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Updated: June 6, 2025
Andrew Bedient had entered the company of lovers.... There have been great lovers who were not otherwise great men, but never a great man who was not a great lover.... On the night he had first seen Beth Truba across the table, deep within there had been a swift ignition of altar-flames that would never cease to burn.
"I tell you, Beth Truba," he said, "there isn't a phase, a moment, of this harsh hour of transition, that isn't majestic with promise!... It's a good picture.... Dear old mother, in every province of the soul, she is a step nearer the Truth than man. The little matters of the intellect, from which she has been barred for centuries, she shall override like a Brunhilde.
It was altogether outlandish, when he considered his small personal interest in such an affair.... He thought of the listening eyes of Beth Truba had he told her of such an adventure of his boyhood.... And he thought of the clever and intrepid Adith Mallory, and what she had meant by the last added line of her letter, "I know what you can do."
Just at this moment, the door of the elevator-shaft opened on her floor and her knocker fell. She tossed the letter under the leather cover of the table, and admitted Vina Nettleton. A new light had come into the studio of Vina Nettleton; and only when at last the light became too strong, and the struggle too close, had she left it to seek her friend Beth Truba.
Bedient saw that the years had locked one door after another about the real heart of Beth Truba. His work was plain to unlock them one by one. How the task fascinated; he made it his art and his first thought. "You change so," she complained laughingly, after there had been several sittings. "I'm afraid I shall paint you very badly because I am trying so hard.
Indeed, that moment, Beth Truba seemed to hear the whispered affirmations of tragedy from evolved women everywhere....And whither was tending the race, if only the Wordlings of the world were to be satisfied if Wordlings were all that men cared for? What was to become of the race, if the few women who loved art, and through art learned really to love their kind, were forever to be denied?
Conscientious scruples, please to observe, had been stirred up in me; I was somehow ashamed of talk, talk without ceasing, nothing but talk yesterday in Arbat, to-day in Truba, to-morrow in Sivtsevy-Vrazhky, and all about the same thing.... But if that is what people want of me?
No one, so well as she, could perceive the tragedy of this gifted woman, whom the right man had missed in the crush of the world's women. A real artist, but a greater woman.... More than this was revealed to Beth. Her own Shadowy Sister was speaking to her with Vina Nettleton's tongue, as Beth Truba could never speak of another...
Perhaps it had been necessary for him to break down before he could sleep.... Many times before, he had seen his body lying asleep. He was more than ever tired and torn this day. Every vista of the hills held poignant hurt, because Beth Truba could not see this beauty. He dared not touch the orchestrelle. Falk brought coffee and fruit after Jaffier's servant had departed.
It was hard, until Beth Truba leaned forward and ignited the story. After that, the furious experience lived in Bedient's mind, and most of it was related into her eyes. When he described the light before the break of the storm, how it was like the hall-way of his boyhood, where the yellow-green glass had frightened him, Beth became paler if possible, and more than ever intent.
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