ing high in heaven. No occidental instrument had ever
such a golden, conquering tone. It was the tone of one who foretold the
coming, and was full of invincible faith and sweetness. Lenyard closed
his eyes. That a single tone could so thrill his nerves he would have
denied. This, then, was the secret. For the first time in the Christian
world, the beauties of tonal timbres were made audible--almost visible;
the quality appealed to the eye, the inner eye. Was not the tinted music
so cunningly merged as to impinge first on the optic nerve? Had the
East, the Hindus and the Chinese, known of this purely material fact for
ages, and guarded it in esoteric silence? Here was music based on
simple, natural sounds, the sounds of birds and air, the subtle sounds
of silk. For centuries Europe had been on the wrong track with its
melodic experimenting, its complex of harmonies. Illowski was indeed
the saviour of music--and Neshevna, her great, green, luminous eyes upon
him, held Lenyard's hand.

The sound grew in volume, grew less silken, and more threatening, while
the light faded into mute, misty music like the purring of cats. A
swelling roar assaulted their ears; nameless creeping things seemed to
fill the tone. Yet it was in one tonality; there was no harmony, no
melody. The man's quick ear detected many new, rich timbres, as if made
by strange instruments. He also recognized interior rhythms, the result
of color rather than articulate movement. Then came silence, a silence
that shouted cruelly across the gulfs of blackness, a silence so
profound as to be appalling. Sound, rhythm, silence--the material from
which is fashioned the creative stuff of the universe! Lenyard became
restless; but the grip on his fingers tightened. He felt the oppressive
dread that precedes the flight of a nightmare; the dread that mankind
knows when sunk in shallow, horrid sleep. A low, frightened wail mounted
out of the darkness wherein massed the people. Another tone usurped the
ear, pierced the eyes. It was a blinding beam of tone, higher and more
undulating. His heart harshly ticking like a clock, he viewed, as in a
vision, the march of the nations, the crash of falling theocracies, of
dying dynasties. On a stony platform, vast and crowded, he knelt in
sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thundered over the weeping millions of
Nineveh; and the Lord of Hosts would not be appeased. Stretching to the
clouds were black, basaltic battlements, and above them