sand out of a paper bag. It
rattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard surface. And while he did
this, he talked rapidly, boomingly, with immense enthusiasm.

"All sounds," he said, half to himself, half to the astonished secretary,
"create their own patterns. Sound builds; sound destroys; and invisible
sound-vibrations affect concrete matter. For all sounds produce
forms--the forms that correspond to them, as you shall now see. Within
every form lies the silent sound that first called it into view--into
visible shape--into being. Forms, shapes, bodies are the vibratory
activities of _sound made visible_."

"My goodness!" exclaimed Spinrobin, who was listening like a man in a
dream, but who caught the violence of the clergyman's idea none the less.

"Forms and bodies are--_solidified Sound_," cried the clergyman in
italics.

"You say something extraordinary," exclaimed the commonplace Spinrobin in
his shrill voice. "Marvelous!" Vaguely he seemed to remember that
Schelling had called architecture "frozen music."

Mr. Skale turned and looked at him as a god might look at an
insect--that he loved.

"Sound, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with a sudden and effective lowering of
his booming voice, "is the original divine impulsion behind
nature--communicated to language. It is--creative!"

Then, leaving the secretary with this nut of condensed knowledge to crack
as best he could, the clergyman went to the end of the room in three
strides. He busied himself for a moment with something upon the wall;
then he suddenly turned, his great face aglow, his huge form erect,
fixing his burning eyes upon his distracted companion.

"In the Beginning," he boomed solemnly, in tones of profound conviction,
"was--the _Word_." He paused a moment, and then continued, his voice
filling the room to the very ceiling. "At the Word of God--at the thunder
of the Voice of God, worlds leaped into being!" Again he paused. "Sound,"
he went on, the whole force of his great personality in the phrase, "was
the primordial, creative energy. A sound can call a form into existence.
Forms are the Sound-Figures of archetypal forces--the Word made Flesh."
He stopped, and moved with great soft strides about the room.

Spinrobin caught the words full in the face. For a space he could not
measure--considerably less than a second, probably--the consciousness of
something unutterably immense, unutterably flaming, rushed tumultuously
through his mind, with wing