sheer exaltation. The
great house had become dear to him. His own fullness was enough. There
was no loneliness--"loneliness, with our planet in the Milky Way?"...
He felt a sense of authority in what he wrote, altogether new, a more
finished simplicity--the very white wine of clarity.

Then he placed great energies of planting upon the lands Jaffier had
conferred upon Miss Mallory; and carried out plans for the increase of
his own harvests. In fact, he was more interested than ever in this
base of his future operations in New York. He realized the need of
help--an ordering executive mind. His brain and body quickly adjusted
to the great good which had descended upon him--work and praise, and
love for all things. With these, his hours breathed.

One midnight in July, as he lay awake, an impulse came to play
Beethoven's symphony--in the dark.... He arranged the four rolls to
hand, turned off the lights again, and sat down before the
orchestrelle. The opening bars, which the Master designated, "_So pocht
das Schicksal an die Pforte_," lured his every power of concentration.
He was one with it, and movements of the dark swung with the flow of
harmony. The silence startled him. It was hard to re-assemble his
faculties to change the rolls for the _'Andante_....

The three voices returned to his mind--man and woman and the luminous
third Presence. That which had always been dim and formless before, now
cleared--the place and the man. The room was large and had the
character of a music studio, or one department of a large conservatory.
A grand piano, a stand for violin, pictures of the masters, and famous
musical scenes on the wall--more, there was music in the air--intervals
when the three figures seemed to listen. A violin was across the man's
knee, a bow in his right hand.

The man was down, whipped. The world had been too much for him. The
face was not evil, nor was it mighty. A tall young man--a figure knit
with beauty and precision. It was the figure of a small man enlarged,
rather than one of natural bulk. Bedient's recognition of the man was
not material; some inner correspondence made him know.... He was
sitting upon a rocker, too small and low for him. The long, perfect
limbs stretched out would have appeared lax and drunken but for their
grace of line. The bow-hand dropped limp, almost to the floor. The
other moved the violin about, handled it lightly, familiarly, as one
would play with a scarf. Fugitive humor f