oman, to such a spirit....

A frightful void stretches between mere man and reality.... Mere man
must be baptized in spirit to feel the anguish that is woman's, to give
her _real_ treasures to some male. Which are the greater artists and
producers, the saviors of the race? Those heroines who survive the
heart-break of man's indelicacy, and manage alone to give their
treasures to their children. The art of such women lives, indeed. David
Cairns was coming along.

The work that Andrew Bedient began in the Cairns mind and heart was
being finished by Vina Nettleton. In great thirst of soul, he had come
to her and been restored. He was very eager to leave all he had in the
shelter of the palms.

"David," Bedient had said, "there is only one greater work for a man in
the world than making a woman happy; and that--making _all_ women
happier! It seems that an avatar must come for that soon. To-day the
great gifts of women are uncalled for by men. They cannot take each
other, save in physical arms. There is a barrier between the sexes. Man
has not learned, or has forgotten, the heart-language. What a need for
lovers! If one could look into the secret places of women, across the
world's table, into the minds of women who hate and are restless, and
whose desires rove; even into the minds of those who actually venture
beyond the man-made pale, he would see over all the need of lovers!...
Give a woman love, and she will give the world lovers, and we shall
have brotherhood singing in our ears.... David, I ask you only to look
at the genius born of woman, in and out of wedlock, during the first
days of her mating with a man whom she believes to be all that she has
cried out for. He may have destroyed every hope afterward, sacked every
sanctuary, but, if she trembled close to her great happiness in the
beginning, the child of such a beginning has glory upon his brow!"

Cairns was ready to see; ready to read this in the history of men. More
than this, he was ready to flood fresh dawns of light into the tired
eyes of Vina Nettleton, and upon her pallor make roses bloom. Moreover,
he could discern in her an immortal artist, the conception of which
changed him from a male to a man.

And of this seeing came another needed conception: that intellectual
arrogance is the true modern devil; that the ancient devil, desire of
flesh, is obvious, banal, and commonplace, compared to this.... He
dared to bring his realizations to a woman, and fo