sense
of being unwanted at the hearth of the human family, were taken from
her, like the brittle and dusty packings from a glorious urn. Some
marvel of freshness sped through her veins. She was not as yesterday--a
little gray shade of an evil dream. Yesterday, and all the yesterdays,
she had modelled alone, poor creatures of clay, and now the world
suddenly called her to the academy of immortals....

Yes, he had come. He was brave and beloved.... She arose and knelt in
the dark before that panel of greatest meaning--the Gethsemane. And
long afterward, she stood by the open window. There were no stars, but
the tired city was cut in light. And faint sounds reached her from
below.... They were not Jews and Romans, but her own people, rushing to
and fro for the happiness she had found.

TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

BETH SIGNS THE PICTURE

Bedient walked up the Avenue, carrying one of his small leather-bound
books to Beth. It was the day after the call of the Grey One there. He
had learned to give--which may be made an exquisite art--little things
that forbade refusal, but which were invested with cumulative values.
Thus he brought many of his rare books of the world to the studio. In
them she came upon his marginal milestones, and girdled them with her
own pencillings. So their inner silences were broken, and they entered
the concourse of the elect together.

The wonder of the woman rose and rose in his mind. His joy, apart from
her, was to give joy to others, and so he had moved about New York for
days and nights, reflecting her in countless ways. When he thought of
his money at all, it was to realize with curious amazement that there
was quite enough for anything he wished to do. Things to do were so
many in New York, that numberless times each day he sent a prayer of
thankfulness to Captain Carreras, always with a warm delight in the
memory. And he liked to think it was Beth's hand. She had told him of
her pilgrimages during holiday time to the infinite centres of
sorrow--and it became a kind of dream of his--the time when they would
go together, not holidays alone, but always. The great fortune slowly
became identified in his mind with the work he had to do; but
Equatoria, the base, amusingly enough, sank away into vaster
remoteness. There were moments in which Bedient almost believed there
was a little garden of his planting in the heart of the lustrous lady;
moments, even, when he thought it was extending broade