Bedient lost himself in the study of the veins which showed through the delicate white skin of Vina’s temples.  He was moved to personal interest by this woman’s work.  The room was intense with the figures about, and the artist’s being.  He was sure Marguerite Grey did not know all that concerned her friend, the full meaning, for instance, of the shadows that began at the inner corners of her eyes and flared like dark wings outward.  There was something tremendous in the frail, small creature, an inner brightness that shone forth through her white skin, as light through porcelain.  Bedient granted quickly that there was power here to make the world remember the name of Vina Nettleton; but he knew she was not giving all to these creatures of clay.  He had never sensed such a mingling of emotions and spirit....  “Pure spirit,” the Grey One had said.  Possibly it was so to the world, but he would have said that the spirit of Vina Nettleton was fed by emotion—­seas, woods, fields, skies and rivers of emotion—­and that mighty energies, unused by the great task, roamed in nightly anguish.

Bedient moved raptly among the panels.  He wondered how the artist had made the light fall upon the dull clay, always where the Christ stood or walked or hung....  “And how did you know He had such beautiful hands?” he asked.

Vina Nettleton looked startled, and the Grey One came closer, saying:  “I’m glad you see that.  To me the hands are a particular achievement.  Do you notice the fine modelling at the outer edges of the palms, and the trailing length of the fingers?”

“Yes,” said Bedient, “as if you could not quite tell where the flesh ended and the healing magnetism began.”

Vina Nettleton sat down upon one of the steps of a ladder and stared at him.  The Grey One added: 

“And yet you cannot say they are overdone.  They are the hands of an artist, but not assertively so.”

“It is my limitation that I don’t know,” he said, “but how is that effect obtained, that suggestion of psychic power?”

“Part is your sensitiveness of eye and understanding,” the Grey One answered, “and the rest comes from our little woman making a prayer of her work; from taking an image of Him and the Others into the dark; of light, ascetic sleep and putting away the dreams of women——­”

Scarlet showed under the transparent skin of the Nettleton temples now—­as if putting away the dreams of women were not an unqualified success.

“It is all interesting.  I am grateful to you both for letting me come,” Bedient said with strange animation, eager yet full of hesitancy.  “More wonderful than the hands, is the Face, which Miss Nettleton has kept averted throughout her entire idea.  That’s the way the Face appears to me.  The disciples and the multitudes must have seen it so, except on rare, purposeful occasions....  He must have been slight and not tall, and delicate as you see Him.  It was not that He lacked physical