irty years from now there would be that poise and sweetness in
the world that dreamers descry in far future ages. And here and there
would be a beyond-man, indeed; and here and there cosmic, instead of
mere self-consciousness.

He believed that the greatest miracle for the unsealed eye in this day,
was that woman had emerged from a degraded past with this powerful
present vitality; the capacity to hope and dream and suffer and be
aroused; that she had the fervor and power of visioning _left_ to be
aroused! Surely this was the Third of the Trinity sustaining her....
Bedient began to study with sympathy and regard those groups of women,
willing to sacrifice the best of their natures and descend into man's
spheres of action, there to wring from man on his own ground the
privileges so doggedly withheld. He saw that their sacrifice was
heroic; that their cause was "in the air"; that this was but one
startling manifestation of a great feminist seething over the world;
and yet every brightness of evolution depended, as he saw it, upon
woman being herself, retaining first of all those stores of beauty and
spirit which are designed to be her gifts to manhood and the race. In
the eyes of the future, he believed, these women would stand as the
inspired pioneers of a rending transition period.

The note that came from Beth Truba, saying that she would see him about
the portrait at two on Tuesday, Bedient regarded as one of the happiest
things that ever befell. It was delivered at the Club by messenger that
Monday night. Very well he knew, that she gracefully might have
declined, and would have, had she not been able to look above a certain
misleading event.

There were moments in which he seemed always to have known Beth Truba.
Had he come back after long world-straying?

There was a painting of Bernhardt in an upper gallery at the Club, that
he had regarded with no little emotion during past days. The face of
the greatest actress, so intensely feminine, in strangely effective
profile between a white feathery collar and a white fur hat, had made
him think of Beth Truba in a score of subtle ways. They told him that
the painting had been done by a young Italian, who had shown the good
taste to worship the creator of _La Samaritaine_.... Bedient wished he
could paint the russet-gold hair and the lustrous pallor of ivory which
shone from Beth's skin, and put upon the canvas at the last, what had
been a revelation to him, and which