one must needs speak by burgling metaphors and own in bitterness after all that one has failed. And it was only a vision. The wonderful creatures flying through the aether saw them not as they stood there, flew through them as one might pass through a whisp of mist. The Vicar lost all sense of duration, all sense of necessity———
"Ah!" said the Angel, suddenly putting down the fiddle.
The Vicar had forgotten the book on Political Economy, had forgotten everything until the Angel had done. For a minute he sat quite still. Then he woke up with a start. He was sitting on the old iron-bound chest.
"Really," he said slowly, "you are very clever."
He looked about him in a puzzled way. "I had a kind of vision while you were playing. I seemed to see——— What did I see? It has gone."
He stood up with a dazzled expression upon his face. "I shall never play the violin again," he said. "I wish you would take it to your room—and keep it——— And play to me
