‘And another thing they wonderfully knew,’ he almost whispered, ‘was that, with the precession of their deity across the equinoctial changes, there came new powers down into the world of men. Each cycle--each zodiacal sign--brought its special powers which they quickly typified in the monstrous effigies we label to-day in our dull museums. Each sign took some two thousand years to traverse. Each sign, moreover, involved a change in human consciousness. There was this relation between the heavens and the human heart. All that they knew. While the sun crawled through the sign of Taurus, it was the Bull they worshipped; with Aries, it was the ram that coifed their granite symbols. Then came, as you remember, with Pisces the great New Arrival, when already they sank from their grand zenith, and the Fish was taken as the emblem of the changing powers which the Christ embodied. For the human soul, they held, echoed the changes in the immense journey of the original deity, who is its source, across the Zodiac, and the truth of “As above, so Below” remains the key to all manifested life. And to-day the sun, just entering Aquarius, new powers are close upon the world. The old--that which has been for two thousand years--again is crumbling, passing, dying. New powers and a new consciousness are knocking at our doors. It is a time of change. It is also’--he leaned forward so that his eyes came close before me--‘the time to make the change. The soul can choose its own conditions. It can----’ A sudden crash smothered the rest of the sentence. A chair had fallen with a clatter upon the wooden floor where the carpet left it bare. Whether Isley in rising had stumbled against it, or whether he had purposely knocked it over, I could not say. I only knew that he had abruptly risen and as abruptly sat down again. A curious feeling came to me that the sign was somehow prearranged. It was so sudden. His voice, too, was forced, I thought. ‘Yes, but we can do without all that, Moleson,’ he interrupted with acute abruptness. ‘Suppose we have a tune instead.’ VIII It was after dinner in his private room, and he had sat very silent in his corner until this sudden outburst. Moleson got up quietly without a word and moved over to the piano. I saw--or was it imagination merely?--a new expression slide upon his withered face. He meant mischief somewhere.