he flutes of Pan cried to him to
dance: indoors the echoes of yet greater music whispered in the
penetralia of his spirit that he should cry. In this extraordinary new
world of Philip Skale's revelation he fairly spun.

It was one thing when the protective presence of the clergyman was about
him, or when he was sustained by the excitement of enthusiasm, but when
he was alone, at his normal level, timid, yet adventurous, the too vivid
sense of these new things made him tremble. The terrifying beauty of
Skale's ideas; the realization in cold blood that all forms in the world
about him were silently a-singing, and might any moment vanish and
release their huge bodies into primal sounds; that the stones in the
road, the peaked hills, the very earth herself might alter in shape
before his eyes: on the other hand, that the viewless forces of life and
death might leap into visibility and form with the calling of their
names; that himself, and Skale, and Mrs. Mawle, and that pale fairy
girl-figure were all enmeshed in the same scheme with plants, insects,
animals and planets; and that God's voice was everywhere too sublimely
close--all this, when he was alone, oppressed him with a sense of things
that were too intimate and too mighty for daily life.

In these moments--so frequent now as to be almost continuous--he
preferred the safety of his ordinary and normal existence, dull though it
might be; the limited personality he had been so anxious to escape from
seemed wondrous sweet and comforting. The Terror of the approaching
Experiment with this mighty name appalled him.

The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and more
contradictory and confused. The outcome for himself seemed to be the
result of the least little pressure this way or that--possibly at the
very last moment, too. Which way the waiting Climax might draw him was a
question impossible to decide.

III

And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a sharp stage
nearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr. Skale came up
unexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand upon his shoulder in a way
that made him positively jump.

"Spinrobin," he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that shamed his
timidity and cowardice, "are you ready?"

"For anything and everything," was the immediate reply, given almost
automatically as he felt the clergyman's forces flood into his soul
and lift him.

"The time is at hand, then," continued the