair and sensitive of spirit, and this slim, dark-skinned little maiden, with the voice of music and the wide-opengrey eyes, understood one another from the very first instant theiratmospheres touched and mingled; and the big Skale, looking on intentlyover their very shoulders, saw that it was good and smiled down uponthem, too, in his turn. 

"The harmony of souls and voices is complete, " he said, but in so low atone that the secretary did not hear it. Then, with a hand on a shoulderof each, he half pushed them before him into the dining room, his wholeface running, as it were, into a single big smile of contentment. Theimportant event had turned out to his entire satisfaction. He looked likesome beneficent father, well pleased with his two children. 

But Spinrobin, as he moved beside the girl and heard the rustle of herdress that almost touched him, felt as though he stood upon a slidingplatform that was moving ever quicker, and that the adventure upon whichhe was embarked had now acquired a momentum that nothing he could dowould ever stop. And he liked it. It would carry him out of himself intosomething very big. .. . 

And at dinner, where he sat opposite to the girl and studied her faceclosely, Mr. Skale, he was soon aware, was occupied in studying the twoof them even more closely. He appeared always to be listening to theirvoices. They spoke little enough, however, only their eyes metcontinually, and when they did so there was no evidence of a desire towithdraw. Their gaze remained fastened on one another, on her partwithout shyness, without impudence on his. That Mr. Skale wished for theman intimate and even affectionate understanding was evident, and thesecretary warmed to him on that account more than ever, if on no other. 

It surprised him too--when he thought of it, which was rarely--that agirl who was perforce of humble origin could carry herself with an air ofsuch complete and natural distinction, and prove herself so absolutely"the lady. " For there was something about her of greater value than anymere earthly rank or class could confer; her spirit was in its veryessence distinguished, perfectly simple, yet strong with a great andnatural pride. It never occurred to her soul to doubt its own greatvalue--or to question that of others. She somehow or other made thelittle secretary feel of great account. He had never quite realized hisown value before. Her presence, her eyes, her voice served to bring itout. And a very curious detail that he always mentions just at this pointis the fact that it never occurred to him to wonder what her surnamemight be, or whether, indeed, she had one at all. Her name, Miriam, seemed sufficient. The rest of her--if there was any other part of hernot described by those three syllables--lay safely and naturally includedsomewhere in _his own_ name. "Spinrobin" described her as well ashimself. But "Miriam" completed his own personality and at the same timeextended it. He felt all wrapped up and at peace with her. With PhilipSkale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam, he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that henaturally belonged as "one of the family. " They were like the four notesin the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto; himself andMiriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the singing soprano. Theimagery by which, in the depths of his mind, he sought to interpret tohimself the whole singular business ran, it seems, even then to music andthe analogies of music. 

The meal was short and very simple. Mrs. Mawle carved the joint at theend of the table, handed the vegetables and looked after their wants withthe precision of long habit. Her skill, in spite of the withered arm, wasnoteworthy. They talked little, Mr. Skale hardly at all. Miriam spokefrom time to time across the table to the secretary. She did not askquestions, she stated facts, as though she already knew all about hisfeelings and tastes. She may have been twenty years of age, perhaps, butin some way she took him back to childhood. And she said things with thesimple audacity of a child, ignoring Mr. Skale's presence. It seemed tothe secretary as if he had always known her. 

"I knew just how you would look, " she said, without a trace of shyness, "the moment I heard your name. And you got my name very quickly, too?"

"Only part of it, at first--"

"Oh yes; but when you saw me completely you got it all, " she interrupted. "And I like your name, " she added, looking him full in the eye with hersoft grey orbs; "it tells everything. "

"So does yours, you know. "

"Oh, of course, " she laughed; "Mr. Skale gave it to me the day Iwas born. "

"I _heard_ it, " put in the clergyman, speaking almost for the first time. And the talk dropped again, the secretary's head fairly whirling. 

"You used it all, of course, as a little boy, " she said presently again;"names, I mean?"

"Rather, " he replied without hesitation; "only I've rather lost itsince--"

"It will come back to you here. It's so splendid, all this world ofsound, and makes everything seem worth while. But you lose your way atfirst, of course; especially if you are out of practice, as you must be. "

Spinrobin did not know what to say. To hear this young girl make use ofsuch language took his breath away. He became aware that she was talkingwith a purpose, seconding Mr. Skale in the secret examination to whichthe clergyman was all the time subjecting him. Yet there was no elementof alarm in it all. In the room with these two, and with the motherlyfigure of the housekeeper busying about to and fro, he felt at home, comforted, looked after--more even, he felt at his best; as though thestream of his little life were mingling in with a much bigger andworthier river, a river, moreover, in flood. But it was the imagery ofmusic again that most readily occurred to him. He felt that the note ofhis own little personality had been caught up into the comforting bosomof a complete chord. .. . 

VII

"Mr. Spinrobin, " suddenly sounded soft and low across the table, and, thrilled to hear the girl speak his name, he looked up quickly and foundher very wide-opened eyes peering into his. Her face was thrust forward alittle as she leaned over the table in his direction. 

As he gazed she repeated his name, leisurely, quietly, and even moresoftly than before: "Mr. Spinrobin. " But this time, as their eyes met andthe syllables issued from her lips, he noticed that a singularafter-sound--an exceedingly soft yet vibrant overtone--accompanied it. The syllables set something quivering within him, something that sang, running of its own accord into a melody to which his rising pulses beattime and tune. 

"Now, please, speak my name, " she added. "Please look straight at me, straight into my eyes, and pronounce _my_ name. "

His lips trembled, if ever so slightly, as he obeyed. 

"Miriam . .. " he said. 

"Pronounce each syllable very distinctly and very slowly, " she said, hergrey eyes all over his burning face. 

"Mir . .. I . .. Am, " he repeated, looking in the center of the eyeswithout flinching, and becoming instantly aware that his utteranceof the name produced in himself a development and extension of theoriginal overtones awakened by her speaking of his own name. It waswonderful . .. Exquisite . .. Delicious. He uttered it again, and thenheard that she, too, was uttering his at the same moment. Each spoke theother's name. He could have sworn he heard the music within him leapacross the intervening space and transfer itself to her . .. And that heheard his own name singing, too, in _her_ blood. 

For the names were true. By this soft intoning utterance they seemed topass mutually into the secret rhythm of that Eternal Principle of Speechwhich exists behind the spoken sound and is independent of its means ofmanifestation. Their central beings, screened and limited behind theirnames, knew an instant of synchronous rhythmical vibration. It was theirintroduction absolute to one another, for it was an instant of nakedrevelation. 

"Spinrobin. .. . "

"Miriam. .. . "

VIII

. .. A great volume of sound suddenly enveloped and caught away the twosinging names, and the spell was broken. Miriam dropped her eyes;Spinrobin looked up. It was Mr. Skale's voice upon them with a shout. 

"Splendid! splendid!" he cried; "your voices, like your names, are madefor one another, in quality, pitch, accent, everything. " He wasenthusiastic rather than excited; but to Spinrobin, taking part in thisastonishing performance, to which the other two alone held the key, itall seemed too perplexing for words. The great bass crashed and boomedfor a moment about his ears; then came silence. The test, or whatever itwas, was over. It had been successful. 

Mr. Skale, his face still shining with enthusiasm, turned towards him. Miriam, equally happy, watched, her hands folded in her lap. 

"My dear fellow, " exclaimed the clergyman, half rising in his chair, "howmad you must think us! How mad you must think us! I can only assure youthat when you know more, as you soon shall, you will understand theimportance of what has just taken place. .. . "

He said a good deal more that Spinrobin did not apparently quite take in. He was too bewildered. His eyes sought the girl where she sat opposite, gazing at him. For all its pallor, her face was tenderly soft andbeautiful; more pure and undefiled, he thought, than any humancountenance he had ever seen, and sweet as the face of a child. Utterlyunstained it was. A similar light shone in the faces of Skale and Mrs. Mawle. In their case it had forged its way through the more or lessdefiling garment of a worn and experienced flesh. But the light inMiriam's eyes and skin was there because it had never been extinguished. She had retained her pristine brilliance of soul. Through the littlespirit of the perplexed secretary ran a thrill of genuine worship andadoration. 

"Mr. Skale's coffee is served in the library, " announced the voice of thehousekeeper abruptly behind them; and when Spinrobin turned again hediscovered that Miriam had slipped from the room unobserved and was gone. 

Mr. Skale took his companion's arm and led the way towards the hall. 

"I am glad you love her, " was his astonishing remark. "It is the firstand most essential condition of your suiting me. "

"She is delightful, wonderful, charming, sir--"

"Not 'sir, ' if you please, " replied the clergyman, standing aside at thethreshold for his guest to pass; "I prefer the use of the name, you know. I think it is important. "

And he closed the library door behind them. 

Chapter II

I

For some minutes they sat in front of the fire and sipped their coffee insilence. The secretary felt that the sliding platform on which he wastraveling into this extraordinary adventure had been going a little toofast for him. Events had crowded past before he had time to look squarelyat them. He had lost his bearings rather, routed by Miriam's beauty andby the amazing way she talked to him. Had she lived always inside histhoughts she could not have chosen words better calculated to convincehim that they were utterly in sympathy one with the other. Mr. Skale, moreover, approved heartily. The one thing Spinrobin saw clearly throughit all was that himself and Miriam--their voices, rather--were necessaryfor the success of the clergyman's mysterious experiments. Only, whileMiriam, little witch, knew all about it, he, candidate on trial, knew asyet--nothing. 

And now, as they sat opposite one another in the privacy of the library, Spinrobin, full of confidence and for once proud of his name andpersonality, looked forward to being taken more into the heart of theaffair. Things advanced, however, more slowly than he desired. Mr. Skale's scheme was too big to be hurried. 

The clergyman did not smoke, but his companion, with the other's readypermission, puffed gently at a small cigarette. Short, rapid puffs hetook, as though the smoke was afraid to enter beyond the front teeth, andwith one finger he incessantly knocked off the ashes into his saucer, even when none were there to fall. On the table behind them gurgled theshaded lamp, lighting their faces from the eyes downwards. 

"Now, " said Mr. Skale, evidently not aware that he thundered, "we cantalk quietly and undisturbed. " He caught his beard in a capacious hand, in such a way that the square outline of his chin showed through thehair. His voice boomed musically, filling the room. Spinrobin listenedacutely, afraid even to cross his legs. A genuine pronouncement, he felt, was coming. 

"A good many years ago, Mr. Spinrobin, " he said simply, "when I was acurate of a country parish in Norfolk, I made a discovery--of arevolutionary description--a discovery in the world of real things, thatis, of spiritual things. "

He gazed fixedly over the clutched beard at his companion, apparentlysearching for brief, intelligible phrases. "But a discovery, thedevelopment of which I was obliged to put on one side until I inheritedwith this property the means and leisure which enabled me to continue myterrific--I say purposely terrific--researches. For some years now I havebeen quietly at work here absorbed in my immense pursuit. " And again hestopped. "I have reached a point, Mr. Spinrobin--"

"Yes, " interjected the secretary, as though the mention of his nametouched a button and produced a sound. "A point--?"

"Where I need the assistance of some one with a definite quality ofvoice--a man who emits a certain note--a certain tenor note. " He releasedhis beard, so that it flew out with a spring, at the same momentthrusting his head forward to drive home the announcement effectively. 

Spinrobin crossed his legs with a fluttering motion, hastily. "As youadvertised, " he suggested. 

The clergyman bowed. 

"My efforts to find the right man, " continued the enthusiast, leaningback in his chair, "have now lasted a year. I have had a dozen men downhere, each on a month's trial. None of them suited. None had therequisite quality of voice. With a single exception, none of them couldstand the loneliness, the seclusion; and without exception, all of themwere too worldly to make sacrifices. It was the salary they wanted. Themajority, moreover, confused imagination with fancy, and courage withmere audacity. And, most serious of all, not one of them passed the testof--Miriam. She harmonized with none of them. They were discords one andall. You, Mr. Spinrobin, are the first to win acceptance. The instant sheheard your name she cried for you. And she knows. She sings the soprano. She took you into the chord. "

"I hope indeed--" stammered the flustered and puzzled secretary, and thenstopped, blushing absurdly. "You claim for me far more than I should dareto claim for myself, " he added. The reference to Miriam delighted him, and utterly destroyed his judgment. He longed to thank the girl forhaving approved him. "I'm glad my voice--er--suits your--chord. " In hisheart of hearts he understood something of what Mr. Skale was driving at, yet was half-ashamed to admit it even to himself. In this twentiethcentury it all seemed so romantic, mystical, and absurd. He felt it wasall half-true. If only he could have run back into that great "mentalprairie" of his boyhood days it might all have been _quite_ true. 

"Precisely, " continued Mr. Skale, bringing him back to reality, "precisely. And now, before I tell you more, you will forgive my askingyou one or two personal questions, I'm sure. We must build securely as wego, leaving nothing to chance. The grandeur and importance of myexperiments demand it. Afterwards, " and his expression changed to asudden softness in a way that was characteristic of the man, "you mustfeel free to put similar questions to me, as personal and direct as youplease. I wish to establish a perfect frankness between us at the start. "

"Thank you, Mr. Skale. Of course--er--should anything occur to me toask--" A momentary bewilderment, caused by the great visage so close tohis own, prevented the completion of the sentence. 

"As to your beliefs, for instance, " the clergyman resumed abruptly, "your religious beliefs, I mean. I must be sure of you on that ground. What are you?"

"Nothing--I think, " Spinrobin replied without hesitation, remembering howhis soul had bounced its way among the various creeds since Cambridge, and arrived at its present state of Belief in Everything, yet without anydefinite label. "Nothing in particular. Nominally, though--a Christian. "

"You believe in a God?"

"A Supreme Intelligence, most certainly, " was the emphatic reply. 

"And spirits?"

Spinrobin hesitated. He was a very honest soul. 

"Other life, let me put it, " the clergyman helped him; "other beingsbesides ourselves?"

"I have often felt--wondered, rather, " he answered carefully, "whetherthere might not be other systems of evolution besides humanity. Suchextraordinary Forces come blundering into one's life sometimes, and onecan't help wondering where they come from. I have never formulated anydefinite beliefs, however--"

"Your world is not a blind chaos, I mean?" Mr. Skale put gravely to him, as though questioning a child. 

"No, no, indeed. There's order and system--"

"In which you personally count for something of value?" asked theother quickly. 

"I like to think so, " was the apologetic reply. "There's something thatincludes me somewhere in a purpose of very great importance--only, ofcourse, I've got to do my part, and--"

"Good, " Mr. Skale interrupted him. "And now, " he asked softly, aftera moment's pause, leaning forward, "what about death? Are you afraidof death?"

Spinrobin started visibly. He began to wonder where this extraordinarycatechism was going to lead. But he answered at once: he had thought outthese things and knew where he stood. 

"Only of its possible pain, " he said, smiling into the bearded visagebefore him. "And an immense curiosity, of course--"

"It does not mean extinction for you--going out like the flame of acandle, for instance?"

"I have never been able to believe _that_, Mr. Skale. I continuesomewhere and somehow--forever. "

The cross-examination puzzled him more and more, and through it, for thefirst time, he began to feel dimly, ran a certain strain of something notquite right, not permissible in the biggest sense. It was not thequestions themselves that produced this odd and rather disquietingimpression, but the fact that Mr. Skale was preparing the ground withsuch extraordinary thoroughness. This conversation was the first swell, as it were, rolling mysteriously in upon him from the ocean in whosedeeps the great Experiment lay buried. Forces, tidal in strength, oceanicin volume, shrouded it just now, but he already felt them. They reachedhim through the person of the clergyman. It was these forces playingthrough his personality that Spinrobin had been aware of the first momentthey met on the station platform, and had "sensed" even more stronglyduring the walk home across the mountains. 

Behind the play of these darker impressions, as yet only vague andambiguous, there ran in and out among his thoughts the vein of somethingmuch sweeter. Miriam, with her large grey eyes and silvery voice, wascontinually peeping in upon his mind. He wondered where she was and whatshe was doing in the big, lonely house. He wished she could have been inthe room to hear his answers and approve them. He felt incomplete withouther. Already he thought of her as the melody to which he was theaccompaniment, two things that ought not to be separated. 

"My point is, " Mr. Skale continued, "that, apart from ordinary humanties, and so forth, you have no intrinsic terror of death--of losing yourpresent body?"

"No, no, " was the reply, more faintly given than the rest. "I love mylife, but--but--" he looked about him in some confusion for the rightwords, still thinking of Miriam--"but I look forward, Mr. Skale; I lookforward. " He dropped back into the depths of his armchair and puffedswiftly at the end of his extinguished cigarette, oblivious of the factthat no smoke came. 

"The attitude of a brave man, " said the clergyman with approval. Then, looking straight into the secretary's blue eyes, he added with increasedgravity: "And therefore it would not be immoral of me to expose you to anexperiment in which the penalty of a slip would be--death? Or you wouldnot shrink from it yourself, provided the knowledge to be obtained seemedworth while?"

"That's right, sir--Mr. Skale, I mean; that's right, " came the answerafter an imperceptible pause. 

The result of the talk seemed to satisfy the clergyman. "You must thinkmy questions _very_ peculiar, " he said, the sternness of his facerelaxing a little, "but it was necessary to understand your exactposition before proceeding further. The gravity of my undertaking demandsit. However, you must not let my words alarm you. " He waited a moment, reflecting deeply. "You must regard them, if you will, as a kind oftest, " he resumed, searching his companion's face with eagle eyes, "thebeginning of a series of tests in which your attitude to Miriam and hersto you, so far as that goes, was the first. "

"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Skale, " was his inadequate rejoinder; for themoment the name of the girl was introduced his thoughts instantlywandered out to find her. The way the clergyman pronounced it increasedits power, too, for no name he uttered sounded ordinary. There seemed acurious mingling in the resonant cavity of his great mouth of thefundamental note and the overtones. 

"Yes, you have the kind of courage that is necessary, " Mr. Skale wassaying, half to himself, "the modesty that forgets self, and theunworldly attitude that is essential. With your help I may encompasssuccess; and I consider myself wonderfully fortunate to have found you, wonderfully fortunate. .. . "

"I'm glad, " murmured Spinrobin, thinking that so far he had not learnedanything very definite about his duties, or what it was he had to do toearn so substantial a salary. Truth to tell, he did not bother much aboutthat part of it. He was conscious only of three main desires: to pass theunknown tests, to learn the nature of Mr. Skale's discovery, with theexperiment involved, and--to be with Miriam as much as possible. Thewhole affair was so unusual that he had already lost the common standardsof judging. He let the sliding platform take him where it would, and heflattered himself that he was not fool enough to mistake originality forinsanity. The clergyman, dreamer and enthusiast though he might be, wasas sane as other men, saner than most. 

"I hope to lead you little by little to what I have in view, " Mr. Skalewent on, "so that at the end of our trial month you will have learnedenough to enable you to form a decision, yet not enough to--to use myknowledge should you choose to return to the world. "

It was very frank, but the secretary did not feel offended. He acceptedthe explanation as perfectly reasonable. In his mind he knew full wellwhat his choice would be. This was the supreme adventure he had been solong a-seeking. No ordinary obstacle could prevent his accepting it. 

II

There came a pause of some length, in which Spinrobin found nothingparticular to say. The lamp gurgled; the coals fell softly into thefender. Then suddenly Mr. Skale rose and stood with his back to thegrate. He gazed down upon the small figure in the chair. He toweredthere, a kindly giant, enthusiasm burning in his eyes like lamps. Hisvoice was very deep, his manner more solemn than before when he spoke. 

"So far, so good, " he said, "and now, with your permission, Mr. Spinrobin, I should like to go a step further. I should like totake--your note. "

"My note?" exclaimed the other, thinking he had not heard correctly. 

"Your sound, yes, " repeated the clergyman. 

"My sound!" piped the little man, vastly puzzled, his voice shrill withexcitement. He dodged about in the depths of his big leather chair, asthough movement might bring explanation. 

Mr. Skale watched him calmly. "I want to get the vibrations of yourvoice, and then see what pattern they produce in the sand, " he said. 

"Oh, in the sand, yes; quite so, " replied the secretary. He rememberedhow the vibrations of an elastic membrane can throw dry sand, looselyscattered upon its surface, into various floral and geometrical figures. Chladni's figures, he seemed to remember, they were called after theirdiscoverer. But Mr. Skale's purpose in the main, of course, escaped him. 

"You don't object?"

"On the contrary, I am greatly interested. " He stood up on the mat besidehis employer. 

"I wish to make _quite_ sure, " the clergyman added gravely, "that yourvoice, your note, is what I think it is--accurately in harmony withmine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's. The pattern it makes will help toprove this. "

The secretary bowed in perplexed silence, while Mr. Skale crossed theroom and took a violin from its case. The golden varnish of its ribs andback gleamed in the lamplight, and when the clergyman drew the bow acrossthe strings to tune it, smooth, mellow sounds, soft and resonant asbells, filled the room. Evidently he knew how to handle the instrument. The notes died away in a murmur. 

"A Guarnerius, " he explained, "and a perfect pedigree specimen; it hasthe most sensitive structure imaginable, and carries vibrations almostlike a human nerve. For instance, while I speak, " he added, laying theviolin upon his companion's hand, "you will feel the vibrations of myvoice run through the wood into your palm. "

"I do, " said Spinrobin. It trembled like a living thing. 

"Now, " continued Mr. Skale, after a pause, "what I first want is toreceive the vibrations of your own voice in the same way--into my verypulses. Kindly read aloud steadily while I hold it. Stop reading when Imake a sign. I'll nod, so that the vibrations of my voice won'tinterfere. " And he handed a notebook to him with quotations enteredneatly in his own handwriting, selected evidently with a purpose, and alldealing with sound, music, as organized sound, and names. Spinrobin readaloud; the first quotation from Meredith he recognized, but the others, and the last one, discussing names, were new to him:--

"But _listen in the thought_; so may there comeConception of a newly-added chord, Commanding space beyond where ear has home. 

"Everything that the sun shines upon sings or can be made to sing, andcan be heard to sing. Gases, impalpable powders, and woolen stuffs, incommon with other non-conductors of sound, give forth notes of differentpitches when played upon by an intermittent beam of white light. Coloredstuffs will sing in lights of different colors, but refuse to sing inothers. The polarization of light being now accomplished, light and soundare known to be alike. Flames have a modulated voice and can be made tosing a definite melody. Wood, stone, metal, skins, fibers, membranes, every rapidly vibrating substance, _all have in them the potentialitiesof musical sound_. 

"Radium receives its energy from, and responds to, radiations whichtraverse all space--as piano strings respond to sounds in unison withtheir notes. Space is all a-quiver with waves of radiant energy. Wevibrate in sympathy with a few strings here and there--with the tinyX-rays, actinic rays, light waves, heat waves, and the hugeelectromagnetic waves of Hertz and Marconi; but there are great spaces, numberless radiations, to which we are stone deaf. Some day, a thousandyears hence, we shall know the full sweep of this magnificent harmony. 

"Everything in nature has its name, and he who has the power to call athing by its proper name can make it subservient to his will; for itsproper name is not the arbitrary name given to it by man, but theexpression of the totality of its powers and attributes, because thepowers and attributes of each Being are intimately connected with itsmeans of expression, and between both exists the most exact proportion inregard to measure, time, and condition. "

The meaning of the four quotations, as he read them, plunged down intohim and touched inner chords very close to his own beliefs. Something ofhis own soul, therefore, passed into his voice as he read. He read, thatis to say, with authority. 

A nod from Mr. Skale stopped him just as he was beginning a fifthpassage. Raising the vibrating instrument to his ear, the clergyman firstlistened a moment intently. Then he quickly had it under his chin, beardflowing over it like water, and the bow singing across the strings. Thenote he played--he drew it out with that whipping motion of the bow onlypossible to a loving expert--was soft and beautiful, long drawn out witha sweet singing quality. He took it on the G string with the secondfinger--in the "fourth position. " It thrilled through him, Spinrobindeclares, most curiously and delightfully. It made him happy to hear it. It was very similar to the singing vibrations he had experienced whenMiriam gazed into his eyes and spoke his name. 

"Thank you, " said Mr. Skale, and laid the violin down again. "I've gotthe note. You're E flat. "

"E flat!" gasped Spinrobin, not sure whether he was pleased ordisappointed. 

"That's your sound, yes. You're E flat--just as I thought, just as Ihoped. You fit in exactly. It seems too good to be true!" His voice beganto boom again, as it always did when he was moved. He was striding about, very alert, very masterful, pushing the furniture out of his way, hiseyes more luminous than ever. "It's magnificent. " He stopped abruptly andlooked at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for aninstant lost his bearings altogether. "It means, my dear Spinrobin, " hesaid slowly, with a touch of solemnity that woke an involuntary shiverdeep in his listener's being, "that you are destined to play a part, andan important part, in one of the grandest experiments ever dreamed of bythe heart of man. For the first time since my researches began twentyyears ago I now see the end in sight. "

"Mr. Skale--that _is_ something--indeed, " was all the little man couldfind to say. 

There was no reason he could point to why the words should have produceda sense of chill about his heart. It was only that he felt again the hugegroundswell of this vast unknown experiment surging against him, liftinghim from his feet--as a man might feel the Atlantic swells rise with himtowards the stars before they engulfed him forever. It seemed getting atrifle out of hand, this adventure. Yet it was what he had always longedfor, and his courage must hold firm. Besides, Miriam was involved in itwith him. What could he ask better than to risk his insignificantpersonality in some gigantic, mad attempt to plumb the Unknown, with thatslender, little pale-faced Beauty by his side? The wave of Mr. Skale'senthusiasm swept him away deliciously. 

"And now, " he cried, "we'll get your Pattern too. I no longer have anydoubts, but none the less it will be a satisfaction to us both to see it. It must, I'm sure, harmonies with ours; it must!"

He opened a cupboard drawer and produced a thin sheet of glass, uponwhich he next poured some finely powdered sand out of a paper bag. Itrattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard surface. And while he didthis, he talked rapidly, boomingly, with immense enthusiasm. 

"All sounds, " he said, half to himself, half to the astonished secretary, "create their own patterns. Sound builds; sound destroys; and invisiblesound-vibrations affect concrete matter. For all sounds produceforms--the forms that correspond to them, as you shall now see. Withinevery form lies the silent sound that first called it into view--intovisible shape--into being. Forms, shapes, bodies are the vibratoryactivities of _sound made visible_. "

"My goodness!" exclaimed Spinrobin, who was listening like a man in adream, but who caught the violence of the clergyman's idea none the less. 

"Forms and bodies are--_solidified Sound_, " cried the clergyman initalics. 

"You say something extraordinary, " exclaimed the commonplace Spinrobin inhis shrill voice. "Marvelous!" Vaguely he seemed to remember thatSchelling had called architecture "frozen music. "

Mr. Skale turned and looked at him as a god might look at aninsect--that he loved. 

"Sound, Mr. Spinrobin, " he said, with a sudden and effective lowering ofhis booming voice, "is the original divine impulsion behindnature--communicated to language. It is--creative!"

Then, leaving the secretary with this nut of condensed knowledge to crackas best he could, the clergyman went to the end of the room in threestrides. He busied himself for a moment with something upon the wall;then he suddenly turned, his great face aglow, his huge form erect, fixing his burning eyes upon his distracted companion. 

"In the Beginning, " he boomed solemnly, in tones of profound conviction, "was--the _Word_. " He paused a moment, and then continued, his voicefilling the room to the very ceiling. "At the Word of God--at the thunderof the Voice of God, worlds leaped into being!" Again he paused. "Sound, "he went on, the whole force of his great personality in the phrase, "wasthe primordial, creative energy. A sound can call a form into existence. Forms are the Sound-Figures of archetypal forces--the Word made Flesh. "He stopped, and moved with great soft strides about the room. 

Spinrobin caught the words full in the face. For a space he could notmeasure--considerably less than a second, probably--the consciousness ofsomething unutterably immense, unutterably flaming, rushed tumultuouslythrough his mind, with wings that bore his imagination to a place wherelight was--dazzling, white beyond words. He felt himself tossed up toHeaven on the waves of a great sea, as the body of strange belief behindthe clergyman's words poured through him. .. . For somewhere, behind theincoherence of the passionate language, burned the blaze of a truethought at white heat--could he but grasp it through the stammeringutterance. 

Then, with equal swiftness, it passed. His present surroundings cameback. He dropped with a dizzy rush from awful spaces . .. And was awarethat he was merely--standing on the black, woolly mat before the firewatching the movements of his new employer, that his pumps were brightand pointed, his head just level with a dark marble mantelpiece. Dazed, and a trifle breathless he felt; and at the back of his disordered mindstirred a schoolboy's memory that the Pythagoreans believed theuniverse to have been called out of chaos by Sound, Number, andHarmony--or something to that effect. .. . But these huge, fugitivethoughts that tore through him refused to be seized and dealt with. Hestaggered a little, mentally; then, with a prodigious effort, controlledhimself--and watched. 

III

Mr. Skale, he saw, had fastened the little sheet of glass by its fourcorners to silken strings hanging from the ceiling. The glass plate hung, motionless and horizontal, in the air with its freight of sand. Forseveral minutes the clergyman played a series of beautiful modulations indouble-stopping upon the violin. In these the dominating influence was Eflat. Spinrobin was not musical enough to describe it more accuratelythan this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how Skaledrew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and searching tones bywhich strings can reach the spiritual center of a man and make himrespond to delicate vibrations of thoughts beyond his normal gamut. .. . 

Spinrobin, listening, understood that he was a greater man than heknew. .. . 

And the sand on the glass sheet, he next became aware, was shifting, moving, dancing. He heard the tiny hissing and rattling of the drygrains. It was uncommonly weird. This visible and practical resultmade the clergyman's astonishing words seem true and convincing. Thatmoving sand brought sanity, yet a certain curious terror of theunknown into it all. 

A minute later Mr. Skale stopped playing and beckoned to him. 

"See, " he said quietly, pointing to the arrangement the particles ofsand had assumed under the influence of the vibrations. "There's yourpattern--your sound made visible. That's your utterance--the Note yousubstantially represent and body forth in terms of matter. "

The secretary stared. It was a charming but very simple pattern the linesof sand had assumed, not unlike the fronds of a delicate fern growing outof several small circles round the base. 

"So that's my note--made visible!" he exclaimed under his breath. "It'sdelightful; it's quite exquisite. "

"That's E flat, " returned Mr. Skale in a whisper, so as not to disturbthe pattern; "if I altered the note, the pattern would alter too. Enatural, for instance, would be different. Only, luckily, you are Eflat--just the note we want. And now, " he continued, straighteninghimself up to his full height, "come over and see mine and Miriam's andMrs. Mawle's, and you'll understand what I meant when I said that yourswould harmonize. " And in a glass case across the room they examined anumber of square sheets of glass with sand upon them in various patterns, all rendered permanent by a thin coating of a glue-like transparentsubstance that held the particles in position. 

"There you see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's, " he said, stooping tolook. "They harmonize most beautifully, you observe, with your own. "

It was, indeed, a singular and remarkable thing. The patterns, though alldifferent, yet combined in some subtle fashion impossible of analysis toform a complete and well-proportioned Whole--a design--a picture. Thepatterns of the clergyman and the housekeeper provided the base andforeground, those of Miriam and the secretary the delicatesuperstructure. The girl's pattern, he noted with a subtle pleasure, wascuriously similar to his own, but far more delicate and waving. Yet, whereas his was floral, hers was stellar in character; that of thehousekeeper was spiral, and Mr. Skale's he could only describe as aminiature whirlwind of very exquisite design rising out of apparentlythree separate centers of motion. 

"If I could paint over them the color each shade of sound represents, "Mr. Skale resumed, "the tint of each _timbre_, or _Klangfarbe_, as theGermans call it, you would see better still how we are all groupedtogether there into a complete and harmonious whole. "

Spinrobin looked from the patterns to his companion's great face bendingthere beside him. Then he looked back again at the patterns. He couldthink of nothing quite intelligible to say. He noticed more clearly everyminute that these dainty shapes of sand, stellar, spiral, and floral, stood to one another in certain definite proportions, in a rising andcalculated ratio of singular beauty. 

"There, before you, lies a true and perfect chord made visible, " theclergyman said in tones thrilling with satisfaction, "--three notes inharmony with the fundamental sound, myself, and with each other. My dearfellow, I congratulate you, I congratulate you. "

"Thank you very much, indeed, " murmured Spinrobin. "I don't quiteunderstand it all yet, but it's--it's extraordinarily fascinating andwonderful. "

Mr. Skale said nothing, and Spinrobin drifted back to his big armchair. Adeep silence pervaded the room for the space of several minutes. In theheart of that silence lay the mass of direct and vital questions thesecretary burned, yet was afraid, to ask. For such was the plain truth;he yearned to know, yet feared to hear. The Discovery and the Experimentof this singular man loomed already somewhat vast and terrible; theadjective that had suggested itself before returned to him--"notpermissible. " . .. Of Mr. Skale himself he had no sort of fear, though agrowing and uncommon respect, but of the purpose Mr. Skale had in viewhe caught himself thinking more and more, yet without obvious reason, with a distinct shrinking almost amounting to dismay. But for the factthat so sweet and gentle a creature as Miriam was traveling the same pathwith him, this increased sense of caution would have revealed itselfplainly for what it was--Fear. .. . 

"I am deeply interested, Mr. Skale, " he said at length, breaking firstthe silence, "and sympathetic too, I assure you; only--you will forgiveme for saying it--I am, as yet, still rather in the dark as to where allthis is to lead--" The clergyman's eyes, fixed straight upon his own, again made it difficult to finish the sentence as he wished. 

"Necessarily so, because I can only lead you to my discovery step bystep, " replied the other steadily. "I wish you to be thoroughly preparedfor anything that may happen, so that you can deal intelligently withresults that might otherwise overwhelm you. "

"Overwhelm--?" faltered his listener. 

"_Might_, I said. Note carefully my use of words, for they are accuratelychosen. Before I can tell you all I must submit you, for your own sake, to certain tests--chiefly to the test of Alteration of Form by Sound. Itis somewhat--er--alarming, I believe, the first time. You must bethoroughly accustomed to these astonishing results before we dare toapproach the final Experiment; so that you will not tremble. For therecan be no rehearsal. The great Experiment can only be made once . .. And Imust be as sure as possible that you will feel no terror in the face ofthe Unknown. "

IV

Spinrobin listened breathlessly. He hesitated a moment after the otherstopped speaking, then slewed round on his slippery chair and faced him. 

"I can understand, " he began, "why you want imagination, but you spoke ofcourage too? I mean, --is there any immediate cause for alarm? Anypersonal danger, for instance, _now_?" For the clergyman's weightysentences had made him realize in a new sense the loneliness of hissituation here among these desolate hills. He would appreciate someassurance that his life was not to be trifled with before he lost thepower to withdraw if he wished to do so. 

"None whatever, " replied Mr. Skale with decision, "there is no questionat all of physical personal injury. You must trust me and have a littlepatience. " His tone and manner were exceedingly grave, yet at the sametime inspired confidence. 

"I do, " said Spinrobin honestly. 

Another pause fell between them, longer than the rest; it was broken bythe clergyman. He spoke emphatically, evidently weighing his words withthe utmost care. 

"This Chord, " he said simply--yet, for all the simplicity, there ran toand fro behind his words the sense of unlawful and immense forcesimpending--"I need for a stupendous experiment with sound, an experimentwhich will lead in turn towards a yet greater and final one. There is noharm in your knowing that. To produce a certain transcendent result Iwant a complex sound--a chord, but a complete and perfect chord in whicheach note is sure of itself and absolutely accurate. "

He waited a moment. There was utter silence about them in the room. Spinrobin held his breath. 

"No instrument can help me; the notes must be human, " he resumed in alower voice, "and the utterers--pure. For the human voice can producesounds 'possessing in some degree the characteristics not only of allmusical instruments, but of all sounds of whatever description. ' By meansof this chord I hope to utter a certain sound, a certain _name_, of whichyou shall know more hereafter. But a name, as you surely know, need notbe composed of one or two syllables only; a whole symphony may be a name, and a whole orchestra playing for days, or an entire nation chanting foryears, may be required to pronounce the beginning merely of--of certainnames. Yours, Robert Spinrobin, for instance, I can pronounce in aquarter of a second; but there may be names so vast, so mighty, thatminutes, days, years even, may be necessary for their full utterance. There may be names, indeed, which can never be known, for they couldnever be uttered--_in time_. For the moment I am content simply to dropthis thought into your consciousness; later you shall understand more. Ionly wish you to take in now that I need this perfect chord for theutterance in due course of a certain complex and stupendous name--theinvocation, that is, of a certain complex and stupendous Force!"

"I think I understand, " whispered the other, afraid to interrupt more. 

"And the difficulty I have experienced in finding the three notes hasbeen immense. I found Mrs. Mawle--alto; then Miriam I found at birth andtrained her--soprano; and now I have found you, Mr. Spinrobin, and mychord, with myself as bass, is complete. Your note and Miriam's, sopranoand tenor, are closer than the relations between the other notes, and atenor has accordingly been most difficult to find. You can now understandthe importance of your being sympathetic to each other. "

Spinrobin's heart burned within him as he listened. He began to graspsome sweet mystical meaning in the sense of perfect companionship themere presence of the girl inspired. They were the upper notes in the samechord together, linked in a singing and harmonious relation, the onenecessary to the other. Moreover, in the presence of Mr. Skale and thehousekeeper, bass and alto in the full chord, their completeness wasstill more emphasized, and they knew their fullest life. The adventurepromised to be amazingly seductive. He would learn practically thestrange truth that to know the highest life Self must be lost and mergedin something bigger. And was this not precisely what he had so long beenseeking--escape from his own insignificance?

"And--er--the Hebrew that you require of me, Mr. Skale?" he asked, returning to practical considerations. 

"Our purposes require a certain knowledge of Hebrew, " he answered withouthesitation or demur, "because that ancient language and the magicalresources of sound are profoundly linked. In the actual sounds of many ofthe Hebrew letters lies a singular power, unguessed by the majority, undivined especially, of course, by the mere scholar, but available forthe pure in heart who may discover how to use their extraordinary values. They constitute, in my view at least, a remnant of the original Chaldaeanmysteries, the lore of that magic which is older than religion. Thesecret of this knowledge lies in the _psychic values of sound_; forHebrew, the Hebrew of the Bahir, remains in the hierarchy of languages adirect channel to the unknown and inscrutable forces; and the knowledgeof mighty and supersensual things lies locked up in the correct utteranceof many of its words, letters and phrases. Its correct utterance, markwell. For knowledge of the most amazing and terrible kind is there, waiting release by him who knows, and who greatly dares. 

"And you shall later learn that sound is power. The Hebrew alphabet youmust know intimately, and the intricate association of its letters withnumber, color, harmony and geometrical form, all of which are butsymbols of the Realities at the very roots of life. The Hebrew alphabet, Mr. Spinrobin, is a 'discourse in methods of manifestation, offormation. ' In its correct pronunciation lies a way to direct knowledgeof divine powers, and to conditions beyond this physical existence. "

The clergyman's voice grew lower and lower as he proceeded, and theconviction was unavoidable that he referred to things whereof he hadpractical knowledge. To Spinrobin it was like the lifting of a greatveil. As a boy he had divined something of these values of sound andname, but with the years this knowledge had come to seem fantastic andunreal. It now returned upon him with the force of a terrific certainty. That immense old inner playground of his youth, without boundaries orhorizon, rolled up before his mental vision, inviting further anddetailed discovery. 

"With the language, qua language, " he continued, "you need not trouble, but the 'Names' of many things you must know accurately, and especiallythe names of the so-called 'Angels'; for these are in reality Forces ofimmense potency, vast spiritual Powers, Qualities, and the like, allevocable by correct utterance of their names. This language, as you willsee, is _alive_ and divine in the true sense; its letters are thevehicles of activities; its words, terrific formulae; and the truepronunciation of them remains today a direct channel to divine knowledge. In time you shall see; in time you shall know; in time you shall hear. Mr. Spinrobin, " and he thrust his great head forwards and dropped hisvoice to a hushed whisper, "in time we shall all together make thisExperiment in sound which shall redeem us and make us as Gods!"

"Thank you!" gasped the secretary, swept off his feet by this torrent ofuncommon and mystical language, and passing a moist hand through hisfeathery hair. He was not entirely ignorant, of course, of the allegeduse of sound in the various systems of so-called magic that haveinfluenced the minds of imaginative men during the history of the world. He had heard, more or less vaguely, perhaps, but still withunderstanding, about "Words of Power"; but hitherto he had merelyregarded such things as picturesque superstitions, or half-truths thatlie midway between science and imagination. Here, however, was a man inthe twentieth century, the days of radium, flying machines, wirelesstelegraphy, and other invitations towards materialism, who apparently hadpractical belief in the effective use of sound and in its psychic anddivine possibilities, and who was devoting all of his not inconsiderablepowers of heart and mind to their actual demonstration. It wasastonishing. It was delightful. It was incredible! And, but for thecurrents of a strange and formidable fear that this conception of Skale'saudacious Experiment set stirring in his soul, Spinrobin's enthusiasmwould have been possibly as great as his own. 

As it was he went up to the big clergyman and held out his hand, utterlycarried away by the strangeness of it all, caught up in a vague splendorhe did not quite understand, prepared to abandon himself utterly. 

"I gather something of what you mean, " he said earnestly, "if not all;and I hope most sincerely I may prove suitable for your purpose when thetime comes. As a boy, you know, curiously enough, I always believed inthe efficacy of names and the importance of naming true. I think, " headded somewhat diffidently, looking up straight into the luminous eyesabove him, "if you will allow me to say so, I would follow you anywhere, Mr. Skale--anywhere you cared to lead. "

"'Upon him that overcometh, '" said the clergyman in that gentle voice hesometimes used, soft as the voice of woman, "'will I write my newname. .. . '"

He gazed down very searchingly into the other's eyes for a minute or two, then shook the proffered hand without another word. And so theyseparated and went to bed, for it was long past midnight. 

Chapter III

I

In his bedroom, though excitement banished sleep in spite of the latenessof the hour, he was too exhausted to make any effective attempt to reducethe confusion of his mind to order. For the first time in his life thediary-page for the day remained blank. For a long time he sat before itwith his pencil--then sighed and put it away. A volume he might havewritten, but not a page, much less a line or two. And though it was buteight hours since he had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Philip Skale, it seemed to him more like eight days. 

Moreover, all that he had heard and seen, fantastic and strained as hefelt it to be, possibly even the product of religious mania, wasnevertheless profoundly disquieting, for mixed up with it somewhere orother was--truth. Mr. Skale _had_ made a discovery--a giant one; it wasnot all merely talk and hypnotism, the glamour of words. His greatExperiment would prove to be real and terrible. He _had_ discoveredcertain uses of sound, occult yet scientific, and if he, Spinrobin, elected to stay on, he would be obliged to play his part in thedénouement. And this thought from the very beginning appalled while itfascinated him. It filled him with a kind of horrible amazement. For theobject the clergyman sought, though not yet disclosed, already cast itsmonstrous shadow across his path. He somehow discerned that it would dealdirectly with knowledge the saner judgment of a commonplace world hadalways deemed undesirable, unlawful, unsafe, dangerous to the souls thatdared attempt it, failure involving a pitiless and terrible Nemesis. 

He lay in bed watching the play of the firelight upon the high ceiling, and thinking in confused fashion of the huge clergyman with histhundering voice, his great lambent eyes and his seductive gentleness; ofhis singular speculations and his hints, half menacing, half splendid, ofthings to come. Then he thought of the housekeeper with her deafness andher withered arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, ofMiriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever findinghis own, and of the intimate personal relations so swiftly establishedbetween them. .. . 

It was, indeed, a singular household thus buried away in the heart ofthese lonely mountains. The stately old mansion was just the rightsetting for--for--

Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly, interruptingthe flow of ideas. He never understood how or whence it came, but withthe picture of all the empty rooms in the corridor about him, hereceived the sharp unwelcome impression that when Mr. Skale described thehouse as empty it was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced, the uneasy conviction took possession of him that the building wasactually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There wasabsolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it. And with itflashed across his memory echoes of that unusual catechism he had beensubjected to--in particular the questions whether he believed inspirits, --"other life, " as Skale termed it. Sinister suspicions flashedthrough his imagination as he lay there listening to the ashes droppingin the grate and watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possiblethat there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow evokedfrom the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means of sound into formand shape--_created?_

Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond the world. Heshivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul suddenly without apparentcause, whence do they come? Why, out of these rather extravagant andbaseless speculations, should have emerged this sense of throttling dreadthat appalled him? And why, once again, should he have felt convincedthat the ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was impious, fraught with a kind of heavenly danger, "unpermissible?"

Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not guess. He onlyknew that by way of relief his mind instinctively sought out Miriam, andso found peace. Curled up in a ball between the sheets his body presentlyslept, while his mind, intensely active, traveled off into that vastinner prairie of his childhood days and called her name aloud. Andpresumably she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and hisdreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed eight hourslater, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed with thin bread andbutter and a cup of steaming tea. 

II

For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into the routineof this odd little household, for he had great powers of adaptability. At first the promise of excitement faded. The mornings were spent in thestudy of Hebrew, Mr. Skale taking great pains to instruct him in thevibratory pronunciation (for so he termed it) of certain words, andespecially of the divine, or angelic, names. The correct utterance, involving a kind of prolonged and sonorous vibration of the vowels, appeared to be of supreme importance. He further taught him curiouscorrespondences between Sound and Number, and the attribution to theseagain of certain colors. The vibrations of sound and light, as air andether, had intrinsic importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certainnames; all of which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neitherhead nor tail of it. 

That there were definite results, though, he could not deny--psychicresults; for a name uttered correctly produced one effect, and utteredwrongly produced another . .. Just as a wrong note in a chord afflicts thehearer whereas the right one blesses. .. . 

The afternoons, wet or fine, they went for long walks together about thedesolate hills, Miriam sometimes accompanying them. Their talk andlaughter echoed all over the mountains, but there was no one to hearthem, the nearest village being several miles away and the railwaystation--nothing but a railway station. The isolation was severe; therewere no callers but the bi-weekly provision carts; letters had to befetched and newspapers were neglected. 

Arrayed in fluffy tweeds, with baggy knickerbockers and heavily-nailedboots, he trotted beside his giant companion over the moors, somewhatlike a child who expected its hand to be taken over difficult places. Hisconfidence had been completely won. The sense of shyness left him. Hefelt that he already stood to the visionary clergyman in a relationshipthat was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasminstead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim sense ofthe Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably, just as in childhoodthe idea of Heaven and Hell had stood waiting to catch him--real onlywhen he thought carefully about them. Skale was just the kind of man, hefelt, who would make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the worldhad overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of humanknowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a good deal ofits inspirational quality as well. 

Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a dog, hangingupon his lightest word. New currents ran through him mentally andspiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid personality quickened hisown, and the impetus of his inner life lifted him with its more violentmomentum. The world of an ordinary man is so circumscribed, soconventionally molded, that he can scarcely conceive of things that maydwell normally in the mind of an extraordinary man. Adumbrations ofthese, however, may throw their shadow across his field of vision. Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was un-ordinary innearly all; and thus, living together in this intimate solitude, thesecretary got peeps into his companion's region that gradually convincedhim. With cleaned nerves and vision he began to think in ways and termsthat were new to him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend, moved forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller personalitybegan to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that hitherto had not evenknocked at the door, and the frontiers of his mind first wavered, thenunfolded to admit them. 

The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane, was a realworld, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical results. Spinrobinwould have staked his very life upon it. .. . 

And, meanwhile, he made love openly--under any other conditions, outrageously--to Miriam, whose figure of soft beauty moving silentlyabout the house helped to redeem it. She rendered him quiet littleservices of her own accord that pleased him immensely, for occasionallyhe detected her delicate perfume about his room, and he was sure it wasnot Mrs. Mawle who put the fresh heather in the glass jars upon histable, or arranged his papers with such neat precision on the desk. 

Her delicate, shining little face with its wreath of dark hair, wentwith him everywhere, hauntingly, possessingly; and when he kissed her, as he did now every morning and every evening under Mr. Skale's veryeyes, it was like plunging his lips into a bed of wild flowers that noartificial process had ever touched. Something in him sang when she wasnear. She had, too, what he used to call as a boy "night eyes"--changingafter dusk into such shadowy depths that to look _at_ them was to lookbeyond and through them. The sight could never rest only upon theirsurface. Through her eyes, then, stretched all the delight of that oldimmense play-ground . .. Where names clothed, described, and summonedliving realities. 

His attitude towards her was odd yet comprehensible; for though hisdesire was unquestionably great, it was not particularly active, probablybecause he knew that he held her and that no aggressive effort wasnecessary. Secure in the feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her, he also found that he had little enough to say to her, never anything toask. She knew and understood it all beforehand; expression was uncalledfor. As well might the brimming kettle sing to the water "I contain you, "or the water reply "I fill you!"

Only this was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts from the verybeginning he had used the analogy of sound--of the chord. As well mightone note feel called upon to cry to another in the same chord, "Hark! I'msounding with you!" as that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heartresponds and sings to yours. "

After a period of separation, however, he became charged with things hewanted to say to her, all of which vanished utterly the moment they cametogether. Words instantly then became unnecessary, foolish. He heard thatfaint internal singing, and his own resonant response; and they merelystayed there side by side, completely happy, everything told withoutspeech. This sense of blissful union enwrapped his soul. In the languageof his boyhood he had found her name; he knew her; she was his. 

Yet sometimes they did talk; and their conversations, in any othersetting but this amazing one provided by the wizardry of Skale'senthusiasm, must have seemed exquisitely ludicrous. In the room, oftenwith the clergyman a few feet away, reading by the fire, they would sitin the window niche, gazing into one another's eyes, perhaps even holdinghands. Then, after a long interval of silence Mr. Skale would hearSpinrobin's thin accents:

"You brilliant little sound! I hear you everywhere within me, chanting asong of life!"

And Miriam's reply, thrilled and gentle:

"I'm but your perfect echo! My whole life sings with yours!"

Whereupon, kissing softly, they would separate, and Mr. Skale would coverthem mentally with his blessing. 

Sometimes, too, he would send for the housekeeper and, with the aid ofthe violin, would lead the four voices, his own bass included, throughthe changes of various chords, for the vibratory utterance of certainnames; and the beauty of these sounds, singing the "divine names, " wouldmake the secretary swell to twice his normal value and importance (thushe puts it), as the forces awakened by the music poured and surged intothe atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would explain withburning words that many a symphony of Beethoven's, a sonata ofSchumann's, or a suite of Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful, romantic or melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partiallyby these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The powersof these Beings were just as characteristic, their existence just asreal, as the simpler names of the Hebrew angels, and their psychicinfluence upon the soul that heard them uttered just as sure andindividual. 

"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by science orphilosophy been adequately explained, and never can be until the occultnature of sound, and its correlations with color, form, and number isonce again understood. 'Rhythm is the first law of the physicalcreation, ' says one, 'and music is a breaking into sound of thefundamental rhythm of universal being. ' 'Rhythm and harmony, ' declaresPlato, 'find their way into the secret places of the soul. ' 'It is themanifestation, ' whispers the deaf Beethoven, 'of the inner essentialnature of all that is, ' or in the hint of Leibnitz, 'it is a calculationwhich the soul makes unconsciously in secret. ' It is 'love in search of aname, ' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to the truth than allthe philosophers, since love is the dynamic of pure spirit. But I, " hecontinued after a pause for breath, and smiling amid the glow of hisgreat enthusiasm, "go beyond and behind them all into the very heart ofthe secret; for you shall learn that to know the sounds of the GreatNames and to utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into theheart of their deific natures and make you 'as the gods themselves. .. !'"

And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight trembling ranacross the fabric of his normal world, as though it were about to vanishand give place to another--a new world of divine things made utterlysimple. For many things that Skale said in this easy natural way, hefelt, were in the nature of clues and passwords, whose effect hecarefully noted upon his secretary, being intended to urge him, with acertain violence even, into the desired region. Skale was testing himall the time. 

III

And it was about this time, more than half way through the trial month, that the clergyman took Spinrobin, now become far more than merelysecretary, into his fuller confidence. In a series of singularconversations, which the bewildered little fellow has reported to thebest of his ability, he explained to him something of the science of truenames. And to prove it he made two singular experiments: first he utteredthe true name of Mrs. Mawle, secondly of Spinrobin himself, with resultsthat shall presently be told. 

These things it was necessary for him to know and understand before theymade the great Experiment. Otherwise, if unprepared, he might witnessresults that would involve the loss of self-control and the failure, therefore, of the experiment--a disaster too formidable to contemplate. 

By way of leading up to this, however, he gave him some account first ofthe original discovery. Spinrobin asked few questions, made few comments;he took notes, however, of all he heard and at night wrote them up asbest he could in his diary. At times the clergyman rose and interruptedthe strange recital by moving about the room with his soft and giantstride, talking even while his back was turned; and at times theastonished secretary wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil with asnap, and Mr. Skale had to wait while he sharpened it again. His innerexcitement was so great that he almost felt he emitted sparks. 

The clue, it appears, came to the clergyman by mere chance, though headmits his belief that the habits of asceticism and meditation he hadpracticed for years may have made him in some way receptive to thevision, for as a vision, it seems, the thing first presented itself--avision made possible by a moment of very rapid hypnosis. 

An Anglican priest at the time, in charge of a small Norfolk parish, hewas a great believer in the value of ceremonial--in the use, that is, ofcolor, odor and sound to induce mental states of worship andadoration--more especially, however, of sound as uttered by the voice, the human voice being unique among instruments in that it combined thecharacteristics of all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, was to him amatter of psychic importance, and it was one summer evening, intoning, inthe chancel, that he noticed suddenly certain very curious results. Thefaces of two individuals in the congregation underwent a charming andsingular change, a change which he would not describe more particularlyat the moment, since Spinrobin should presently witness it for himself. 

It all happened in a flash--in less than a second, and it is probable, he holds, that his own voice induced an instant of swift and passinghypnosis upon himself; for as he stood there at the lectern there cameupon him a moment of keen interior lucidity in which he realized beyonddoubt or question what had happened. The use of voice, bell, or gong, has long been known as a means of inducing the hypnotic state, andduring this almost instantaneous trance of his there came a suddenrevelation of the magical possibilities of sound-vibration. By somechance rhythm of his intoning voice he had hit upon the exact pitch, quality and accent which constituted the "Note" of more than one memberof the congregation before him. Those particular individuals, withoutbeing aware of the fact, had at once responded, automatically andinevitably. For a second he had heard, he knew, their true names! He hadunwittingly "called" them. 

Spinrobin's heart leaped with excitement as he listened, for this idea of"Naming True" carried him back to the haunted days of his childhoodclairvoyance when he had known Winky. 

"I don't _quite_ understand, Mr. Skale, " he put in, desirous to hear amore detailed explanation. 

"But presently you shall, " was all the clergyman vouchsafed. 

The clue thus provided by chance he had followed up, but by methods hardto describe apparently. A corner of the veil, momentarily lifted, hadbetrayed the value that lies in the repetition of certain sounds--therhythmic reiteration of syllables--in a word, of chanting or incantation. By diving down into his subconscious region, already prepared by longspiritual training, he gradually succeeded in drawing out further detailspiece by piece, and finally by infinite practice and prayer welding themtogether into an intelligible system. The science of true-naming slowly, with the efforts of years, revealed itself. His mind slipped past thedeceit of mere sensible appearances. Clair-audiently he heard the trueinner names of things and persons. .. . 

Mr. Skale rose from his chair. With thumbs in the armholes of hiswaistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he stood over thesecretary, who continued making frantic notes. 

"That chance discovery, then, made during a moment's inner vision, " hecontinued with a grave excitement, "gave me the key to a whole world ofnew knowledge, and since then I have made incredible developments. Listenclosely, Mr. Spinrobin, while I explain. And take in what you can. "

The secretary laid down his pencil and notebook. He sat forward in anattitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his chair. He wastrembling. This strange modern confirmation of his early Heaven of wonderbefore the senses had thickened and concealed it, laid bare again hisearliest world of far-off pristine glory. 

"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a soundattached to their physical appearance at birth by the parents--ameaningless sound. It is not their true name. That, however, existsbehind it in the spiritual world, and is the accurate description ofthe soul. It is the sound you express visibly before me. The Word isthe Life. "

Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the clergyman spiedthe movement. "Never mind the notes, " he said; "listen closely to me. "Spinrobin obeyed meekly. 

"Your ordinary outer name, however, " continued Mr. Skale, speaking withprofound conviction, "may be made a conductor to your true, inner one. The connection between the two by a series of subtle interior links formsgradually with the years. For even the ordinary name, if you reflect amoment, becomes in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with thefinest threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you _become_it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room full ofpeople, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock, however small, ofincreased vitality. It touches the imagination. It calls upon the soulbuilt up around it. "

He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the room, even afterhe ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering, delighted, Spinrobin drank inevery word. How well he knew it all. 

"Now, " resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone unconsciously, "the firstpart of my discovery lies in this: that I have learned to pronounce theordinary names of things and people in such a way as to lead me to theirtrue, inner ones--"

"But, " interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name of--?"

"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty name--invain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what I now tell you, and you shall understand a part, at least, of my discovery. As I wassaying, I have learned how to find the true name by means of the false;and understand, if you can, that to pronounce a true name correctly meansto participate in its very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, tolearn the ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are thesounds originally uttered by the 'Word' of God when He created us, or'called' us into Being out of the void of infinite silence, and to repeatthem correctly means literally--to--speak--with--His--Voice. It is tospeak the truth. " The clergyman dropped his tone to an awed whisper. "Words are the veils of Being; to speak them truly is to lift a corner ofthe veil. "

"What a glory! What a thing!" exclaimed the other under his breath, trying to keep his mind steady, but losing control of language in theattempt. The great sentences seemed to change the little room into atemple where sacred things were about to reveal themselves. Spinrobin nowunderstood in a measure why Mr. Skale's utterance of his own name andthat of Miriam had sounded grand. Behind each he had touched the truename and made it echo. 

The clergyman's voice brought his thoughts back from distances in thatinner prairie of his youth where they had lost themselves. 

"For all of us, " he was repeating with rapt expression in his shiningeyes, "are Sounds in the mighty music the universe sings to God, whoseVoice it was that first produced us, and of whose awful resonance we areechoes therefore in harmony or disharmony. " A look of power passed intohis great visage. Spinrobin's imagination, in spite of the efforts thathe made, fluttered with broken wings behind the swift words. A flash ofthe former terror stirred in the depths of him. The man was at the heelsof knowledge it is not safe for humanity to seek. .. . 

"Yes, " he continued, directing his gaze again upon the other, "that is apart of my discovery, though only a part, mind. By repeating your outername in a certain way until it disappears in the mind, I can arrive atthe real name within. And to utter it is to call upon the secret soul--tosummon it from its lair. 'I have redeemed thee; I have called thee byname. ' You remember the texts? '_I know thee by name_, ' said Jehovah tothe great Hebrew magician, '_and thou art mine_. ' By certain rhythms andvibratory modulations of the voice it is possible to produce harmonics ofsound which awaken the inner name into life--and then to spell it out. Note well, to _spell_ it, --spell--incantation--the magical use ofsound--the meaning of the Word of Power, used with such terrific effectin the old forgotten Hebrew magic. Utter correctly the names of theirForces, or Angels, I am teaching you daily now, " he went on reverently, with glowing eyes and intense conviction; "pronounce them with fullvibratory power that awakens all their harmonics, and you awaken alsotheir counterpart in yourself; you summon their strength orcharacteristic quality to your aid; you introduce their powers activelyinto your own psychical being. Had Jacob succeeded in discovering the'Name' of that 'Angel' with whom he wrestled, he would have become onewith its superior power and have thus conquered it. Only, he askedinstead of commanded, and he found it not. .. "

"Magnificent! Splendid!" cried Spinrobin, starting from his chair, seizing with his imagination potently stirred, this possibility ofdeveloping character and rousing the forces of the soul. 

"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see, " replied Skale, placing agreat hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud necessarily, but byan inner effort of intense will which sets in vibration the finerharmonics heard only by the poet and magician, those harmonics andovertones which embody the psychical element in music. For the methods ofpoet and magician, I tell you, my dear Spinrobin, are identical, and allthe faiths of the world are at the heels of that thought. Provided youhave faith you can--move mountains! You can call upon the very gods!"

"A most wonderful idea, Mr. Skale, " faltered the other breathlessly, "quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened him a little with theirmental thunder. 

"And utterly simple, " was the reply, "for all truth is simple. "

He paced the floor like a great caged animal. He went down and leanedagainst the dark bookcase, with his legs wide apart, and hands in hiscoat pockets. "To name truly, you see, is to evoke, to create!" heroared from the end of the room. "To utter as it should be uttered anyone of the Ten Words, or Creative Powers of the Deity in the old Hebrewsystem, is to become master of the 'world' to which it corresponds. Forthese names are still in living contact with the realities behind. Itmeans to vibrate with the powers that called the universe into beingand--into form. "

A sort of shadowy majesty draped his huge figure, Spinrobin thought, ashe stood in semi-darkness at the end of the room and thundered forththese extraordinary sentences with a conviction that, for the moment atleast, swept away all doubt in the mind of his listener. Dreadful ideas, huge-footed and threatening, rushed to and fro in the secretary's mind. He was torn away from all known anchorage, staggered, dizzy and dismayed;yet at the same time, owing to his adventure-loving temperament, a preyto some secret and delightful exaltation of the spirit. He was out of hisdepth in great waters. .. . 

Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side andwhispered in accents that were soothing in comparison:

"And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by which God calledinto being the worlds, and sent the perfect, rounded bodies of thespheres spinning and singing, blazing their eternal trails of glorythrough the void! How sweet the whisper that crystallized in flowers! Howtender the note that fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam. .. . "

At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in some delightfuland inexplicable way that brought with it--peace. The power of all thesestrange and glowing thoughts poured their full tide into his own ratherarid and thirsty world, frightening him with their terrific force. Butthe mere utterance of that delightful name--in the way Skale utteredit--brought confidence and peace. 

". .. Could we but hear them!" Skale continued, half to himself, half tohis probationer; "for the sad thing is that today the world has ears yetcannot hear. As light is distorted by passing through a gross atmosphere, so sound reaches us but indistinctly now, and few true names can bringtheir wondrous messages of power correctly. Men, coarsening with thematerialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the luxury ofinventions and the diseases of modern life that develop intellect at theexpense of soul. They have lost the old inner hearing of divine sound, and but one here and there can still catch the faint, far-off andineffable music. "

He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle as theglowing words fell from his heart of longing. 

"None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to the sun; noneknow the chanting of the spheres! The ears of the world are stopped withlust, and the old divine science of true-naming seems lost forever amidthe crash of engines and the noisy thunder of machinery!. .. Only amongflowers and certain gems are the accurate old true names still to befound!. .. But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on theancient trail to Power. "

The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting his faceupwards with a rapt expression while he murmured under his breath thedescription of the Rider on the White Horse from the Book of theRevelations, as though it held some inner meaning that his heart knew yetdared not divulge: "And he had a Name written, that no man knew but hehimself. And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his Name iscalled The Word of God . .. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh aname written, --'King of Kings and Lord of Lords. .. . '"

And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound but not tothe actual words, fancied that a faintly colored atmosphere of deepscarlet accompanied the vibrations of his resonant whisper and producedin the depths of his mind this momentary effect of colored audition. 

It was all very strange and puzzling. He tried, however, to keep an openmind and struggle as best he might with these big swells that rolledinto his little pool of life and threatened to merge it in a vaster tidethan he had yet dreamed of. Knowing how limited is the world which thesenses report, he saw nothing too inconceivable in the idea thatcertain persons might possess a peculiar inner structure of the spiritby which supersensuous things can be perceived. And what more likelythan that a man of Mr. Skale's unusual caliber should belong to them?Indeed, that the clergyman possessed certain practical powers of anextraordinary description he was as certain as that the house was notempty as he had at first supposed. Of neither had he proof as yet; butproof was not long in forthcoming. 

Chapter IV

I

"Then if there is so much sound about in all objects and forms--if thewhole universe, in fact, is sounding, " asked Spinrobin with a naïveimpertinence not intended, but due to the reaction of his simple mindfrom all this vague splendor, "why don't we hear it more?"

Mr. Skale came upon him like a boomerang from the end of the room. He wassmiling. He approved the question. 

"With us the question of hearing is merely the question of wavelengths inthe air, " he replied; "the lowest audible sound having a wavelength ofsixteen feet, the highest less than an inch. Some people can't hear thesqueak of a bat, others the rumble of an earthquake. I merely affirm thatin every form sleeps the creative sound that is its life and being. Theear is a miserable organ at best, and the majority are far too gross toknow clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, that have awavelength of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one hand, or a millionthpart of an inch on the other?"

"A thousand miles! A millionth of an inch?" gasped the other, gazing athis interlocutor as though he was some great archangel of sound. 

"Sound for most of us lies between, say, thirty and many thousandvibrations per second--the cry of the earthquake and the cricket; it isour limitation that renders the voice of the dewdrop and the voice of theplanet alike inaudible. We even mistake a measure of noise--like acontinuous millwheel or a river, say--for silence, when in reality thereis no such thing as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singingand thundering about us, " he added, holding up a giant finger as thoughto listen. "To the imperfection of our ears you may ascribe the fact thatwe do not hear the morning stars shouting together. "

"Thank you, yes, I quite see now, " said the secretary. "To name truly isto hear truly. " The clergyman's words seemed to hold a lamp to a vastinterior map in his mind that was growing light. A new dawn was breakingover the great mental prairie where he wandered as a child. "To find thetrue name of anything, " he added, "you mean, is to hear its sound, itsindividual note as it were?" Incredible perspectives swam into his ken, hitherto undreamed of. 

"Not 'as it were, '" boomed the other, "You _do_ hear it. After which thenext step is to utter it, and so absorb its force into your own being bysynchronous vibration--union mystical and actual. Only, you must be sureyou utter it correctly. To pronounce incorrectly is to call itincompletely into life and form--to distort and injure it, and yourselfwith it. To make it untrue--a lie. "

They were standing in the dusk by the library window, watching the veilof night that slowly covered the hills. The flying horizons of the moorshad slipped away into the darkness. 

The stars were whispering together their thoughts of flame and speed. Atthe back of the room sat Miriam among the shadows, like some melodyhovering in a musician's mind till he should call her forth. It was closeupon the tea hour. Behind them Mrs. Mawle was busying herself with lampsand fire. Mr. Skale, turning at the sound of the housekeeper, motioned tothe secretary to approach, then stooped down and spoke low in his ear:

"With many names I had great difficulty, " he whispered. "With hers, forinstance, " indicating the housekeeper behind them. "It took me fiveyears' continuous research to establish her general voice-outline, andeven then I at first only derived a portion of her name. And in utteringit I made such errors of omission and pronunciation that her physicalform suffered, and she emerged from the ordeal in disorder. You have, ofcourse, noticed her disabilities. .. . But, later, though only instammering fashion, I called upon her all complete, and she has sinceknown a serene blessedness and a sense of her great value in the music oflife that she never knew before. " His face lit up as he spoke of it. "Forin that moment she found herself. She heard her true name, God's creativesound, thunder through her being. "

Spinrobin, feeling the clergyman's forces pouring through him like a tideat such close proximity, bowed his head. His lips were too dry to framewords. He was thinking of the possible effects upon his own soul and bodywhen his name too should be "uttered. " He remembered the withered arm andthe deafness. He thought, too, of that slender, ghostly figure thathaunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing. Lastly, heremembered his strange conviction that somewhere in the great building, possibly in his own corridor, there were other occupants, other life, Beings of unearthly scale waiting the given moment to appear, summoned byutterance. 

"And you will understand now why it is I want a man of high courage tohelp me, " Skale resumed in a louder tone, standing sharply upright; "aman careless of physical existence, and with a faith wholly beyond thethings of this world!"

"I do indeed, " he managed to reply aloud, while in his thoughts he wassaying, "I will, I _must_ see it through. I won't give in!" With all hismight he resisted the invading tide of terror. Even if sad results camelater, it was something to have been sacrificed in so big a conception. 

In his excitement he slipped from the edge of the windowsill, where hewas perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in front of him, caught histwo wrists and set him upon his feet. A shock, like a rush ofelectricity, ran through him. He took his courage boldly in both handsand asked the question ever burning at the back of his mind. 

"Then, this great Experiment you--we have in view, " he stammered, "is todo with the correct uttering of the names of some of the great Forces, orAngels, and--and the assimilating of their powers into ourselves--?"

Skale rose up gigantically beside him. "No, sir, " he cried, "it isgreater--infinitely greater than that. Names of mere Angels I can callalone without the help of any one; but for the name I wish to utter awhole chord is necessary even to compass the utterance of the openingsyllable; as I have told you already, a chord in which you share theincalculable privilege of being the tenor note. But for the completedsyllables--the full name--!" He closed his eyes and shrugged his massiveshoulders--"I may need the massed orchestras of half the world, thechorused voices of the entire nation--or in their place a still smallvoice of utter purity crying in the wilderness! In time you shall knowfully--know, see and hear. For the present, hold your soul with whatpatience and courage you may. "

The words thundered about the room, so that Miriam, too, heard them. Spinrobin trembled inwardly, as though a cold air passed him. Thesuggestion of immense possibilities, vague yet terrible, overwhelmed himagain suddenly. Had not the girl at that moment moved up beside him andput her exquisite pale face over his shoulder, with her hand upon hisarm, it is probable he would then and there have informed Mr. Skale thathe withdrew from the whole affair. 

"Whatever happens, " murmured Miriam, gazing into his eyes, "we go onsinging and sounding together, you and I. " Then, as Spinrobin bent downand kissed her hair, Mr. Skale put an arm round each of them and drewthem over to the tea table. 

"Come, Mr. Spinrobin, " he said, with his winning smile, "you must not bealarmed, you know. You must not desert me. You are necessary to us all, and when my Experiment is complete we shall all be as gods together. Donot falter. There is nothing in life, remember, but to lose oneself; andI have found a better way of doing so than any one else--by mergingourselves into the Voice of--"

"Mr. Skale's tea has been standing more than ten minutes, " interruptedthe old housekeeper, coming up behind them; "if Mr. Spinrobin willplease to let him come--" as though it was Spinrobin's fault that therehad been delay. 

Mr. Skale laughed good-humouredly, as the two men, suddenly in the regionof teacups and buttered toast, looked one another in the face with acertain confusion. Miriam, sipping her tea, laughed too, curiously. Spinrobin felt restored to some measure of safety and sanity again. Onlythe strange emotion of a few moments before still moved there unseenamong them. 

"Listen, and you shall presently hear her name, " the clergymanwhispered, glancing up at the other over his teacup, but Spinrobin wascrunching his toast too noisily to notice the meaning of the words fully. 

II

The Stage Manager who stands behind all the scenes of life, both greatand small, had prepared the scene well for what was to follow. Thesentences about the world of inaudible sound had dropped the right kindof suggestion into the secretary's heart. His mind still whirred with alitter of half-digested sentences and ideas, however, and he was vividlyhaunted by the actuality of truth behind them all. His whole inner beingat that moment cried "Hark!" through a hush of expectant wonder. 

There they sat at tea, this singular group of human beings: Mr. Skale, bigger than ever in his loose housesuit of black, swallowing his liquidwith noisy gulps; Spinrobin, nibbling slippery morsels of hot toast, onthe edge of his chair; Miriam, quiet and mysterious, in her corner; andMrs. Mawle, sedate, respectful in cap and apron, presiding over theteapot, the whole scene cozily lit by lamp and fire--when this remarkablenew thing happened. Spinrobin declares always that it came upon him likea drowning wave, frightening him not with any idea of injury to himself, but with a dreadful sense of being lost and shelterless among theimmensities of a transcendent new world. Something passed into the roomthat made his soul shake and flutter at the center. 

His attention was first roused by a sound that he took, perhaps, to bethe wind coming down from the hills in those draughts and gusts hesometimes heard, only to his imagination now it was a peopled windcrying round the walls, behind whose voice he detected the great fluidform of it--running and colored. But, with the noise, a terror that wasno ordinary terror invaded the recesses of his soul. It was the fear ofthe Unknown, dreadfully multiplied. 

He glanced up quickly from his teacup, and chancing to meet Miriam's eye, he saw that she was smiling as she watched him. This sound, then, hadsome special significance. At the same instant he perceived that it wasnot outside but in the room, close beside him, that Mr. Skale, in fact, was talking to the deaf housekeeper in a low and carefully modulatedtone--a tone she could not possibly have heard, however. Then hediscovered that the clergyman was not speaking actually, but repeatingher name. He was intoning it. It grew into a kind of singing chant, anincantation. 

"Sarah Mawle . .. Sarah Mawle . .. Sarah Mawle . .. " ran through theroom like water. And, in Skale's mouth, it sounded as his own namehad sounded--different. It became in some significant way--thusSpinrobin expresses it always--stately, important, nay, even august. It became real. The syllables led his ear away from their normalsignification--away from the outer toward the inner. His ordinary mentalpicture of the mere letters SARAHMAWLE disappeared and became merged insomething else--into something alive that pulsed and moved withvibrations of its own. For, with the outer sound there grew up anotherinterior one, that finally became separate and distinct. 

Now Spinrobin was well aware that the continued repetition of one's ownname can induce self-hypnotism; and he also knew that the reiteration ofthe name of an object ends by making that object disappear from the mind. "Mustard, " repeated indefinitely, comes to have no meaning at all. Themind drops behind the mere symbol of the sound into something that isunintelligible, if not meaningless. But here it was altogether anothermatter, and from the torrent of words and similes he uses to describe it, this--a curious mixture of vividness and confusion--is apparently what hewitnessed:

For, as the clergyman's resonant voice continued quietly to utter thename, something passed gradually into the appearance of the motherly oldhousekeeper that certainly was not there before, not visible, at least, to the secretary's eyes. Behind the fleshly covering of the body, withinthe very skin and bones it seemed, there flowed with steady splendor aneffect of charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from herface and figure with the glow and rush of increased life. A suggestion ofgrandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express itself through thehumble domestic exterior of her everyday self; at first, as though somegreater personage towered shadowy behind her, but presently with agrowing definiteness that showed it to be herself and nothing separate. The two, if two they were, merged. 

Her mien, he saw, first softened astonishingly, then grew firm with anaspect of dignity that was unbelievably beautiful. An air of peace andjoy her face had always possessed, but this was something beyond either. It was something imposing, majestic. So perilously adjusted is theludicrous to the sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumblywhether the word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote"angel, " he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of thespectacle hinted at the same time that he should have wept. For the tearsof a positive worship started to his eyes at the sight. 

"Sarahmawle . .. Sarahmawle. .. . " The name continued to pour itself abouthim in a steady ripple, neither rising nor falling, and certainly notaudible to those deaf old ears that flanked the vigorous and unwrinkledface. "Youth" is not the word to describe this appearance of ardentintensity that flamed out of the form and features of the housekeeper, for it was something utterly apart from either youth or age. Nor was itany mere idealization of her worn and crumpled self. It was independentof physical conditions, as it was independent of the limitations of timeand space; superb as sunshine, simple as the glory that had sometimestouched his soul of boyhood in sleep--the white fires of an uttertransfiguration. 

It was, in a word, as if the name Skale uttered had summoned to thefront, through all disguising barriers of flesh, her true and nakedspirit, that which neither ages nor dies, that which the eyes, when theyrest upon a human countenance, can never see--the Soul itself!

For the first time in his life Spinrobin, abashed and trembling, gazedupon something in human guise that was genuinely sublime--perfect with astainless purity. The mere sight produced in him an exaltation of thespirit such as he had never before experienced . .. Swallowing up hisfirst terror. In his heart of hearts, he declares, he prayed; for thiswas the natural expression for an emotion of the volume and intensitythat surged within him. .. . 

How long he sat there gazing seems uncertain; perhaps minutes, perhapsseconds only. The sense of time's passage was temporarily annihilated. Itmight well have been a thousand years, for the sight somehow swept himinto eternity. .. . In that tearoom of Skale's lonely house among themountains, the warmth of an earthly fire upon his back, the light of anearthly oil-lamp in his eyes, holding buttered toast in exceedinglyearthly fingers, he sat face to face with something that yet was not ofthis earth, something majestic, spiritual and eternal . .. Visibleevidence of transfiguration and of "earth growing heaven. .. . "

 * * * * *

It was, of course, stupid and clumsy of Spinrobin to drop his teacup andlet it smash noisily against the leg of the table; yet it was naturalenough, for in his ecstasy and amazement he apparently lost control ofcertain muscles in his trembling fingers. .. . Though the change camegradually it seemed very quick. The volume of the clergyman's voice grewless, and as the tide of sound ebbed the countenance of the housekeeperalso slowly altered. The flames that a moment before had burned sowhitely there flickered faintly and were gone; the glory faded; thesplendor withdrew. She even seemed to dwindle in size. .. . She resumed hernormal appearance. Skale's voice ceased. 

The incident apparently had occupied but a few moments, for Mrs. Mawle, he realized, was gathering the plates together and fitting them into thespaces of the crowded tea-tray with difficulty--an operation, heremembered, she had just begun when the clergyman first began to callupon her name. 

She, clearly, had been conscious of nothing unusual. A moment later, with her customary combination of curtsey and bow, she was gone from theroom, and Spinrobin, acting upon a strange impulse, found himselfstanding upright by the table, looking wildly about him, passing hishand through his scattered hair, and trying in vain to utter words thatshould relieve his overcharged soul of the burden of glory and mysterythat oppressed it. 

A pain, profoundly searching, pierced his heart. He thought of thesplendors he had just witnessed, and of the joy and peace upon thosefeatures even when the greater wonder withdrew. He thought of the powerin the countenance of Skale, and of the shining loveliness in the face ofMiriam. Then, with a blast of bitterest disappointment, he realized theinsignificance of his own self--the earthiness of his own personality, the dead, dull ordinariness of his own appearance. Why, oh, why, couldnot all faces let the soul shine through? Why could not all identifythemselves with their eternal part, and thus learn happiness and joy? Asense of the futile agony of life led him with an impassioned eagernessagain to the thought of Skale's tremendous visions, and of the greatExperiment that beckoned beyond. Only, once more the terror of itspossible meaning dropped upon him, and the little black serpents of fearshot warningly across this brighter background of his hopes. 

Then he was aware that Miriam had crossed the room and stood beside him, for her delicate and natural perfume announced her even before he turnedand saw. Her soft eyes shining conveyed an irresistible appeal, and withher came the sense of peace she always brought. She was the one thing atthat moment that could comfort and he opened his arms to her and let hercome nestling in against him, both hands finding their way up under thelapels of his coat, all the exquisite confidence of the innocent child inher look. Her hair came over his lips and face like flowers, but he didnot kiss her, nor could he find any words to say. To hold her there wasenough, for the touch of her healed and blessed him. 

"So now you have seen her as she really is, " he heard her voice againsthis shoulder; "you have heard her true name, and seen a little of itsform and color!"

"I never guessed that in this world--" he stammered; then, instead ofcompleting the sentence, held her more tightly to him and let his facesink deeper into the garden of her hair. 

"Oh yes, " she answered, and then peered up with unflinching look into hiseyes, "for that is just how I see you too--bright, splendid and eternal. "

"Miriam!" It was as unexpected as a ghost and as incredible. "Me . .. ?"

"Of course! You see I know your true name. I see you as you are within!"

Something came to steady his swimming brain, but it was only after adistinct effort that he realized it was the voice of Mr. Skaleaddressing him. Then, gradually, as he listened, gently releasing thegirl in order to turn towards him, he understood that what he hadwitnessed had been in the nature of a "test"--one of those tests he hadbeen warned would come--and that his attitude to it was regarded by theclergyman with approval. 

"It was a test more subtle than you know, perhaps, Mr. Spinrobin, " he wassaying, "and the feelings it has roused in you are an adequate proof thatyou have come well through it. As I knew you would, as I knew you would, "he added, with evident satisfaction. "They do infinite credit both toyourself and to our judgment in--er--accepting you. "

A wave of singular emotion seemed to pass across the room from one to theother that, catching the breathless secretary in its tide, filled himwith a high pride that he had been weighed and found worthy, then lefthim cold with a sudden reaction as he realized after some delay theimport of the words Mr. Skale was next saying to him. 

Chapter V

"And now you shall hear your own name called, " boomed the clergyman withenthusiasm, "and realize the beauty and importance of your own note inthe music of life. "

And while Spinrobin trembled from head to toe Mr. Skale bore down uponhim and laid a hand upon his shoulder. He looked up into the clergyman'sluminous eyes. His glance next wandered down the ridge of that masterfulnose and lost itself among the flowing strands of the tangled beard. Atthat moment it would hardly have surprised him to see the big visagedisappear, and to hear the Sound, of which it was the visible form, slipinto his ears with a roar. 

But side by side with the vague terror of the unknown he was consciousalso of a smaller and more personal pang. For a man may envy other forms, yet keenly resent the possible loss or alteration of his own. And heremembered the withered arm and the deafness. 

"But, " he faltered, yet ashamed of his want of courage, "I don't want tolose my present shape, or--come back--without--"

"Have no fear, " exclaimed the other with decision. "Miriam and myselfhave not been experimenting in vain these three weeks. We have found yourname. We know it accurately. For we are all one chord, and as I promisedyou, there is no risk. " He stopped, lowering his voice; and, taking thesecretary by the arm with a fatherly and possessive gesture, "Spinrobin, "he whispered solemnly, "you shall learn the value and splendor of yourSelf in the melody of the Universe--that burst of divine music! You shallunderstand how closely linked you are to myself and Mrs. Mawle, but, closest of all, to Miriam. For Miriam herself shall call your name, andyou shall hear!"

So little Miriam was to prove his executioner, or his redeemer. That wassomehow another matter. The awe with which these experiments of Mr. Skale's inspired him ebbed considerably as he turned and saw theappealing, wistful expression of his other examiner. Brave as a lion hefelt, yet timid as a hare; there was no idea of real resistance in himany longer. 

"I'm ready, then, " he said faintly, and the girl came up softly to hisside and sought his face with a frank innocence of gaze that made noattempt to hide her eagerness and joy. She accepted the duty withdelight, proudly conscious of its importance. 

"I know thee by name and thou art mine, " she murmured, taking his hand. 

"It makes me happy, yet afraid, " he replied in her ear, returning thecaress; and at that moment the clergyman who had gone to fetch hisviolin, returned into the room with a suddenness that made them bothstart--for the first time. Very slightly, with the first sign of thatmodesty which comes with knowledge he had yet noticed in her, or feltconscious of in himself, she withdrew, a wonderful flush tinging her paleskin, then passing instantly away. 

"To make you feel absolutely safe from possible disaster, " Mr. Skale wassaying with a smile, "you shall have the assistance of the violin. Thepitch and rhythm shall be thus assured. There is nothing to fear. "

And Miriam, equally smiling with confidence, led her friend, perplexedand entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and confusing puzzle--ledhim to the armchair she had just vacated, and then seated herself at hisfeet upon a high footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet andirresistible directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense ofbewilderment and his confidence. 

"First, you must speak my name, " she said gently, yet with a note ofauthority, "so that I may get the note of your voice into myself. Once ortwice will do. "

He obeyed. "Miriam . .. Miriam . .. Miriam, " he said, and watched the tinyreflection of his own face in her eyes, her "night-eyes. " The same momenthe began to lose himself. The girl's lips were moving. She had picked uphis voice and merged her own with it, so that when he ceased speaking hertones took up the note continuously. There was no break. She carried onthe sound that he had started. 

And at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived thatthe violin had left its case and was under the clergyman's beard. The bowundulated like a silver snake, drawing forth long, low notes that flowedabout the room and set the air into rhythmical vibrations. Thesevibrations, too, carried on the same sound. Spinrobin gave a littleuncontrollable jump; he felt as if he had uttered his own death-warrantand that this instrument proclaimed the sentence. Then the feeling ofdread lessened as he heard Mr. Skale's voice mingling with the violin, combining exquisitely with the double-stopping he was playing on the twolower strings; for the music, as the saying is, "went through him" withthrills of power that plunged into unknown depths of his soul and liftedhim with a delightful sense of inner expansion to a state where fear wasmerged in joy. 

For some minutes the voice of Miriam, murmuring so close before him thathe could feel her very breath, was caught in the greater volume of theviolin and bass. Then, suddenly, both Skale and violin ceased together, and he heard her voice emerge alone. With a little rush like that of asinging flame, it dropped down on to the syllables of his name--his uglyand ridiculous outer and ordinary name:

"ROBERTSPINROBIN . .. ROBERTSPINROBIN . .. " he heard; and the sound flowedand poured about his ears like the murmur of a stream through summerfields. And, almost immediately, with it there came over him a sense ofprofound peace and security. Very soon, too, he lost the sounditself--did not hear it, as sound, for it grew too vast and enveloping. The sight of Miriam's face also he lost. He grew too close to her to seeher, as object. Both hearing and sight merged into something moreintimate than either. He and the girl were together--one consciousness, yet two aspects of that one consciousness. 

They were two notes singing together in the same chord, and he had losthis little personality, only to find it again, increased and redeemed, inan existence that was larger. 

It seemed to Spinrobin--for there is only his limited phraseology to drawfrom--that the incantation of her singing tones inserted itself betweenthe particles of his flesh and separated them, ran with his blood, covered his skin with velvet, flowed and purred in the very texture ofhis mind and thoughts. Something in him swam, melted, fused. His innerkingdom became most gloriously extended. .. . 

His soul loosened, then began to soar, while something at the heart ofhim that had hitherto been congealed now turned fluid and alive. He waslight as air, swift as fire. His thoughts, too, underwent a change: roseand fell with the larger rhythm of new life as the sound played uponthem, somewhat as wind may rouse the leaves of a tree, or call upon thesurface of a deep sea to follow it in waves. Terror was nowhere in hissensations; but wonder, beauty and delight ran calling to one anotherfrom one wave to the next, as this tide of sound moved potently in thedepths of his awakening higher consciousness. The little reactions ofordinary life spun away from him into nothingness as he listened to avolume of sound that was oceanic in power and of an infinite splendor:the creative sound by which God first called him into form andbeing--the true inner name of his soul. 

. .. Yet he no longer consciously listened. .. No longer, perhaps, consciously heard. The name of the soul can sound only in the soul, whereno speech is, nor any need for such stammering symbols. Spinrobin for thefirst time knew his true name, and that was enough. 

It is impossible to translate into precise language this torrent ofexquisite sensation that the girl's voice awakened. In the secretchambers of his imagination Spinrobin found the _thoughts_, perhaps, thatclothed it with intelligible description for himself, but in speaking ofit to others he becomes simply semi-hysterical, and talks a kind ofhearty nonsense. For the truth probably is that only poetry or music canconvey any portion of a mystical illumination, otherwise hopelesslyincommunicable. The outer name had acted as a conductor to the inner namebeyond. It filled the room, and filled some far vaster space that openedout above the room, about the house, above the earth, yet at the sametime was deep, deep down within his own self. He passed beyond theconfines of the world into those sweet, haunted gardens where Cherubimand Seraphim--vast Forces--continually do sing. It floated him off hisfeet as a rising tide overtakes the little shore-pools and floats theminto its own greatness, and on the tranquil bosom of these giant swellshe rose into a state that was too calm to be ecstasy, yet too glorious tobe mere exaltation. 

And as his own little note of personal aspiration soared with this vastermusic to which it belonged, he felt mounting out of himself into acondition where at last he was alive, complete and splendidly important. His sense of insignificance fled. His ordinary petty and unvalued selfdropped away flake by flake, and he realized something of the essentialmajesty of his own real Being as part of an eternal and wonderful Whole. The little painful throb of his own limited personality slipped into thegiant pulse-beat of a universal vibration. 

In his normal daily life, of course, he lost sight of this Whole, blindedby the details seen without perspective, mistaking his little personalityfor all there was of him; but now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singingin the body of this stupendous music, he understood with a rush ofindescribable glory that he was part and parcel of this great chord--thisparticular chord in which Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam also sang theirharmonious existences--that this chord, again, was part of a vaster musicstill, and that all, in the last resort, was a single note in the divineUtterance of God. 

That is, the little secretary, for the first time in his existence, sawlife as a whole, and interpreted the vision so wondrous sweet and simple, with the analogies of sound communicated to his subliminal mind by themighty Skale. Whatever the cause, however, the fine thing was that hesaw, heard, knew. He was of value in the scheme. In future he could pipehis little lay without despair. 

Moreover, with a merciless clarity of vision, he perceived an evendeeper side of truth, and understood that the temporary discords werenecessary, just as evil, so-called, is necessary for the greater finalperfection of the Whole. For it came to him with the clear simplicity ofa child's vision that the process of attuning his being to the right notemust inevitably involve suffering and pain: the awful stretching of thestring, the strain of the lifting vibrations, the stress at first ofsounding in harmony with all the others, and the apparent loss of one'sown little note in order to do so. .. 

This point he reached, it seems, and grasped. Afterwards, however, heentered a state where he heard things no man can utter because nolanguage can touch transcendental things without confining or destroyingthem. In attempting a version of them he merely becomes unintelligible, as has been said. Yet the mere memory of it brings tears to his blue eyeswhen he tries to speak of it, and Miriam, who became, of course, hischief confidant, invariably took it upon herself to stop his futileefforts with a kiss. 

 * * * * *

So at length the tide of sound began to ebb, the volume lessened and grewdistant, and he found himself, regretfully, abruptly, sinking back intowhat by comparison was mere noise. First, he became conscious that helistened--heard--saw; then, that Miriam's voice still uttered his namesoftly, but his ordinary, outer name, Robertspinrobin; that he noticedher big grey eyes gazing into his own, and her lips moving to frame thesyllables, and, finally, that he was sitting in the armchair, trembling. Joy, peace, wonder still coursed through him like flames, but dyingflames. Mr. Skale's voice next reached him from the end of the room. Hesaw the fireplace, his own bright and pointed pumps, the tea table wherethey had drunk tea, and then, as the clergyman strode towards him overthe carpet, he looked up, faint with the farewell of the awfulexcitement, into his face. The great passion of the experience stillglowed and shone in him like a furnace. 

And there, in that masterful bearded visage, he surprised an expressionso tender, so winning, so comprehending, that Spinrobin rose to his feet, and taking Miriam by the hand, went to meet him. There the three of themstood upon the mat before the fire. He felt overwhelmingly drawn to thepersonality of the man who had revealed to him such splendid things, andin his mind stirred a keen and poignant regret that such knowledge couldnot be permanent and universal, instead of merely a heavenly dream in themind of each separate percipient. Gratitude and love, unknown to himbefore, rose in his soul. Spinrobin, his heart bursting as with flames, had cried aloud, "You have called me by my name and I am free!. .. Youhave named me truly and I am redeemed!. .. " And all manner of speech, semi-inspirational, was about to follow, when Mr. Skale suddenly moved toone side and raised his arm. He pointed to the mirror. 

Spinrobin was just tall enough to see his own face in the glass, butthe glimpse he caught made him stand instantly on tiptoe to see more. For his round little countenance, flushed as it was beneath its fringeof disordered feathery hair, was literally--transfigured. A glory, similar to the glory he had seen that same evening upon the face of thehousekeeper, still shone and flickered about the eyes and forehead. Thesignature of the soul, brilliant in purity, lay there, transforming theinsignificance of the features with the grandeur and nobility of itsown power. 

"I am honored, --too gloriously honored!" was the singular cry thatescaped his lips, vainly seeking words to express an emotion of theunknown, "I am honored as the sun. .. And as the stars. .. !"

And so fierce was the tide of emotion that rose within him at the sight, so strong the sense of gratitude to the man and girl who had shown himhow his true Self might contain so great a glory, that he turned with acry like that of a child bewildered by the loss of some incomprehensiblehappiness--turned and flung himself first upon the breast of the bigclergyman, and then into the open arms of the radiant Miriam, with sobsand tears of wonder that absolutely refused to be restrained. 

Chapter VI

I

The situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to have beenthat the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the final Experiment wasmet and equalized by his passionate curiosity regarding it. Had thesebeen the only two forces at work, the lightest pressure in eitherdirection would have brought him to a decision. He would have acceptedthe challenge and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left. 

There was, however, another force at work upon which he had hardlycalculated at the beginning, and that force now came into fulloperation and controlled his decision with margin and to spare. Heloved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is probable that herown calm courage would have put him to shame and made him "face themusic. " He could no more have deserted her than he could have desertedhimself. The die was cast. 

Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in dangerousand unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to terrify him, for Miriam, at least, it held nothing alarming. She had no qualms, knew nouneasiness. She looked forward to the end with calmness, even with joy, just as ordinary good folk look forward to a heaven beyond death. For shehad never known any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother andGod. He had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life inthis solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading, providing hercompanionship, training her with the one end in view of carrying out hisimmense and fire-stealing purpose. 

She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so drilled with theidea that this life was but a tedious training-place for a worthier stateto come, that she looked forward, naturally enough, with confidence andrelief to the great Experiment that should bring her release. She knewvaguely that there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never forone instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far, Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attemptedever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experimentmight fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forcesthat could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him. 

It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a slight incidentin the last chapter, that a change began to steal, at firstimperceptibly, then obviously, over their relations together. Spinrobinhad been in the house three weeks--far longer, no doubt, than any of theother candidates. There only remained now the final big tests. Thepreliminary ones were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon themoment would come for him to stay--or go. And it was in all probabilitythis reflection that helped her to make certain discoveries in herselfthat at first she did not in the least understand. 

Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made himintuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and moved himprodigiously. His account of it all is like no love story that has everbeen heard, for in the first place this singular girl hardly breathedabout her the reality of an actual world. She had known nothing beyondthe simple life in this hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on theother the portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dreamrevealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no standardsbut her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in spite of herdevotion to the girl, suffered under too great disabilities to fill theplace of a mother, while Mr. Skale was too lost in his vast speculationsto guide her except in a few general matters, and too sure of her at thesame time to reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Herexceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand, and herown native purity and good sense on the other, however, led her fairlystraight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his modesty and his fineaspirations, was a "little gentleman" into the bargain, ensured that nounlawful temptation should be placed in her way, or undue pressure, basedupon her ignorance, employed. 

II

They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains soon after thetest of calling his name, and they were alone, the clergyman beingengaged upon some mysterious business that had kept him out of sight allday. They did not talk much, but they were happy in each other's company, Spinrobin more than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed, they went along hand in hand like children. 

"Miriam, " he had asked on the top of the moors, "did I ever tell youabout Winky--my little friend Winky?" And she had looked up with a smileand shaken her head. "But I like the name, " she added; "I should like tohear, please. " And he told her how as a boy he had invoked various folkto tease his sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story hesomehow or other always referred to the little person by name, and neveronce revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all night on the lawnoutside his sister's window to intercept the expected visit. 

"Winky, " she said, speaking rather low, "is a true name, of course. You really created Winky--called Winky into being. " For to her nowthis seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to himself at theage of ten. 

"Oh, I really loved Winky, " he replied enthusiastically, and was at thesame moment surprised to feel her draw away her hand. "Winky lived foryears in my very heart. "

And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between them, wasthat he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it either. In less thana second he was beside her and had both her hands in his. He understoodin a flash. 

"You precious baby, " he cried, "but Winky was a little man. Hewasn't a girl!"

She looked up through her tears--oh, but how wonderful her grey eyes werethrough tears!--and made him stand still before her and repeat hissentence. And she said, "I know it's true, but I like to hear you say it, and that's why I asked you to repeat it. "

"Miriam, " he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather at herfeet, "there's only one name in my heart, I can tell you that. I heard itsing and sing the moment I came into this house, the very instant I firstsaw you in that dark passage. I knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago, that one day a girl with your name would come singing into my life tomake me complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look asbeautiful as you are. " He kissed the two hands he held. "Or thatshe--would--would think of me as you do, " he stammered in his passion. 

And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears, bent and kissedhis feathery hair, and immediately after was on her knees in front of himamong the heather. 

"I own you, " she said quite simply. "I know your name, and you know mine. Whatever happens--" But Spinrobin was too happy to hear any more, andputting both arms round her neck, he kissed the rest of her words awayinto silence. 

And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently, but veryfirmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the delicacy of his mindunderstood that for the first time in her curious, buried life theprimitive instincts had awakened, so that she knew herself a woman, and awoman, moreover, who loved. 

 * * * * *

Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear, wonder, and--love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that should theclergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his intimate relations nowwith Miriam, instead of making it easier for him to learn the facts, madeit on the other hand more difficult. For he could not, of course, makeuse of her affection to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish himto know. And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him. None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final experimentwas, and what the 'empty' rooms contained. And most of all what the greatname was they were finally to utter by means of the human chord. 

The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were toocomplicated and too violent to enable him to form a proper judgment ofthe whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this calmer adjudication nevercame to him at all, for even to this day the mere mention of theclergyman's name brings to his round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasmand wonder which are the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale stillremains the great battering force of his life that carried him off hisfeet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of firetearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained should make themall four as gods. 

Chapter VII

I

And thus the affair moved nearer to its close. The theory and practice ofmolding form by means of sound was the next bang at his mind--deliveredin the clergyman's most convincing manner, and, in view of the proofsthat soon followed, an experience that seemed to dislocate the veryfoundations of his visible world, deemed hitherto secure enough at leastto stand on. 

Had it all consisted merely of talk on Mr. Skale's part the secretarywould have known better what to think. It was the interludes of practicalproof that sent his judgment so awry. These definite, sensible results, sandwiched in between all the visionary explanation, left him utterly atsea. He could not reconcile them altogether with hypnotism. He couldonly, as an ordinary man, already with a bias in the mystical direction, come to the one conclusion that this overwhelming and hierophantic manwas actually in touch with cisterns of force so terrific as to bedangerous to what he had hitherto understood to be--life. It was easyenough for the clergyman, in his optimistic enthusiasm, to talk abouttheir leading to a larger life. But what if the experiment failed, andthese colossal powers ran amok upon the world--and upon the invokers?

Moreover--chief anxiety of all--what was this name to be experimentedwith? What was the nature of this force that Skale hoped to invoke--somighty that it should make them "as gods, " so terrible that a chord alonecould compass even the first of its stupendous syllables?

And, further, he was still haunted with the feeling that other "beings"occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion, and more than oncerecently he had wakened in the night with an idea, carried over fromdreams possibly, that the corridor outside his bedroom was moving andalive with footsteps. "From dreams possibly, " for when he went and peeredshivering through the narrow crack of the half-opened door, he sawnothing unusual. And another time--he was awake beyond question at themoment, for he had been reading till two o'clock and had but justextinguished the candle--he had heard a sound that he found impossible todescribe, but that sent all the blood with a swift rush from the regionof his heart. It was not wind; it was not the wood cracking with thefrost; it was not snow sliding from the slates outside. It was somethingthat simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded particularlyloud just outside his door; and it came with the abrupt suddenness of areport. It made him think of all the air in the rooms and halls andpassages being withdrawn by immense suction, as though a gigantic domehad been dropped over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And justafter it he heard, unmistakably, the long soft stride of Skale going pasthis door and down the whole length of the corridor--stealthily, veryquickly, with the hurry of anxiety or alarm in his silence and his speed. 

This, moreover, had now happened twice, so that imagination seemed afar-fetched explanation. And on both occasions the clergyman had remainedinvisible on the day following until the evening, and had thenreappeared, quiet and as usual, but with an atmosphere of immensevibratory force somehow about his person, and a glow in his face and eyesthat at moments seemed positively colored. 

No word of explanation, however, had as yet been forthcoming of theseomens, and Spinrobin waited with what patience he could, meanwhile, forthe final test which he knew to be close upon him. And in his diary, thepages usually left blank now because words failed him, he wrote aportion of Anone's cry that had caught his memory and expressed a littleof what he felt:

. .. For fiery thoughtsDo shape themselves within me, more and more, Whereof I catch the issue, as I hearDead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, _Like footsteps upon wool_. .. . 

II

It was within three days of the expiration of his trial month that hethen had this conversation with the clergyman, which he understood quitewell was offered by way of preparation for the bigger tests about tocome. He has reported what he could of it; it seemed to him at the timeboth plausible and absurd; it was of a piece, that is, with the rest ofthe whole fabulous adventure. 

Mr. Skale, as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-darknessbetween tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about the practicalresults obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he already knew for thatmatter), and how it is possible by fiddling long enough upon a certainnote to fiddle down a bridge and split it asunder. From that he passed onto the scientific fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not onlyin constant whirring motion, but that also they do not actually touch oneanother. The atoms composing the point of a pin, for instance, shift andchange without ceasing, and--there is space between them. 

Then, suddenly taking Spinrobin's arm, he came closer, his booming tonedropping to a whisper:

"To change the form of anything, " he said in his ear, "is merely tochange the arrangement of those dancing molecules, to alter their rate ofvibration. " His eyes, even in the obscurity of the dusk, went across theother's face like flames. 

"By means of sound?" asked the other, already beginning to feel eerie. 

The clergyman nodded his great head in acquiescence. 

"Just as the vibrations of heat-waves, " he said after a pause, "canalter the form of a metal by melting it, so the vibrations of sound canalter the form of a thing by inserting themselves between thosewhirling molecules and changing their speed and arrangement--change theoutline, that is. "

The idea seemed fairly to buffet the little secretary in the face, butMr. Skale's proximity was too overpowering to permit of very clearthinking. Feeling that a remark was expected from him, he managed toejaculate an obvious objection in his mind. 

"But is there any sound that can produce vibrations fine and rapidenough--to--er--accomplish such a result?"

Mr. Skale appeared almost to leap for pleasure as he heard it. In realityhe merely straightened himself up. 

"That, " he cried aloud, to the further astonishment and even alarm of hiscompanion, "is another part of my discovery--an essential particular ofit: the production of sound-vibrations fine and rapid enough to altershapes! Listen and I will tell you!" He lowered his voice again. "I havefound out that by uttering the true inner name of anything I can set inmotion harmonics--harmonics, note well, half the wave length and twicethe frequency!--that are delicate and swift enough to insert themselvesbetween the whirling molecules of any reasonable object--any object, Imean, not too closely or coherently packed. By then swelling or loweringmy voice I can alter the scale, size or shape of that object almostindefinitely, its parts nevertheless retaining their normal relativeproportions. I can scatter it to a huge scale by separating its moleculesindefinitely, or bring them so closely together that the size of theobject would be reduced to a practical invisibility!"

"Re-create the world, in fact!" gasped Spinrobin, feeling the earth heknew slipping away under his feet. 

Mr. Skale turned upon him and stood still a moment. The huge moors, glimmering pale and unreal beneath their snow, ran past them intothe sky--silent forms corresponding to who knows what pedal notes?The wind sighed--audible expression of who shall say what mightyshapes?. .. Something of the passion of sound, with all its mystery andsplendor, entered his heart in that windy sigh. Was anything real? Wasanything permanent?. .. Were Sound and Form merely interchangeable symbolsof some deeper uncataloged Reality? And was the visible cohesion afterall the illusory thing?

"Re-mold the whole universe, sir!" he roared through the darkness, in away that made the other wish for the touch of Miriam's hand to steadyhim. "I could make you, my dear Spinrobin, immense, tiny, invisible, orby a partial utterance of your name, permanently crooked. I couldoverwhelm your own vibrations and withdraw their force, as by suction ofa vacuum, absorbing yourself into my own being. By uttering the name ofthis old earth, if I knew it, I could alter its face, toss the forestslike green dust into the sea, and lift the pebbles of the seashore to themagnitude of moons! Or, did I know the true name of the sun, I couldutter it in such a way as to identify myself with its very being, and soescape the pitiful terrors of a limited personal existence!"

He seized his companion's arm and began to stride down the mountainsideat a terrific pace, almost lifting Spinrobin from his feet as he did so. About the ears of the panting secretary the wild words tore like bullets, whistling a new and dreadful music. 

"My dear fellow, " he shouted through the night, "at the Word of Power ofa true man the nations would rush into war, or sink suddenly into eternalpeace; the mountains be moved into the sea, and the dead arise. To knowthe sounds behind the manifestations of Nature, the names of mechanicalas well as of psychical Forces, of Hebrew angels, as of Christianvirtues, is to know Powers that you can call upon at will--and use! Utterthem in the true vibratory way and you waken their counterpart inyourself and stir thus mighty psychic powers into activity in your Soul. "

He rained the words down upon the other's head like a tempest. 

"Can you wonder that the walls of Jericho fell flat before a 'Sound, 'or that the raging waves of the sea lay still before a voice thatcalled their Name? My discovery, Mr. Spinrobin, will run through theworld like a purifying fire. For to utter the true names ofindividuals, families, tribes and nations, will be to call them to theknowledge of their highest Selves, and to lift them into tune with themusic of the Voice of God. "

They reached the front door, where the gleam of lamps shone with a homelywelcome through the glass panels. The clergyman released his companion'sarm; then bent down towards him and added in a tone that held in it forthe first time something of the gravity of death:

"Only remember--that to utter falsely, to pronounce incorrectly, to calla name incompletely, is the beginning of all evil. For it is to lie withthe very soul. It is also to evoke forces without the adequatecorresponding shape that covers and controls them, and to attract uponyourself the destructive qualities of these Powers--to your own finaldisintegration and annihilation. "

Spinrobin entered the house, filled with a sense of awe that was cold andterrible, and greater than all his other sensations combined. The windsof fear and ruin blew shrill about his naked soul. None the less he wassteadfast. He would remain to bless. Mr. Skale might be violent in mind, unbalanced, possibly mad; but his madness thundered at the doors ofheaven, and the sound of that thundering completed the conquest of hisadmiration. He really believed that when the end came those mighty doorswould actually open. And the thought woke a kind of elemental terror inhim that was not of this world--yet marvelously attractive. 

III

That night the singular rushing sound again disturbed him. It seemed asbefore to pass through the entire building, but this time it included agreater space in its operations, for he fancied he could hear it outsidethe house as well, traveling far up into the recesses of the darkmountains. Like the sweep of immense draughts of air it went down thepassage and rolled on into the sky, making him think of the clergyman'ssuggestion that some sounds might require airwaves of a hundred milesinstead of a few inches, too vast to be heard as sound. And shortly afterit followed the great gliding stride of Mr. Skale himself down thecorridor. That, at least, was unmistakable. 

During the following day, moreover, Mr. Skale remained invisible. Spinrobin, of course, had never permitted himself to search the house, oreven to examine the other rooms in his own corridor. The quarters whereMiriam slept were equally unknown to him. But he was quite certain thatthese prolonged periods of absence were spent by the clergyman in someremote part of the rambling building where there existed isolated, if notactually secret, rooms in which he practiced the rituals of somedangerous and intrepid worship. And these intimidating and mysterioussounds at night were, of course, something to do with the forces heconjured. .. . 

The day was still and windless, the house silent as the grave. He walkedabout the hills during the afternoon, practicing his Hebrew "Names" and"Words" like a schoolboy learning a lesson. And all about him the slopesof mountain watched him, listening. So did the sheet of snow, shining inthe wintry sunlight. The clergyman seemed to have put all sound in hispocket and taken it away with him. The absence of anything approachingnoise became almost oppressive. It was a Silence that prepares. Spinrobinwent about on tiptoe, spoke to Miriam in whispers, practiced his Names inhushed, expectant tones. He almost expected to see the moors andmountains open their deep sides and let the Sounds of which they were thevisible shape escape awfully about him. .. . 

In these hours of solitude, all that Skale had told him, and more stillthat he divined himself, haunted him with a sense of disquieting reality. Inaudible sounds of fearful volume, invisible forms of monstrouscharacter, combinations of both even, impended everywhere about him. Hebecame afraid lest he might stumble, as Skale had done, on the very notethat should release them and bring them howling, leaping, crashing abouthis ears. Therefore, he tried to make himself as small as possible; hemuffled steps and voice and personality. If he could, he would havecompletely disappeared. 

He looked forward to Skale's return, but when evening came he was stillalone, and he dined _tête-à-tête_ with Miriam for the first time. Andshe, too, he noticed, was unusually quiet. Almost they seemed to haveentered the world of Mrs. Mawle, the silent regions of the deaf. But forthe most part it is probable that these queer impressions were due to theunusual state of Spinrobin's imagination. He knew that it was his lastnight in the place--unless the clergyman accepted him; he knew also thatMr. Skale had absented himself with a purpose, and that the said purposehad to do with the test of Alteration of Forms by Sound, which wouldsurely be upon him before the sun rose. So that, one way and another, itwas natural enough that his nerves should have been somewhat overtaxed. 

The presence of Miriam and Mrs. Mawle, however, did much to soothe him. The latter, indeed, mothered the pair of them quite absurdly, smiling allthe time while she moved about softly with the dishes, and doing her bestto make them eat enough for four. Between courses she sat at the end ofthe room, waiting in the shadows till Miriam beckoned to her, and once ortwice going so far as to put her hand upon Spinrobin's shoulderprotectively. 

His own mind, however, all the time was full of charging visions. He keptthinking of the month just past and of the amazing changes it had broughtinto his thoughts. He realized, too, now that Mr. Skale was away, something of the lonely and splendid courage of the man, following thisterrific, perhaps mad, ideal, day in day out, week in week out, fortwenty years and more, his faith never weakening, his belief undaunted. Waves of pity, too, invaded him for the first time--pity for this sweetgirl, brought up in ignorance of any other possible world; pity for thedeaf old housekeeper, already partially broken, and both sacrificed tothe dominant idea of this single, heaven-climbing enthusiast; pity lastof all for himself, swept headlong before he had time to reflect, intothe audacious purpose of this violent and headstrong super-man. 

All manner of emotions stirred now this last evening in his perplexedbreast; yet out of the general turmoil one stood forth more clearly thanthe rest--his proud consciousness that he was taking an important part insomething really big at last. Behind the screen of thought and emotionwhich veiled so puzzlingly the truth, he divined for the first time inhis career a golden splendor. If it also terrified him, that was only hiscowardice. .. . In the same way it might be splendid to jump into Niagarajust above the falls to snatch a passing flower that seemed morewonderful than any he had seen before, but--!

"Miriam, tomorrow is my last day, " he said suddenly, catching her greyeyes upon him in the middle of his strange reflections. "Tonight may bemy last night in this house with you. "

The girl made no reply, merely looking up and smiling at him. But thesinging sensation that usually accompanied her gaze was not present. 

"That was very nearly--a discord, " she observed presently, referring tohis remark. "It was out of tune!" And he realized with a touch of shamewhat she meant. For it was not true that this was his last evening; heknew really that he would stay on and that Mr. Skale would accept him. Quick as a flash, with her simple intuition, she felt that he had saidthis merely to coax from her some sign of sympathy or love. And the girlwas not to be drawn. She knew quite well that she held him and that theirfate, whatever it might be, lay together. 

The gentle rebuke made him silent again. They sat there smiling at oneanother across the table, and old Mrs. Mawle, sitting among the shadowsat the far end of the room, her hands crossed in front of her, her whiteevening cap shining like a halo above her patient face, watched them, also smiling. The rest of the strange meal passed without conversation, for the great silence that all day had wrapped the hills seemed to haveinvaded the house as well and laid its spell upon every room. A deephush, listening and expectant, dropped more and more about the buildingand about themselves. 

After dinner they sat for twenty minutes together before the libraryfire, their toes upon the fender, for, contrary to her habit, Miriam hadnot vanished at once to her own quarters. 

"We're not alone here, " remarked Spinrobin presently, in a low voice, andshe nodded her head to signify agreement. The presence of Mr. Skale whenhe was in the house but invisible, was often more real and tremendousthan when he stood beside them and thundered. Some part of him, someemanation, some potent psychic messenger from his personality, kept themclosely company, and tonight the secretary felt it very vividly. Hisremark was really another effort to keep in close touch with Miriam, evenin thought. He needed her more than ever in this sea of silence that wasgathering everywhere about him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded overhim. His anxiety became every moment more acute, and those black serpentsof fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fiber in hisbeing he felt certain that a test which should shake the very foundationsof his psychical life was slowly and remorselessly approaching him. 

Yet, though he longed to speak outright and demand of Miriam what sheknew, and especially that she should reveal the place of the clergyman'sconcealment and what portent it was that required all this dread andmuted atmosphere for its preparation, he kept a seal upon his lips, realizing that loyalty forbade, and that the knowledge of her contemptwould be even worse than the knowledge of the truth. 

And so in due course she rose to go, and as he opened the door for herinto the hall, she paused a moment and turned towards him. A suddeninexplicable thrill flashed through him as she turned her eyes upon hisface, for he thought at first she was about to speak. He has neverforgotten the picture as she stood there so close to his side, thelamplight on her slim figure in its white silk blouse and neat darkskirt, the gloom of the unlit hall and staircase beyond--stood there aninstant, then put both her arms about his neck, drew him down to her, andkissed him gently on both cheeks. Twice she kissed him, then was goneinto the darkness, so softly that he scarcely heard her steps, and hestood between the shadows and the light, her perfume still lingering, andwith it the sweet and magical blessing that she left behind. For thatcaress, he understood, was the innocent childlike caress of their firstdays, and with all the power of her loving little soul in it she hadgiven him the message that he craved: "Courage! And keep a brave heart, dear Spinny, _tonight_!"

Chapter VIII

I

Spinrobin lingered a while in the library after Miriam was gone, thenfeeling slightly ill at ease in the room now that her presence waswithdrawn, put the lights out, saw that the windows were properly barredand fastened, and went into the hall on his way to bed. 

He looked at the front door, tried the chain, and made sure that bothtop and bottom bolts were thrown. Why he should have taken thesesomewhat unusual precautions was not far to seek, though at the momenthe could not probably have explained. The desire for protection wasawake in his being, and he took these measures of security and defensebecause it sought to express itself, as it were, even automatically. Spinrobin was afraid. 

Up the broad staircase he went softly with his lighted candle, leavingthe great hall behind him full to the brim with shadows--shadows thatmoved and took shape. His own head and shoulders in monstrous outlinepoured over the walls and upper landings, and thence leaped to theskylight overhead. As he passed the turn in the stairs, the darkcontents of the hall below rushed past in a single mass, like animmense extended wing, and settled abruptly at his back, following himthence to the landing. 

Once there, he went more quickly, moving on tiptoe, and so reached hisown room halfway down. He passed two doors to get there; another two laybeyond; all four, as he believed, being always locked. It was these fourrooms that conjured mightily with his imagination always, for these werethe rooms he pictured to himself, though without a vestige of proof, asbeing occupied. It was from the further ones--one or other of them--hebelieved Mr. Skale came when he had passed down the corridor at two inthe morning, stealthily, hurriedly, on the heels of that rush of soundthat made him shake in his bed as he heard it. 

In his own room, however, surrounded by the familiar and personal objectsthat reminded him of normal life, he felt more at home. He undressedquickly, all his candles alight, and then sat before the fire in thearmchair to read a little before getting into bed. 

And he read for choice Hebrew--Hebrew poetry, and on this particularoccasion, the books of Job and Ezekiel. For nothing had so soothing andcalming an effect upon him as the mighty yet simple imagery of thesesonorous stanzas; they invariably took him "out of himself, " or at anyrate out of the region of small personal alarms. And thus, letting hisfancy roam, it seems, he was delighted to find that gradually the fearswhich had dominated him during the day and evening disappeared. He passedwith the poetry into that region of high adventure which his nature inreal life denied him. The verses uplifted him in a way that made hisrecent timidity seem the mere mood of a moment, or at least negligible. His memory, as one thing suggested another, began to give up its dead, and some of Blake's drawings, seen recently in London with prodigiouseffect, began to pass vividly before his mental vision. 

The symbolism of what he was reading doubtless suggested the memory. Hefelt himself caught in the great invisible nets of wonder that foreverswept the world. The littleness of modern life, compared to that ancientand profound spirit which sought the permanent things of the soul, haunted him with curious insistence. He suffered a keen, though somewhatmixed realization of his actual insignificance, yet of his potentialsublimity could he but identify himself with his ultimate Self in theregion of vision. .. . His soul was aware of finding itself alternatelyruffled and exalted as he read . .. And pondered . .. As he visualized tosome degree the giant Splendors, the wonderful Wheels, the spirit Wingsand Faces and all the other symbols of potent imagery evoked by theimagination of that old Hebrew world. .. . 

So that when, an hour later, pacified and sleepy, he rose to go to bed, this poetry seems to have left a very marked effect upon hismind--mingled, naturally enough, with the thought of Mr. Skale. For onhis way across the floor, having adjusted the fire-screen, he distinctlyremembered thinking what a splendid "study" the clergyman would have madefor one of Blake's representations of the Deity--the flowing beard, thegreat nose, the imposing head and shoulders, the potentialities of themassive striding figure, surrounded by a pictorial suggestion of all thesound-forces he was forever talking about. .. . 

This thought was his last, and it was without fear of any kind. Merely, he insists, that his imagination was touched, and in a manner perfectlyaccountable, considering the ingredients of its contents at the time. 

And so he hopped nimbly into bed. On the little table beside him stoodthe candle and the copy of the Hebrew text he had been reading, with itsparallel columns in the two languages. His Jaeger slippers were beneaththe chair, his clothes, carefully folded, on the sofa, his collar, studsand necktie in a row on the top of the mahogany chest of drawers. On themantelpiece stood the glass jar of heather, filled that very day byMiriam. He saw it just as he blew out the candle, and Miriam, accordingly, was the last vision that journeyed with him into the countryof dreams and sweet forgetfulness. 

The night was perfectly still. Winter, black and hard, lay about thehouse like an iron wall. No wind stirred. Snow covered the world ofmountain and moor outside, and Silence, supreme at midnight, poured allher softest forces upon the ancient building and its occupants. Spinrobin, curled up in the middle of the big four-poster, slept like atired baby. 

II

It was a good deal later when somewhere out of that mass of silence rosethe faint beginnings of a sound that stirred first cautiously about thevery foundations of the house, and then, mounting inch by inch, throughthe hall, up the staircase, along the corridor, reached the floor wherethe secretary slept so peacefully, and finally entered his room. Itsmuffled tide poured most softly over all. At first only this murmur wasaudible, as of "footsteps upon wool, " of wind or drifting snow, a mereghost of sound; but gradually it grew, though still gentle and subdued, until it filled the space from ceiling unto floor, pressing in like waterdripping into a cistern with ever-deepening note as its volume increased. The trembling of air in a big belfry where bells have been a-ringingrepresents best the effect, only it was a trifle sharper inquality--keener, more alive. 

But, also, there was something more in it--something gong-like andmetallic, yet at the same time oddly and suspiciously human. It held atemper, too, that somehow woke the "panic sense, " as does the hurriednote of a drum--some quick emotional timbre that stirs the sleepingoutposts of apprehension and alarm. On the other hand, it was constant, neither rising nor falling, and thus ordinarily, it need not have stirredany emotion at all--least of all the emotion of consternation. Yet, therewas that in it which struck at the root of security and life. It was arevolutionary sound. 

And as it took possession of the room, covering everything with itsgarment of vibration, it slipped in also, so to speak, between thecrevices of the sleeping, unprotected Spinrobin, coloring his dreams--hisinnocent dreams--with the suggestion of nightmare dread. Of course, hewas too deeply wrapped in slumber to receive the faintest intimation ofthis waking analysis. Otherwise he might, perhaps, have recognized thekind of primitive, ancestral dread his remote forefathers knew when theinexplicable horror of a tidal wave or an eclipse of the sun overwhelmedthem with the threatened alteration of their entire known universe. 

The sleeping figure in that big four-poster moved a little as the tide ofsound played upon it, fidgeting this way and that. The human balluncoiled, lengthened, straightened out. The head, half hidden by folds ofsheet and pillowcase, emerged. 

Spinrobin unfolded, then opened his eyes and stared about him, bewildered, in the darkness. 

"Who's there? Is that you--anybody?" he asked in a whisper, the confusionof sleep still about him. 

His voice seemed dead and smothered, as though the other soundoverwhelmed it. The same instant, more widely awake, he realized that hisbedroom was _humming_. 

"What's that? What's the matter?" he whispered again, wondering uneasilyat the noise. 

There was no answer. The vague dread transferred itself adroitly from hisdream-consciousness to his now thoroughly awakened mind. It began to dawnupon him that something was wrong. He noticed that the fire was out, andthe room dark and heavy. He realized dimly the passage of time--aconsiderable interval of time--and that he must have been asleep severalhours. Where was he? _Who_ was he? What, in the name of mystery andnight, had been going on during the interval? He began to shake allover--feverishly. Whence came this noise that made everything in thedarkness tremble?

As he fumbled hurriedly for the matchbox, his fingers caught in the foldsof pillowcase and sheet, and he struggled violently to get them clearagain. It was while doing this that the impression first reached him thatthe room was no longer quite the same. It had changed while he slept. Even in the darkness he felt this, and shuddering pulled the blanketsover his head and shoulders, for this idea of the changed room plucked atthe center of his heart, where terror lay waiting to leap out upon him. 

After what seemed five minutes he found the matchbox and struck a light, and all the time the torrent of sound poured about his ears with such aneffect of bewilderment that he hardly realized what he was doing. Astrange terror poured into him that _he_ would change with the room. Atlength the match flared, and while he lit the candle with shakingfingers, he looked wildly, quickly about him. At once the sounds rushedupon him from all directions, burying him, so to speak, beneath vehementvibrations of the air that rained in upon him. .. . Yes, the room hadindeed changed, actually changed . .. But before he could decide where thedifference lay the candle died down to a mere spark, waiting for the wickto absorb the grease. It seemed like half an hour before the yellowtongue grew again, so that he finally saw clearly. 

But--saw what? Saw that the room had horribly altered while he slept, yes! But how altered? What in the name of all the world's deities was thematter with it? The torrent of sound, now growing louder and louder, soconfused him at first, and the dancing patchwork of light and shadow thecandle threw so increased his bewilderment, that for some minutes hesought in vain to steady his mind to the point of accurate observation. 

"God of my Fathers!" cried Spinrobin at last under his breath, and hardlyknowing what he said, "if it's not moving!"

For this, indeed, was what he saw while the candle flame burned steadilyupon a room that was no longer quite recognizable. 

At first, with the natural exaggeration due to shock, he thought thewhole room moved, but as his powers of sight came with time to reportmore truly, he perceived that this was only true of certain things in it. It was not the ceiling that poured down in fluid form to meet a floorever gliding and shifting forward into outlandish proportions, but it wascertain objects--one here, another there--midway between the two that, having assumed new and unaccustomed outlines, lent to the rest of thechamber a general appearance of movement and an entirely alteredexpression. And these objects, he perceived, holding tightly to thebedclothes with both hands as he stared, were two: the dark, old-fashioned cupboard on his left, and the plush curtains that drapedthe window on his right. He himself, and the bed and the rest of thefurniture were stationary. The room as a whole stood still, while thesetwo common and familiar articles of household furnishing took on a formand an expression utterly foreign to what he had always known as acupboard and a curtain. This outline, this expression, moreover, if notactually sinister, was grotesque to the verge of the sinister: monstrous. 

The difficulty of making any accurate observation at all was furtherincreased by the perplexity of having to observe two objects, not even onthe same side of the room. Their outlines, however, Spinrobin claims, altered very slowly, wavering like the distorted reflections seen inmoving water, and unquestionably obeying in some way the pitch and volumeof the sound that continued to pour its resonant tide about the room. Thesound manipulated the shape; the connection between the two was evident. That, at least, he grasped. Somebody hidden elsewhere in the house--Mr. Skale probably, of course, in one of his secret chambers--wasexperimenting with the "true names" of these two "common objects, "altering their normal forms by inserting the vibrations of sound betweentheir ultimate molecules. 

Only, this simple statement that his clearing mind made to itself in noway accounted for the fascination of horror that accompanied themanifestation. For he recognized it as the joy of horror and not alonethe torment. His blood ran swiftly to the rhythm of these hummingvibrations that filled the space about him; and his terror, hisbewilderment, his curious sense of elation seemed to him as messengers offar more terrific sensations that communicated to him dimly the rushingwonder of some aspect of the Unknown in its ultimate nature essentiallybeautiful. 

This, however, only dawned upon him later, when the experiment wascomplete and he had time to reflect upon it all next day; for, meanwhile, to see the proportions he had known since childhood alter thus before hiseyes was unbelievably dreadful. To see your friend sufficiently himselfstill to be recognizable, yet in essentials, at the same time, grotesquely altered, would doubtless touch a climax of distress andhorror for you. The changing of these two things, so homely andwell-known in themselves, into something that was not themselves, involved an idea of destruction that was worse than even death, for itmeant that the idea in the mind no longer corresponded to the visibleobject there before the eyes. The correspondence was no longer a trueone. The result was a lie. 

To describe the actual forms assumed by these shifting and waveringbodies is not possible, for when Spinrobin gives the details one simplyfails to recognize either cupboard or curtain. To say that the dark, lumbering cupboard, standing normally against the wall down there in theshadows, loomed suddenly forward and upward, bent, twisted, and stretchedout the whole of one side towards him like a misshapen arm, can conveynothing of the world of new sensations that the little secretary feltwhile actually watching it in progress in that haunted chamber of Skale'smansion among the hills. Nor can one be thrilled with the extraordinarysense of wonder that thrilled Spinrobin when he saw the faded plushcurtain hang across the window in such a way that it might well havewrapped the whole of Wales into a single fold, yet without extending itsskirts beyond the actual walls of the room. For what he saw apparentlyinvolved contradictions in words, and the fact is that no description ofwhat he saw is really possible at all. 

"Hark! By thunder!" he exclaimed, creeping out of bed with sheer stressof excitement, while the sounds poured up through the floor as thoughfrom cellars and tunnels where they lay stored beneath the house. Theysang and trembled about him with the menaces of a really exquisite alarm. He moved cautiously out into the center of the room, not daring toapproach too close to the affected objects, yet furiously anxious todiscover how it was all done. For he was uncommonly "game" through itall, and had himself well in hand from beginning to end. He was reallytoo excited, probably, to feel ordinary fear; it all swept him away toomightily for that; he did not even notice the sting of the hotcandle-grease as it fell upon his bare feet. 

There he stood, plucky little Spinny, steady amid this shifting world, master of his soul amid dissolution, his hair pointing out like ruffledfeathers, his blue eyes wide open and charged with a speechless wonder, his face pale as chalk, lips apart, jaw a trifle dropped, one hand in thepocket of his dressing-gown, and the other holding the candle at an anglethat showered grease upon the carpet of the Rev. Philip Skale as well asupon his own ankles. There he stood, face to face with the grotesquehorror of familiar outlines gone wrong, the altered panorama of his knownworld moving about him in a strange riot of sound and form. It was, heunderstood, an amazing exhibition of the transforming power of sound--ofsound playing tricks with the impermanence and the illusion of Form. Skale was making his words good. 

And behind the scenes he divined, with a shudder of genuine admiration, the figure of the master of the ceremonies, somehow or other growncolossal, as he had thought of him just before going to sleep--PhilipSkale, hidden in the secret places of the building, directing theoperations of this dreadful aspect of his revolutionary Discovery. .. . Andyet the thought brought a measure of comfort in its train, for was he notalso himself now included in the mighty scheme?. .. In his mind he sawthis giant Skale, with his great limbs and shoulders, his flowing, shaggybeard, his voice of thunder and his portentous speculations, and, sodoing, felt himself merged in a larger world that made his own littleterrors and anxieties of but small account. Once again the sense of hisown insignificance disappeared as he realized that at last he was in thefull flood of an adventure that was providing the kind of escape he hadalways longed for. 

Inevitably, then, his thought flew to Miriam, and as he remembered herfinal word to him a few short hours ago in the hall below, he alreadyfelt ashamed of the fear with which he had met the beginning of the"test. " He instantly felt steeped instead in the wonder and power of thewhole thing. His mind, though still trembling and shaken, came to rest. He drew, that is, upon the larger powers of the Chord. 

And the interesting thing was that the moment this happened he noticed achange begin to come over the room. With extraordinary swiftness the tideof vibration lessened and the sound withdrew; the humming seemed to sinkback into the depths of the house; the thrill and delight of his recentterrors fled with it. The air gradually ceased to shake and tremble; thefurniture, with a curious final shiver as of spinning coins about tosettle, resumed its normal shape. Once more the room, and with it theworld, became commonplace and dull. The test apparently was over. He hadmet it with success. 

Spinrobin, holding the candle straight for the first time, turned backtowards the bed. He caught a passing glimpse of himself in the mirror ashe went--white and scattered he describes his appearance. .. . He climbedagain into bed, blew the candle out, put the matchbox under his pillowwithin easy reach, and so once more curled himself up into a ball andcomposed himself to sleep. 

Chapter IX

I

But he was hardly settled--there had not even been time to warm thesheets again--when he was aware that the test, instead of being over, was, indeed, but just beginning; and the detail that conveyed thisunwelcome knowledge to him, though small enough in itself, was yetfraught with a crowded cargo of new alarms. It was a step upon thestaircase, approaching his room. 

He heard it the instant he lay still in bed after the shuffling processknown generally as "cuddling down. " And he knew that it was approachingbecause of the assistance the hall clock brought to his bewildered ears. For the hall clock--a big, dignified piece of furniture with a deepnote--happened just then to strike the hour of two in the morning, andthere was a considerable interval between the two notes. He first heardthe step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for thestaircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and perhaps adozen seconds later, when the second stroke had died away, he heard thestep again, as it passed from the top of the staircase on to thepolished boards of the landing. The owner of the step, meanwhile, hadpassed up the whole length of the staircase in the interval, and was nowcoming across the landing in a direct line towards his bedroom door. 

"It _is_ a step, I suppose, " it seems he muttered to himself, as withhead partially raised above the blankets he listened intently. "It's a_step_, I mean. .. ?" For the sound was more like a light tapping of alittle hammer than an actual step--some hard substance drummingautomatically upon the floor, while yet moving in advance. He recognized, however, that there was intelligence behind its movements, because of thesense of direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned thesharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in fugitivefashion to his mind--Heaven alone knows why--that it might be somemechanical contrivance that was worked from the hall by a hand. For thesound was too light to be the tread of a person, yet too "conscious" tobe merely a sound of the night operating mechanically. And it was unlikethe noise that the feet of any animal would make, any animal that hecould think of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to hismind, but without approval. 

The puzzling characteristics of the sound, therefore, contradictory asthey were, left him utterly perplexed, so that for some little time hecould not make up his mind whether to be frightened, interested ormerely curious. 

This uncertainty, however, lasted but a moment or two at the most, for anappreciable pause outside his door was next followed by a noise ofscratching upon the panels, as of hands or paws, and then by theshuffling of some living body that was flattening itself in an attempt tosqueeze through the considerable crack between door and flooring, and soto enter the room. 

And, hearing it, Spinrobin this time was so petrified with aninstantaneous rush of terror, that at first he dared not even move tofind the matches again under his pillow. 

The pause was dreadful. He longed for brilliant light that should revealall parts of the room equally, or else for a thick darkness that shouldconceal him from everything in the world. The uncertain flicker of asingle candle playing miserably between the two was the last thing in theworld to appeal to him. 

And then events crowded too thick and fast for him to recognize any oneemotion in particular from all the fire of them passing so swiftly in andout among his hopelessly disorganized thoughts. Terror flashed, but withit flashed also wonder and delight--the audacity of unreflectingcourage--and more--even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge andforces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast Transparencythat hides from men the Unknown. 

It is soon told. For a moment there was silence, and then he knew thatthe invader had effected an entrance. There was barely time to marvel atthe snake-like thinness of the living creature that could avail itself ofso narrow a space, when to his amazement he heard the quick patter offeet across the space of boarded flooring next the wall, and then thesilence that muffled them as they reached the carpet proper. 

Almost at the same second something leaped upon his bed, and there shotswiftly across him a living thing with light, firm tread--a creature, sofar as he could form any judgment at all, about the size of a rabbit or acat. He felt the feet pushing through sheets and blankets upon his body. They were little feet; how many, at that stage, he could not guess. Thenhe heard the thud as it dropped to the floor upon the other side. 

The panic terror that in the dark it would run upon his bare exposed facethus passed; and in that moment of intense relief Spinrobin gripped hissoul, so to speak, with both hands and made the effort of his life. Whatever happened now he must have a light, be it only the light of asingle miserable candle. In that moment he felt that he would havesacrificed all his hopes of the hereafter to have turned on a flood ofsearching and brilliant sunshine into every corner of theroom--instantaneously. The thought that the creature might jump againupon the bed and touch him before he could see, gave him energy to act. 

With dashes of terror shooting through him like spears of ice, he grabbedthe matchbox, and after a frenzied entanglement again with sheets andpillow-case, succeeded in breaking four matches in quick succession. Theycracked, it seemed to him, like pistol shots, till he half expected thatthis creature, waiting there in the darkness, must leap out in thedirection of the sound to attack him. The fifth lit, and a moment laterthe candle was burning dimly, but with its usual exasperating leisure anddelay. As the flare died down, then gradually rose again, he fairlyswallowed the room with a single look, wishing there were eyes all overhis body. It was a very faint light. At first he saw nothing, heardnothing--nothing alive, that is. 

"I must act! I must do something--at once!" he remembered thinking. For, to wait meant to leave the choice and moment of attack to this other. .. . 

Cautiously, and very slowly, therefore, he wriggled to the edge of thebed and slid over, searching with his feet for slippers, but findingnone, yet not daring to lower his eyes to look; then stood upright witha sudden rush, shading the candle from his eyes with one hand andpeering over it. 

As a rule, in moments of overwhelming emotion, the eyes search tooeagerly, too furiously, to see properly at all; but this does not seem tohave been the case with Spinrobin. The shadows ran about like water andthe flickering of the candle-flame dazzled, but there, opposite to him, over by the darkness of the dead fireplace, he saw instantly the smallblack object that was the immediate cause of his terror. Its actual shapewas merged too much in the dark background to be clearly ascertainable, but near the top of it, where presumably the head was, the candle-flameshone reflected in two brilliant points of light that were directedstraight upon his face, and he knew that he was looking into the eyes ofa living creature that was not the very least on the defensive. It was aliving creature, aggressive and unafraid. 

For perhaps a couple of minutes--or was it seconds only?--these twobeings with the breath of life in them faced one another. Then Spinrobinmade a step cautiously in advance; lowering his candle he moved towardsit. This he did, partly to see better, partly to protect his bare legs. The idea of protection, however, seems to have been merely instinct, forat once this notion that it might dash forward to attack him was mergedin the unaccountable realization of a far grander emotion, as heperceived that this "living creature" facing him was, for all itsdiminutive size, both dignified and imposing. Something in itsatmosphere, something about its mysterious presentment there upon thefloor in its dark corner, something, perhaps, that flashed from itsbrilliant and almost terrible eyes, managed to convey to him that it wasclothed with an importance and a significance not attached normally tothe animal world. It had "an air. " It bore itself with power, with value, almost with pride. 

This incongruous impression bereft him of the sensations of ordinaryfear, while it increased the sources of his confusion. Yet it convinced. He knew himself face to face with some form of life that was considerablein the true sense--spiritually. It exercised a fascination over him thatwas at the moment beyond either explanation or belief. 

As he moved, moreover, the little dark object also moved--away from him, as though resenting closer inspection. With action--again unlike theaction of any animal he could think of, and essentially dignified--bothrapid and nicely calculated, it ran towards the curtains behind. Thisappearance of something stately that went with it was indefinable andbeyond everything impressive; for how in the world could such smallproportions and diminutive movements convey grandeur? And again Spinrobinfound it impossible to decide precisely how it moved--whether on fourlegs or on two. 

Keeping the two points of light always turned upon him, it shot acrossthe floor, leaped easily upon a chair, passed with a nimble spring fromthis to a table by the wall, still too much in obscurity to permit aproper view; and then, while the amazed secretary approached cautiouslyto follow its movements better, it crawled to the edge of the table, andin so doing passed for the first time full across the pale zone offlickering candlelight. 

Spinrobin, in that quick second, caught a glimpse of flying hair, and sawthat it moved either as a human being or as a bird--on two legs. 

The same moment it sprang deftly from the high table to the mantelpiece, turned, stood erect, and looked at him with the whole glare of the lightupon its face; and Spinrobin, bereft of all power of intelligiblesensation whatever, saw to his unutterable distress that it was--a man. The dignity of its movements had already stirred vaguely his sense ofawe, but now the realization beyond doubt of its diminutive _human_ shapeadded a singularly acute touch of horror; and it was the combination ofthe two emotions, possibly, that were responsible also for the tworemarkable impulses of which he was first conscious: first, a mad desireto strike and kill; secondly, an imperious feeling that he must hide hiseyes in some act or other of worship!

And it was then he realized that the man was--Philip Skale!

Mr. Skale, scarcely a foot high, dressed as usual in black, flowingbeard, hooked nose, lambent, flashing eyes and all, stood there upon themantelpiece level with his secretary's face, not three feet separatingthem, and--smiled at him. He was small as a Tanagra figure, and inperfect proportion. 

It was unspeakably terrible. 

II

"Of course--I'm dreaming, " cried Spinrobin, half aloud, half to thefigure before him. He searched behind him with one hand for solidsupport. "You're a dream thing. It's some awful trick--God willprotect me--!"

Mr. Skale's tiny lips moved. "No, no, " his voice said, and it sounded asfrom a great distance. "I'm no dream thing at all, and you are wideawake. Look at me well. I am the man you know--Philip Skale. Lookstraight into my eyes and be convinced. " Again he smiled his kindly, winning smile. "What you now see is nothing but a result of sounding mytrue name in a certain way--very softly--to increase the cohesion of myphysical molecules and reduce my visible expression. Listen, and watch!"

And Spinrobin, half stupefied, obeyed, feeling that his weakening kneesmust in another moment give way and precipitate him to the floor. He wasutterly unnerved. The onslaught of terror and amazement was overwhelming. For something dreadful beyond all words lay in the sight of this man, whom he was accustomed to reverence in his gigantic everyday shape, herereduced to the stature of a pygmy, yet compelling as ever, terrific evenwhen thus dwarfed. And to hear the voice of thunder that he knew so wellcome to him disguised within this thin and almost wailing tone, passedequally beyond the limits of what he could feel as emotion or translateinto any intelligible words or gesture. 

While, therefore, the secretary stood in awful wonder, doing as he wastold simply because he could do nothing else, the figure of the clergymanmoved with tiny steps to the edge of the mantelpiece, until it seemed asthough he meant in another moment to leap on to his companion's shoulder, or into his arms. At the edge, however, he stopped--the brink of aprecipice, to him!--and Spinrobin then became aware that from his movinglips, doll-like though bearded, his voice was issuing with anever-growing volume of sound and power. 

Vibrations of swiftly-increasing depth and wave-length were spreadingthrough the air about him, filling the room from floor to ceiling. Whatthe syllables actually uttered may have been he was too dazed to realize, for no degree of concentration was possible to his mind at all; he onlyknew that, before his smarting eyes, with this rising of the voice to itsold dominant inflexion, the figure of Mr. Philip Skale grew likewise, indescribably; swelled, rose, spread upwards and outwards, but with theparts ever passing slowly in consistent inter-relation, from minute tominute. He became, always in perfect proportion, magnified and extended. The growing form, moreover, kept pace exactly, and most beautifully, withthe increasing tide of sonorous vibration that flooded himself, itsutterer and the whole room. 

Spinrobin, it seems, had just sufficient self-control left to realizethat this sound was similar in quality to that which had first awakenedhim and caused the outlines of the furniture to alter, when the sight ofMr. Skale's form changing thus terribly before his eyes, and within thetouch of his very hand, became too much for him altogether. .. . 

What precisely happened he never knew. The sounds first enveloped him, then drove him backwards with a sense of immense applied resistance. Hecollapsed upon the sofa a few feet behind him, as though irresistiblypushed. The power that impelled him charged vehemently through the littleroom till it seemed the walls must burst asunder to give it scope, whilethe sounds rose to such a volume that he figured himself drowned andoverpowered by their mighty vibrations as by the storm swells of theAtlantic. Before he lost them as sound he seems thus to have been awareof them as moving waves of air. .. . The next thing he took in was thatamid the waste of silence that now followed his inability to hear, thefigure of Philip Skale towered aloft towards the ceiling, till it seemedpositively to occupy all the available space in the room about him. 

Had he dropped upon the floor instead of upon the sofa it is probablethat at this point Spinrobin would have lost consciousness, at any ratefor a period; but that sofa, which luckily for his bones was so closebehind, galvanized him sharply back into some measure of self-controlagain. Being provided with powerful springs, it shot him up into the air, whence he relapsed with a series of smaller bounds into a normal sittingposture. Still holding the lighted candle as best he could, the littlesecretary bounced upon that sofa like a tennis ball. And the violentmotion shook him into himself, as it were. His tottering universestruggled back into shape once more. He remembered vaguely that all thiswas somehow a test of his courage and fitness. And this thought, strengthened by a law of his temperament which forced him to welcome thesweet, mad terror of the whole adventure, helped to call out the reservesof his failing courage. 

He bounced upon his feet again--those bare feet plastered with candlegrease--and, turning his head, saw the clergyman, of incredible stature, yet still apparently increasing, already over by the door. He was turningthe key with a hand the size--O horror!--of Spinrobin's breast. The nextmoment his vast stooping body filled the entire entrance, blotting outwhole portions of the walls on either side, then was gone from the room. 

Leaving the candlestick on the sofa, his heart aflame with a fearfulecstasy of curiosity, he dashed across the floor in pursuit, but Mr. Skale, silently and with the swiftness of a river, was already down thestairs before he had covered half the distance. 

Through the framework of the door Spinrobin saw this picture:

Skale, like some awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the hall sometwenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up through the well of thebuilding till his head and shoulders alone seemed to fill the entirespace beneath the skylight. Though his feet rested unquestionably uponthe ground, his face, huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and halflighted above the banisters of this second storey, his tangled lockssweeping the ceiling, and his beard, like some dark river of hair, flowing downwards through the night. And this spreading countenance ofcloud it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, that Spinrobin saw turnslowly towards him across the faint flicker of the candlelight, lookstraight down into his face, and smile. The great mouth and eyesunquestionably smiled. And that smile, for all its vast terror, wasbeyond words enchanting--like the spread laughter of a summer landscape. 

Among the spaces of the immense visage--reminding him curiously of hisboyhood's conception of the Creator--Spinrobin lost himself and grewdizzy with a deadly yet delicious faintness. The mighty tenderness, thecompassion, the splendor of that giant smile overpowered him andswallowed him up. 

For one second, in dreadful silence, he gazed. Then, rising to meet thetest with a courage that he felt might somehow involve the alteration ifnot the actual destruction of his own little personality, but that alsoproved his supreme gameness at the same time, he tried to smile inreturn. .. . The strange and pitiful attempt upon his own face perhaps, inthe semi-obscurity, was not seen. He only remembers that he somehow foundstrength to crawl forward and close the door with a bang, though not thestrength to turn the key and lock it, and that two seconds later, havingkicked the candle over and out in his flying leap, he was in the middleof the bed under a confused pile of sheets and blankets, weeping withmuffled sobs in the darkness as though his heart must burst with thewonder and terror of all he had witnessed. 

For, to the simple in heart, at the end of all possible stress and strainof emotion, comes mercifully the blinding relief of tears. .. . 

And then, although too overcome to be able to prove it even to himself, it was significant that, lying there smothered among the bedclothes, hebecame aware of the presence of something astonishingly sweet andcomforting in his consciousness. It came quite suddenly upon him; thereaction he experienced, he says, was very wonderful, for with it thesense of absolute safety and security returned to him. Like a terrifiedchild in the darkness who suddenly knows that its mother stands by thebed, all-powerful to soothe, he felt certain that some one had moved intothe room, was close beside him, and was even trying to smooth his pillowand arrange the twisted bedclothes. 

He did not dare uncover his face to see, for he was still dominated bythe memory of Mr. Skale's portentous visage; but his ears were not soeasily denied, and he was positive that he heard a voice that called hisname as though it were the opening phrase of some sweet, childhoodlullaby. There was a touch about him somewhere, it seemed, of delicatecool hands that brought with them the fragrance as of a scented summerwind; and the last thing he remembered before he sank away into welcomeunconsciousness was an impression, fugitive and dreamlike, of a gentleface, unstained and pale as marble, that bent above his pillow, and, singing, called him away to forgetfulness and peace. 

III

And several hours later, when he woke after a refreshing sleep to findMrs. Mawle smiling down upon him over a tray of steaming coffee, herecalled the events of the night with a sense of vivid reality that ifpossible increased his conviction of their truth, but without thesmallest symptom of terror or dismay. For the blessing of the presencethat had soothed him into sleep lay still upon him like a garment toprotect. The test had come and he had not wholly failed. 

With something approaching amusement, he watched the housekeeper pick upa candlestick from the middle of the floor and put his Jaeger slippersbeneath the chair, having found one by the cupboard and the other over bythe fireplace. 

"Mr. Skale's compliments and Mr. Spinrobin is not to hurry himself, " heheard her saying, as she put the tray beside the bed and went out of theroom. He looked at his watch and saw that it was after ten o'clock. 

Half an hour later he was dressed and on his way downstairs, consciousonly of an overwhelming desire to see Mr. Skale, but to see him in hisnormal and fatherly aspect again. For a strain of worship mingled oddlywith his devouring curiosity, and he was thirsty now for the rest of theadventure, for the complete revelation of the Discovery in all itsbearings. And the moment he saw the clergyman in the hall he ran towardshim, scarcely realizing what it was he meant to say or do. Mr. Skalestretched out both hands to meet him. His face was alight with pleasure. 

But, before they could meet and touch, a door opened and in slippedMiriam between them; she, too, was radiant, and her hands outstretched. 

"Me first, please! Me first!" she cried with happy laughter, and beforeSpinrobin realized what was happening, she had flung her arms about hisneck and kissed him. "You were splendid!" she whispered in his ear, "andI _am_ proud of you--ever so proud!"

The next minute Skale had him by the hands. 

"Well done! well done!" his voice boomed, while he gazed down into hisface with enthusiastic and unqualified approval. "It was all magnificent. My dear little fellow, you've got the heart of a god, and, by Heavens, you shall become as a god too! For you are worthy!" He shook himviolently by both hands, while Miriam looked eagerly on with admirationin her wide grey eyes. 

"I'm so glad, so awfully glad--" stammered the secretary, rememberingwith shame his moments of vivid terror. He hardly knew what he said atthe moment. 

"The properties of things, " thundered the clergyman, "as you have nowlearned, are merely the 'muffled utterances of the Sounds that madethem. ' The thing itself is its name. "

He spoke rapidly, with intense ardor and with reverence. "You have seenwith your own eyes a scientific proof of my Discovery on its humblestlevel--how the physical properties of objects can be manipulated by thevibratory utterance of their true names--can be extended, reduced, glorified. Next you shall learn that spiritual qualities--the attributesof higher states of being--can be similarly dealt with andharnessed--exalted, intensified, _invoked_--and that the correctutterance of mighty Names can seduce their specific qualities into yourown soul to make you mighty and eternal as themselves, and that to callupon the Great Names is no idle phrase. .. . When the time comes, Spinrobin, you shall not shrink, you shall not shrink. .. . " He flung hisarms out with a great gesture of delight. 

"No, " repeated Spinrobin, yet aware that he felt mentally battered at theprospect, "I shall not shrink. I think--now--I can manage--anything!"

And then, watching Miriam with lingering glance as she vanished laughingup the staircase, he followed Mr. Skale into the library, his thoughtstearing wildly to and fro, swelling with delight and pride, thrillingwith the wonder of what was yet to come. There, with fewest possiblesentences, the clergyman announced that he now accepted him and would, therefore, carry out the promise with regard to the bequeathal of hisproperty to him in the event of any untoward circumstances arising later. He also handed to him in cash the salary for the "trial month, " togetherwith a check for the first quarter in advance. He was beaming with thesatisfaction he felt at having found at last a really qualified helper. Spinrobin looked into his face as they shook hands over the bargain. Hewas thinking of other aspects he had seen of this amazing being but a fewhours before--the minute, the colossal, the changing-between-the-twoSkales. .. . 

"I'm game, Mr. Skale, " he said simply, forgetting all his recent doubtsand terrors. 

"I know you are, " the clergyman replied. "I knew it all along. "

Chapter X

I

The first thing Spinrobin knew when he ran upstairs to lock away themoney in his desk was that his whole being, without his directing it, asked a question of momentous import. He did not himself ask itdeliberately. He surprised his sub-consciousness asking it:

"WHAT IS THIS NAME THAT PHILIP SKALE FOREVER SEEKS?"

It was no longer mere curiosity that asked it, but that sense ofresponsibility which in all men of principle and character lies at theroot of action and of life. And Spinrobin, for all his little weaknesses, was a man of character and principle. There came a point when he could nolonger follow blindly where others led, even though the leader were sogrand an individual as Philip Skale. This point is reached at varyingdegrees of the moral thermometer, and but for the love that Miriam hadwakened in his heart, it might have taken much longer to send the mercuryof his will so high in so short a time. He now felt responsibility fortwo, and in the depths of his queer, confused, little mind stirred thethought that possibly after all the great adventure he sought was onlythe supreme adventure of a very wonderful Love. 

He records these two questions at this point, and it is only just tohimself, therefore, to set them down here. To neither was the answer yetforthcoming. 

For some days the routine of this singular household followed its normalcourse, the only change being that while the secretary practiced hisHebrew names and studied the relations between sound, color, form and therest, he kept himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mightyhumanizer and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesomeand practical values of existence. He turned, so to speak, and tried toface the matter squarely; to see the adventure as a whole; to get allround it and judge. It seems, however, that he was too much in the thickof it to get that bird's-eye view which reduces details to the rightproportion. Skale's personality was too close, and flooded him tooviolently. Spinrobin remained confused and bewildered; but alsounbelievably happy. 

"Coming out all right, " he wrote shakily in that gilt-edged diary. "Beginning to understand why I'm in the world. Am just as important asanybody else--_really_. Impossible explain more. " His entries werevery like telegrams, in which a man attempts to express in a lucidshorthand all manner of things that the actual words hardly compass. And life itself is not unlike some mighty telegram that seeks vainlyto express, between the extremes of silence and excess, all that thesoul would say. .. . 

"Skale is going too far, " perhaps best expresses the daily burden of hisaccumulating apprehension. "He is leading up to something that makes meshrink--something not quite legitimate. Playing with an Olympian firethat may consume us both. " And there his telegram stopped; for how inthe world could he put into mere language the pain and distress involvedin the thought that it might at the same time consume Miriam? It alltouched appalling depths of awe in his soul. It made his heart shake. Thegirl had become a part of his very self. 

Vivid reactions he suffered, alternating with equally vivid enthusiasms. He realized how visionary the clergyman's poetical talk was, but the nextminute the practical results staggered him again, as it were, back into astate of conviction. For the poetry obscured his judgment and fired hisimagination so that he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it wasnot only illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effectsstared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is waste oftime. One must act. 

Yet how "act?" The only way that offered he accepted: he fell back uponthe habits of his boyhood, read his Bible, and at night dropped humblyupon his knees and prayed. 

"Keep me straight and pure and simple, and bless . .. Miriam. Grantthat I may love and strengthen her . .. And that my love may bring herpeace . .. And joy . .. And guide me through all this terror, I beseechThee, into Truth. .. . "

For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even admit that itwas love; feeling only the highest, he could not quite correlate hissweet and elevated passion with the common standards of what the Worldcalled love. The humility of a great love is ever amazing. 

And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for ordinaryprotection from the possible results of Skale's audacity. The Love of Godhe could understand, but the Wrath of God was a conception he was stillunemancipated enough to dread; and a dark, portentous terror that Skalemight incur it, and that he might be dragged at its heels into somehideous catastrophe, chased him through the days and nights. It allseemed so unlawful, impious, blasphemous. .. . 

". .. And preserve us from vain presumptions of the heart and brain, Ipray Thee, lest we be consumed. .. . Please, O God, forgive the insolenceof our wills . .. And the ignorant daring of our spirit. .. . Permitnot the innocent to suffer for the guilty . .. And especiallybless . .. Miriam. .. . "

Yet through it all ran that exquisite memory of the calling of his truename in the spaces of his soul. The beauty of far-off unattainablethings hovered like a star above his head, so that he went about thehouse with an insatiable yearning in his heart, a perpetual smile ofwonder upon his face, and in his eyes a gleam that was sometimes terror, sometimes delight. 

It was almost as if some great voice called to him from the mountaintops, and the little chap was forever answering in his heart, "I'm coming! I'mcoming!" and then losing his way purposely, or hiding behind bushes onthe way for fear of meeting the great invisible Caller face to face. 

II

And, meanwhile, the house became for him a kind of Sound-Temple as itwere, protected from desecration by the hills and desolate spaces thatsurrounded it. From dawn to darkness its halls and corridors echoed withthe singing violin, Skale's booming voice, Miriam's gentle tones, and hisown plaintive yet excited note, while outside the old grey walls the airwas ever alive with the sighing of the winds and the ceaseless murmur offalling water. Even at night the place was not silent. He understood atlast what the clergyman had told him--that perfect silence does notexist. The universe, down to its smallest detail, sings through everysecond of time. 

The sounds of nature especially haunted him. He never heard the wind nowwithout thinking of lost whispers from the voice of God that had strayeddown upon the world to sweeten and bewilder the hearts of men--whispersa-search for listeners simple enough to understand. And when their walkstook them as far as the sea, the dirge of the waves troubled his soulwith a kind of distressing exaltation that afflicted the very deeps ofhis being. It was with a new comprehension he understood his employer'sdictum that the keynote of external nature was middle F--this employerwho himself possessed that psychic sense of absolute pitch--and that theroar of a city, wind in forest trees, the cry of trains, the rushing ofrivers and falling water, Niagara itself, all produced this singleutterance; and he loved to sing it on the moors, Miriam laughing by hisside, and to realize that the world, literally, sang with them. 

Behind all sounds he divined for the first time a majesty that appalled;his imagination, glorified by Skale, instantly fell to constructing theforms they bodied forth. Out of doors the flutes of Pan cried to him todance: indoors the echoes of yet greater music whispered in thepenetralia of his spirit that he should cry. In this extraordinary newworld of Philip Skale's revelation he fairly spun. 

It was one thing when the protective presence of the clergyman was abouthim, or when he was sustained by the excitement of enthusiasm, but whenhe was alone, at his normal level, timid, yet adventurous, the too vividsense of these new things made him tremble. The terrifying beauty ofSkale's ideas; the realization in cold blood that all forms in the worldabout him were silently a-singing, and might any moment vanish andrelease their huge bodies into primal sounds; that the stones in theroad, the peaked hills, the very earth herself might alter in shapebefore his eyes: on the other hand, that the viewless forces of life anddeath might leap into visibility and form with the calling of theirnames; that himself, and Skale, and Mrs. Mawle, and that pale fairygirl-figure were all enmeshed in the same scheme with plants, insects, animals and planets; and that God's voice was everywhere too sublimelyclose--all this, when he was alone, oppressed him with a sense of thingsthat were too intimate and too mighty for daily life. 

In these moments--so frequent now as to be almost continuous--hepreferred the safety of his ordinary and normal existence, dull though itmight be; the limited personality he had been so anxious to escape fromseemed wondrous sweet and comforting. The Terror of the approachingExperiment with this mighty name appalled him. 

The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and morecontradictory and confused. The outcome for himself seemed to be theresult of the least little pressure this way or that--possibly at thevery last moment, too. Which way the waiting Climax might draw him was aquestion impossible to decide. 

III

And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a sharp stagenearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr. Skale came upunexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand upon his shoulder in a waythat made him positively jump. 

"Spinrobin, " he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that shamed histimidity and cowardice, "are you ready?"

"For anything and everything, " was the immediate reply, given almostautomatically as he felt the clergyman's forces flood into his souland lift him. 

"The time is at hand, then, " continued the other, leading his companionby the arm to a deep leather sofa, "for you to know certain things thatfor your own safety and ours, I was obliged to keep hidden tillnow--first among which is the fact that this house is not, as yousupposed, empty. "

Prepared as he was for some surprising announcement, Spinrobinnevertheless started. It was so abrupt. 

"Not empty!" he repeated, eager to hear more, yet quaking. He had neverforgotten the nightly sounds and steps in his own passage. 

"The rooms beyond your own, " said Skale, with a solemnity that amountedto reverence, "are occupied--"

"By--" gasped the secretary. 

"Captured Sounds--gigantic, " was the reply, uttered almost belowthe breath. 

The two men looked steadily at one another for the space of severalseconds, Spinrobin charged to the brim with anxious questions pressingsomehow upon the fringe of life and death, Skale obviously calculatinghow much he might reveal or how little. 

"Mr. Spinrobin, " he said presently, holding him firmly with his eyes, "you are aware by this time that what I seek is the correct pronunciationof certain names--of a certain name, let us say, and that so complex isthe nature of this name that no single voice can utter it. I need achord, a human chord of four voices. "

Spinrobin bowed. 

"After years of research and experiment, " resumed the clergyman, "I havefound the first three notes, and now, in your own person, has come mysupreme happiness in the discovery of the fourth. What I now wish you toknow, though I cannot expect you to understand it all at first, is thatthe name I seek is broken up into four great divisions of sound, and thatto each of these separate divisions the four notes of our chord formintroductory channels. When the time comes to utter it, each one of uswill call the syllable or sound that awakens the mighty response in oneof these immense and terrific divisions, so that the whole name willvibrate as a single chord sung perfectly in tune. "

Mr. Skale paused and drew deep breaths. This approach to his greatexperiment, even in speech, seemed to exhaust him so that he was obligedto call upon reserves of force that lay beneath. His whole mannerbetrayed the gravity, the reverence, the mingled respect and excitementof--death. 

And the simple truth is that at the moment Spinrobin could not find inhimself sufficient courage to ask what this fearful and prodigious namemight be. Even to put ordinary questions about the four rooms was alittle beyond him, for his heart beat like a hammer against his ribs, andhe heard its ominous drum sounding through both his temples. 

"And in each of the rooms in your corridor, ready to leap forth whencalled, lie the sounds or voices I have captured and imprisoned, theseseparate chambers being sheeted and prepared--huge wax receptacles, infact, akin to the cylinders of the phonograph. Together with the form orpattern belonging to them, and the color, there they lie at present insilence and invisibility, just as the universe lay in silence andinvisibility before the word of God called it into objective being. But--_know them and they are mine_. "

"All these weeks--so close to me, " whispered Spinrobin, too low for Skaleto notice. 

Then the clergyman leaned over towards him. "These captured sounds areas yet by no means complete, " he said through his beard, as though afraidto admit it; "for all I have of them really is their initial letters, oftheir forms the merest faint outlines, and of their colors but a firstsuggestion. And we must be careful, we must be absolutely wise. To utterthem correctly will mean to transfer to us the qualities of Gods, whereasto utter falsely may mean to release upon the surface of the world forcesthat--" He shrugged his great shoulders and an ashen pallor spreaddownwards over the face to the very lips. The sentence remainedunfinished; and its very incompleteness left Spinrobin with the mostgrievous agony of apprehension he had yet experienced. 

"So that, if you are ready, our next step shall be to show you the roomin which your own particular sound lies, " added Mr. Skale after a longpause; "the sound in the chord it will be your privilege to utter whenthe time comes. For each of us will utter his or her particular letter, the four together making up the first syllable in the name I seek. "

Mr. Skale looked steadily down into the wide blue eyes of his companion, and for some minutes neither of them spoke. 

"The letter I am to utter, " repeated the secretary at length; "the letterin some great name?"

Mr. Skale smiled upon him with the mighty triumph of the Promethean ideain his eyes. 

"The room, " he muttered deeply and softly, "in which it lies waiting foryou to claim it at the appointed time . .. The room where you shall learnits color, become attuned to its great vibratory activity, see its form, and _know_ its power in your own person. "

Again they looked long into one another's eyes. 

"I'm game, " murmured Spinrobin almost inaudibly; "I'm game, Mr. Skale. "But, as he said it, something in his round head turned dizzy, while histhoughts flew to Miriam and to the clergyman's significant phrase of afew minutes ago--"we must be careful, we must be absolutely wise. "

IV

And the preparation the clergyman insisted upon--detailed, thoroughand scrupulous--certainly did not lessen in Spinrobin's eyes thegravity of the approaching ordeal. They spent two days and nights inthe very precise and punctilious study, and utterance, of the Hebrewnames of the "angels"--that is, forces--whose qualities were essentialto their safety. 

Also, at the same time, they fasted. 

But when the time came for the formal visit to those closed rooms, ofwhich the locked doors were like veils in a temple, Spinrobin declares itmade him think of some solemn procession down ancient passageways ofcrypt or pyramid to the hidden places where inscrutable secrets lay. Itwas certainly thrilling and impressive. Skale went first, moving slowlywith big strides, grave as death, and so profoundly convinced of themomentous nature of their errand that an air of dignity, and of darkadventure almost majestic, hung about his figure. The long corridor, thatdreary December morning, stretched into a world of shadows, and abouthalf-way down it he halted in front of a door next but one to Spinrobin'sroom and turned towards his companion. 

Spinrobin, in a mood to see anything, yet striving to hide behind oneof those "bushes, " as it were, kept his distance a little, but Mr. Skale took him by the arm and drew him forward to his side. Slowly hestooped, till the great bearded lips were level with his ear, andwhispered solemnly:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see--and _hear_ God. "

Then he turned the key and led the way inside. 

But apparently there were double doors, for they found themselves atfirst in a cupboard-like space that formed a tiny vestibule to the roomitself; and here there was light enough to see that the clergyman wastaking from nails on the wall two long garments like surplices, colored, so far as Spinrobin could make out, a deep red and a deep violet. 

"For our protection, " whispered Skale, enveloping himself in the red one, while he handed the other to his companion and helped him into it. "Wearit closely about your body until we come out. " And while the secretarystruggled among the folds of this cassock-like garment, that was severalfeet too long for his diminutive stature, the clergyman added, still witha gravity and earnestness that impressed the imagination beyond all reachof the ludicrous:

"For sound and color are intimately associated, and there arecombinations of the two that can throw the spiritual body into acondition of safe receptivity, without which we should be deaf and blindeven in the great Presences themselves. "

Trivial details, presenting themselves in really dramatic moments, mayimpress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At this very momentSpinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of wall and door a tiny spider'sweb, with the spider itself hanging in the center of its littlenet--shaking. And he has never forgotten it. It expressed pictoriallyexactly what he felt himself. He, too, felt that he was shaking inmidair--as in the center of a web whose strands hung suspended from thevery stars. 

And the words, spoken in that slow deep whisper, filled the little spacein which the two men stood, and somehow completed for Spinrobin the senseof stupendous things adequately approached. 

Then Mr. Skale closed the outer door, shutting out the last feebleglimmer of day, at the same moment turning the handle of the portalbeyond. And as they entered the darkness, Spinrobin, holding up hisviolet robe with one hand to prevent tripping, with the other caught holdof the tail of the flowing garment in front of him. For a second or twohe stopped breathing altogether. 

V

On the very threshold a soft murmur of beauty met them; and, as plainlyas though the darkness had lifted into a blaze of light, the secretary atonce realized that he stood in the presence of something greater than allhe had hitherto known in this world. He had managed to find theclergyman's big hand, and he held it tightly through a twisted corner ofhis voluminous robe. The inner door next closed behind them. Skale, hewas aware, had again stooped in the darkness to the level of his ear. 

"I'll give you the sound--the note, " he heard him whisper. "Utter itinwardly--in your thoughts only. Its vibrations correspond to the color, and will protect us. "

"Protect us?" gasped Spinrobin with dry lips. 

"From being shattered and destroyed--owing to the intense activity of thevibrations conveyed to our ultimate physical atoms, " was the whisperedreply, as the clergyman proceeded to give him under his breath aone-syllable sound that was unlike any word he knew, and that for thelife of him he has never been able to reproduce since. 

Mr. Skale straightened himself up again and Spinrobin pictured himstanding there twice his natural size, a huge and impressive figure as hehad once before seen him, clothed now with the double dignity of hisstrange knowledge. Then, advancing slowly to the center of the room, theystood still, each uttering silently in his thoughts the syllable thatattuned their inner beings to safety. 

Almost immediately, as the seconds passed, the secretary became awarethat the room was beginning to shake with a powerful but regularmovement. All about him had become alive. Vitality, like the vitalityof youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouringinto them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straightfrom the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness ofsharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describesit. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given tohim by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength and gloryinto his heart. 

The darkness, meanwhile, began to lift. It moved upwards in spirals that, as they rose, hummed and sang. A soft blaze of violet like the color ofthe robe he wore became faintly visible in the air. The chamber, heperceived, was about the same size as his own bedroom, and empty of allfurniture, while walls, floor, and ceiling were draped in the same shadeof violet that covered his shoulders; and the sound he uttered, _andthought_, called forth the color and made it swim into visibility. Thewalls and ceiling sheeted with wax opened, so to speak, their giant lips. 

Mr. Skale made a movement and drew him closer. He raised one arm into theair, and Spinrobin, following the motion, saw what at first he imaginedto be vast round faces glimmering overhead, outlined darkly against theviolet atmosphere. Mr. Skale, with what seemed a horrible audacity, wasreaching up to touch them, and as he did so there issued a low, soft, metallic sound, humming and melodious, that dropped sweetly about hisears. Then the secretary saw that they were discs of metal--immense gongsswinging in midair, suspended in some way from the ceiling, and each oneas Skale touched it emitted its beautiful note till all combined togetherat length into a single chord. 

And this chord, though Spinrobin talks whole pages in describing it, apparently brought in its train the swell and thunder of somethingbeyond, --the far sweetness of exquisite harmonics, thousands uponthousands, inwoven with the strands of deeper notes that boomed withcolossal vibrations about them. And, in some fashion that musical peoplewill understand, its gentler notes caught up the sound that Spinrobin wasuttering in his mind, and took possession of it. They merged. Anextraordinary volume, suggesting a huge aggregation of sound behindit--in the same way that a murmur of wind may suggest the roar oftempests--rose and fell through the room, lifted them up, bore them away, sang majestically over their heads, under their feet, and through theirvery minds. The vibrations of their own physical atoms fell into pacewith these other spiritual activities by a kind of sympathetic resonance. 

The combination of power and simplicity was what impressed him most, itseems, for it resembled--resembled only--the great spiritual simplicityin Beethoven that rouses and at the same time satisfies the profoundestyearnings of the soul. It swept him into utter bliss, into something foronce complete. And Spinrobin, at the center of his glorified yet quakinglittle heart, understood vaguely that the sound he uttered, and the soundhe heard, were directly connected with the presence of some august andawful Name. .. . 

VI

Suddenly Mr. Skale, he was aware, became rigid beside him. Spinrobinpressed closer, seeking the protective warmth of his body, and realizingfrom the gesture that something new was about to happen. And somethingdid happen, though not precisely in the sense that things happen in thestreets and in the markets of men. In the sphere of his mind, perhaps, ithappened, but was none the less real for that. 

For the Presence he had been aware of in the room from the moment ofentrance became then suddenly almost concrete. It came closer--sheeted inwonder inscrutable. The form and body of the sounds that filled the airpressed forward into partial visibility. Spinrobin's powers of interiorsight, he dimly realized, increased at the same time. Vast as a mountain, as a whole range of mountains; beautiful as a star, as a whole heaven ofstars; yet simple as a flower of the field; and singing this little songof pure glory and joy that he felt was the inmost message of thechord--this Presence in the room sought to push forward into objectivereality. And behind it, he knew, lay the stupendous urgency and drive ofsome power that held the entire universe in its pulses as easily as theocean holds a shoal of minnows. .. . 

But the limits of realization for him were almost reached. Spinrobinwanted to close his eyes, yet could not. He was driven along with thewave of sound thus awakened and forced to see what was to be seen. Thistime there was no bush behind which he could screen himself. And there, dimly sketched out of the rhythmical vibrations of the seething violetobscurity, rose that looming Outline of wonder and majesty that clotheditself about them with a garment as of visible sound. The Unknown, suggesting incredible dimensions, stood at his elbow, tremendously drapedin these dim, voluminous folds of music and color--very fearful, veryseductive, yet so supremely simple at the same time that a little childcould have understood without fear. 

But only partially there, only partially revealed. The ineffable glorywas never quite told. Spinrobin, amid all the torrent of words in whichhe sought later to describe the experience, could only falter out asingle comprehensible sentence: "I felt like stammering in intoxicationover the first letter of a name I loved--loved to the point ofecstasy--to the point even of giving up my life for it. "

And meanwhile, breathless and shaking, he clung to Skale, still murmuringin his heart the magic syllable, but swept into some region of glorywhere pain and joy both ceased, where terror and delight merged into someperfectly simple form of love, and where he became in an instant of timean entirely new and emancipated Spinrobin, driving at full speed towardsthe ultimate sound and secret of the universe--God. 

 * * * * *

He never remembered exactly how he got out of the room, but it alwaysseemed as though he dropped with a crash from some enormous height. Thesounds ceased; the gongs died into silence; the violet faded; thequivering wax lay still. .. . Mr. Skale was moving beside him, and the nextminute they were in the narrow vestibule between the doors, hanging upordinary colored surplices upon ordinary iron nails. 

Spinrobin stumbled. Skale caught him. They were in the corridoragain--cold, cheerless, full of December murk and shadows--and thesecretary was leaning against the clergyman's shoulder breathless andtrembling as though he had run a mile. 

Chapter XI

I

"And the color of _my_ sound is a pale green, " he heard behind him intones as sweet as a muted violin string, "while the form of my note fitsinto yours just like a glove. Dear Spinny, don't tremble so. We shallalways be together, remember, you and I. .. . "

And when, turning, he saw Miriam at his side, radiant with her shininglittle smile of welcome, the relief was so great that he took her in hisarms and would not let her go. She drew him tenderly away downstairs, forthe clergyman, it seemed, was still busy with something in the room, andhad left them. .. . 

"_I_ know, _I_ know, " she said softly, making him sit down beside her onthe sofa, "I know the rush of pain and happiness it brings. It shifts thewhole key of your life, doesn't it? When I first went into my 'room' andlearned the letter I was to utter in the Name, I felt as if I could nevercome back to ordinary things again, or--"

"What name?" interrupted Spinrobin, drawing sharply away from her, andthe same second amazed at the recklessness that had prompted the onequestion he dreaded. 

The inevitable reaction had come. He realized for the first time thatthere _was_ an alternative. All the passion of battle was upon him. Theterrific splendors of Skale's possible achievement dazzled the verywindows of his soul, but at the same time the sweet uses of normal humanlife called searchingly to him from within. He had been circling aboutthis fight for days; at last it was unexpectedly upon him. He might climbto Skale's impossible Heaven, Skale's outrageous Heaven . .. On the wingsof this portentous experience, or--he might sink back into the stream ofwholesome and commonplace life, with a delicious little human love tocompanion him across the years, the unsoiled love of an embryonic soulthat he could train practically from birth. Miriam was beside him, softand yielding, ready, doubtless, to be molded for either path. 

"What name?" he repeated, holding his breath once the words were out. 

"_The_ name, of course, " she answered gently, smiling up into hiseyes. "The name I have lived to know and that you came here to learn, so that when our voices sing and utter it together in the chord weshall both become--"

Spinrobin set his mouth against her own to stop her speech. She yieldedto him with her whole little body. Her eyes smiled the great humanwelcome as she stared so closely into his. 

"Shall become--what we are not now, " he cried fiercely, drawing his faceback, but holding her body yet more closely to him. "Lose each other, don't you see? Don't you realize that?"

"No, no, " she said faintly, "find each other--you mean--"

"Yes--if all goes well!" He spoke the words very low. For perhaps thirtyseconds they stared most searchingly into each other's eyes, drawingslightly apart. Very slowly her face, then, went exceedingly pale. 

"_If--all goes well_" she repeated, horrified. Then, after a pause, sheadded: "You mean--that he might make a mistake--or--?"

And Spinrobin, drinking in the sweet breath that bore the wordsso softly from her lips, answered, measuring his words with ponderousgravity as though each conveyed a sentence of life or death, "_If--all--goes--well_. "

She watched him with something of that utter clinging mother-love in hereyes that claims any degree of suffering gladly rather than the loss ofher own--passionately welcoming misery in preference to loss. She, too, had divined the alternative. 

Then, kissing his cheeks and eyes and lips, she untied his arms fromabout her neck and ran, blushing furiously, from the room. And with herwent doubt, for the first time--doubt as to the success of the greatexperiment--doubt as to their Leader's power. 

II

And while Spinrobin still sat there, trembling with the two passions thattore his soul in twain--the passion to climb forbidden skies with Skale, and the passion to know sweet human love with Miriam--there camethundering into the room no less a personage than the giant clergyman, straight from those haunted rooms. Pallor hung about his face, but therewas a light radiating through it--a high, luminous whiteness--that madethe secretary think of his childhood's pictures of the Hebrew prophetdescending from Mount Sinai, the glory of internal spheres stillreflected upon the skin and eyes. Skale, like a flame and a wind, camepouring into the room. The thing he had remained upstairs to completehad clearly proved successful. The experiment had moved anotherstage--almost the final one--nearer accomplishment. 

The reaction was genuinely terrific. Spinrobin felt himself swept awaybeyond all power of redemption. Miriam and the delicious human life fadedinto insignificance again. What, in the name of the eternal fires, were agirl's lips and love compared to the possibilities of Olympianachievement promised by Skale's golden audacities? Earth faded before thelights of heaven. The whole tide of human emotion was nothing compared toa drop of this terrible salt brine from seas in unknown stars. .. . Asusual Skale's personality caught him up into some seventh heaven of thesoaring imagination. 

"Spinrobin, my glorious companion in adventure, " thundered the clergyman, "your note suits perfectly the chord! I am delighted beyond all words. You chime with amazing precision and accuracy into the complexMaster-Tone I need for the proper pronunciation of the Name! Your cominghas been an inspiration permitted of Him who owns it. " His excitement wasprofoundly moving. The man was in earnest if ever man was. "We shallsucceed!" And he caught him in his arms. "For the Name manifests theessential attributes of the Being it describes, and in uttering it weshall know mystical union with it. .. . We shall be as Gods!"

"Splendid! Splendid!" exclaimed Spinrobin, utterly carried away by thisspiritual enthusiasm. "I will follow you to the end--"

III

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when framed in the doorway, delicate and seductive as a witch, again stood Miriam, then moved softlyforward into the room. Her face was pale as the grave. Her little, delicate mouth was set with resolution. Clearly she had overheard, butclearly also she had used the interval for serious reflection. 

"We cannot possibly--_fail_, can we?" she asked, gliding up like afrightened fawn to the clergyman's side. 

He turned upon her, stern, even terrible. So relentless was his swiftappearance, so implacable in purpose, that Spinrobin felt the suddenimpulse to fly to her assistance. But instantly his great visage brokeinto a smile like the smile of thunderous clouds when unexpectedly thesun breaks through, then quickly hides itself again. 

"Everywhere, " he roared, "true things are great and clean. .. . Havefaith. .. Have faith. .. . " And he looked upon them both as though his eyeswould sweep from their petty souls all vestige of what was afraid andimmature. "We all are--pure . .. We all are true . .. Each calls his notein singleness of heart . .. We cannot fail!"

And just here Spinrobin, a little beyond himself with excitementprobably, pattered across the room to his giant leader's side and peeredup into his visage. He stood on tiptoe, craning his neck forwards, thenspoke very low:

"I have the right, _we_ have the right--for I have earned it--to be takennow fully into confidence, and to know everything--_everything_, " camethe words; and the reply, simple and immediate, that dropped back uponhim through all that tangle of ragged beard was brief and to the point:

"You have. Listen, then--" And he led them both by the hand like twochildren towards the sofa, and then, standing over them, began to speak. 

IV

"I seek, " he said slowly and gravely, "the correct utterance of a certainmighty and ineffable name, and in each of those four rooms lies a letterof its first syllable. For all these years of research"--his voicedropped suddenly--"have only brought me to that--the first syllable. Andthe name itself is composed of four, each more mighty than the last. "

A violent trembling ran over both listeners. Spinrobin, holding a coldlittle hand in his, dreaded unuttered sentences. For if mere letterscould spell so vast a message, what must be the meaning of a wholesyllable, and what the dire content of the completed name itself!

"Yes, " Skale went on with a reverence born of profoundest awe, "thecaptured sounds I hold are but the opening vibrations of this tremendousname, and the task is of such magnitude that absolute courage andabsolute faith are essential. For the sounds are themselves creativesounds, and the consequences in case of faulty utterance might be tooappalling to contemplate--"

"Creative!" fell from the little man on the sofa, aghast at thepossibility. Yet the one burning question that lay trembling just behindhis lips dared not frame itself in words, for there was something in Mr. Skale's face and manner that rendered the asking of it not yet possible. The revelation of the name must wait. 

"Even singly, as you saw, their power is terrific, " he went on, ignoringthe pathetic interruption, "but united--as we shall unite them while eachof us utters his letter and summons forth the entire syllable by means ofthe chord--they will constitute a Word of Power which shall make us asGods if uttered correctly; if incorrectly, shall pour from this house toconsume and alter the surface of the entire world with the destructivetempest due to mispronunciation and a lie. "

Miriam nestled closer into her companion's side. There was otherwise nosign outwardly of the emotions that surged through the two little figuresupon the sofa. 

"And now--now that you have this first syllable complete?" faltered ahigh and sharing tenor voice. 

"We must transfer it to a home where it shall wait in silence and insafety until we have also captured the other remaining three. " Skale cameforward and lowered his mouth to his companions' ears. "We shall transferit, as you now understand, by chanting the four letters. Our living chordwill summon forth that first syllable into visible form and shape. Ourfour voices, thus trained and purified, each singing a mighty letter, shall create the astounding pattern of the name's first syllable--"

"But the home, " stammered Spinrobin; "this home where it shall awaitthe rest?"

"My rooms, " was the reply, "can contain letters only, for a wholesyllable I need a larger space. In the crypt-like cellars beneath thishouse I have the necessary space all ready and prepared to hold thisfirst syllable while we work upon the second. Come, and you shall see!"

They crossed the hall and went down the long stone passage beyond thedining room till they reached a swinging baize door, and so came to thedark stairs that plunged below ground. Skale strode first, Spinrobinfollowing with beating heart; he held Miriam by the hand; his steps, though firm enough, made him think of his efforts as a boy when treadingwater for solid ground out of his depth. 

V

Cold air met them, yet it was neither dank nor unpleasant as air usuallyis that has never tasted sunlight. There was a touch of vitality about itwholly remarkable. Miriam pressed closer. Every detail, every littleincident that brought them nearer to the climax was now interpreted bythese two loving children as something that might eventually spell forthem separation. Yet neither referred to it directly. The pain of theultimate choice possessed them deep within. 

"Here, " exclaimed the clergyman in a hushed tone that yet woke echoes onall sides, while he lit a candle and held it aloft, "you see the cellarvaults all ready for the first great syllable when our chord shall bringit leaping down from the rooms upstairs. Here will reside the pattern ofthe name's opening syllable till we shall have accomplished theconstruction of the others. "

And like some august master of forbidden ceremonies, looking twice hisnatural size as the shadows played tricks with his arms and shoulders, merging his outline into walls and ceiling, Skale stood and lookedabout him. 

Spaces stretched away on all sides as in the crypt of a cathedral, mostbeautifully and harmoniously draped with the separate colors of the fourrooms, red, yellow, violet and green; immense gongs, connected apparentlywith some intricate network of shining wires, hung suspended in midairbeneath the arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks, erect and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-cavitiesplaced to increase the intensity of the respective notes when caught; andin the dim background the clergyman pointed out an elaborate apparatusfor quickly altering the temperature of the air, and another for therapid production of carbonic acid gas, since by means of a lens ofcarbonic acid gas sound can be refracted like light, and by changing thetemperature of the air that conveys it, sound can be bent, also like aray of light, in any desired direction. The whole cellar seemed in someway to sum up and synthesize the distinctive characteristics of the fourrooms. Over it all, sheeting ceiling and walls, lay the living andreceptive wax. Singularly suggestive, too, was the appearance of thosehuge metal discs, like lifeless, dark faces waiting the signal to opentheir bronze lips and cry aloud, ready for the advent of the Sound thatshould give them birth and force them to proclaim their mighty secret. Spinrobin stared, silent and fascinated, almost expecting them to beginthere and then their dreadful and appalling music. 

Yet the place was undeniably empty; no ghost of a sound stirred thegorgeous draperies; nothing but a faint metallic whispering seemed tobreathe out from the big discs and forks and wires as Skale's voice, modulated and hushed though it was, vibrated gently against them. Nothingmoved, nothing uttered, nothing lived--as yet. 

"Destitute of all presence, you see it now, " whispered the clergyman, shading the candle with one huge hand; "though before long, when wetransfer our great captured syllable down here, you shall know it aliveand singing with a thousand thunders. The Letters shall not escape me. The gongs and colors correspond exactly. They will retain both the soundsand the outlines . .. And the wax is sensitive as the heart of a child. "And his big face shone quite dreadfully as the whole pomp and splendor ofhis dream come true set fire to his thoughts. 

But Spinrobin was glad when at length they turned and moved slowly againup the stone steps and emerged into the pale December daylight. Thatdark cellar, wired, draped, waxed and be-gonged, awaiting its mightyoccupant, filled his mind with too vast a sensation of wonder andanticipation for peace. 

"And for the syllables to follow, " Skale resumed when they were once morein the library, "we shall want spaces larger still. There are great holesin these hills"--stretching out an arm to indicate the mountains abovethe house--"and down yonder in the heart of those cliffs by the soundingsea there are caverns. They are far, but the distance is of noconsequence. They will serve us well. I know them. I have marked them. They are ready. "

He swept his beard to and fro with one hand. Spinrobin already saw thoseholes and caverns in the terms of sound and color. 

"And--for the entire name--when completed?" he asked, knowing that thequestion was but a feeble substitute for that other one he burned to ask, yet dared not allow his lips to utter. Skale turned and looked at him. Heraised his hands aloft. His voice boomed again as of old. 

"The open sky!" he cried with enthusiasm; "the vault of heaven itself!For no solid structure exists in the world, not even the ribs of theseold hills, that could withstand the power of that--of that eternal andterrific--"

Spinrobin leapt to his feet. The question swept from his lips at lastlike a flame. Miriam clung to his arm, trying in vain to stop him. 

"Then tell me, " he cried aloud, "tell me, you great blasphemer, whose isthe Name that you seek to utter under heaven . .. And tell me why it is mysoul faints and is so fearfully afraid?"

Mr. Skale looked at him for a moment as a man might look at some triflingphenomenon of life that puzzled yet interested him. But there was love inhis eyes--love, and the forgiveness of a great soul. Spinrobin, afraid athis own audacity, met his eyes recklessly, while Miriam peered from oneto the other, perplexed and questioning. 

"Spinrobin, " said the clergyman at length, in a voice turned soft andtender with compassion, "the name I seek--this awful name we may alleventually utter together, completely formed--is one that no living manhas spoken for nigh two thousand years, though all this time the searchhas been kept alive by a few men in every age and every country of theworld. Some few, they say--ah, yes, '_they say_'--have found it, theninstantly forgotten it again; for once pronounced it may not be retained, but goes utterly lost to the memory on the instant. Only once, so far aswe may know"--he lowered his voice to a hushed and reverent whisper thatthrilled about them in the air like the throbbing of a string--"has itbeen preserved: the Prophet of Nazareth, purer and simpler than all othermen, recovered the correct utterance of the first two syllables, andswiftly--very swiftly--phonetically, too, of necessity, --wrote them downbefore the wondrous memory had time to fade; then sewed the piece ofparchment into his thigh, and hence 'had Power' all his life. 

"It is a name, " he continued, his tone rising to something of its oldthunder, "that sounds like the voice of many waters, that piles the oceaninto standing heaps and makes the high hills to skip like little lambs. It is a name the ancient Hebrews concealed, as Tetragrammaton, beneath athousand devices, the name, they said, that 'rusheth through theuniverse, ' to call upon which--that is, to utter correctly--is to callupon that name which is far above all others that can be named--"

He paused midway in the growing torrent of his speech and lifted hiscompanion out of the sofa. He set him upon his feet, holding both hishands and peering deep into his eyes--those bewildered yet unflinchingblue eyes of the little man who sought terrific adventure as an escapefrom insignificance--

"--to know which, " he added, in a sudden awed whisper, "is to know theultimate secrets of life and death, and to read the riddle of the worldand the soul--to become even as itself--Gods. "

He stopped abruptly, and again that awful, flaming smile ran over hisface, flushing it from chin to forehead with the power of his burning andtremendous belief. 

Spinrobin was already weeping inwardly, without sound. He understood atlast, only too well, what was coming. Skale's expression held the wholewild glory, and the whole impious audacity of what seemed his blasphemousspiritual discovery. The fires were alight in his eyes. He stooped downlower and opened wide his capacious arms. The next second, Spinrobin, Miriam, and Mrs. Mawle, who had unexpectedly come upon them from behind, were gathered all together against his breast. His voice then droppedsuddenly to a tiny whisper of awful joy that seemed to creep from hislips like some message too mighty to be fully known, and half lost itselfamong the strands of his beard. 

"My wonderful redeemed children, notes in my human chord, " he whisperedover their heads, "it is the Name that shall make us as God, for it isnone other than the Name that rusheth through the universe"--his breathfailed him most curiously for an instant--"the NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY!"

Chapter XII

I

A certain struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's report of itall, as of a man striving to express violent thoughts in a language hehas not yet mastered. It is evident, for instance, as those few familiarwith the "magical" use of sound in ceremonial and the power that residesin "true naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale'sintended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was necessary forthe utterance of the complex "Name. "

Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while they laid holdupon his imagination, never fully entered his understanding. Few minds, it seems, can conceive of any deity as other than some anthropomorphicextension of themselves, for the idea is too greatly blinding to admithuman thought within a measurable distance even of a faintest conception. The true, stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the openingsyllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended. Miriam, with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter ignorance ofworldly things from birth, came nearer to the reality; but then Miriamwas now daily more and more caught up into the vortex of a sweet andcompelling human love, and in proportion as this grew she feared thegreat experiment that might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss. Gradually dread closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully toHeaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths that laywith Spinny upon the earth. 

They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke of oneanother in the far-fetched terminology of sound and music. He no longercalled her his "brilliant little sound, " nor did she respond with "youperfect echo"; they fell back--sign of a gradual concession to more humanthings--upon the gentler terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, ofWinky. They shared Winky between them . .. Though neither one nor other ofthem divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-opening lives. 

"Winky is yours, " she would say, "because you made him, but he belongs tome too, because he simply can't live without me!"

"Or I without you, Little Magic, " he whispered, laughing tenderly. "So, you see, we are all three together. "

Her face grew slightly troubled. 

"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide him, or tellhim not to come. " And far down in her deep grey eyes swam the firstmoisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my wonderful Spinny?"

"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps, " he replied gravely, "but that is onlywhen I think of what may be coming if--the experiment succeeds--"

"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice droppedinstinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to make sure theywere alone. 

He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink ear. "If itsucceeds, " he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose; if it fails westay upon the earth. " Then he stood off, holding her hands at arm'slength and gazing down upon her. "Do you want to go to Heaven?" he askedvery deliberately, "or to stay here upon the earth with me and Winky--?"

She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying with the strangeconflict of new and inexplicable emotions. 

"I want to be with you here, and forever. Heaven frightens me now. But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also want--" She brokeoff abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see her face buried against hisshoulder, could not guess whether she was laughing or weeping. He onlydivined that something in her heart, profound as life itself, somethingshe had never been warned to conceal, was clamoring for comprehension andsatisfaction. 

"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand--"

"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on littlevisits, " he heard between the broken breathing. 

"I'll tell him--"

"But there's no good telling _him_, " she interrupted almost fiercely, "itis _me_ you must tell. .. . "

Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he could not quiteunderstand. He pressed her hard against him, keeping silence. 

Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the tears ofmingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of this girl-woman whoknew not the common ugly standards of life because no woman had ever toldthem to her. 

"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share in making himtoo, " she said very softly. "When I have made him too, then he will stayforever with us, I think. "

And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him that singularexultation of triumphant love which comes to a pure man when he meets themother-to-be of his firstborn, lowered his own face very reverently tohers, and kissed her on the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguelywondering whether the awful name that Skale sought with so much thunderand lightning, did not lie at that very moment, sweetly singing itsdivinest message, between the contact of this pair of youthful lips, thelips of himself and Miriam. 

II

And Philip Skale, meanwhile, splendid and independent of all commonobstacles, thundered along his tempestuous mad way, regardless andignorant of all signs of disaffection. The rest of that week--a week ofhaunting wonder and beauty--was devoted to the carrying out of thestrange program. It is not possible to tell in detail the experience ofeach separate room. Spinrobin does it, yet only succeeds in repeatinghimself; and, as has been seen, his powers failed even in that firstchamber of awe. The language does not exist in which adventures so remotefrom normal experience can be clothed without straining the mind to theverge of the unintelligible. It appears, however, that each roompossessed its color, note and form, which later were to issue forth andcombine in the even vaster pattern, chord and outline which shouldinclude them all. 

Even the thought of it strained the possibilities of belief and theresources of the imagination. .. . His soul fluttered and shrank. 

They continued the processes of prayer and fasting Skale had ordained asthe time for the experiment drew near, and the careful vibratoryutterance of the "word" belonging to each room, the vibrations of whichthrew their inner selves into a condition of safe--or comparativelysafe--receptivity. But Spinrobin no longer said his prayers, for thethought that soon he was to call upon the divine and mighty name inreality prevented his doing so in the old way of childhood--nominally. Hefeared there might come an answer. 

He literally walked the dizzy edge of precipices that dropped over theedge of the world. The incoherence of all this traffic with sound andname had always bewildered him, even to the point of darkness, whereasnow it did more, it appalled him in some sense that was monstrous andterrifying. Yet, while weak with terror when he tried to face thepossible results, and fevered with the notion of entering some newcondition (even though one of glory) where Miriam might no longer be ashe now knew her, it was the savage curiosity he felt that prevented hiscoming to a definite decision and telling Mr. Skale that he withdrew fromthe whole affair. 

Then the idea grew in his mind that the clergyman was obsessed by someperverted spiritual force, some "Devil" who deceived him, and that thename he sought to pronounce was after all not good--not God. Histhoughts, fears, hopes, all became hopelessly entangled, through them onething alone holding clear and steady--the passionate desire to keepMiriam as she was now, and to be with her forever. His mind played trickswith him too. Day and night the house echoed with new sounds; the verywalls grew resonant; the entire building, buried away among thesedesolate hills, trembled as though he were imprisoned within the belly ofsome monstrous and gigantic fiddle. 

Mr. Skale, too, began to change, it seemed. While physically heincreased, as it were, with the power of his burning enthusiasm, hisbeard longer and more ragged, his eyes more luminous, and his voiceshaking through the atmosphere almost like wind, his personality, in somecurious fashion, seemed at the same time to retire and become oddlytinged with a certain remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twicecaught himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or paganfigure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that presently he, Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most wonderful vision the worldhad ever known. His imagination, it will be seen, was affected in moreways than one. .. . 

With a tremendous earnestness the clergyman went about the building, downthe long dark corridors and across the halls, his long soft strides tookhim swiftly everywhere; his mere presence charged with some potent forcethat betrayed itself in the fire of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks. 

Spinrobin thought of him as some daring blasphemer, knocking at a door inthe sky. The sound of that knocking ran all about the universe. And whenthe door opened, the heavens would roll back like an enormous, flatcurtain. .. . 

"Any moment almost, " Skale whispered to him, smiling, "the day may beupon us. Keep yourself ready--and--in tune. "

And Spinrobin, expecting a thunderclap in his sleep, but ever plucky, answered in his high-pitched voice, "I'm ready, Mr. Philip Skale, I'mready! I'm game too!" when, truthfully speaking, perhaps, he was neitherone nor other. 

He would start up from sleep in the nighttime at the least sound, and theroar of the December gales about the house became voices of portent thatconveyed far more than the mere rushing of inarticulate winds. .. . 

"When the hour comes--and it is close at hand--we shall not fail to knowit, " said Skale, pallid with excitement. "The Letters will be out uponus. They will live! But with an intense degree of exuberant life farbeyond what we know as life--we, in our puny, sense-limited bodies!" Andthe scorn in his voice came from the center of his heart. "For what wehear as sound is only a section, " he cried, "only a section ofsound-vibrations--as they exist. "

"The vibrations our ears can take are _very_ small, I know, " interpolatedSpinrobin, cold at heart, while Miriam, hiding behind chairs and tablesthat offered handy protection, watched with mingled anxiety andconfidence, knowing that in the last resort her adorable and "wonderfulSpinny" would guide her aright. Love filled her heart, ousting that otherportentous Heaven!

III

And then Skale announced that the time was ready for rehearsals. 

"Let us practice the chord, " he said, "so that when the moment comessuddenly upon us, in the twinkling of an eye, in the daytime or in thenight, we shall be prepared, and each shall fly to his appointed placeand utter his appointed note. "

The reasons for these definite arrangements he did not pretend toexplain, for they belonged to a part of his discovery that he keptrigidly to himself; and why Spinrobin and Miriam were to call their notesfrom the corridor itself, while Skale boomed his great bass in theprepared cellar, Mrs. Mawle chanting her alto midway in the hall, actingas a connecting channel in some way, was apparently never made fullyclear. In Spinrobin's imagination it was very like a practicalillustration of the written chord, the notes rising from the bass clef tothe high soprano--the cellar to the attic, so to speak. But, whatever themeaning behind it, Skale was exceedingly careful to teach to each ofthem his and her appointed place. 

"When the Letters move of themselves, and make the first sign, " herepeated, "we shall know it beyond all doubt or question. At any momentof the day or night it may come. Each of you then hasten to yourappointed place and wait for the sound of my bass in the cellar. Therewill be no mistake about it; you will hear it rising through thebuilding. Then, each in turn, as it reaches you, lift your voices andcall your notes. The chord thus rising through the building will gatherin the flying Letters: it will unite them; it will summon them down tothe fundamental master-tone I utter in the cellar. The moment the Lettersummoned by each particular voice reaches the cellar, that voice mustcease its utterance. Thus, one by one, the four mighty Letters will cometo rest below. The gongs will vibrate in sympathetic resonance; thecolors will tremble and respond; the finely drawn wires will link thetwo, and the lens of gas will lead them to the wax, and the record of theaugust and terrible syllable will be completely chained. At any desiredmoment afterwards I shall be able to reawaken it. Its phonetic utterance, its correct pronunciation, captured thus in the two media of air andether, sound and light, will be in my safe possession, ready for use. 

"But"--and he looked down upon his listeners with a dreadful andimpressive gravity that yet only just concealed the bursting exultationthe thought caused him to feel--"remember that once you have uttered yournote, you will have sucked out from the Letter a portion of its ownterrific life and force, which will immediately pass into yourself. Youwill instantly absorb this, for you will have called upon a mightyname--the mightiest--and your prayer will have been answered. " He stoopedand whispered as in an act of earnest prayer, "_We shall be as Gods_!"

Something of cold splendor, terribly possessing, came close to them ashe spoke the words; for this was no empty phrase. Behind it lay the greatdrive of a relentless reality. And it struck at the very root of the fearthat grew every moment more insistent in the hearts of the two lovers. They did not want to become as gods. They desired to remain quietly humanand to _love_!

But before either of them could utter speech, even had they dared, theawful clergyman continued; and nothing brought home to them more vividlythe horrible responsibility of the experiment, and the results ofpossible failure, than the few words with which he concluded. 

"And to mispronounce, to utter falsely, to call inaccurately, will meanto summon into life upon the world--and into the heart of theutterer--that which is incomplete, that which is not God--Devils!--devilsof that subtle Alteration which is destruction--the devils of a Lie. "

 * * * * *

And so for hours at a time they rehearsed the sounds of the chord, butvery softly, lest the sound should rise and reach the four rooms andinvite the escape of the waiting Letters prematurely. 

Mrs. Mawle, holding the bit of paper on which her instructions wereclearly written, was as eager almost as her master, and as the note shehad to utter was practically the only one left in the register of hervoice, her deafness provided little difficulty. 

"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud, " said Skale, beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be in tones thateven the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a measure of redemptionthat shall destroy in a second of time all physical disabilitieswhatsoever. .. . "

It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for days hadbeen hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely, hesitatingly, evensolemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer with an anxiety as greatas his own. 

"And if any one of us fails, " he said, "and pronounces falsely, will theresult affect all of us, or only the utterer?"

"The utterer only, " replied the clergyman. "For it is his own spirit thatmust absorb the forces and powers invoked by the sound he utters. "

He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of failure wastoo remote to be practical. 

Chapter XIII

I

But Spinrobin was hardly prepared for the suddenness of the denouement. He had looked for a longer period of preparation, with the paraphernaliaof a considerable, even an august ceremony. Instead, the announcementcame with an abrupt simplicity that caught him with a horrid shock ofsurprise. He was taken wholly unawares. 

"The only thing I fear, " Mr. Skale had confided to them, "is that thevibrations of our chord may have already risen to the rooms and cause apremature escape. But, even so, we shall have ample warning. For thedeaf, being protected from the coarser sounds of earth, are swift to hearthe lightest whispers from Heaven. Mrs. Mawle will know. Mrs. Mawle willinstantly warn us. .. . "

And this, apparently, was what happened, though not precisely as Mr. Skale had intended, nor with the margin for preparation he had hoped. Itwas all so swift and brief and shattering, that to hear Spinrobin tell itmakes one think of a mass of fireworks that some stray spark has sentwith blazing explosion into the air, to the complete loss of thecalculated effect had they gone off seriatim as intended. 

And in the awful stress of excitement there can be no question thatSpinny acted out of that subconscious region of the mind which considersand weighs deeds before passing them on to the surface mind, translatingthem into physical expression and thinking itself responsible for thewhole operation. The course he adopted was thus instinctive, and, sincehe had no time to judge, blameless. 

Neither he nor Miriam had any idea really that their minds, subconsciously, were already made up. Yet only that morning he had beentalking with her, skirting round the subject as they always did, ashamedof his doubts about success, and trying to persuade her, and, therefore, himself, that the path of duty lay in following their leader blindly tothe very end. 

He had seen her on the stairs ahead of him, and had overtaken herquickly. He drew her down beside him, and they sat like two childrenperched on the soft-carpeted steps. 

"It's coming, you know, " he said abruptly, "the moment's gettingvery close. "

He felt the light shudder that passed through her into himself. Sheturned her face to him and he saw the flush of excitement painted in thecenter of the usually pale cheeks. He thought of some rare flower, delicately exotic, that had sprung suddenly into blossom from the heartof the bleak December day, out of the very boards whereon they sat. 

"We shall then be as gods, " he added, "filled with the huge power ofthose terrific Letters. And that is only the beginning. " In himself hewas striving to coax a fading enthusiasm, and to pour it into her. Herlittle hand stole into his. "We shall be a sort of angel together, Isuppose. Just think of it. .. !" His voice was not as thrilling as it oughtto have been, for very human notes vibrated down below in the part hetried to keep back. He saw the flush fade from her cheeks, and the pallorspread. "You and I, Miriam--something tremendous together, greater thanany other man and woman in the whole world. Think of it, dear baby; justthink of it. .. !"

A tiny frown gathered upon her forehead, darkening the grey eyeswith shadows. 

"But--lose our Winky!" she said, nestling against his coat, her voicesingularly soft, her fingers scratching gently the palm of his handwhere they lay. 

"Hush, hush!" he answered, kissing her into silence. "We must have morefaith. I think everything will be all right. And there is no reason whywe should lose our Winky, " he added, very tenderly, smothering the doubtas best he could, "although we may find his name changed. Like the restof us, he will get a 'new name' I suppose. "

"Then he won't be _our_ Winky any longer, " she objected, with a touch ofobstinacy that was very seductive. "We shall all be different. Perhapswe shall be too wonderful to need each other any more. .. . Oh, Spinny, you precious thing my life needs, think of that! We may be too wonderfuleven to care!"

Spinrobin turned and faced her. He tried to speak with authority andconviction, but he was a bad actor always. He met her soft grey eyes, already moist and shining with a tenderness of love beyond belief, andgazed into them with what degree of sternness he could. 

"Miriam, " he said solemnly, "is it possible that you do not want us tobe as gods?"

Her answer came this time without hesitation. His pretended severity onlymade her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a hair's breadth thisexquisite first love of her awakening soul. 

"Some day, perhaps, oh, my sweet Master, " she whispered with tremblinglips, "but not now. I want to be on earth first with you--and withour Winky. "

To hear that precious little voice call him "sweet Master" was almostmore than he could bear. He made an effort, however, to insist upon thisfancied idea of "duty" to Skale; though everything, of course, betrayedhim--eyes, voice, gestures. 

"But we owe it to Mr. Skale to become as gods, " he faltered, trying tomake the volume of his voice atone for its lack of conviction. 

And it was then she uttered the simple phrase that utterly confoundedhim, and showed him the new heaven and new earth wherein he and she andWinky already lived. 

"I am as God _now_, " she said simply, the whole passion of a clean, strong little soul behind the words. "You have made me so! You love me!"

II

The same moment, before they could speak or act, Skale was upon them frombehind with a roar. 

"Practicing your splendid notes together!" he cried, thundering down thesteps past them, three at a time, clothed for the first time in theflowing scarlet robe he usually wore only in the particular room wherehis own "note" lived. "That's capital! Sing it together in your heartsand in your souls and in your minds; and the more the better!"

He swept by them like a storm, vanishing through the hall below like someliving flame of fire. They both understood that he wore that robe forprotection, and that throughout the house the heralds of the approachingpowers of the imprisoned Letters were therefore already astir. His stepsechoed below them in the depths of the building as he descended to thecellar, intent upon some detail of the appalling consummation that drewevery minute nearer. 

They turned and faced one another, breathless a little. Tenderness andterror shone plainly in their eyes, but Spinrobin, ever an ineffectuallittle man, and with nothing of the "Master" really in his compositionanywhere, found no word to speak. That sudden irruption of the terrificclergyman into their intimate world had come with an effect of dramaticand incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the furnaceto new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now suddenly saw clearand sure. The effect of the incident was too explosive, however, for himto find expression. Action he found in a measure, but no words. He tookMiriam passionately into his arms as they stood there in the gatheringdusk upon the staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriamit was who found the words upon which they separated and went quietlyaway to the solitude each needed for the soul. 

"We'll leave the gods alone, " she said with gentle decision, yetmaking it seem as though she appealed to his greater strength andwisdom to decide; "I want nothing but you--you and Winky. And all youreally want is me. "

But in his room he heard the vibrations of the clergyman's voice risingup through the floor and walls as he practiced in the cellar the soundswith which the ancient Hebrews concealed the Tetragrammaton:YOD--HE--VAU--HE: JEHOVAH--JAHVE--of which the approaching greatexperiment, however, concerned itself only with the opening vibrations ofthe first letter--YOD. .. . 

And, as he listened, he hesitated again . .. Wondering after all whetherMiriam was right. 

III

It was towards the end of their short silent dinner that very night--thesilence due to the fact that everybody was intently listening--whenSpinrobin caught the whisper of a singular faint sound that he took firstto be the rising of wind. The wind sometimes came down that way withcurious gulps from the terraces of the surrounding moors. Yet in thissound was none of that rush and sigh that the hills breed. It did notdrop across the curves of the world; it rose from the center. 

He looked up sharply, then at once realized that the sound was notoutside at all, but inside--inside the very room where he sat facingSkale and Miriam. Then something in his soul recognized it. It was thefirst wave in an immense vibration. 

Something stretched within him as foam stretches on the elastic side of aheaped Atlantic roller, retreated, then came on again with a secondgigantic crest. The rhythm of the huge sound had caught him. The life inhim expanded awfully, rose to far summits, dropped to utter depths. Asense of glowing exaltation swept through him as though wings of powerlifted his heart with enormous ascendancy. The biggest passions of hissoul stirred--the sweetest dreams, yearnings, aspirations he had everknown were blown to fever heat. Above all, his passion for Miriam waxedtumultuous and possessed him. 

Mr. Skale dropped his fruit knife and uttered a cry, but a cry of sopeculiar a character that Spinrobin thought for a moment he was about toburst into song. At the same instant he stood up, and his chair fellbackwards with a crash upon the floor. Spinrobin stood up too. He assertsalways that he was lifted up. He recognized no conscious effort of hisown. It was at this point, moreover, that Miriam, pale as linen, yetuttering no sound and fully mistress of herself, left her side of thetable and ran round swiftly to the protection of her lover. 

She came close up. "Spinny, " she said, "it's come!"

Thus all three were standing round that dinner table on the verge of somevery vigorous action not yet disclosed, as people, vigilant and alert, stand up at a cry of fire, when the door from the passage opened noisilyand in rushed Mrs. Mawle, surrounded by an atmosphere of light such asmight come from a furnace door suddenly thrown wide in some dark foundry. Only the light was not steady; it was whirling. 

She ran across the floor as though dancing--the dancing of achild--propelled, it seemed, by an irresistible drive of force behind;while with her through the opened door came a roaring volume of soundthat was terrible as Niagara let loose, yet at the same time exquisitelysweet, as birds or children singing. Upon these two incongruous qualitiesSpinrobin always insists. 

"The deaf shall hear--!" came sharply from the clergyman's lips, thesentence uncompleted, for the housekeeper cut him short. 

"They're out!" she cried with a loud, half-frightened jubilance; "Mr. Skale's prisoners are bursting their way about the house. And one ofthem, " she added with a scream of joy and terror mingled, "is in mythroat. .. !"

If the odd phrase she made use of stuck vividly in Spinrobin's memory, the appearance she presented impressed him even more. For her face wasshining and alight, radiant as when Skale had called her true name weeksbefore. Flashes of flame-like beauty ran about the eyes and mouth; andshe looked eighteen--eternally eighteen--with a youth that was permanentand unchanging. Moreover, not only was hearing restored to her, but herleft arm, withered for years, was in the act of pointing to the ceiling, instinct with vigorous muscular life. Her whole presentment wassplendid, intense--redeemed. 

"The deaf hear!" repeated Skale in a shout, and was across the room withthe impetus of a released projectile. "The Letters are out and alive! Toyour appointed places! The syllable has caught us! Quick, quick! If youlove your soul and truth . .. Fly!"

Deafening thunders rushed and crashed and blew about the room, interpenetrated everywhere at the same time by that searching strain ofsweetness Spinrobin had first noticed. The sense of life, running freeand abundant, was very remarkable. The same moment he found his handclasped, and felt himself torn along by the side of the rushing clergymaninto the hall. Behind them "danced" Mrs. Mawle, her cap awry, her apronflying, her elastic-side boots taking the light, dancing step of youth. With quick, gliding tread Miriam, still silent, was at his heels. Heremembers her delicate, strange perfume reaching him faintly through allthe incredible turmoil of that impetuous exit. 

In the hall the roar increased terrifically about his ears. Skale, in hisbiggest booming voice, was uttering the names of Hebrew"angels"--invoking forces, that is, to his help; and behind him Mrs. Mawle was singing--singing fragments apparently of the "note" she had toutter, as well as fragments of her own "true name" thus magicallyrecovered. Her restored arm gyrated furiously, her tripping youth speltwitchery. Yet the whole madness of the scene came to Spinrobin with afreezing wind of terror; for about it was a lawless, audacious blasphemy, that must surely win for itself a quite appalling punishment. .. . 

Yet nothing happened at once--nothing destructive, at least. Skaleand the housekeeper, he saw, were hurriedly robing themselves in thered and yellow surplices that hung from nails in the hall, and theinstinct to laugh at the sight was utterly overwhelmed when he rememberedthat these were the colors which were used for safety in their respective"rooms. " . .. It was a scene of wild confusion and bewilderment which thememory refuses to reproduce coherently. In his own throat already began apassionate rising of sound that he knew was the "note" he had to utterattempting to escape, summoned forth automatically by these terriblevibrating Letters in the air. A cataract of sound seemed to fill thebuilding and made it shake to its very foundations. 

But the hall, he saw, was not only alive with "music, " it was ablaze withlight--a white and brilliant glory that at first dazzled him to the pointof temporary blindness. 

The same second Mr. Skale's voice, storming its way somehow above thetumult, made itself heard:

"To the rooms upstairs, Spinrobin! To the corridor with Miriam! And whenyou hear my voice from the cellar--_utter_! We may yet be in time tounite the Letters. .. !"

He released the secretary's hand, flinging it from him, and was off witha bounding, leaping motion like an escaped animal towards the stonepassage that led to the cellar steps; and Spinrobin, turning abouthimself like a top in a perfect frenzy of bewilderment, heard his greatvoice as he disappeared round the corner:

"It has come upon me like a thief in the night! Before I am fullyprepared it has called me! May the powers of the Name have mercy upon mysoul. .. !" And he was gone. For the last time had Spinrobin set his eyesupon the towering earthly form of the Rev. Philip Skale. 

IV

Then, at first, it seems, the old enthusiasm caught him, and with him, therefore, caught Miriam, too. That savage and dominant curiosity to knowclutched him, overpowering even the assaults of a terror that fairlybattered him. Through all the chaos and welter of his dazed mind hesought feverishly for the "note" he had to utter, yet found it not, forhe was too horribly confused. Fiddles, sand-patterns, colored robes, gongs, giant tuning-forks, wax-sheeted walls, aged-faces-turned-young andcaverns-by-the-sea jostled one another in his memory with a jumble ofdisproportion quite inextricable. 

Next, impelled by that driving sense of duty to Skale, he turned to thegirl at his side: "Can you do it?" he cried. 

Unable to make her voice heard above the clamor she nodded quickly inacquiescence. Spinrobin noticed that her little mouth was set ratherfirmly, though there was a radiance about her eyes and features that madeher sweetly beautiful. He remembers that her loveliness and her pluckuplifted him above all former littlenesses of hesitation; and, seizingher outstretched hand, they flew up the main staircase and in less than aminute reached the opening of the long corridor where the rooms were. 

Here, however, they stopped with a gasp, for a hurricane of moving airmet them in the face like the draught from some immense furnace. Againthe crest of a wave in the colossal sound-vibration had caught them. Staggering against the wall, they tried again and again to face thetempest of sound and light, but the space beyond them was lit with thesame unearthly brilliance as the hall, and out of the whole long throatof that haunted corridor issued such a passion of music and such atorrent of gorgeous color, that it seemed impossible for any aggregationof physical particles--least of all poor human bodies--to remain coherentfor a single instant before the concentrated onslaught. 

Yet, game to the inmost core of his little personality, and raised farabove his normal powers by the evidence of Miriam's courage and fidelity, he struggled with all his might and searched through the chambers of hisbeing for the note he was ordained to utter in the chord. The ignominy offailure, now that the great experiment was full upon him--failure inMiriam's eyes, too--was simply impossible to contemplate. Yet, in spiteof every effort, the memory of that all-important note escaped himutterly, for the forces of his soul floundered, helpless and disheveled, before the too mighty splendors that were upon him at such closequarters. The sounds he actually succeeded in emitting between dry andquivering lips were pitiful and feeble beyond words. 

Down that living corridor, meanwhile, he saw the doors of the four roomswere gone, consumed like tissue paper; and through the narrow portalsthere shouldered forward, bathed in light ineffable, the separateoutlines of the Letters so long imprisoned in inactivity. And with theirappearance the sounds instantly ceased, having overpassed the limits ofwhat is audible to human ears. A great stillness dropped about them withan abrupt crash of utter silence. For a "crash" of silence itwas--all-shattering. 

And then, from the categories of the incomprehensible and unmanifest, "something" loomed forth towards them where, limp and shaking, theyleaned against the wall, and they witnessed the indescribable operationby which the four Letters, whirling and alive, ran together and meltedinto a single terrific semblance of a FORM . .. The sight of which enteredthe heart of Spinrobin and threatened to split it asunder with the joy ofthe most sublime terror and adoration a human soul has ever known. 

And the whole gigantic glory of Skale's purpose came upon him like atempest. The magnificent effrontery by which the man sought to storm hisway to heaven again laid its spell upon him. The reaction was of amazingswiftness. It almost seemed as though time ceased to operate, soinstantaneously did his mood pass from terror to elation--wild, ecstaticelation that could dare anything and everything to share in the awfuldelight and wonder of Skale's transcendent experiment. 

And so, forgetting himself and his little disabilities of terror andshrinking, he sought once again for the note he was to utter in thechord. And this time he found it. 

V

Very faintly, yet distinctly audible in the deep stillness, it soundedfar away down in the deeps of his being. And, with a splendid spiritualexultation tearing and swelling in his heart, he turned at oncetriumphantly to Miriam beside him. 

"Utter your note too!" he cried. "Utter it with mine, for any moment nowwe shall hear the command from the cellar. .. . Be ready. .. !"

And the FORM, meanwhile, limned in the wonder of an undecipherableor at least untranslatable geometry, silently roaring, enthroned inthe undiscoverable colors beyond the spectrum, swept towards themas he spoke. 

At the same instant Miriam answered him, her exquisite little face setlike a rock, her marble pallor painted with the glory of the approachingsplendors. Just when the moment of success was upon them; when theflying Letters were abroad; when all the difficult weeks of preparationwere face to face with the consummation; and when any moment Skale'sbooming bass might rise from the bowels of the building as the signal toutter the great chord and unite the fragments of the first divinesyllable; when Spinrobin had at last conquered his weakness and recoveredhis note--then, at this decisive and supreme moment, Miriam assertedherself and took the reins of command. 

"No, " she said, looking with sudden authority straight into his eyes, "no! I will not utter the note. Nor shall you utter yours!" And sheclapped her little hand tight upon his mouth. 

In that instant of unutterable surprise the two great forces of his lifeand personality met together with an explosive violence wholly beyond hispower to control. For on the one hand lay the fierce enticement ofSkale's heaven, with all that it portended, and on the other the deepthough temporarily submerged human passion of his love for the girl. Miriam's sudden action revealed the truth to him better than anyargument. In a flash he realized that her choice was made, and that shewas in entire and final revolt against the whole elaborate experiment andall that it involved. The risk of losing her Spinny, or finding himchanged in some condition of redemption where he would no longer be thelittle human thing she so dearly loved, had helped her to this final, swift conclusion. 

With her hand tight over his lips, and her face of white decision beforehim, he understood. She called him with those big grey eyes to the sweetand common uses of life, instead of to the heights of some audaciousheaven where they might be as gods with Philip Skale. She clung tohumanity. And Spinrobin, seeing her at last with spiritual eyes fullyopened, knew finally that she was right. 

"But oh, " he always cries, "in that moment I knew the most terriblechoice I have ever had to make, for it was not a choice between life anddeath, but a choice between two lives, each of infinite promised wonder. And what do you think it was that decided me, and made me choose thewholesome, humble life with little Miriam in preference to the grandeurof Skale's vast dream? What _do_ you think?" And his face always turnspink and then flame-colored as he asks it, hesitating absurdly beforegiving the answer. "I'll tell you, because you'd never guess in thisworld. " And then he lowers his voice and says, "It was the deliciouslittle sweet perfume of her fingers as she held them over my lips. .. . !"

That delicate, faint smell was the symbol of human happiness, andthrough all the whirlwind of sound and color about him, it somehowmanaged to convey its poignant, searching message of the girl's utterlove straight into his heart. Thus curiously out of proportion andinsignificant, indeed, are sometimes the decisive details that inmoments of overwhelming experience turn the course of life's river thisway or that. .. . 

With a single wild cry in his soul that found no audible expression, hegave up the unequal struggle. He turned, and with Miriam by his side, flew down the corridor from the advent of the Immensity that was uponthem--from the approach of the escaping Letters. 

VI

How Spinrobin found his way out of that sound-stricken house remains anunsolved mystery. He never understood it himself; he remembers only thatwhen they reached the ground floor the vibrations of Skale's opening bassnote had already begun. Its effect, too, was immediately noticeable. Forthe roar of the escaping Letters, which upstairs had reached so immense avolume as to be recognized only in terms of silence, now suddenly grew ina measure harnessed and restrained. Their vibration became reduced--downcloser to the sixteen-foot wavelength which is the limit of humanaudition. They were being leashed in by the summoning master-tone. Theygrew once more audible. 

On the rising swirl of sound the two humans were swept down passagesand across halls, as two leaves are borne by a tempest, and afterfrantic efforts, in which Spinrobin bruised his body against doors andwalls without number, he found himself at last in the open air, and ata considerable distance from the house of terror. Stars shone overhead. He saw the outline of hills. Breaths of cool wind fanned his burningskin and eyes. 

But he dared not turn to look or listen. The music of that opening note, now rising through the building from the cellar, might catch him and winhim back. The chord in which himself and Miriam were to have utteredtheir appointed tones, even half-told, was still mighty to overwhelm. Itseffect upon the Letters themselves had been immediate. 

The feeling that he had proved faithless to Skale, unworthy of the greatexperiment, never properly attuned to this fearful music of thegods--this was forgotten in the overmastering desire to escape from itall into the safety of common human things with Miriam. Setting hiscourse ever up the hills, he ran on and on, till breath failed himutterly and he was obliged to stop for lack of strength. And it was onlythen he realized that the whole time the girl had been in his arms. Hehad been carrying her. 

Placing her on the ground, he caught a glimpse of her eyes in thedarkness, and saw that they were still charged with the one devouringpassion that had made the sacrifice of Skale and of all her trainingsince birth inevitable. Soft and glowing with her first knowledge oflove, her grey eyes shone like stars newly risen. 

"Come, come!" he whispered hoarsely; "we must get as far aspossible--away from it all. Across the hills we shall find safety. Oncethe splendors overtake us we are lost. .. . "

Seizing her by the hand, they pressed on again, the ocean of sound risingand thundering behind them and below. 

Without knowing it, he had taken the path by which the clergyman hadbrought him from the station weeks ago on the day of his first arrival. With a confused memory, as of a dream, he recognized it. The ground wasslippery with dead leaves whose odor penetrated sharply the air of night. Everywhere about him, as they paused from time to time in the little openspaces, the trees pressed up thickly; and ever from the valley they hadjust left the increasing tide of sound came pouring up after them likethe roar of the sea escaping through doors upon the surface of the world. 

And even now the marvelous, enticing wonder of it caught him more thanonce and made him hesitate. The sense of what he was giving up sickenedhim with a great sudden yearning of regret. The mightiness of that lovedleader, lonely and unafraid, trafficking with the principalities andpowers of sound, and reckoning without misgiving upon the cooperation ofhis other "notes"--this plucked fearfully at his heartstrings. But onlyin great tearing gusts, so to speak, which passed the instant he realizedthe little breathless, grey-eyed girl at his side, charged with herbeautiful love for him and the wholesome ambition for human things. 

"Oh! but the heaven we're losing. .. !" he cried once aloud, unable to contain himself. "Oh, Miriam . .. And I have provedunworthy . .. Small. .. !"

"Small enough to stay with me forever and ever . .. Here on the earth, "she replied passionately, seizing his hand and drawing him further up thehill. Then she stopped suddenly and gathered a handful of dead leaves, moss, twigs and earth. The exquisite familiar perfume as she held it tohis face pierced through him with a singular power of conviction. 

"We should lose _this_, " she exclaimed; "there's none of this . .. Inheaven! The earth, the earth, the dear, beautiful earth, with you . .. AndWinky . .. Is what I want!"

And when he stopped her outburst with a kiss, fully understanding theprofound truth she so quaintly expressed, he smelt the trees andmountains in her hair, and her fragrance was mingled there with thefragrance of that old earth on which they stood. 

VII

The rising flood of sound sent them charging ahead the same minute, forit seemed upon them with a rush; and it was only after much stumbling andfloundering among trees and boulders that they emerged into the openspace of the hills beyond the woods. Actually, perhaps, they had beenrunning for twenty minutes, but to them it seemed that they had beenrunning for days. They stood still and looked about them. 

"You shall never regret, never, never, " Miriam whispered quickly. "I canmake you happier than all this ever could, " and she waved her arm towardsthe house below. "And you know it, my little Master. "

But before he could reply, or do more than place an arm about her waistto support her, something came to pass that communicated its message totheir souls with an incalculable certainty neither could explain. Perhaps it was that distance enabled them to distinguish between thesounds more clearly, or perhaps their beings were still so intimatelyconnected with Skale that some psychic warning traveled up to them acrossthe night; but at any rate there then came about this sharp and suddenchange in the quality of the sound-tempest round them that proclaimed thearrival of an exceedingly dramatic moment. The nature of the rushing, flying vibrations underwent alteration. And, looking one another in theeyes, they realized what it meant. 

"He's beginning . .. " faltered Spinrobin in some skeleton of a voice. "Skale has begun to _utter_. .. !" He said it beneath his breath. 

Down in the cellar of that awful house the giant clergyman, alone andundismayed, had begun to call the opening vibration of the living chordwhich was to gather in this torrent of escaping Letters and unite them intemporary safety in the crypts of the prepared vault. For the first timein eighteen hundred years the initial sound of the "Name that rusheththrough the universe"--the first sound of its opening syllable, thatis--was about to thunder its incalculable message over the earth. 

Crouching close against each other they stood there on the edge of thewoods, the night darkly smothering about them, the bare, open hills lyingbeyond in the still sky, waiting for the long-apprehended climax--theutterance of the first great syllable. 

"It will make him . .. As God, " crashed the thought through Spinrobin'sbrain as he experienced the pangs of the fiercest remorse he had everknown. "Even without our two notes the power will be sublime. .. !"

But, through Miriam's swiftly-beating heart, as she pressed closer andcloser: "I know your true name . .. And you are mine. What else in heavenor earth can ever matter. .. ?"

Chapter XIV

I

Skale had indeed begun to utter. And to these two bewildered childrenstanding there alone with their love upon the mountain, it seemed thatthe whole world knew. 

Those desolate hills that rolled away like waves beneath the stars; thewhispering woods about them; the distant sea, eternally singing its ownnote of sadness; the boulders at their feet; the very stars themselves, listening in the heart of night--one and all were somehow aware that aportion of the great Name which first called them into being was about toissue from the sleep of ages once again into manifestation. .. . Perhapsto quicken them into vaster life, perhaps to change their forms, perhapsto merge them all back into the depths of the original "word" ofcreation . .. With the roar of a dissolving universe. .. . 

Through everything, from the heart of the hidden primroses below the soilto the center of the huge moors above, there ran some swift thrill oflife as the sounds of which they were the visible expression trembled insympathetic resonance with the opening vibrations of the great syllable. 

Philip Skale had begun to utter. Alone in the cellar of thattempest-stricken house, already aware probably that the upper notes ofhis chord had failed him, he was at last in the act of calling upon theName that Rusheth through the Universe . .. The syllable whose powersshould pass into his own being and make him as the gods. .. . 

And, first of all, to the infinite surprise of these two listening, shaking lovers, the roaring thunders that had been battling all aboutthem, grew faint and small, and then dropped away into mere trickles ofsound, retreating swiftly down into the dark valley where the housestood, as though immense and invisible leashes drew them irresistiblyback. One by one the Letters fled away, leaving only a murmur ofincredibly sweet echoes behind them in the hills, as the master-sound, spoken by this fearless and audacious man, gathered them into theirappointed places in the cellar. 

But if they expected stupendous things to follow they were at firstsingularly disappointed. For, instead of woe and terror, instead of thefoundering of the visible universe, there fell about the listening worlda cloak of the most profound silence they had ever known, soft beyondconception. The Name was not in the whirlwind. Out of the heart of thatdeathly stillness it came--a small, sweet voice, that was undeniably thevoice of Philip Skale, its awful thunders all smoothed away. With it, too, like a faint overtone, came the yet gentler music of another voice. The bass and alto were uttering their appointed notes in harmony andwithout dismay. 

Everywhere the sound rose up through the darkness of great distance, yetat the same time ran most penetratingly sweet, close beside them in theirvery ears. So magically intimate indeed was it, yet so potentially hugefor all its soft beginning, that Spinrobin declares that what he heardwas probably not the actual voices, but only some high liberatedharmonics of them. 

The sounds, moreover, were not distinguishable as consonants and vowelsin the ordinary sense, and to this day remain for him beyond all reachof possible reproduction. He did not hear them as "word" or "syllable, "but as some incalculably splendid Message that was too mighty to betaken in, yet at the same time was sweeter than all imagined music, simple as a little melody "sweetly sung in tune, " artless as windthrough rustling branches. 

And, moreover, as this small, sweet voice ran singing everywhere aboutthem in the darkness of hills and woods, Spinrobin realized, with awhole revolution of wonder sweeping through him, that the sound, for allits gentleness, was at work vehemently upon the surface of thelandscape, altering and shifting the pattern of the solid earth, just asthe sand had wreathed into outlines at the sound of his own voice weeksago, and as the form of the clergyman had changed at the vibrations ofthe test night. 

The first letters of the opening syllable of this divine and magicalname were passing over the world . .. Shifting the myriad molecules thatcomposed it by the stress and stir of its vast harmonics . .. Changingthe pattern. 

But this time the change was not dreadful; the new outline, even beforehe actually perceived it, was beautiful above all known forms of beauty. The outer semblance of the old earth appeared to melt away and revealthat heart of clean and dazzling wonder which burns ever at its inmostcore--the naked spirit divined by poets and mystics since the beginningof time. It was a new heaven and a new earth that pulsed below them inresponse to the majesty of this small sweet voice. All nature knew, fromthe birds that started out of sleep into passionate singing, to the fishthat stirred in the depths of the sea, and the wild deer that sprangalert in their wintry coverts, scenting an eternal spring. For the earthrolled up as a scroll, shaking the outworn skin of centuries from herface, and suffering all her rocky structure to drop away and disclose thesoft and glowing loveliness of an actual being--a being most tenderly andexquisitely alive. It was the beginning of spiritual vision in their ownhearts. The name had set them free. The blind saw--a part of God. .. . 

II

And then, in Spinrobin's heart, the realization of failure--that he wasnot in his appointed place, following his great leader to the stars, clashed together with the splendor of his deep and simple love for thistrembling slip of a girl beside him. 

The thought that God, as it were, had called him and he had been afraidto run and answer to his name overpowered his timid, aching soul withsuch a flood of emotion that he found himself struggling with a glorioustemptation to tear down the mountainside again to the house and play hisappointed part--utter his note in the chord even thus late. For theessential bitterness and pain that lies at the heart of all transitoryearthly things--the gnawing sense of incompleteness and vanity thattouches the section of transitory existence men call "life, " met face toface with this passing glimpse of reality, timeless and unconditioned, which the sound of the splendid name flashed so terrifically before hisawakened soul-vision, --and threatened to overwhelm him. 

In another instant he would have yielded and gone; forgotten evenMiriam, and all the promised sweetness of life with her half-planned, when something came to pass abruptly that threw his will and all hislittle calculations into a dark chaos of amazement where, by a kindof electrically swift reaction, he realized that the one true, possible and right thing for him was this very love he was about to castaside. His highest destiny was upon the unchanged old earth . .. WithMiriam . .. And Winky. .. . 

She turned and flung her arms round his neck in a passion of tears asthough she had divined his unspoken temptation . .. And at the same timethis awful new thing was upon them both. It caught them like a tempest. For a disharmony--a discord--a lying sound was loose upon the air fromthose two voices far below. 

"Call me by my true name, " she cried quickly, in an anguish ofterror; "for my soul is afraid. .. . Oh, love me most utterly, utterly, utterly . .. And save me!"

Unnerved and shaking like a leaf, Spinrobin pressed her againsthis heart. 

"I know you by name and you are mine, " he tried to say, but the wordsnever left his lips. It was the love surging up in his tortured heartthat alone held him to sanity and prevented--as it seemed to him in thatappalling moment--the dissolution of his very being and hers. 

For Philip Skale had somewhere _uttered falsely_. 

A darting zigzag crack, as of lightning, ran over the giant fabric ofvibrations that covered the altering world as with a flood . .. And soundsthat no man may hear and not die leaped awfully into being. Thesuddenness and immensity of the catastrophe blinded these two listeningchildren-souls. Awe and terror usurped all other feelings . .. But one. Their love, being born of the spirit, held supreme, insulating them, soto speak, from all invading disasters. 

Philip Skale had made a mistake in the pronunciation of the Name. 

The results were dreadful and immediate, and from all the surface of thewakening world rose anguished voices. Spinrobin started up, liftingMiriam into his arms. He spun dizzily for a moment between boulders andtrees, giving out a great wailing cry, unearthly enough had there beenany to hear it. Then he began to run wildly through the thick darkness. In his ear--for her head lay close--he heard her dear voice, between thesobs of collapse, calling his inner name most sweetly; and the soundsummoned to the front all in him that was best and manly. 

"My sweet Master, my sweet Master!"

But he did not run far. About him on every side the night lifted asthough it were suddenly day. He saw the summits of the bleak mountainsagleam with the reflection of some great light that rushed upon them fromthe valley. All the desolate landscape, hesitating like some hoveringocean between the old pattern and the new, seemed to hang suspended amidthe desolation of the winter skies. Everything roared. It seemed theground shook. The very bones of the woods went shuddering together; thehills toppled; and overhead, in some incredible depths of space, boomedsounds as though the heavens split off into fragments and hurled theconstellations about the vault to swell these shattering thunders of acollapsing world. 

The Letters of that terrible and august Name were passing over the faceof the universe--distorted because mispronounced--creative sounds, disheveled and monstrous, because incompletely and incorrectly uttered. 

"Put me down, " he heard Miriam cry where she lay smothered in his arms, "and we can face everything together, and be safe. Our love is biggerthan it all and will protect us. .. . "

"Because it is complete, " he cried incoherently in reply, seizing thetruth of her thought, and setting her upon the ground; "it includes eventhis. It is a part of . .. The Name . .. Correctly uttered . .. For it istrue and pure. "

He heard her calling his inner name, and he began forthwith to call herown as they stood there clinging to one another, mingling arms and hairand lips in such a tumult of passion that it seemed as though all thisouter convulsion of the world was a small matter compared to thecommotion in their own hearts, revolutionized by the influx of a divinelove that sought to melt them into a single being. 

And as they looked down into the valley at their feet, too bewildered toresist these mighty forces that stole the breath from their throats andthe strength from their muscles, they saw with a clearness as of day thatthe House of Awe in which their love had wakened and matured was passingaway and being utterly consumed. 

In a flame of white fire, tongued and sheeted, streaked with gulfs ofblack, and most terribly roaring, it rose with a prodigious crackling ofwalls and roof towards the sky. Volumes of colored smoke, like hillsmoving, went with it; and with it, too, went the forms--the substance oftheir forms, at least, of their "sounds" released--of Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle, and all the paraphernalia of gongs, drapery, wires, sheeted walls, sand-patterns, and the preparations of a quarter of a century of laborand audacious research. For nothing could possibly survive in such afurnace. The heat of it struck their faces where they stood even herehigh upon the hills, and the currents of rising wind blew the girl'stresses across his eyes and moved his own feathery hair upon his head. The notes of those leaping flames were like thunder. 

"Watch now!" cried Miriam, though he divined the meaning from the gestureof her free hand rather than actually heard the words. 

And, leaning their trembling bodies against a great boulder behindthem, they then saw in the midst of the conflagration, or hoveringdimly above it rather, the vast outlines of the captured sounds--theLetters--escaping back again into the womb of eternal silence from whichthey had been with such appalling courage evoked. In forms of dazzlingblackness they passed upwards in their chariots of flame, yet at the sametime passed _inwards_ in some amazing kind of spiral motion upon theirown axes, vanishing away with incredible swiftness and beauty deep downinto themselves . .. And were gone. 

Realizing in some long-forgotten fashion of childhood the fearful majestyof the wrath of Jehovah, yet secretly undismayed because each felt sogloriously lost in their wonderful love, the bodies of Miriam andSpinrobin dropped instinctively upon their knees, and, still tightlyclasped in one another's arms, bowed their foreheads to the ground, touching the earth and leaves. 

But how long they rested thus upon the heart of the old earth, orwhether they slept, or whether, possibly, the inevitable reaction to allthe overstrain of the past hours led them through a period ofunconsciousness, neither of them quite knew. Nor was it possible forthem to have known, perhaps, that the lonely valley sheltering the Houseof Awe, running tongue-like into these desolate hills, had theunenviable reputation of trembling a little in sympathy with anyconsiderable shock of earthquake that came to move that portion of theround globe from her sleep. Of this they knew as little, no doubt, asthey did of the ill-defined line of demarcation between experiences thatare objective, capable of being weighed and measured, and those that aresubjective, taking place--though with convincing authority--only in thesphere of the mind. .. . 

All they do know, and Spinrobin tells it with an expression of supremehappiness upon his shining round face, is that at length they stirredas they lay, opened their eyes, turned and looked at one another, thenstood up. On Miriam's hair and lashes lay the message of the dew, andin her clear eyes all the soft beauty of the stars that had watchedover them. 

But the stars themselves had gone. Over the hills ran the colored feet ofthe dawn, swift and rosy, touching the spread of heathery miles with thetints of approaching sunrise. The tops of the leafless trees stirredgently with a whisper of wind that stole up from the distant sea. Thebirds were singing. Over the surface of the old earth flew the magicalthrill of life. It caught these two children-lovers, sweeping them intoeach other's arms as with wings. 

Out of all the amazing tempest of their recent experiences emerged thisever-growing splendor of their deep and simple love. The kindly earththey had chosen beckoned them down into the valley; the awful heaven theyhad rejected smiled upon them approvingly, as the old sun topped thehills and peeped upon them with his glorious eye. 

"Come, Miriam, " breathed Spinrobin softly into her little ear;"we'll go down into another valley . .. And live happily togetherforever and ever. .. . "

"Yes, " she murmured, blushing with the rosiness of that exquisitewinter's dawn; ". .. You and I . .. And . .. And . .. "

But Spinrobin kissed the unborn name from her lips. "Hush!" hewhispered, "hush!"

For the little "word" between these two was not yet made flesh. But thedawn-wind caught up that "hush" and carried it to the trees andundergrowth about them, and then ran thousand-footed before them towhisper it to the valley where they were going. 

And Miriam, knowing the worship and protection in his delicate caress, looked up into his face and smiled--and the smile in her grey eyes wasthat ancient mother-smile which is coeval with life. For the word ofcreation flamed in these two hearts, waiting only to be uttered.