w, his eyes still fixed upon the
rainbow, and deep, quivering tunes came from the violin. In an instant,
Lynn recognised his mastery. He was playing as the great had played
before him, with passion and with infinite pain.

All the beauty of the world was a part of it--the sun, the wide fields
of clover, and the Summer rain. Moonlight and the sound of many waters,
the unutterable midnights of the universe, Iris and the beauty of the
marshes, where her name-flower, like a thread of purple, embroidered a
royal tapestry. Beyond this still was the beauty of the spirit, which
believes all things, suffers all things, and triumphs at last through
its suffering and its belief.

Primal forces spoke through the adagio, swelling into splendid
chords--love and night and death. It was the cry of a soul in bondage,
straining to be free; struggling to break the chain and take its place,
by right of its knowledge and its compassion, with those who have
learned to live.

Lynn was quivering like an aspen in a storm, and he breathed heavily.
Through the majestic crescendo came that deathless message: "Endure, and
thou shalt triumph; wait, and thou shalt see." Like an undercurrent,
too, was the inseparable mystery of pain.

Under the spell of the music, he saw it all--the wide working of the law
which takes no account of the finite because it deals with the infinite;
which takes no heed of the individual because it guards us all. Far
removed from its personal significance, his grief became his friend--the
keynote, the password, the countersign admitting him to that vast
Valhalla where the shining souls of the immortals, outgrowing defeat,
have put on the garments of Victory.

Sunset took the rainbow and made it into flame. Once more Lynn played
the adagio, instinct with its world-old story, voicing its world-old
law. He was so keenly alive that the strings cut into his fingers, yet
he played on, fully comprehending, fully believing, through the splendid
chords of the crescendo to the end.

Then there was a faltering step upon the stair, a fumbling at the latch,
and someone staggered into the room. It was the Master, blind with
tears, his loved Cremona in his outstretched hands.

"Here!" he cried, brokenly. "Son of mine heart! Play!"

XIX

The Secret Chamber

"He loves her still." The memory of the words carried balm to Margaret's
sore heart. There could be no mistake, for Doctor Brinkerhoff had been
positive. It was abs