Then, in a moment, all was peace again, and it was as if I heard a low, sweet sound, only that there was no sound, but something like what you might dream the music of the spheres to be. He came to my chair again and unbound me.
My momentary passion had vanished. “Light your cigar,” he said, “it has gone out.” I did so. I had a strange, restful feeling, as of being at one with the world, a sense of peace, between the peace of death and that of sleep.
“This,” he said, “is the pulse of the world; and it is Sleep. You remember, in the Nibelung-saga, when Erda, the Earth spirit, is invoked, unwillingly she appears, and then she says, Lass mich schlafen—let me sleep on—to Wotan, king of the gods? Some of the old myths are true enough, though not the Christian ones, most always.... This pulse of the earth seems to you dead silence, yet the beats are pulsing thousands a second faster than the highest sound.... For emotions are subtler things than sound, as you sentimental ones would say; you poets that talk of ‘heart’ and ‘soul.’ We men of science say it this way: That those bodily organs that answer to your myth of a soul are but more widely framed, more nicely textured, so as to respond to the impact of a greater number of movements in the second.”
While he was speaking he had gone into the other room, and was bending the lever down once more; I flew at his throat. But even before I reached him my motive changed; seizing a Spanish knife that was on the table, I sought to plunge it in my breast. But, with a quick stroke of the elbow, as if he had been prepared for the attempt, he dashed the knife from my hand to the floor, and I sank in despair back into his arm-chair.
“Yes-s,” said he, with a sort of hiss of content like a long-drawn sigh of relief. “Yes-s-s—I haf put my mechanik quickly through the Murder-motif without binding you again, after I had put it back to sleep.”
“What do you mean?” I said, languidly. How could I ever hope to win Althea away from this man’s wiles?
“When man’s consciousness awakes from the sleep of the world, its first motive is Murder,” said he; “you remember the Hebrew myth of Cain?” and he laughed silently. “Its next is Suicide; its third, Despair. This time I have put my mechanik quickly through the Murder movement, so your wish to kill me was just now but momentary.”
There was an evil gleam in his eye as he said this.
“I leafe a dagger on the table, because if I left a pistol the subject would fire it, and that makes noise. Then at the motion of Suicide you tried to kill yourself: the suicide is one grade higher than the murderer. And now, you are in Despair.”
He bent the lever further down and touched a small glass rod.