all rendered permanent by a thin coating of a glue-like transparent
substance that held the particles in position.

"There you see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's," he said, stooping to
look. "They harmonize most beautifully, you observe, with your own."

It was, indeed, a singular and remarkable thing. The patterns, though all
different, yet combined in some subtle fashion impossible of analysis to
form a complete and well-proportioned Whole--a design--a picture. The
patterns of the clergyman and the housekeeper provided the base and
foreground, those of Miriam and the secretary the delicate
superstructure. The girl's pattern, he noted with a subtle pleasure, was
curiously similar to his own, but far more delicate and waving. Yet,
whereas his was floral, hers was stellar in character; that of the
housekeeper was spiral, and Mr. Skale's he could only describe as a
miniature whirlwind of very exquisite design rising out of apparently
three separate centers of motion.

"If I could paint over them the color each shade of sound represents,"
Mr. Skale resumed, "the tint of each _timbre_, or _Klangfarbe_, as the
Germans call it, you would see better still how we are all grouped
together there into a complete and harmonious whole."

Spinrobin looked from the patterns to his companion's great face bending
there beside him. Then he looked back again at the patterns. He could
think of nothing quite intelligible to say. He noticed more clearly every
minute that these dainty shapes of sand, stellar, spiral, and floral,
stood to one another in certain definite proportions, in a rising and
calculated ratio of singular beauty.