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Instead of the peace of her presence, he was filled with restless energies, past all precedent. Quite in a boyish way, he wanted to do things for her, huge and little things, forgetting not the least, and performing each succeeding action with a finer art. Beth Truba was the first woman who ever appealed to Bedient, without recalling in some way the Adelaide passion.
Beth Truba shook herself from this crippling rush of thoughts, and started to her feet. "Vina, you've been drinking deep of power. You're a giantess reeking with mad contagions. Also, you're a heretic. Allow me to remind you that we are spinsters; born and enforced, and decently-to-be-buried spinsters. It isn't the Sailor-man, but the spring of the year, that makes us a bit feverish.
Whatever was great and desirable in woman was likely to wear a Beth Truba hall-mark for his observation.
The women regarded each other in silence. Bedient stayed, until the tardy May dusk effaced the city, all but the myriad points of light. Beth Truba awoke late. Goliath of Gath had just fallen with obituary hiccoughs and a great clatter of armor.... She sat up, and reviewed recent events backward. The stone had sunk into the forehead. David came down to meet the giant smiling.
There was hardly a trace of that element in the new outpouring. If it is true that a woman calls from man a love-token in her own image, Beth Truba was marble cold. The larger part of his first giving was above the flesh, a passion to bestow beautiful things, the happiness of others.
As for the picture, it is an inspiration, though I cannot judge that so well. But it is not those " "And what then, pray?" "Beth Truba." "A tired old artist whom nobody knows really." "I wish you wouldn't say that," he declared earnestly. "There is nothing alive this moment, nothing in the great sun's light, that has put on such a glory of maturity. Why, you are concentrated sunlight to me!"
Her voice became bright with animation upon learning that Beth was upon the wire. "There's no one in New York whom I'd rather talk with this moment, Miss Truba." "And why?" "That portrait at the Smilax Club I saw it yesterday. I'm writing about it.... The face I know and you have done it tremendously! I can't tell you how it affected me. Don't bother to come down here. Let me go to you."
"He is very brave and evolved," she whispered bitterly, "but the man within him was not to be denied.... Wordling has that.... God, it seems as if there is nothing of that in red-haired Beth Truba!... No, he must run off to the ocean, quite as if he had been a poor, impatient boy, like the Other!" Her face crimsoned.
I'm a spinster.... That word hypnotizes me. I'm all ice again. I shall know Mr. Bedient ethically and not otherwise." Cairns laughed with her, but something within hurt. His relation with Beth Truba had been long, and increasingly delightful, since the ordeal of becoming just a friend was safely past.
As for Vina Nettleton, the cloistered, she could do as she liked, being great in her calling; besides, a woman who had a man-visitor so rarely as Vina Nettleton, might be expected to become snappy and excited. Bedient was proving a rather stiff drug. Mrs. Wordling now wished to observe his action upon Beth Truba.
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