, for
reviling her idol on his later work, especially the bust of Balzac,
which the critics said showed deterioration," Beth told him, "As if
Rodin did not know the mystic Balzac better than the populace."

"It has always seemed that the mystics of the arts must recognize one
another," Bedient said.... "I do not know Balzac----"

"You must. Why, even Taine, Sainte Beuve, and Gautier didn't _know_
him! They glorified his work just so long as it had to do with fleshly
Paris, but called him mad in his loftier altitudes where they couldn't
follow."

It was possibly an hour afterward, when Bedient halted before a certain
picture longer than others; then went back to another that had
interested him. Moments passed. He seemed to have forgotten all
exteriors, but vibrated at intervals from one to another of these--two
small silent things--_Le Chant du Berger_ and another. They were
designated only by catalogue numbers. Beth, who knew them, would have
waited hours.... Presently he spoke, and told her long of their
effects, what they meant to him.

"You have not been here before?" she asked.

"No."

"You don't know who did those pictures?"

"No."

"Puvis de Chavannes."

"The name is but a name to me, but the work--why, they are out of the
body entirely! I can feel the great silence!" he explained, and told
her of his cliff and _God-mother_, of Gobind, the bees, the moon, the
standing pools, the lotos, the stars, the forests, the voices and the
dreams.... They stood close together, talking very low, and the
visitors brushed past, without hearing.

"If not the greatest painter, Puvis de Chavannes is the greatest mural
painter of the nineteenth century," Beth said. "Rodin, who knew Balzac,
also knew Puvis de Chavannes.... '_The mystics of the arts know one
another_,'" she added. "I saw Rodin's bust and statue of these men in
Paris."

To Beth, the incident was of inestimable importance in her conception
of Bedient.... A Japanese group interested him later--an old vender of
sweetmeats in a city street, with children about him--little girls bent
forward under the weight of their small brothers. Beth regarded the
picture curiously and waited for Bedient to speak.

"It's very real," he said. "The little girls are crippled from these
weights. The boy babe rides his sister for his first views of the
world.... Look at the sweet little girl-faces, haggard from the burden
of their fat-cheeked, wet-nosed brothers. A birth is a