iled him most curiously for an instant--"the NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY!"

Chapter XII

I

A certain struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's report of it
all, as of a man striving to express violent thoughts in a language he
has not yet mastered. It is evident, for instance, as those few familiar
with the "magical" use of sound in ceremonial and the power that resides
in "true naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale's
intended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was necessary for
the utterance of the complex "Name."

Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while they laid hold
upon his imagination, never fully entered his understanding. Few minds,
it seems, can conceive of any deity as other than some anthropomorphic
extension of themselves, for the idea is too greatly blinding to admit
human thought within a measurable distance even of a faintest conception.
The true, stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening
syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended. Miriam,
with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter ignorance of
worldly things from birth, came nearer to the reality; but then Miriam
was now daily more and more caught up into the vortex of a sweet and
compelling human love, and in proportion as this grew she feared the
great experiment that might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss.
Gradually dread closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully to
Heaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths that lay
with Spinny upon the earth.

They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke of one
another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and music. He no longer
called her his "brilliant little sound," nor did she respond with "you
perfect echo"; they fell back--sign of a gradual concession to more human
things--upon the gentler terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of
Winky. They shared Winky between them ... though neither one nor other of
them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-opening lives.

"Winky is yours," she would say, "because you made him, but he belongs to
me too, because he simply can't live without me!"

"Or I without you, Little Magic," he whispered, laughing tenderly. "So,
you see, we are all three together."

Her face grew slightly troubled.

"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide him, or tell
him not to come." And far d