uline force.

Her head fell back upon the cushions, and she lost herself in the vague
wonder the book aroused. Life was there--the life of the flesh, of vivid
sensation, of experience that ran hot and swift. The active principle,
so strong in the predestined artist, stirred suddenly in her breast, and
she felt the instant of blind terror which comes with the realisation of
the fleeting possibilities of earth. Outside--beyond her--existence in
its multitudinous forms, its diversity of colour, swept on like some
vast caravan from which she had been detached and set apart. Lying there
she heard the call of it, that tremendous music which shook through her
and loosened a caged voice within herself. Her own poetry became for her
but a little part of the tumultuous, passionate instinct for life within
her--for life not as it was in its reality but as she saw it
transfigured and enkindled by the imagination that lives in dreams.

Suddenly from the darkened silence of the house below a thin sound rose
trembling, and then, gaining strength, penetrated into the closed
chambers. Uncle Percival was at his flute again; he had arisen in the
night to resume his impassioned piping; and, rising hurriedly, Laura lit
her candle and went out into the hall, where a streak of light beneath
Angela's door ran like a white thread across the blackness. Listening a
moment, she heard inside the nervous pacing to and fro of tired yet
restless feet, and after a short hesitation she turned the knob and
entered.

"Oh, Aunt Angela, did the flute wake you?" she asked.

For answer the long white figure stopped its frantic movement and turned
upon her a blanched and stricken face out of which two beautiful haunted
eyes stared like living terrors--terrors of memory, of silence, of the
unseen which had taken visible forms.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" cried Angela breathlessly, raising her
quivering hands to her ears. "I have heard it before! I have heard
it--long before!"

She paused, gasping, and without a word Laura turned and ran down the
dark staircase, while with each step the air that Uncle Percival played
sounded louder in her ears.

The door of the library was open, and as she entered she called out in a
voice that held a sob of anger, "Uncle Percival, how could you?"

His attentive, deafened ears were for his music alone, and, letting the
flute fall from his hands, he turned to look at her with the pathetic,
innocent enquiry of a good bu