atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would explain with
burning words that many a symphony of Beethoven's, a sonata of
Schumann's, or a suite of Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful,
romantic or melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partially
by these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The powers
of these Beings were just as characteristic, their existence just as
real, as the simpler names of the Hebrew angels, and their psychic
influence upon the soul that heard them uttered just as sure and
individual.

"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by science or
philosophy been adequately explained, and never can be until the occult
nature of sound, and its correlations with color, form, and number is
once again understood. 'Rhythm is the first law of the physical
creation,' says one, 'and music is a breaking into sound of the
fundamental rhythm of universal being.' 'Rhythm and harmony,' declares
Plato, 'find their way into the secret places of the soul.' 'It is the
manifestation,' whispers the deaf Beethoven, 'of the inner essential
nature of all that is,' or in the hint of Leibnitz, 'it is a calculation
which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.' It is 'love in search of a
name,' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to the truth than all
the philosophers, since love is the dynamic of pure spirit. But I," he
continued after a pause for breath, and smiling amid the glow of his
great enthusiasm, "go beyond and behind them all into the very heart of
the secret; for you shall learn that to know the sounds of the Great
Names and to utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into the
heart of their deific natures and make you 'as the gods themselves...!'"

And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight trembling ran
across the fabric of his normal world, as though it were about to vanish
and give place to another--a new world of divine things made utterly
simple. For many things that Skale said in this easy natural way, he
felt, were in the nature of clues and passwords, whose effect he
carefully noted upon his secretary, being intended to urge him, with a
certain violence even, into the desired region. Skale was testing him
all 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 merely
secretary, into his fuller confidence. In a series of singular