"Well?" I asked eagerly.
"Well, you seem to ask me by your eyes what this all means. I will apply it at once to myself. By my researches into human electrical science, I discovered that MY companion, MY other half of existence, though not on earth, was near me, and could be commanded by me; and, on being commanded, obeyed. With Zara it was different. She could not COMMAND--she OBEYED; she was the weaker of the two. With you, I think it will be the same thing. Men sacrifice everything to ambition; women to love. It is natural. I see there is much of what I have said that appears to have mystified you; it is no good puzzling your brain any more about it. No doubt you think I am talking very wildly about Twin-Flames and Spiritual Affinities that live for us in another sphere. You do not believe, perhaps, in the existence of beings in the very air that surrounds us, invisible to ordinary human eyes, yet actually akin to us, with a closer relationship than any tie of blood known on earth?"
I hesitated. Heliobas saw my hesitation, and his eyes darkened with a sombre wrath.
"Are you one of those also who must see in order to believe?" he said, half angrily. "Where do you suppose your music comes from? Where do you suppose any music comes from that is not mere imitation? The greatest composers of the world have been mere receptacles of sound; and the emptier they were of self-love and vanity, the greater quantity of heaven-born melody they held. The German Wagner--did he not himself say that he walked up and down in the avenues, 'trying to catch the harmonies as they floated in the air'? Come with me--come back to the place you left, and I will see if you, like Wagner, are able to catch a melody flying."
He grasped my unresisting arm, and led me, half-frightened, half- curious, into the little chapel, where he bade me seat myself at the organ.
"Do not play a single note," he said, "till you are compelled."
And standing beside me, Heliobas laid his hands on my head, then pressed them on my ears, and finally touched my hands, that rested passively on the keyboard.
He then raised his eyes, and uttered the name I had often thought of but never mentioned--the name he had called upon in my dream.
"Azul!" he said, in a low, penetrating voice, "open the gateways of the Air that we may hear the sound of Song!"