passed beyond him, indeed,--trying to realize what it
would mean to him.... Pitiful, boyish and unfinished, he struggled to
adjust his own life to her going--and watched her bind her hair.

Every movement of the conflict held a globe of meaning for the son of
this woman, a third of a century afterward. Her tragedy had marked it
imperishably upon the tissue of his life, with Beethoven's _Andante_
movement for the key. Strains of it may have come to that music-room
with these towering emotions.... More than this Andrew Bedient saw the
sources of his own heritage! From another aspect he viewed the
deathlessness of time, the beauty of physical death, the radiance of
the future, the immortality of love. It was revealed how all the agony
of the world arises from the knitting together of soul and flesh, the
evolving of soul through flesh. Spirit is given birth in flesh--and
birth is pain. Death is the ecstasy of the grown spirit. Spirit
prospers alone through giving, and greatly through the giving of love.
Spirit shines star-like in the giving of woman--in the fineness and
fullness which she _loves_ into her children, binding glory upon them
with her dreams. Thus is expressed her greatness; thus women are
nearest the sources of spirit; thus they fulfill the first meaning of
life on earth. And the woman who preserves the nobility of her
conception of Motherhood--against the anguish of a broken heart and a
destroyed love--God sends his Angels to sustain her!...

Bedient was aroused at last in the silence and in the dark.... He knelt
in a passion of tribute to his immortal heroine, whose spirit had
danced with him above the flesh and the world. He saw again that he was
ordained to look within for the woman; that his heart was his mother's
heart; his spirit, her spirit--this twain one in loving and giving.

IV

NEW YORK

_Allegro Finale_

THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

THE GREAT PRINCE HOUSE

There were calms and conquests on the brow of Vina Nettleton. She had
been in Nantucket one whole day alone, before David Cairns came. Such a
day availeth much, but she shuddered a little at the joy she took in
the prospect of his coming. Vina had learned what his absence meant a
month before, when three entire days elapsed without a call from Cairns
at the studio. He had been away on a certain happiness venture....
There had been no word yet, but here, Nantucket--Vina breathed deeply
at the name. Almost every day their thoughts