"Shall become--what we are not now," he cried fiercely, drawing his face
back, but holding her body yet more closely to him. "Lose each other,
don't you see? Don't you realize that?"

"No, no," she said faintly, "find each other--you mean--"

"Yes--if all goes well!" He spoke the words very low. For perhaps thirty
seconds they stared most searchingly into each other's eyes, drawing
slightly apart. Very slowly her face, then, went exceedingly pale.

"_If--all goes well_" she repeated, horrified. Then, after a pause, she
added: "You mean--that he might make a mistake--or--?"

And Spinrobin, drinking in the sweet breath that bore the words
so softly from her lips, answered, measuring his words with ponderous
gravity as though each conveyed a sentence of life or death,
"_If--all--goes--well_."

She watched him with something of that utter clinging mother-love in her
eyes that claims any degree of suffering gladly rather than the loss of
her own--passionately welcoming misery in preference to loss. She, too,
had divined the alternative.

Then, kissing his cheeks and eyes and lips, she untied his arms from
about her neck and ran, blushing furiously, from the room. And with her
went doubt, for the first time--doubt as to the success of the great
experiment--doubt as to their Leader's power.

II

And while Spinrobin still sat there, trembling with the two passions that
tore his soul in twain--the passion to climb forbidden skies with Skale,
and the passion to know sweet human love with Miriam--there came
thundering into the room no less a personage than the giant clergyman,
straight from those haunted rooms. Pallor hung about his face, but there
was a light radiating through it--a high, luminous whiteness--that made
the secretary think of his childhood's pictures of the Hebrew prophet
descending from Mount Sinai, the glory of internal spheres still
reflected upon the skin and eyes. Skale, like a flame and a wind, came
pouring into the room. The thing he had remained upstairs to complete
had clearly proved successful. The experiment had moved another
stage--almost the final one--nearer accomplishment.

The reaction was genuinely terrific. Spinrobin felt himself swept away
beyond all power of redemption. Miriam and the delicious human life faded
into insignificance again. What, in the name of the eternal fires, were a
girl's lips and love compared to the possibilities of Olympian
achievement promised by Skale's golden