erhood of
the Christ, he pointed out how it works among _us_. Why, he says that
there is nothing worth reading nor regarding nor listening to in the
world of art, that has not that visioning feminine quality. The artist
must be evolving through spirit, before his book or painting or
symphony begins to live. All the rest of art is a mere squabbling over
the letter of past prophecies, as the Jews did with the living Christ
in their streets!... What a mother he must have had! I seemed to see
her--to sense her--beside him. It was as if _she_ looked into my heart
and the Grey One's heart, and with her hand on her big boy's head, said
to us, smiling and happily: 'This is _my_ art--and he lives! You have
but to look into your own hearts, you listening women, to know that he
lives!'... Oh, Beth, her work does live to bless her! Can't you see how
dead-cold the clay felt to my fingers after that?"

"Did he speak of his mother?"

"No."

Beth arose. "Vina," she said, "we are absolutely detached from the
centres of sanity. We shall now walk Broadway, not the Avenue, but
Broadway, to get back to markets and mere men. You're too powerful for
this poor little room----"

"You always talk and laugh, Beth, but you're confronted and you know
it. Confronted--that's the thing! Woman or artist--there's no word so
naked and empty to me as just _artist_----"

"Only _spinster_," Beth suggested, shivering.

Vina stretched out her frail arms wearily, and her eyes suddenly
fastened upon a fresh heather-plant on the corner of the writing-table.
"Oh, please, drop a veil over that little bush," she pleaded. "It's
arrayed like a bride----"

"A bridal veil, dear?"

"'No, no, a shawl, a rug!"

* * * * *

Beth returned alone at dusk. In some ways the afternoon was memorable.
It was hard for her to keep her doubts about Bedient. Most of all that
impressed her was Vina's sense of the mother's nearness to the man. She
had thought of that at once, as she listened to his story. And he had
not told Vina nor the Grey One about his mother... She sat down at her
table and drew forth the opened but unread letter from Albany.

"Woman or artist," she whispered bitterly, "as if one could not be
both!...It is only because a woman-and-artist requires a man who can
love artistically. Few men can do that--and anything else beside....
Can you, Sailor-man?... Not if you explain to me why I found you at
Wordling's.... Perhaps I c