men cared for? What was to become
of the race, if the few women who loved art, and through art learned
really to love their kind, were forever to be denied? And here was Vina
Nettleton with the spiritual power to concentrate her dream into an
avatar (if into the midst of her solitary labors, a great man's love
should suddenly come)!... Did the Destiny Master fall asleep for a
century at a time, that such a genius for motherhood should be denied,
while the earth was being replenished with children of chance, branded
with commonness and forever afraid?

Beth Truba shook herself from this crippling rush of thoughts, and
started to her feet.

"Vina, you've been drinking deep of power. You're a giantess reeking
with mad contagions. Also, you're a heretic. Allow me to remind you
that we are spinsters; born and enforced, and decently-to-be-buried
_spinsters_. It isn't the Sailor-man, but the spring of the year, that
makes us a bit feverish. We should go to the catacombs for this season,
when this devil's rousing is in the air.... If you have anything
further to say, purely in regard to artistic inspirations, you may go
on----"

Vina sat rigidly before her, wan and white-lipped as if her emotions
were burned out. Presently she began to talk again in her trailing
pensive way:

"I had been working deep and doggedly for days, hardly noticing who
came in or out. When the Grey One entered with him, I felt myself
bobbing, whirling up into light surface water. I hardly spoke the first
half hour. I remembered the night before, when he told that fine story
straight into your eyes. I thought him wonderful then, and it occurred
to me that you were in for it. But it was different when he came into
my shop--something intimate and important. His eyes roved from one
'Station' to another, while the Grey One exploited me in her absurd,
selfless fashion. She's a third in our trouble Beth.

"Presently he asked me how I knew the Christ had such wonderful hands;
then he talked of the Forerunner and Saint Paul, who could have done so
much, had they been there during the Passion, and of the women who
_were_ there. It was strange to have him come into the studio--to
me--with all these pictures developed through silent years. It seems to
me something tremendous must come of it... Someone knocked, and
frenziedly I ordered the intruder away, without opening the door."

And now Vina repeated the belief of Bedient that impressed her so
deeply: that