‘It would sound empty and monotonous elsewhere--in London, for instance,’ I heard Moleson drawling, as he swayed to and fro, ‘but here it is big and splendid--true. You hear what I mean,’ he added gravely. ‘You understand?’ ‘What is it?’ asked Isley thickly, before I could say a word. ‘I forget exactly. It has tears in it--more than I can bear.’ The end of his sentence died away in his throat. Moleson did not look at him as he answered. He looked at me. ‘You surely ought to know,’ he replied, the voice rising and falling as though the rhythm forced it. ‘You have heard it all before--that chant from the ritual we----’ Isley sprang up and stopped him. I did not hear the sentence complete. An extraordinary thought blazed into me that the voices of both men were not quite their own. I fancied--wild, impossible as it sounds--that I heard the twin Colossi singing to each other in the dawn. Stupendous ideas sprang past me, leaping. It seemed as though eternal symbols of the cosmos, discovered and worshipped in this ancient land, leaped into awful life. My consciousness became enveloping. I had the distressing feeling that ages slipped out of place and took me with them; they dominated me; they rushed me off my feet like water. I was drawn backwards. I, too, was changing--being changed. ‘I remember,’ said Isley softly, a reverence of worship in his voice. But there was anguish in it too, and pity; he let the present go completely from him; the last strands severed with a wrench of pain. I imagined I heard his soul pass weeping far away--below. ‘I’ll sing it,’ murmured Moleson, ‘for the voice is necessary. The sound and rhythm are utterly divine!’ IX And forthwith his voice began a series of long-drawn cadences that seemed somehow the root-sounds of every tongue that ever was. A spell came over me I could touch and feel. A web encompassed me; my arms and feet became entangled; a veil of fine threads wove across my eyes. The enthralling power of the rhythm produced some magical movement in the soul. I was aware of life everywhere about me, far and near, in the dwellings of the dead, as also in the corridors of the iron hills. Thebes stood erect, and Memphis teemed upon the river banks. For the modern world fell, swaying, at this sound that restored the past, and in this past both men before me lived and had their being. The storm of present life passed o’er their heads, while they dwelt underground, obliterated, gone. Upon the wave of sound they went down into their recovered kingdom. I shivered, moved vigorously, half rose up, then instantly sank back again, resigned and helpless. For I entered by their side, it seemed, the conditions of their strange captivity. My thoughts, my feelings, my point of view were transplanted to another centre. Consciousness shifted in me. I saw things from another’s point of view--antiquity’s.