They were two notes singing together in the same chord, and he had lost his little personality, only to find it again, increased and redeemed, in an existence that was larger.

It seemed to Spinrobin—­for there is only his limited phraseology to draw from—­that the incantation of her singing tones inserted itself between the particles of his flesh and separated them, ran with his blood, covered his skin with velvet, flowed and purred in the very texture of his mind and thoughts.  Something in him swam, melted, fused.  His inner kingdom became most gloriously extended....

His soul loosened, then began to soar, while something at the heart of him that had hitherto been congealed now turned fluid and alive.  He was light as air, swift as fire.  His thoughts, too, underwent a change:  rose and fell with the larger rhythm of new life as the sound played upon them, somewhat as wind may rouse the leaves of a tree, or call upon the surface of a deep sea to follow it in waves.  Terror was nowhere in his sensations; but wonder, beauty and delight ran calling to one another from one wave to the next, as this tide of sound moved potently in the depths of his awakening higher consciousness.  The little reactions of ordinary life spun away from him into nothingness as he listened to a volume of sound that was oceanic in power and of an infinite splendor:  the creative sound by which God first called him into form and being—­the true inner name of his soul.

...Yet he no longer consciously listened... no longer, perhaps, consciously heard.  The name of the soul can sound only in the soul, where no speech is, nor any need for such stammering symbols.  Spinrobin for the first time knew his true name, and that was enough.

It is impossible to translate into precise language this torrent of exquisite sensation that the girl’s voice awakened.  In the secret chambers of his imagination Spinrobin found the thoughts, perhaps, that clothed it with intelligible description for himself, but in speaking of it to others he becomes simply semi-hysterical, and talks a kind of hearty nonsense.  For the truth probably is that only poetry or music can convey any portion of a mystical illumination, otherwise hopelessly incommunicable.  The outer name had acted as a conductor to the inner name beyond.  It filled the room, and filled some far vaster space that opened out above the room, about the house, above the earth, yet at the same time was deep, deep down within his own self.  He passed beyond the confines of the world into those sweet, haunted gardens where Cherubim and Seraphim—­vast Forces—­continually do sing.  It floated him off his feet as a rising tide overtakes the little shore-pools and floats them into its own greatness, and on the tranquil bosom of these giant swells he rose into a state that was too calm to be ecstasy, yet too glorious to be mere exaltation.