The Madness of Olaf Yolara threw her white arms high.

From the mountainous tiers came a mighty sigh; a rippling ran through them.

And upon the moment, before Yolara's arms fell, there issued, apparently from the air around us, a peal of sound that might have been the shouting of some playful god hurling great suns through the net of stars.

It was like the deepest notes of all the organs in the world combined in one; summoning, majestic, cosmic! It held within it the thunder of the spheres rolling through the infinite, the birth-song of suns made manifest in the womb of space; echoes of creation's supernal chord! It shook the body like a pulse from the heart of the universe--pulsed--and died away.
On its death came a blaring as of all the trumpets of conquering hosts since the first Pharaoh led his swarms--triumphal, compelling! Alexander's clamouring hosts, brazen-throated wolf-horns of Caesar's legions, blare of trumpets of Genghis Khan and his golden horde, clangor of the locust levies of Tamerlane, bugles of Napoleon's armies--war-shout of all earth's conquerors! And it died! Fast upon it, a throbbing, muffled tumult of harp sounds, mellownesses of myriads of wood horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of flutes, Pandean pipings--inviting, carrying with them the calling of waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest winds--calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain like the very honeyed essence of sound.
And after them a silence in which the memory of the music seemed to beat, to beat ever more faintly, through every quivering nerve.
From me all fear, all apprehension, had fled.

In their place was nothing but joyous anticipation, a supernal freedom from even the shadow of the shadow of care or sorrow; not now did anything matter--Olaf or his haunted, hate-filled eyes; Throckmartin or his fate--nothing of pain, nothing of agony, nothing of striving nor endeavour nor despair in that wide outer world that had turned suddenly to a troubled dream.
Once more the first great note pealed out! Once more it died and from the clustered spheres a kaleidoscopic blaze shot as though drawn from the majestic sound itself.