l them singing around her!... Why do you let
him go? Only a nineteenth century mind with the ideas of a slave woman
would let him go!... Keep him with you. Show your power. Create the
giant. By no means is that the least of woman's work!"

She shuddered at such a descent.

"Would you go back and be the waiting spider forever in the
yellow-brown studio, breaking your heart in the little room when some
woman chooses to bring you news of men and the world? You would not
descend to woman's purest prerogative?... Greater women than you shall
come, and they shall avail themselves of that, and their children shall
be great in the land...."

"Oh, what a world, and what a fool!" Beth said aloud.

"Why?"

She turned at his quick, imperious tone.

"I don't--I don't know. It just came!"

Beth bit her lip, and shut her eyes. There was a booming in her brain,
as from cataracts and rapids. His face had made her suddenly weak, but
there was something glorious in being carried along in this wild
current. She had battled so long. She was no longer herself, but part
of him. The face she had seen was white; the eyes dark and piercing,
terrible in their concentration of power, but not terrible to her. All
the magic from the sunlight had come to them. They were the eyes which
command brute matter.... The Other had become a giant; this man a god.

"What a day!" she whispered.

"Let's ride on!" he said swiftly.

The horses whirled about at his word. As his hand touched hers, she
felt the thrill of it, in her limbs and scalp. He lifted her to the
saddle. There was something invincible in his arms. The strength he
used was nothing compared to that which was reserved....

She seemed the plaything of some furious, reckless happiness....
"Asking nothing! Asking nothing!" repeated again and again in her
brain. And what should he ask--and why?... Her thoughts flew by and
upward--intent, but swift to vanish, like bees in high noon. Atoms of
concentrated sunlight, sun-gold upon their wings.... The good hot sun,
all the earth stretched out for it, and giving forth green tributes.
The newest leaf and the oldest tree alike expanded with praise.... What
a splendor to be out of the city and the paint and the tragedy; to have
in her veins the warm brown earth and the good hot sun--and this mighty
dynamo beneath! She was mad with it all, and glad it was so.

Beth raised her eyes to the dazzling vault. One cannot sit a horse
so--well. She lost t