* *

Bedient asked no one. He did not know that the race Marguerite Grey was
running was with American dollars, and that the sanctuary she meant was
only a debtless spinsterhood. He did not know that she dared not give
up the Handel studio while she held a single hope of her vogue
returning. Only the great, who are permitted eccentricities, dare
return to their garrets. Nor did Bedient know that her marriage meant
she had failed utterly, and that another must square her debts; that
only out of the hate of defeat could she give herself for this
price.... Still, Bedient knew quite enough.

It was a little later, after he had been truly admitted into the circle
he loved so well, that Beth told him the story of the Grey One's first
collision with the man world. It was a rainy afternoon; they were
together in the studio he always entered with reverence.

"She is different from Vina," Beth said, speaking of Marguerite Grey.
"She has been working fearfully and she's not made for such furious
sessions as Vina Nettleton can endure. Vina seems replenished by her
own atmosphere. She told me once that when her work is coming well, her
whole body sings, all the functions in rhythm. Aren't people strange?
That little soft thing with baby hands! Why, her physical labor alone
some days would weary a strong man--and that is the thoughtless part.

"But I was telling you about the Grey One. Sometimes I think she is
more noble than we understand--one of those strange, solitary women who
love only once. At least, she seems to ask only success in her work,
and what that will bring her." Beth thought a moment of the horrible
alternative which she did not care to explain to Bedient. "A few years
ago in Europe--just a young thing, she was, when she met her hero. He
was a good man, and loved her. I knew them both over there. In the
beginning, it was one of those really golden romances, and in Italy.
One day, a woman came to the Grey One, and in the lightest, brassiest
way, asked to be congratulated on her engagement, mentioning the man
whose attentions Marguerite had accepted as a heavenly dispensation.
This was in Florence. The woman hurried away that day for London. The
Grey One, just a gullible girl, was left half dead. When her lover
came, she refused to see him. He wrote a letter which she foolishly
sent back, unopened. And she returned to Paris--all this in the first
shock.... She did not hear from him again for two years. Word