so, David, but you had to be Cairns and not
New York! A woman would have shown you----"

Cairns had met before, in various ways, Bedient's unwillingness to
identify himself with results of his own bringing about. Beth had long
realized his immaturity, yet she had not spoken. Cairns saw this now.

"A woman would have shown me----?" he repeated.

"That the way to heaven is always against the crowd," Bedient
finished.... "A few days after I came to New York, you joined me at the
Club. You said you couldn't work; that you found your mind stealing
away from the pages before you. I knew you were getting closer to real
work then. David, when you find yourself stealing mentally away to
follow some pale vision or shade of remembrance, don't jerk up,
thinking you must get back to work. Why, you're nearer real work in
following the phantoms than mere gray matter ever will unfold for you.
Creating is a process of the depths; the brain is but the surface of
the instrument that produces. How wearisome music would be, if we knew
only the major key! How terrible would be sunlight, if there were no
night! Out of darkness and the deep minor keys of the soul come those
utterances vast and flexible enough to contain reality."

"Why don't you write, Andrew?" Cairns asked.

"New York has brought one thought to my mind with such intensity, that
all others seem to have dropped back into the melting-pot," Bedient
answered.

"And that one?"

"The needs of women."

"I have heard your tributes to women----"

"I have uttered no tributes to women, David!" Bedient said, with
uncommon zeal. "Women want no tributes; they want truth.... The man who
can restore to woman those beauties of consciousness which belong to
her--which men have made her forget--just a knowledge of her
incomparable importance to the race, to the world, to the kingdom of
heaven--and help woman to make men see it; in a word, David, the man
who can make men see what women are, will perform in this rousing hour
of the world--the greatest good of his time!"

"Go on, it is for me to listen!"

"You can break the statement up into a thousand signs and reasons,"
said Bedient. "We hear such wonderful things about America in Asia--in
India. Waiting for a ship in Calcutta, I saw a picture-show for the
first time. It ran for a half hour, showing the sufferings of a poor
Hindu buffeted around the world--a long, dreary portion of starvation,
imprisonment and pain. The dramatic cli