plaints recurring persistently again and again like sighs of parting, but could not be restrained, like voices of regret for the things that were never to be again.  Or it was a pathos, a joy in all things good, a vast tenderness, so sweet, so divinely pure that it could not be framed in words, so great and so deep that it found its only expression in tears.  There came over him a vague sense of those things which are too beautiful to be comprehended, of a nobility, a self-oblivion, an immortal eternal love and kindness, all goodness, all benignity, all pity for sin, all sorrow for grief, all joy for the true, the right, and the pure.

To be better, to be true and right and pure, these were the only things that were worth while, these were the things that he seemed to feel in the music.  It was as if for the moment he had become a little child again, not ashamed to be innocent, ignorant of vice, still believing in all his illusions, still near to the great white gates of life.

The appeal had been made directly to what was best and strongest in Vandover, and the answer was quick and over-powering.  All the good that still survived in him leaped to life again in an instant, clamouring for recognition, pleading for existence.  The other Vandover, the better Vandover, wrestled with the brute in him once more, never before so strong, never so persistent.  He had not yet destroyed all that was good in him; now it had turned in one more revolt, crying out against him, protesting for the last time against its own perversion and destruction.  Vandover felt that he was at the great crisis of his life.

After all was over he walked home through the silent streets, proceeding slowly, his hands in his pockets, his head bent down, his mind very busy.  Once in his rooms he threw off his things and, having stirred up the drowsing fire in the tiled stove, sat down before it in his shirt-sleeves, the bosom of his full dress shirt bulging from his vest and faintly creaking as from time to time he drew a long breath.  He had been lured into a mood where he was himself at his very best, where the other Vandover, the better Vandover, drew apart with eyes turned askance, looking inward and downward into the depths of his own character, shuddering, terrified.  Far down there in the darkest, lowest places he had seen the brute, squat, deformed, hideous; he had seen it crawling to and fro dimly, through a dark shadow he had heard it growling, chafing at the least restraint, restless to be free.  For now at last it was huge, strong, insatiable, swollen and distorted out of all size, grown to be a monster, glutted yet still ravenous, some fearful bestial satyr, grovelling, perverse, horrible beyond words.