Algernon Blackwood

“ And while the secretary struggled among the folds of this cassock-like garment, that was several feet too long for his diminutive stature, the clergyman added, still with a gravity and earnestness that impressed the imagination beyond all reach of the ludicrous:
"For sound and color are intimately associated, and there are combinations of the two that can throw the spiritual body into a condition of safe receptivity, without which we should be deaf and blind even in the great Presences themselves." ”

“ Miriam. Grant that I may love and strengthen her ... and that my love may bring her peace ... and joy ...and guide me through all this terror, I beseech Thee, into Truth...."
For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even admit that it was love; feeling only the highest, he could not quite correlate his sweet and elevated passion with the common standards of what the World called love. The humility of a great love is ever amazing.
And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for ordinary protection from the possible results of Skale's audacity. ”

“ For some days the routine of this singular household followed its normal course, the only change being that while the secretary practiced his Hebrew names and studied the relations between sound, color, form and the rest, he kept himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mighty humanizer and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesome and practical values of existence. ”

“ Skale's personality was too close, and flooded him too violently. Spinrobin remained confused and bewildered; but also unbelievably happy.
"Coming out all right," he wrote shakily in that gilt-edged diary. "Beginning to understand why I'm in the world. Am just as important as anybody else--really. Impossible explain more." His entries were very like telegrams, in which a man attempts to express in a lucid shorthand all manner of things that the actual words hardly compass. ”

“ The sentence remained unfinished; and its very incompleteness left Spinrobin with the most grievous agony of apprehension he had yet experienced.
"So that, if you are ready, our next step shall be to show you the room in which your own particular sound lies," added Mr. Skale after a long pause; "the sound in the chord it will be your privilege to utter when the time comes. For each of us will utter his or her particular letter, the four together making up the first syllable in the name I seek." ”

“ He never heard the wind now without thinking of lost whispers from the voice of God that had strayed down upon the world to sweeten and bewilder the hearts of men--whispers a-search for listeners simple enough to understand. ”

“ Trivial details, presenting themselves in really dramatic moments, may impress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At this very moment Spinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of wall and door a tiny spider's web, with the spider itself hanging in the center of its little net--shaking. ”

“ Again they looked long into one another's eyes.
"I'm game," murmured Spinrobin almost inaudibly; "I'm game, Mr. Skale." But, as he said it, something in his round head turned dizzy, while his thoughts flew to Miriam and to the clergyman's significant phrase of a few minutes ago--"we must be careful, we must be absolutely wise."
IV And the preparation the clergyman insisted upon--detailed, thorough and scrupulous--certainly did not lessen in Spinrobin's eyes the gravity of the approaching ordeal. ”

“ Its vibrations correspond to the color, and will protect us."
"Protect us?" gasped Spinrobin with dry lips.
"From being shattered and destroyed--owing to the intense activity of the vibrations conveyed to our ultimate physical atoms," was the whispered reply, as the clergyman proceeded to give him under his breath a one-syllable sound that was unlike any word he knew, and that for the life of him he has never been able to reproduce since. ”

“ The vibrations of their own physical atoms fell into pace with these other spiritual activities by a kind of sympathetic resonance.
The combination of power and simplicity was what impressed him most, it seems, for it resembled--resembled only--the great spiritual simplicity in Beethoven that rouses and at the same time satisfies the profoundest yearnings of the soul. ”