He hung them all in a
room where there was good North light, and kept the key with him. And
so there was a gallery for the Grey One in that house, as well as the
little room next to his. He smiled at the thought that a man's life
becomes a house of his friends.... Torvin reported that Miss Grey had
disposed of several pictures direct from her studio; that he had
marketed eight pictures beside the ones shipped to Equatoria, and that
there was a sprightly demand for her work....

* * * * *

That night, as Bedient ascended the stairs, a long sigh escaped him. So
uncommon a thing was this, that he stopped to reflect. It was like one
casting off a worn garment. Some old, ill, tired part of him passed
away, and out of the great still house. He did not loathe it, but sped
its passing, happily, gratefully.... Then the thought came, "Why do I
attract all this beauty of friendship and loyalty?"... All the eager
activity of others in his behalf recurred--the gracious image of that
Mother of myriad services, before all--and the fragrant essence of a
hundred deeds of love for him.... "I must hurry to keep pace, but I
can't--with these infinite favors!" he whispered.

A passion for service surged through him--to pray, and serve, and love
and do; to write and give and lift and smile; always to help; to fall
asleep blessing the near and the far; to awake prodigal with
strength.... Such a spirit of giving brimmed into his life, that his
flesh thrilled with the ecstasy of illimitable service.

The material things about him--walls, staircase, even the
lamp-globes--were shadowy and unreal in the midst of these mystically
glowing conceptions.

The sense of perfect health came to him--a steady, rhythmic radiation;
not a tired, weak fibre, but a singing vitality of every tissue, as if
it were cushioned in some life-giving fluid--a pure perfumed bloom of
health.

Bedient turned upon the stair. He wanted no man-made room, but the
night and the hills and the skies.... Bare of head he went forth.

THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

THE SUPREME ADVENTURE

The night was full of sounds, sights, odors, textures--that he had
never sensed before. He smelled the wild oranges from the hillsides,
and the raw coffee that lay drying on the great cane mats before the
native cabins. His limbs seemed lifted over the rocky ways; he loved
the dim contours in the starlight, and the breath of the sea that came
with the night-wi