Certain of her barbed sentences caught in Bedient’s mind:  “Women whom men avoid for being ‘strong-minded’ are apt to be strongest in their affections.  You can prove this by the sons of clinging vines."...  “Beware of the man who discusses often, and broods much, upon his spiritual growth, when he fails to make his wife happy."...  “A man’s courage may be just his cowardice running forward under the fear of scorn from his fellows."...  “The most passionate mother is likely to be the least satisfied with just passion from her husband.  Wedded to a man capable of real love, this woman, of all earth’s creatures, is the most natural monogamist."...  “A real woman had three caskets to give to a man she loved.  One day she read in his eyes that he could take but the nearest and lowest; and that moment arose in her heart the wailing cry:  ‘The King is dead!’"...  “The half-grown man never understands that woman is happiest, and at her best in all her services to him, when he depends upon her for a few of the finer things."...

Also Kate Wilkes had a way of doing a memorable bit of criticism in a sentence or two:  Regarding MacDowell, the American composer, “He left the harvest to the others, but what exquisite gleanings he found!"...  As to Nietschze; “He didn’t see all; his isn’t the last word; but he crossed the Forbidden Continent, and has spoken deliriously, half-mad from the journey."...  And her beloved Whitman, “America’s wisest patriot."...

* * * * *

Bedient liked the Grey One.  He liked her that afternoon, when she asked if he cared to come up to Vina Nettleton’s with her.  There was real warmth in her manner from the first....  Always that illusion of having played with her long ago, stole into mind with her name or presence.  (Once he had found her sobbing, about something she wouldn’t tell.  She had always been ready to give up things.  The smile she had for him, would remain upon her lips, while she thought of something else.  She would leave the others and wait for him to come and find her.) These things were altogether outside of human experience, a sweet and subtly attractive run of vagaries which had to do with a tall yellow-haired maid, now Marguerite Grey....  From something Cairns had said, Bedient knew she was unhappy.  He saw it afresh when he entered the big still place where she was.  She had been working, but dropped a curtain over the easel as he entered.

“Did I come at a wrong time?” he asked.  “I can just as well come again.”

“I don’t know of any time so good.  You may not want to come again.”

She had not been weeping.  He saw that with a quick look.  It was deeper than that—­something cold and slow and creeping, that made her reckless with hatred, and writhing.  Answering Bedient’s swift glance, she perceived that he had seen deeply, and was glad.  It eased her; she hoped he had seen all, for she was sick with holding her own....  Meanwhile, her soft voice was telling him about her house.  The pictures of her own here and there, were passed over quickly.  Children, these, that the world had found wanting; badly-brought-up children that the world had frightened back to the parent roof where they warred with one another.