And as his own little note of personal aspiration soared with this vaster music to which it belonged, he felt mounting out of himself into a condition where at last he was alive, complete and splendidly important.  His sense of insignificance fled.  His ordinary petty and unvalued self dropped away flake by flake, and he realized something of the essential majesty of his own real Being as part of an eternal and wonderful Whole.  The little painful throb of his own limited personality slipped into the giant pulse-beat of a universal vibration.

In his normal daily life, of course, he lost sight of this Whole, blinded by the details seen without perspective, mistaking his little personality for all there was of him; but now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singing in the body of this stupendous music, he understood with a rush of indescribable glory that he was part and parcel of this great chord—­this particular chord in which Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam also sang their harmonious existences—­that this chord, again, was part of a vaster music still, and that all, in the last resort, was a single note in the divine Utterance of God.

That is, the little secretary, for the first time in his existence, saw life as a whole, and interpreted the vision so wondrous sweet and simple, with the analogies of sound communicated to his subliminal mind by the mighty Skale.  Whatever the cause, however, the fine thing was that he saw, heard, knew.  He was of value in the scheme.  In future he could pipe his little lay without despair.

Moreover, with a merciless clarity of vision, he perceived an even deeper side of truth, and understood that the temporary discords were necessary, just as evil, so-called, is necessary for the greater final perfection of the Whole.  For it came to him with the clear simplicity of a child’s vision that the process of attuning his being to the right note must inevitably involve suffering and pain:  the awful stretching of the string, the strain of the lifting vibrations, the stress at first of sounding in harmony with all the others, and the apparent loss of one’s own little note in order to do so...

This point he reached, it seems, and grasped.  Afterwards, however, he entered a state where he heard things no man can utter because no language can touch transcendental things without confining or destroying them.  In attempting a version of them he merely becomes unintelligible, as has been said.  Yet the mere memory of it brings tears to his blue eyes when he tries to speak of it, and Miriam, who became, of course, his chief confidant, invariably took it upon herself to stop his futile efforts with a kiss.

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