Gault laughed, and jerked the cloth away. Loseis beheld a beautiful box of a polished red wood, having in the front of it several curious black knobs with indicators and dials above them. The whole apparatus was suggestive of magic. Gault began to turn the knobs, and Loseis, holding her breath, prepared herself for anything to happen; red and green flames perhaps, with a Jinn springing up in the middle.
When it came, it let her down suddenly from that awful suspense. It was not startling at all, but sweet. Music mysteriously filled the room, coming, not from that box, but from an unknown source. It melted the heart with its sweetness. It resembled the music of a violin with which Loseis was familiar, but infinitely fuller and richer, with strange, deep undertones that caused delicious shivers to run up the girl’s spine.
“Oh, what is it? What is it?” she murmured.
“Music from Heaven,” said Gault grinning.
For a moment she believed him. Closing her eyes, she gave herself up to the entrancing sounds. It was too beautiful, too beautiful to be of this earth. Yet it was not strange; it seemed like something she had always been waiting for; it satisfied a longing. It caused her to think of her father and of her lover. The thoughts of death and of love became intermingled in her mind, intolerably sweet and bitter. The tears swelled under her eyelids.
Then Gault destroyed the spell that he himself had evoked. “It’s coming through fine, to-night,” he remarked to Moale. “No interference.”
Loseis dropped down to earth. A recollection came to her. “It is the radio,” she said quietly. “I have read of that, too.”
It was a music of many voices, now loud, now soft; one voice then another spoke above them all; then all were raised together. Shrill, merry voices running up and down like laughter; voices as plaintive as the laughter of loons at dusk; deep, sonorous voices that suggested courage and endurance. Loseis tried in vain to pick out the tune. It had a meaning; but one could not grasp it. It was like listening to the whole world.
“What makes such music?” she whispered.
“Orchestra,” he said.