A nod from Mr. Skale stopped him just as he was beginning a fifth passage.  Raising the vibrating instrument to his ear, the clergyman first listened a moment intently.  Then he quickly had it under his chin, beard flowing over it like water, and the bow singing across the strings.  The note he played—­he drew it out with that whipping motion of the bow only possible to a loving expert—­was soft and beautiful, long drawn out with a sweet singing quality.  He took it on the G string with the second finger—­in the “fourth position.”  It thrilled through him, Spinrobin declares, most curiously and delightfully.  It made him happy to hear it.  It was very similar to the singing vibrations he had experienced when Miriam gazed into his eyes and spoke his name.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Skale, and laid the violin down again.  “I’ve got the note.  You’re E flat.”

“E flat!” gasped Spinrobin, not sure whether he was pleased or disappointed.

“That’s your sound, yes.  You’re E flat—­just as I thought, just as I hoped.  You fit in exactly.  It seems too good to be true!” His voice began to boom again, as it always did when he was moved.  He was striding about, very alert, very masterful, pushing the furniture out of his way, his eyes more luminous than ever.  “It’s magnificent.”  He stopped abruptly and looked at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for an instant lost his bearings altogether.  “It means, my dear Spinrobin,” he said slowly, with a touch of solemnity that woke an involuntary shiver deep in his listener’s being, “that you are destined to play a part, and an important part, in one of the grandest experiments ever dreamed of by the heart of man.  For the first time since my researches began twenty years ago I now see the end in sight.”

“Mr. Skale—­that is something—­indeed,” was all the little man could find to say.

There was no reason he could point to why the words should have produced a sense of chill about his heart.  It was only that he felt again the huge groundswell of this vast unknown experiment surging against him, lifting him from his feet—­as a man might feel the Atlantic swells rise with him towards the stars before they engulfed him forever.  It seemed getting a trifle out of hand, this adventure.  Yet it was what he had always longed for, and his courage must hold firm.  Besides, Miriam was involved in it with him.  What could he ask better than to risk his insignificant personality in some gigantic, mad attempt to plumb the Unknown, with that slender, little pale-faced Beauty by his side?  The wave of Mr. Skale’s enthusiasm swept him away deliciously.

“And now,” he cried, “we’ll get your Pattern too.  I no longer have any doubts, but none the less it will be a satisfaction to us both to see it.  It must, I’m sure, harmonies with ours; it must!”

He opened a cupboard drawer and produced a thin sheet of glass, upon which he next poured some finely powdered sand out of a paper bag.  It rattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard surface.  And while he did this, he talked rapidly, boomingly, with immense enthusiasm.