you?" she cried.
"Oh, why could you not always remember your best, you, who have helped
others so?"

The light, though gray, was still strong. Fixed upon the canvas, as she
had never seen it before, was a revelation of one of those high moments
which had exalted Vina Nettleton, and changed David Cairns in the whole
order of his being. She almost listened for him to speak of the natural
greatness of women.

"But you are forgetting those higher moments," she whispered. "That's
the way with men and boys--to forget--to run away for the little things
beside the ocean----"

But the face denied; the face was of purity. It regarded her steadily
in her long watching--a fixture of poise, happiness assured.... Then
the need of haste and work, left deep in her mind, arose to the surface
with a strong and sudden urging--the delivery to-morrow. Her heart, her
flesh, her soul, all were at war and weary unto death. It was hideous
to attempt to touch it again that day; yet to-morrow an evil light ...
and now came the full realization of a remarkable fact.

The final inner lustre was there. The thing she had long been afraid to
do, save in the exact perfect moment, was done. That Something of his
was before her, its lifting valor not to be denied....

It was just before he had asked her to ride, she recalled now. An elate
concentration had held her while she painted. She had not spoken; she
had hardly known the world about her. It had been too big to leave a
memory.... It was done. It pleaded for him. It was like the Shadowy
Sister pleading for him. Swiftly, she signed the work. It was his.
That was hard.

...In the veil of dusk she was still kneeling, her face ghastly with
waiting.... And not until pride intervened again, and prevailed upon
her to see him no more, after the last ride together, did she find some
old friendly tears, almost as remote from the days she now lived, as
Florentine springtimes of student memory.

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

Bedient arose at four on Saturday morning and looked out of his high
window. June had come. The smell of rain was _not_ in the air. He was
grateful and drew up a chair, facing the East. The old mystery of
morning unfolded over sea, and there was no blemish.... Bedient had not
slept, nor during the two preceding nights. While the abundance of his
strength was not abated, deep grooves (that came to abrupt blind
endings) were worn in his mind from certain th