Beth said.
"Some time I shall paint a little copy of the portrait for you. I'm
sure he would be glad."

THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

A SELF-CONSCIOUS WOMAN

Two days later Beth answered a 'phone call from David Cairns.... He was
just back from Nantucket ... for a few days.... Very grateful to find
her in.... Yes, Vina had come over, too.

Beth was instantly animate. Vina had planned to be gone a month at
least.

"I'd like to come over alone first--may I, Beth?" Cairns asked.

"Yes."

"Within a half-hour?"

"Yes.... I shall prepare to listen to great happiness."

... Beth reflected that she looked a belated forty; that she had lost
her charm for the eye of Jim Framtree, who had treated her like a
relative. She was ashamed to show her suffering to David
Cairns--ashamed that she cared--but it was part of her. Happiness was
in the air. She must listen. She marveled at her capacity to endure....

The dews of joy were upon David Cairns. Between Bedient and Vina, he
had been born again. He looked at her--as all who knew her did now--and
then again in silence. It always made her writhe--that second stare. It
gave her the sense of some foreign evil in her body--like the discovery
of a malady with its threat of death in every vein.

He told her that Vina and he were to be married at once. Beth gave to
the story all that listening could add to the telling of happiness.

"And, David," she said. "I claim a little bit of credit for this
glorious thing----"

"Credit, Beth!" he said rousingly. "I told Vina I could worship you for
it!"

"Don't, please--David. I don't need it. I'm too happy over you both....
And then, it wasn't all mine, you know. I think Mr. Bedient saw you
together in his mind. I think he meant me to startle you to your real
empire----"

"Did he?" Cairns asked eagerly.

"Hasn't it turned out perfectly?"

Beth did not miss the gladness which this hint gave him. She knew that
Bedient's thought of it would be like an authority to Vina as well....
She felt herself drawing farther and farther back from the lives of the
elect, but joyously she urged David to tell about their house in
Nantucket.

"And, Beth," he said intensely. "That was Bedient's doing, too. I
have--all I have seems to be the happiness part."

"Poor dear boy--how hard!"

"...I was telling him how Vina loved Nantucket," Cairns went on, "some
of the rare things she said about the Island and the houses in Lily
Lane, and how I plann