ightly, with the first sign of that
modesty which comes with knowledge he had yet noticed in her, or felt
conscious of in himself, she withdrew, a wonderful flush tinging her pale
skin, then passing instantly away.

"To make you feel absolutely safe from possible disaster," Mr. Skale was
saying with a smile, "you shall have the assistance of the violin. The
pitch and rhythm shall be thus assured. There is nothing to fear."

And Miriam, equally smiling with confidence, led her friend, perplexed
and entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and confusing puzzle--led
him to the armchair she had just vacated, and then seated herself at his
feet upon a high footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet and
irresistible directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense of
bewilderment and his confidence.

"First, you must speak my name," she said gently, yet with a note of
authority, "so that I may get the note of your voice into myself. Once or
twice will do."

He obeyed. "Miriam ... Miriam ... Miriam," he said, and watched the tiny
reflection of his own face in her eyes, her "night-eyes." The same moment
he began to lose himself. The girl's lips were moving. She had picked up
his voice and merged her own with it, so that when he ceased speaking her
tones took up the note continuously. There was no break. She carried on
the sound that he had started.

And at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived that
the violin had left its case and was under the clergyman's beard. The bow
undulated like a silver snake, drawing forth long, low notes that flowed
about the room and set the air into rhythmical vibrations. These
vibrations, too, carried on the same sound. Spinrobin gave a little
uncontrollable jump; he felt as if he had uttered his own death-warrant
and that this instrument proclaimed the sentence. Then the feeling of
dread lessened as he heard Mr. Skale's voice mingling with the violin,
combining exquisitely with the double-stopping he was playing on the two
lower strings; for the music, as the saying is, "went through him" with
thrills of power that plunged into unknown depths of his soul and lifted
him with a delightful sense of inner expansion to a state where fear was
merged in joy.

For some minutes the voice of Miriam, murmuring so close before him that
he could feel her very breath, was caught in the greater volume of the
violin and bass. Then, suddenly, both Skale and violin ceased