,
it seemed, at the certain particular instants when he was ready.
Exactly as he had been spared the terrible temptations of flesh in his
boyhood years, so had he preserved a humble spirit in his intellectual
attainments. It was not he, but the poise that had been given him,
through which he was enabled to cry out in gratitude this hour; for the
soul of man meets a deadlier dragon in intellectual arrogance than in
the foulest pits of flesh. The Destiny Master can smile in pity at a
poor brain, brutalized through bodily lusts, but white with anger is
the countenance that regards a spirit, maimed and sick from being yoked
together with a proud mind. Angels burst into singing when that spirit
is free.

His health was a perfect thing; of that kind that men dream of, and
boys know, but do not stop to feel. He could smell the freshness of
pure water in his bath or when he drank; there was delight in the taste
of common foods; at night in his high room, higher still than the
studio of Vina Nettleton, there were moments when the land-wind seemed
to bring delicacies from the spring meadows of Jersey; or blowing from
the sea, he sensed the great sterile open. He was tireless, and could
discern the finest prints and weaves at bad angles of light.

He moved often along the water-fronts and through abandoned districts;
a curious sense of unreality often came over him in these night
rambles, as if he were tranced among the perversions of astral light.
He gave a great deal, but saw that if he gave his life nightly, even
that would not avail. His money was easily passed into another hand;
that would not do--little vessels of oil overturned upon an Atlantic of
storm. These were but tentative givings; they denied him nothing.
Bedient saw that he must give more than this, and waited for the
way.... The most poignant and heart-wringing experience for him in New
York was suddenly to find himself in the midst of the harried human
herd, when it was trying to play. One can best read a city's tragedy at
its pleasure-places.

...Beth Truba was his great ignition. His love for her overflowed upon
all things.... The hour or more in her studio became the feature of his
day. Bedient was not shown the work on the portrait. Beth didn't
altogether like the way it progressed. Sometimes, she talked as she
worked (sitting low beneath the skylight, so that every change of light
was in her hair, while the spring matured outside). Deep realities were
of