But, through Miriam’s swiftly-beating heart, as she pressed closer and closer:  “I know your true name ... and you are mine.  What else in heaven or earth can ever matter...?”

Chapter XIV

I

Skale had indeed begun to utter.  And to these two bewildered children standing there alone with their love upon the mountain, it seemed that the whole world knew.

Those desolate hills that rolled away like waves beneath the stars; the whispering woods about them; the distant sea, eternally singing its own note of sadness; the boulders at their feet; the very stars themselves, listening in the heart of night—­one and all were somehow aware that a portion of the great Name which first called them into being was about to issue from the sleep of ages once again into manifestation....Perhaps to quicken them into vaster life, perhaps to change their forms, perhaps to merge them all back into the depths of the original “word” of creation ... with the roar of a dissolving universe....

Through everything, from the heart of the hidden primroses below the soil to the center of the huge moors above, there ran some swift thrill of life as the sounds of which they were the visible expression trembled in sympathetic resonance with the opening vibrations of the great syllable.

Philip Skale had begun to utter.  Alone in the cellar of that tempest-stricken house, already aware probably that the upper notes of his chord had failed him, he was at last in the act of calling upon the Name that Rusheth through the Universe ... the syllable whose powers should pass into his own being and make him as the gods....

And, first of all, to the infinite surprise of these two listening, shaking lovers, the roaring thunders that had been battling all about them, grew faint and small, and then dropped away into mere trickles of sound, retreating swiftly down into the dark valley where the house stood, as though immense and invisible leashes drew them irresistibly back.  One by one the Letters fled away, leaving only a murmur of incredibly sweet echoes behind them in the hills, as the master-sound, spoken by this fearless and audacious man, gathered them into their appointed places in the cellar.

But if they expected stupendous things to follow they were at first singularly disappointed.  For, instead of woe and terror, instead of the foundering of the visible universe, there fell about the listening world a cloak of the most profound silence they had ever known, soft beyond conception.  The Name was not in the whirlwind.  Out of the heart of that deathly stillness it came—­a small, sweet voice, that was undeniably the voice of Philip Skale, its awful thunders all smoothed away.  With it, too, like a faint overtone, came the yet gentler music of another voice.  The bass and alto were uttering their appointed notes in harmony and without dismay.