ghts.... How well she knew the cool brightness of his
eyes, as he wrote! The god she had liberated that sunlit day was
dead--not dead to her alone, but to any woman of Shore or Mountain or
Isle.... With a gasp, she recalled Vina Nettleton's first conception,
that Bedient was past, or rapidly passing beyond the attraction of a
single woman.

Beth saw that she had helped to bring him to this greater dimension.
There was a thrill in the thought. There would have been a positive and
enduring joy, had he not gone from her to another. Truly, that was an
inauspicious beginning for Illumination--but miracles happened. This
thought fascinated her now: Had she seen clearly and made the great
sacrifice of withholding herself--that he might rise to prophecy--there
would have been gladness in that! She felt she could have done
that--the iron Beth--given him to the world and not retained him for
her own heart. He said that other women had done so. What an
instrument!

But strength did come from his letter; there was a certain magic in his
praise and blessing. It gave her something like the natural virtues of
mountain coolness and ocean air. Austerely pure, it was. Plainly,
pleasure had not made him tarry long.

* * * * *

Beth and Miss Mallory had talked an hour before the name of Jim
Framtree was innocently mentioned by the newspaperwoman. It was not
Beth's way to betray her fresh start of interest, even though she
gained her first clue to the meaning of the fine light she had seen in
Bedient's eyes at parting.... The blood seemed to harden in her heart.
The familiar sounds of the summer street came up through the open
windows with a sudden horror, as if she were a captive on cannibal
shores.

"No one knows why he wanted this talk with Mr. Framtree," Miss Mallory
was saying. "He wanted it vitally--and you see what came of it--a
revolution averted--the fortunes of the whole Island altered for the
better--and yet, those were only incidents. He was so ill--that another
man would have fallen--and yet he went to _The Pleiad_--and aboard the
Spaniard's yacht, as you read.... I knew his courage before--from the
_Hedda Gabler_ night--but it was true, he didn't know me! The only
result I know was that Mr. Framtree came to New York----"

It seemed to Beth that her humanity was lashed and flung and
desecrated.... "But he did not know," she thought. "He did not know. He
could not have hurt me this way. He