ling were always
inquiring; and that the day would be spoiled if he had undertaken to
explain things in this letter....

Beth crossed to the table, placed the paper-cutter under the flap and
slit it across. Just at this moment, the door of the elevator-shaft
opened on her floor--and her knocker fell. She tossed the letter under
the leather cover of the table, and admitted Vina Nettleton.

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

THIS CLAY AND PAINT AGE

A new light had come into the studio of Vina Nettleton; and only when
at last the light became too strong, and the struggle too close, had
she left it to seek her friend Beth Truba. She had not been sleeping,
nor remembering to eat; but she had been thinking enough for seven
artists, in the long hours, when the light was bad for work. And now
the packing was worn from her nerve-ends, so that she wept easily, like
a nervous child, or a man undone from drink.

The new force of Andrew Bedient had found in her a larger sensitiveness
than even in David Cairns. That long afternoon which he had spent in
her place of working and living was to her a visitation, high above the
years. She had been amazed at the Grey One, for preserving a semblance
of calm. The gratefulness that she had faltered was but a sign of what
she felt.

The figures of Jesus in her room, she had been unable to touch. Bedient
had made her see the _Godhood_ of the Christ. John the Baptist, who had
attained the apex of manhood and prophecy, had called himself unworthy
to loose the latchet of His shoes, and this before Jesus had put on the
glory of the Father.

All the others were amazingly nearer to her. She saw the bleak Iscariot
as never before, and his darkened mother emerged a step out of the
gloom of ages. The Romans moved, as upon a stage, before her, unlit
battling faces, clashing voices and armor; and the bearded Jews heavily
collecting and confuting. She saw the Eleven, and nearest the light,
the frail John, the brother of James,--sad young face and ascetic
pallor.... And in the night, she heard that great Voice crying in the
wilderness, that mighty Forerunner, the returned Elias; next to Christ
Himself, this Baptist, who leaped in the womb of the aged Elizabeth,
when the Mother of the Saviour entered her house in the hill country!
This cataclysmic figure, not of the "Stations," was dominant in the
background of them all. She saw him second to the Christ (for was he
not a prophet in the elder Scripture?) in