the Holy Spirit is the source of the divine principle in
woman; that the Marys of this world are the symbols of that Mystic
Motherhood--the third of the Trinity--which will bring the races of the
world to God, as a woman brings children to her husband.

"Everything he said glowed with this message," she went on. "His every
thought brought out that women are the holders of the spiritual loaf;
that prophets are the sons of strength of great spiritual mothers; that
artists and poets are prophets in the making, and that unto the purest
and greatest of the prophets must come at last Godhood--the Three in
One; and of this Jesus is the Exemplar; His life and death and rising,
His whole Mission, should make us see with _human_ eyes, the Way of
Truth."

"I see, dear girl," Beth said softly, "_why_ you could not open the
door to anyone... Then the, Mission of Jesus was vicarious? I had about
given up hope of comprehending that."

"Yes. He lived and moved and bled and died and rose before the eyes of
common men!" Vina exclaimed. "One has to _bleed_ for such eyes! Without
the living sacrifice, only the rare souls here and there, with the
highest prophetic vision, could have risen clearly to understand these
things.... Thus the growth of spirituality was quickened among the
lowly multitudes. The coming of the Christ is the loveliest
manifestation of the divine feminine principle within Him--the Holy
Spirit. Did he not become a Spiritual Mother of the world? Was not
Godhood the next step for such a finished Spirit? His awful agony was
that these tremendous mysteries of His illumination were enacted in the
hideous low pressures of human understanding. That he could endure this
for the world's eye, is his greatness, his Godhood!"

"And Mr. Bedient comes out of India with this Christian conception?"

"Beth," Vina said solemnly, "I believe there is meaning in that, too.
The beauty and simplicity of that Sacrifice has been husked in dogmas
for centuries, and we here have not torn them all away. He had just the
Book and the Silence, and his own rare mind!"

* * * * *

"But, Vina, how could these things of pure religious fervor and beauty
bring about that other rebellion of yours--the Mary McCullom one?"

"Oh, in a hundred ways; I'm all tired out now, but they'll come back.
In a hundred ways, Beth, he spoke of women--with that same fervor and
beauty. Just as he cleared and made exalted the Mystic Moth