art of an inch on the other?"

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

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

"Thank you, yes, I quite see now," said the secretary. "To name truly is
to hear truly." The clergyman's words seemed to hold a lamp to a vast
interior map in his mind that was growing light. A new dawn was breaking
over the great mental prairie where he wandered as a child. "To find the
true name of anything," he added, "you mean, is to hear its sound, its
individual 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 the
next step is to utter it, and so absorb its force into your own being by
synchronous vibration--union mystical and actual. Only, you must be sure
you utter it correctly. To pronounce incorrectly is to call it
incompletely into life and form--to distort and injure it, and yourself
with it. To make it untrue--a lie."

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

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

"With many names I had great difficulty," he whispered. "With hers, for
instance," indicating the housekeeper behind them. "It took me five
years' continuous research to establish her general voice-out