best----"

"It's not for us--that happy time," Vina added hopelessly. "We are the
sit-tight, hold-fast pilgrims. We belong to the clay-and-paint age----"

"It's something to see that----"

"Oh, how truly _he_ sees it!"

"Your Sailor-man, does he see that, too?"

"Has he been _seeing_ other things--in your studio?" Vina asked
hastily.

"Oh, no, he hasn't been here, but he has been telling David Cairns
things about writing.... David has really been born again."

"Do you know, Beth," Vina declared with intensity, "he has been such an
inspiration to me, that I'm afraid my 'Stations' will look like a
repaired wall, half new and half old plaster."

"My work will stand an inspiration, too."

"Beth----"

"Yes."

"You know what I think of your work, but I believe the Sailor-man could
give you that inspiration----"

"Perhaps I can get it through you and David Cairns," remarked Beth, who
was beginning to see, and with no little amazement, that to Vina the
inspiration was spiritual, impersonal. This made Bedient's influence
all the more exciting.

"Oh, he'll come to you, right enough. I supposed he had.... You know I
was making my James and Matthews, my Peters and Jews and Romans quite
contentedly in that bleak way it has been done a thousand times. But he
made me see them! And the slopes of Calvary, and Gethsemane hunched in
the darkness, and the Christ kneeling in a faint starry light; he made
me see Him kneeling there, His Spirit, like a great mother's loving
heart, standing between an angry Father and the world, a wilful
child----"

"Yes," came softly from Beth.

"And it's almost too much for me now--the Passion, the Agony, the Crime
and the Night--too much for me and clay. It would be, if it were not
for the glowing Marys. They're for _us_, Beth----"

"That's sweet of you, Vina.... It won't be too much. You're in the
reaction now. After that passes you will do the 'Stations' as they have
never been done. And God's poor people will pass before your work for
years and years to come; and something, as much as they can bear of the
thrilling anguish of this new light of yours, will come to them, as
they pray before the Eternal Tragedy."

"But that isn't all, Beth!... There's another; a terrible side. I sort
of had myself in hand until he came, sort of felt myself two thousand
years old, back among them. But he has made me a pitiful modern again,
a woman who has tried and refuses to try longer, to be happy wit