As his fingers touched the strings, there came a sense of familiarity with the instrument, as one who meets a friend after a long separation. He tightened the strings, picked up the bow, and began to play.
It was the adagio movement of the concerto—the one which Herr Kaufmann had said was full of heartache and tears. In all the literature of music, there was nothing so well suited to his mood.
He stood with his face to the window, his eyes still fixed upon the rainbow, and deep, quivering tunes came from the violin. In an instant, Lynn recognised his mastery. He was playing as the great had played before him, with passion and with infinite pain.
All the beauty of the world was a part of it—the sun, the wide fields of clover, and the Summer rain. Moonlight and the sound of many waters, the unutterable midnights of the universe, Iris and the beauty of the marshes, where her name-flower, like a thread of purple, embroidered a royal tapestry. Beyond this still was the beauty of the spirit, which believes all things, suffers all things, and triumphs at last through its suffering and its belief.
Primal forces spoke through the adagio, swelling into splendid chords—love and night and death. It was the cry of a soul in bondage, straining to be free; struggling to break the chain and take its place, by right of its knowledge and its compassion, with those who have learned to live.
Lynn was quivering like an aspen in a storm, and he breathed heavily. Through the majestic crescendo came that deathless message: “Endure, and thou shalt triumph; wait, and thou shalt see.” Like an undercurrent, too, was the inseparable mystery of pain.
Under the spell of the music, he saw it all—the wide working of the law which takes no account of the finite because it deals with the infinite; which takes no heed of the individual because it guards us all. Far removed from its personal significance, his grief became his friend—the keynote, the password, the countersign admitting him to that vast Valhalla where the shining souls of the immortals, outgrowing defeat, have put on the garments of Victory.
Sunset took the rainbow and made it into flame. Once more Lynn played the adagio, instinct with its world-old story, voicing its world-old law. He was so keenly alive that the strings cut into his fingers, yet he played on, fully comprehending, fully believing, through the splendid chords of the crescendo to the end.
Then there was a faltering step upon the stair, a fumbling at the latch, and someone staggered into the room. It was the Master, blind with tears, his loved Cremona in his outstretched hands.