Invern nodded. He was more curious than afraid. With apish agility Van Zorn darted to the pianoforte and literally threw his hands upon its keyboard. A shrill dissonance in B minor sounded; like the lash of hail in his face the solitary auditor felt the stormy magnetism of the playing. He had sufficient control of his critical faculties--though it seemed as if he were launched into space on the tail of some comet--to realize the desperate quality of the performance. It was not that of a virtuoso; rather the travail of a spirit harshly expressing itself in a language foreign to its nature. The symmetry of the Wagner structure was almost destroyed; yet between the bits of broken bars and splintered tones there emerged the music of some one else, a stranger, newer Wagner. Was the Horla of Wagner buried in this demoniacal prelude to the second act of Parsifal struggling into palpable being! Carried before the banners of this surging army of tones, Oswald clutched his couch and eagerly listened to the evil music of Kundry and Klingsor. He saw the stony laboratory with its gloomy battlements, from which the necromancer Klingsor witnessed Parsifal defeat the emasculate squires. He saw the mystic abyss hidden in the haze of violet vapor whence, obeying the hoarse summons of her master, Kundry slowly emerged. Her scream, the symphonic scream of woman, beast, or devil, fell upon his ears as though an eternity of damned souls had gnashed their teeth. And the echoes of her laughter reverberated through the porches of hell. Gundryggia dort! Kundry hier! The succubus, or she-devil, demon, Rose of Hell, after vainly refusing to obey the demands of the harsh magician, sank with a baffled cry: “Oh! Woe is me!” The vast fabric of Klingsor’s abode shivered, dissipated into nothingness. But there followed no shining garden filled with strange and gorgeous flowers, shapes of delights, wooing maidens with promises of unearthly love on their lips. Vainly Oswald awaited that scene of tropical splendor with its dream-terraces, living arabesques, and harmonious comminglement of sky and mountain, earth and fountain, the fair mirage painted by Klingsor’s dark art. It did not appear. Instead the music became no longer Wagner’s, became no longer music. Van Zorn amid brazen thunders wrenched himself from the keyboard, and prostrate upon the floor fairly kissed its surface, mumbling an awful litany. The room was murky, though violet hues suffused the velvet at the end. Invern became conscious of a third person, where he could not say. An icy vibration like the remote buzzing of monstrous dynamos apprised him that a door or window had been opened in the apartment which permitted the entrance of--what! His heart beat in the same rhythm with the mighty dynamos and the hoarse chanting of the Count.