Chapter XI

I

“And the color of my sound is a pale green,” he heard behind him in tones as sweet as a muted violin string, “while the form of my note fits into yours just like a glove.  Dear Spinny, don’t tremble so.  We shall always be together, remember, you and I....”

And when, turning, he saw Miriam at his side, radiant with her shining little smile of welcome, the relief was so great that he took her in his arms and would not let her go.  She drew him tenderly away downstairs, for the clergyman, it seemed, was still busy with something in the room, and had left them....

“I know, I know,” she said softly, making him sit down beside her on the sofa, “I know the rush of pain and happiness it brings.  It shifts the whole key of your life, doesn’t it?  When I first went into my ‘room’ and learned the letter I was to utter in the Name, I felt as if I could never come back to ordinary things again, or—­”

“What name?” interrupted Spinrobin, drawing sharply away from her, and the same second amazed at the recklessness that had prompted the one question he dreaded.

The inevitable reaction had come.  He realized for the first time that there was an alternative.  All the passion of battle was upon him.  The terrific splendors of Skale’s possible achievement dazzled the very windows of his soul, but at the same time the sweet uses of normal human life called searchingly to him from within.  He had been circling about this fight for days; at last it was unexpectedly upon him.  He might climb to Skale’s impossible Heaven, Skale’s outrageous Heaven ... on the wings of this portentous experience, or—­he might sink back into the stream of wholesome and commonplace life, with a delicious little human love to companion him across the years, the unsoiled love of an embryonic soul that he could train practically from birth.  Miriam was beside him, soft and yielding, ready, doubtless, to be molded for either path.

“What name?” he repeated, holding his breath once the words were out.

“The name, of course,” she answered gently, smiling up into his eyes.  “The name I have lived to know and that you came here to learn, so that when our voices sing and utter it together in the chord we shall both become—­”

Spinrobin set his mouth against her own to stop her speech.  She yielded to him with her whole little body.  Her eyes smiled the great human welcome as she stared so closely into his.

“Shall become—­what we are not now,” he cried fiercely, drawing his face back, but holding her body yet more closely to him.  “Lose each other, don’t you see?  Don’t you realize that?”

“No, no,” she said faintly, “find each other—­you mean—­”

“Yes—­if all goes well!” He spoke the words very low.  For perhaps thirty seconds they stared most searchingly into each other’s eyes, drawing slightly apart.  Very slowly her face, then, went exceedingly pale.