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The rising error which might shadow this hour was clear enough to him, but he refused to reckon with it. He was interested, and a little troubled, to perceive there was nothing in common in Mrs. Wordling's mind and his. They spoke a different language. He was sorry, for he knew she could think hard and suddenly, if he had the power to say the exact thing.
Bedient came in for discussion presently, and the park episode. Beth, who had not heard, grew cold, and remembered her own call at Mrs. Wordling's apartment, with the poster.... The Grey One was speaking as if Beth had heard about the later park affair: "... Sometimes that woman seems so obvious, and again so deep."
People whom Beth painted were seldom quite the same afterward to her. She seemed to learn too much. She had greatly admired Mrs. Wordling's good nature at the beginning. There was no objection now; only the actress had given her in quantity what had first attracted, and quantity had palled.
Wordling's room, but she had thought him other than the sort which pursues such obvious attractions. Especially after what Cairns had said, she was hurt to meet him there.... Beth found herself thinking at a furious rate, on the mere hazard that the letter was from Bedient.... Were there really such men in the world as the Bedient whom Cairns pictured, and believed in?
She shivered slightly. She was dazed. Hatred for the moment, hatred for self and the world, for him, imperiously pinning her to the old sorrow; his failure to make a child of her, as a lover of less integrity might have done it was all a sickening botch, about Wordling's pretty taunting face. She had not the strength of faculty to tear down and build again the better way.
Wordling's head was high-held. She was sniffing the night, with the air of a connoisseur. "Do you smell the mignonette, or is it Sweet William? Something we had in the garden at home when I was little.... Are you afraid to go across in the park with me?" "Sailors are never afraid," he said, following her pointed finger to the open gate. They crossed the street laughingly.
Among the letters in her post-box, was one she felt instinctively to be from Andrew Bedient, though it was post-marked Albany. She hesitated to open the letter at first, for fear that he had attempted to explain his presence in Mrs. Wordling's room. This would affix him eternally to commonness in her mind. He had a right to go to Mrs.
"Woman or artist," she whispered bitterly, "as if one could not be both!...It is only because a woman-and-artist requires a man who can love artistically. Few men can do that and anything else beside.... Can you, Sailor-man?... Not if you explain to me why I found you at Wordling's.... Perhaps I can forgive you, after all the lovely things you've said. Anyway I shall tell no one...."
"Must be lovely out, isn't it?... The poster will be ready in three or four days.... Didn't we have a good time at David's party?" "Such a good time " "Really must have, since we stayed until an unconscionable hour. Half-past two when we broke up " "All of that, Beth." The artist looked up from her work. Mrs. Wordling's acquiescences seemed modulated.
Bedient is here to see it!" Mrs. Wordling's brown eyes swam with happiness. Beth was in brown. Her profile was turned to Bedient, as she unrolled the large, heavy paper.... The work was remarkable in its effect of having been done in a sweep. The face was finer, and the curves of the figure slightly lengthened; the whole in Beth's sweeping way, rather masterful. "Splendid!" Mrs.
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