man must know to delight a woman's
understanding. In so many ways, the finishing touches of manhood were
put upon him gracefully, that Beth gloried in the work of adding
treasures of mind and character. She had even made his place in the
world, through strong friends of her own winning.

Beth was a year or two older. The boy had grown splendid in appearance,
when she discovered she was giving him much that he must hold sacredly,
or inflict havoc upon the giver.... In moments when she was happiest,
there would come a thought that something would happen.... The young
man did not fully understand what caused the break. This may be the key
to the very limitation which made him impossible--this lack of delicacy
of perception. Certainly he did not know the greatness of Beth's
giving, nor the fineness she had come to expect from him.... She did
not exactly love him less, but rather as a mother than a maid, since
she had to forgive.

A woman may love a man whom she is too wise to marry. There are
man-comets, splendid, flashing, unsubstantial, who sweep into the zones
of attraction of all the planet sisterhood; but better, if one cannot
have a sun all to oneself, is a little cold moon for the companion
intimate.... Something that the young man had said or done was pure
disturbance to Beth, compatible with no system of development. She had
sent him from her, as one who had stood before her rooted among the
second-rate.

Only Beth knew the depth of the hurt. All the feminine of her had
turned to aching iron. The Shadowy Sister seemed riveted to a hideous
clanking thing, and all the dream-children crushed.

Her friends said: "Who would have thought that after making such a
_man_ of her protege, Beth would refuse to marry him? Ah, Beth loves
her pictures better than she could love any mere man. She was destined
to be true to her work. Only the great women are called upon to make
this choice. Nature keeps them virgin to reveal at the last unshadowed
beauty. This refusal is the signet of her greatness."

Beth heard a murmur of this talk and laughed bitterly.

"No," she said to her studio-walls. "It's only because Beth is a bit
choosey. She isn't a very great artist, and if she were, she wouldn't
hesitate to become Mrs. Right Man, though it made her falter forever,
eye and hand."

In her own heart, she would rather have had her visions of happiness in
children, than to paint the most exquisite flowers and faces in the
comprehe