VII

"Mr. Spinrobin," suddenly sounded soft and low across the table, and, thrilled to hear the girl speak his name, he looked up quickly and found her very wide-opened eyes peering into his. Her face was thrust forward a little as she leaned over the table in his direction.

As he gazed she repeated his name, leisurely, quietly, and even more softly than before: "Mr. Spinrobin." But this time, as their eyes met and the syllables issued from her lips, he noticed that a singular after-sound—an exceedingly soft yet vibrant overtone—accompanied it. The syllables set something quivering within him, something that sang, running of its own accord into a melody to which his rising pulses beat time and tune.

"Now, please, speak my name," she added. "Please look straight at me, straight into my eyes, and pronounce my name."

His lips trembled, if ever so slightly, as he obeyed.

"Miriam …" he said.

"Pronounce each syllable very distinctly and very slowly," she said, her grey eyes all over his burning face.

"Mir … i … am," he repeated, looking in the center of the eyes without flinching, and becoming instantly aware that his utterance of the name produced in himself a development and extension of the original overtones awakened by her speaking of his own name. It was wonderful … exquisite … delicious. He uttered it again, and then heard that she, too, was uttering his at the same moment. Each spoke the other's name. He could have sworn he heard the music within him leap across the intervening space and transfer itself to her … and that he heard his own name singing, too, in her blood.

For the names were true. By this soft intoning utterance they seemed to pass mutually into the secret rhythm of that Eternal Principle of Speech which exists behind the spoken sound and is independent of its means of manifestation. Their central beings, screened and limited behind their names, knew an instant of synchronous rhythmical vibration. It was their introduction absolute to one another, for it was an instant of naked revelation.

"Spinrobin…."

"Miriam…." M7EaS8AilYF1idr2QTnyKmUJlGKPwgFpGZ0jy0jLlpUNRvBqipCbreLdxoIp53nL