iving themselves, have held the young
visionaries pure. Again, poverty, that grim stepmother of the elect,
often intervenes. And to common women--such lovers are absurd, beyond
comprehension. That helps.... Illumination comes between the age of
thirty and forty. After that, the way is clear. They do not grope, they
see; they do not believe, they feel and know."

Beth found these things absorbing, though she accepted them only
tentatively. She saw they were real to him--as bread and wool and
paint.

"There is an impulse, too, among serious young men to live the life of
asceticism and restraint," Bedient added. "It comes out of their very
strength. This is the hasty conclusion of monasteries----"

"Hasty?"

"Well--unfledged saints fall.... Their growth becomes self-centred. The
intellect expands at the expense of soul, a treacherous way that leads
to the dark.... And then--a man must father his own children
beautifully before he can father his race."

"That sounds unerring to me," Beth said.

"Why, it's all the Holy Spirit driving the race!" Bedient exclaimed
suddenly. "You can perceive the measure of it in every man. Look at the
multitude. The sexes devour each other; marriage is the vulgarest
proposition of chance. Men and women want each other--that is all they
know. They have no exquisite sense of selection. In them this glorious
driving Energy finds no beautiful surfaces to work upon, just the
passions, the meat-fed passions. Here is quantity. Nature is always
ruthless with quantity, as cities are ruthless with the crowds. Here is
the great waste, the tearing-down, and all that is ghastly among the
masses; yet here and there from some pitiful tortured mother emerges a
faltering artist--her dream."

"You never forget her, do you,--that figure which sustains through the
darkness and horror?"

"I cannot," he smiled. "No race would outlast a millenium without her.
Such women are saviors--always giving themselves to men--silently
falling with men."

"But about the artist?" Beth asked. "What is his measure of the driving
Energy? How does it work upon him?"

"He has risen from the common," Bedient replied. "He feels the furious
need of completion, some one to ignite his powers and perfect his
expression. It is a woman, but he has an ideal about her. He rushes
madly from one to another, as a bee to different blooms. The flesh and
the devil pull at him, too; surface beauty blinds him, and the world he
has come f