love is giving. Their
love goes on and on into a bigger thing than love for each other, and
becomes love for the race. That's the greater glory. Avatars have that.
The children of real lovers have such a chance for that vaster spirit!
Indeed, you can almost always trace a great man's lineage back to some
lustrous point of this kind."

Beth regarded him deeply for a moment. She could not adjust him to
commonness. She was suffering. Bedient saw only the mystic light of
that suffering. He had never loved her as at this moment.

"I always wish I could paint you, as you look when you are thinking
about such things!" she said. "Just as you looked when you spoke about
two people who have illumined each other, so that they turn their great
anguish of loving upon the race.... Yes, I see it: prophets might
indeed come from that kind of love."

Beth worked with uncommon energy for many minutes.
All-forgetting--time, place, tension and the man near. Her spirit was
strangely sustained under his eyes. The work flew, and left little
traces of its processes in her mind--her concentration was deeper than
memory.

* * * * *

"I'd like to ride with you," he said, rising to leave.

Beth had often spoken of her saddle-horse, which of late had been kept
at her mother's country place. Bedient rented a very good mount in New
York, but Beth remarked that her own had spoiled her for all others,
adding that he would say so, too, if he could see Clarendon, the famous
black she rode.

"I can't afford to keep him in the city long at a time," she explained.
"Oh, it's not what he costs, but he's a devourer of daylight.... It
breaks up half a day to get to the stables and change and all, and I
haven't tried to ride after dark. We poor paint creatures are so
dependent upon light for our work.... And yet riding adds to good
health--just the right sparkle in my case."

"And that's royalty," Bedient declared.

Beth was thinking. He had spoken of riding with her before. He had been
singularly appealing this day. Trouble had filled his eyes at the first
sight of her, and she had felt his struggle with it.... Her mother had
asked to see him, but there wasn't a good mate for Clarendon in or
about Dunstan, where her home was.... She was so worn, mind and nerve
and spirit, that the thought of a long ride lured strongly. She knew he
would be different. Perhaps he might show, beyond the shadow of a
doubt, that he was not