Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side and whispered in accents that were soothing in comparison: 

“And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by which God called into being the worlds, and sent the perfect, rounded bodies of the spheres spinning and singing, blazing their eternal trails of glory through the void!  How sweet the whisper that crystallized in flowers!  How tender the note that fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam....”

At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in some delightful and inexplicable way that brought with it—­peace.  The power of all these strange and glowing thoughts poured their full tide into his own rather arid and thirsty world, frightening him with their terrific force.  But the mere utterance of that delightful name—­in the way Skale uttered it—­brought confidence and peace.

“...  Could we but hear them!” Skale continued, half to himself, half to his probationer; “for the sad thing is that today the world has ears yet cannot hear.  As light is distorted by passing through a gross atmosphere, so sound reaches us but indistinctly now, and few true names can bring their wondrous messages of power correctly.  Men, coarsening with the materialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the luxury of inventions and the diseases of modern life that develop intellect at the expense of soul.  They have lost the old inner hearing of divine sound, and but one here and there can still catch the faint, far-off and ineffable music.”

He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle as the glowing words fell from his heart of longing.

“None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to the sun; none know the chanting of the spheres!  The ears of the world are stopped with lust, and the old divine science of true-naming seems lost forever amid the crash of engines and the noisy thunder of machinery!...  Only among flowers and certain gems are the accurate old true names still to be found!...  But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on the ancient trail to Power.”

The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting his face upwards with a rapt expression while he murmured under his breath the description of the Rider on the White Horse from the Book of the Revelations, as though it held some inner meaning that his heart knew yet dared not divulge:  “And he had a Name written, that no man knew but he himself.  And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood:  and his Name is called The Word of God ... and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written,—­’King of Kings and Lord of Lords....’”

And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound but not to the actual words, fancied that a faintly colored atmosphere of deep scarlet accompanied the vibrations of his resonant whisper and produced in the depths of his mind this momentary effect of colored audition.