igar, while the pianist made broad preludes in
many keys....

The music, from misty weavings, tentative gropings in remote tonalities,
soon resolved itself into the fluid affirmations of Bach's Chromatic
Fantasia. Stannum noticed the burnished, argent surface of an
old-fashioned Egyptian mirror of solid tin hanging in front of him, and
saw in leaden shadows his features, dim and distorted. Being a man of
astrological lore he mused, and presently mumbled, "Tin is the sign of
Jupiter in alchemy and stands for the god of Juno and Thunders," and
immediately begged Bech's pardon for having interrupted him. The pianist
made no sign, having reached the fugue following the prelude. Stannum
again speculated, his head supported by his hands. He stared into the
tinny surface, and it seemed to take on new echoes of light and shade,
following the chromatic changes of the music.... Presently rose
many-colored smoke, as if exhaled from the enchantments of some oriental
mage, and Stannum's eyes strove to penetrate the vaporous thickness. He
plunged his gaze into its tinted steamy volutes, and struggled with it
until it parted and fell away from him like the sound of falling waters.
He could not see the source of the great roaring--the roaring of some
cosmical cataract. He pushed boldly through the dense thunder-world into
the shadow land, still knew that he lived. A few feet away was his
chamber wherein Bech played Bach. Faintly the air cleared, yet never
stopped the terrifying hum that attracted his attention. And now Stannum
stood on the Cliff of the World, saw and heard the travailing and
groaning of light and sound in the epochal and reverberating Void. A
pedal bass, a diapasonic tone, that came from the bowels of the
firmament struck fear to his heart; the tone was of such magnitude as
might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have held it without
cracking and dying. This gigantic flood, this overwhelming and
cataclysmic roar, filled every pore of Stannum's body. It blew him as a
blade of grass is blown in a boreal blast; yet he sensed the pitch.
Unorganized nature, the unrestrained cry of the rocks and their buried
secrets; crushed aspirations, and the hidden worlds of plant, mineral,
animal, and human, became vocal. It was the voice of the monstrous
abortions of nature, the groan of the incomplete, experimental types,
born for a day and shattered forever. All God's mud made moan for
recognition; and Stannum was sorrowf