shrank from the new and utter desolation.... The night seemed closing
about her, as she stood beside the gate. Like some great foreign
elemental, it was, until she was near to screaming, and perceived
herself captive to madness--a broken-nerved creature in a strange
place, stifling among aliens, undone in the torment of strange
stars.... And, another, the ancient terror to strong women, now fell
upon her, to show Beth Truba how mighty she was to suffer. The sense of
her own fruitlessness drove home to her breast, of living without
solution, realizing that all her fluent emotions, lovely ideals, all
her sympathies, dreams and labors, should end with her own tired hands;
that she must know the emptiness of every aspiration, while
half-finished women everywhere were girdled with children.... He was
coming toward her.

That instant, a merciful blankness fell upon her mind. Out of the fury
and maiming, her consciousness seemed lifted to some cool blackness.
There was just one vague, almost primal, instinct, such as a babe must
feel--the need to be taken in his arms. The wall between them would
have fallen had Bedient done that, but nothing was further from his
thoughts. He, too, was groping in terrible darkness. Her spirit was
lost to him.... There was no moonlight, so he could not discern the
anguish of her face, and the sense of her suffering blended with his
own.... A very wise woman has said that it isn't a woman's mysteries
which dismay and mislead a man, but her contradictions.

"And now tell me the rest, Beth," he said quickly, looking down into
the pale blur which was her face. "I must know."

She shivered slightly. She was dazed. Hatred for the moment, hatred for
self and the world, for him, imperiously pinning her to the old sorrow;
his failure to make a child of her, as a lover of less integrity might
have done--it was all a sickening botch, about Wordling's pretty
taunting face. She had not the strength of faculty to tear down and
build again the better way.

"You were telling me that he was your work--of his face and all,"
Bedient whispered.

"Oh, yes.... Oh, yes, and you went away----"

"Yes," he said strangely.

"I must have been dreaming.... It hurt me so--he hurt me so. I
remember----"

And now a cold gray light dawned in her brain, and the old story
cleared--the old worn grooves were easily followed.

"Yes."

"But I--perhaps--I was inexorable." There was something eerie in that
touch which hel