ng inside. Mrs. Wordling happened three days ago,
when I was first thinking out the party. I didn't know we were to get
into real things. 'Ah, here's a ripe rounding influence,' said I. 'Do
come, Mrs. Wordling.' Maybe I _did_ figure out the contrast she
furnished. She's friendly and powerfully pretty and, why, I see it now,
one of the Wordlings of this world would have taken Andrew Bedient into
camp years ago, if he were designed for that kind of woman. Why, that's
the kind of woman he doubtless knows----"

"Do you know what I think?" Beth inquired. "I think you should be
punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. That's a
Wordl--a woman's strategy."

"I know it, Beth," Cairns said excitedly. "But I didn't think of it
until afterward. I wouldn't do it again."

She was startled, saw too late that this was no time for showing him
his crudities.

"You're a dear boy----" she began.

"No, I'm not, Beth. Oh, it isn't the only thing--that has been rammed
home to me.... _Me_; there's so much _me_ mixed up in my mind, so much
tiresome and squalid _me_, that I wonder every decent person hasn't cut
me long since for a bore and a nuisance. Why, I had become all puny and
blinded--_my_ stomach, _my_ desires, markets, memories, ambitions,
doubts, rages, rights, poses and conceits. I really need to tell some
one, to unveil before some one who won't wince, but treasure the little
moral residuum----"

"You have done well to come to Beth," she said, leaning forward and
patting his shoulder with the thin stem of her brush, though a woman
always feels her years when a man brings woes such as these to her....
It was Beth's weakness (or strength) that she could never reveal the
intimacies of her heart. Only sometimes in half-humorous generalities,
she permitted things to escape, thinking no one understood.

"Thanks, Beth. I'm grateful," Cairns said. "I seem to have missed for a
long time the bigger dimension in people, books, pictures, faces, even
in the heart. It's a long time since I set out this way, a down-grade,
and the last few days, I've heard the rapids. I'm going back, as far
and as fast as I can up-stream. And this is no lie; no pose."

"I repeat, you're a dear boy----"

"Oh, it's Bedient who jerked me up straight. I'd have gone on.... And
to think I made him wait over an hour, when he first called.... He's
the finest bit of man-stuff I've ever known, Beth."

She found herself relieved, that he had given