alled, as his words had done. It had even stimulated her to an old
dream of really great work. Beth Truba had long put that away.

The rapt look in his eyes; the rapt smile upon his lips when he spoke
of his great theme; just to paint that, would be greatness. Just to put
it once upon the canvas, that would be enough. It would show that she
had seen more than man--deeper than flesh. One song, one picture, one
book, is enough for any artist. She had always said that....

These thoughts stilled and softened her spirit--held her moveless in
the centre of the room; but again the world returned, with all its play
upon her finished intelligence.... He had not found her sufficient to
restrain him from this ocean episode; and pride uprose--a vindictive
burning that scorched full-length.

"He is very brave and evolved," she whispered bitterly, "but the man
within him was not to be denied.... Wordling has that.... God, it seems
as if there is nothing of that--in red-haired Beth Truba!... No, he
must run off to the ocean, quite as if he had been a poor, impatient
boy, like the Other!"

Her face crimsoned. The shame and agony of the thought brought her to
her knees before the picture she had painted.

"And perhaps it _is_ my fault," she whispered desperately. "Perhaps I
have asked too much, and waited too long. Perhaps they see--what I do
not--and women lie--and I only think I feel! Perhaps I _am_ weathered
and inflexible, and hard and old and cold, and they know, and become
afraid!"

But there was stern denial in the face before her--reproach in the eyes
she had made of paint.... In her terror before these thoughts, which
struck home in the hour of her weakness, the art of the thing suddenly
prevailed--good work, the valiant rescuer.... She remembered how her
presence had aroused the giant in the Other. Her spell had done that.
She had felt the crush of his arms, and queer fires had laughed across
her brain. Then she fell again with the thought, that even that had not
sufficed. Her pride had sent him away even after that--his laugh, his
Greek beauty, his passion and all.... And now it came to her with
fierce reality, that should the Other ever return, it would only make
these later hours and later memories burn the deeper.... A temptation
came to hold Bedient--as a woman could--to keep him from going to
another woman, but her eyes fell with swift shame from the picture.

"I have not made you common--how can I be common with