Towards what? First of all towards dawn, and as he broke into the tenderly playful and speculative mood of the second movement he was imbued with a sense of omnipotence. For, by abandoning his soul to the task, he had been able to make a hundred men forget the world of beer and ribaldry and show them, perhaps for the first time in their lives, their kinship with the sublime "wisdom and spirit of the universe." Otto was going home to learn the technique of slaughter, whilst he, Paul Minas, alias Laval the cabin-boy, could bewitch men into becoming as little children.
The onrush of the third movement transformed the tranquil scene in his subconsciousness to one of elemental clamour and menace. As on the distant night of the hurricane, so now he caught himself "rooting" for the elements, inciting them to violence, that he might demonstrate the triumph of human resistance—his resistance, for throughout this final movement he became identified with the melody. This was the very theme of his life, and he made it exultantly sing, all the while assaulting it with the full fury of the world's opposition. He would not deceive himself by minimizing the strength of his assailants. Hostile voices should scream, roar, rumble, plead, wail and sigh as they had done on the memorable afternoon when Aunt Verona had broken silence. Her inspired domination of the piano was his precedent for to-night's performance. Above the inimical chorus he sounded forth the dauntless theme—his theme. At all costs he must keep it pure, soaring, triumphant. His fear of making slips with work-coarsened fingers vanished like a mist in the sun. The music was playing itself. So should his very life.
If Aunt Verona could only hear—oh, to be able to explain to Aunt Verona that he was vindicating their "method," that he was proving to hundreds of men, to the whole crude and hapless world, that truth and love
