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For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted

lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that

entirely fresh influences were at work within him. Yet they

seemed to him to have come really from himself. The few words

that Basil's friend had said to him-words spoken by chance, no

doubt, and with wilful paradox in them-had touched some secret

chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was

now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many

times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but

rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words!

How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One

could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was

in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to

formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as

that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real

as words?