the opening of the long corridor where the rooms were.

Here, however, they stopped with a gasp, for a hurricane of moving air
met them in the face like the draught from some immense furnace. Again
the crest of a wave in the colossal sound-vibration had caught them.
Staggering against the wall, they tried again and again to face the
tempest of sound and light, but the space beyond them was lit with the
same unearthly brilliance as the hall, and out of the whole long throat
of that haunted corridor issued such a passion of music and such a
torrent of gorgeous color, that it seemed impossible for any aggregation
of physical particles--least of all poor human bodies--to remain coherent
for a single instant before the concentrated onslaught.

Yet, game to the inmost core of his little personality, and raised far
above his normal powers by the evidence of Miriam's courage and fidelity,
he struggled with all his might and searched through the chambers of his
being for the note he was ordained to utter in the chord. The ignominy of
failure, now that the great experiment was full upon him--failure in
Miriam's eyes, too--was simply impossible to contemplate. Yet, in spite
of every effort, the memory of that all-important note escaped him
utterly, for the forces of his soul floundered, helpless and disheveled,
before the too mighty splendors that were upon him at such close
quarters. The sounds he actually succeeded in emitting between dry and
quivering lips were pitiful and feeble beyond words.

Down that living corridor, meanwhile, he saw the doors of the four rooms
were gone, consumed like tissue paper; and through the narrow portals
there shouldered forward, bathed in light ineffable, the separate
outlines of the Letters so long imprisoned in inactivity. And with their
appearance the sounds instantly ceased, having overpassed the limits of
what is audible to human ears. A great stillness dropped about them with
an abrupt crash of utter silence. For a "crash" of silence it
was--all-shattering.

And then, from the categories of the incomprehensible and unmanifest,
"something" loomed forth towards them where, limp and shaking, they
leaned against the wall, and they witnessed the indescribable operation
by which the four Letters, whirling and alive, ran together and melted
into a single terrific semblance of a FORM ... the sight of which entered
the heart of Spinrobin and threatened to split it asunder with the joy of
the most