“Go away,” she said intensely.  “I can see no one.”

Her eyes seemed to burn along the frame.  There was no answer from without, but a light step turning away....  Assured that the visitor was gone, Vina turned back to Bedient.

“We mustn’t be interrupted—­nor must you go yet,” she said with effort.  “I don’t think anything ever happened to me so important.  Oh, I don’t mean for my work; believe me in that, won’t you?  Since a little girl, I have thought of these things.  And here for two years they have been about me.  To me the Third of the Trinity has been as a voice calling out of darkness.  They told me when I was a bit of a girl that It was not for me to understand, and that terrible men committed the deadly sin of blasphemy through It——­”

“Poor child,” Bedient said, smiling at her.  “They didn’t know.  Could anything be lovelier for one to think about?  The Holy Spirit as the source of the divine principle in Woman, and Woman ever so eager to give the spiritual loaf to man!  That’s the richest thought to me.  After that is realized, all one’s thinking must adjust itself to it; as in Hindu minds, all thoughts adjust to reincarnation, and flow from it....  There is a tender glow of spirit, a sort of ignition of the narrative, in every instance where a woman approaches the Christ in His mission on earth.  And men seem to find no meaning in these wonderful things....  The women of this world are the symbols and the vessels of the Holy Spirit.  It is only through woman’s love that It can be given to the race.  I like to think of it this way:  As a woman brings a child to her husband, the father, so the Holy Spirit—­Mystic Motherhood—­is bringing the World to God, the Father.  And Jesus is the first fruits.”

The women regarded each other in silence.  Bedient stayed, until the tardy May dusk effaced the city, all but the myriad points of light.

ELEVENTH CHAPTER

TWO DAVIDS COME TO BETH

Beth Truba awoke late.  Goliath of Gath had just fallen with obituary hiccoughs and a great clatter of armor....  She sat up, and reviewed recent events backward.  The stone had sunk into the forehead.  David came down to meet the giant smiling.  There was no anger about it.  The stone had been slung leisurely.  Before that, the boy had been brought in from his sheep-herding to be anointed king.  Samuel had seen it in a vision, and not otherwise....  David found Saul’s armor irksome, took up his staff, and went to the brook for good, sizable stones, just as if he had spied a wolf slavering at the herds from the brow of the hill....

Beth laughed, and wondered why the Bible story had come back in her dream.  There seemed no clue, not even when she contemplated the events of the rather remarkable evening preceding.  Many minutes afterward, however, arranging her hair, she found herself repeating: