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Updated: June 6, 2025
"Dear Miss Truba: I want to have a portrait painted of myself. I'm convinced that you can do it very well. Will you undertake the work? I shall be back in New York shortly after this letter reaches you Monday, and will wait at the Club until I hear from you. Yours, Andrew Bedient."
Very well he knew, that she gracefully might have declined, and would have, had she not been able to look above a certain misleading event. There were moments in which he seemed always to have known Beth Truba. Had he come back after long world-straying? There was a painting of Bernhardt in an upper gallery at the Club, that he had regarded with no little emotion during past days.
No woman could have dethroned Beth Truba this hour. Wordling arose, and led the way to the gate... which had been locked meanwhile. Mrs. Wordling was inclined to cry a little. "One couldn't possibly climb the fence!" she moaned. "They have keys at the Club, haven't they?" Bedient asked. "Yes. All the houses and establishments on the park front have keys.
He dared be glad of this, but he could not grasp it, unless she were vowed to spinsterhood by some irrevocable iron of her will; or perhaps some king of men had come, and she had given her word.... Bedient could not understand how any discerning masculine mind could look upon Beth Truba, and go his way without determining his chance.
Perhaps, Cairns had pressed down a little too hard on the queer unhurt quality he was alleged to possess. In a word, Bedient sensed the humor of Mrs. Wordling, and could not yet know that she, of the entire company, monopolized the taint. The Smilax Club pleased him, and he had permitted Cairns to put him up there. That flame of a woman, Beth Truba, was the spirit of his every thought.
Another on the shore ignited the fires. A devil within for days and nights had goaded her: "Yes, Beth Truba, red haired and all that, but old and cold, just the same, and strange to men." "I've wanted this day," he said. "It was some need deeper than impulse. I wanted it just this way: A hill like this, shade of great trees that whispered, distant towns and woods, horses neighing to ours.
She put down her brush and said theatrically, "I feel the fatal premonitive impulses.... Spinster, spinster; Beth Truba, spinster!... That's my salvation." "You're the finest woman I know," Cairns said. "You know best, but I doubt if Bedient will go back to Equatoria without seeing more of you " "Did he speak of such a thing?" "That isn't his way " "I am properly rebuked."
She wanted to rush off to Asia somewhere, and bury herself alive, but pride kept her at home. As soon as she was able to move and think coherently, she sought her few friends again. Even her dearest, Vina Nettleton, had realized but a tithe of the tragedy. Beth Truba reached her studio again Monday noon.
"No, you mustn't go with me, David. There are too many things to do for to-night " "Let me go, Vina," Bedient said. In the cab, she told him the story of Mary McCullom's failure as an artist and conquest as a woman the same story she had told Beth Truba and what meant the love of the nurseryman to Mary McCullom. Vina's voice had a strange sound in the shut cab.
Visible through their leaded-glass doors, were ancient services of gold and silver and pewter. The table streamed with light, but the faces and cabinets were in shadow.... Directly across from Bedient sat Beth Truba, the most brilliant woman his visioning eyes ever developed. The sight of her was the perfect stimulus, an elixir too volatile to be drunk, rather to be breathed.
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