“Now he was ruddy, and withal, of a beautiful countenance." Finally it came to her, and she was pleased and astonished:  Throughout the evening, Beth had felt that some Bible description exactly fitted in her mind to the new impression of Bedient, but she could not think of it then.  Her effort had brought it forth in the night, and the whole story that went with it.

Beth drank a bottle of milk, ashamed of the hour, though she had not slept long.  She loved mornings; New York could never change her delight in the long forenoon.  She was at work at two, and undisturbed for two hours.  Beth’s studio was the garret of an old mansion, a step from Fifth Avenue in the Thirties.  Its effect, as one entered, was golden at midday, and turned brown with the first shadows.

Mrs. Wordling called at four.  For a woman who had been scornfully analyzed by Kate Wilkes (who really could be vitriol-tongued) and ordered away from Vina Nettleton’s door like an untimely beggar, Mrs. Wordling looked remarkably well.  In point of fact, Mrs. Wordling was ungovernably pretty.  Moreover, she knew Kate Wilkes well enough to understand that she was too busy to sketch the characters of other women except for their own benefit.  As for Vina Nettleton, the cloistered, she could do as she liked, being great in her calling; besides, a woman who had a man-visitor so rarely as Vina Nettleton, might be expected to become snappy and excited.  Bedient was proving a rather stiff drug.  Mrs. Wordling now wished to observe his action upon Beth Truba.  “I’ll appear to regard it as a perfectly lady-like party, which it was,” she mused, in the dingy interminable stairways,—­the elevator being an uncertain quantity—­“and run no risk of being thrown three nights.”

“Beth, you’re looking really right,” Mrs. Wordling enthused.

“So good of you,” said Beth.  “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.  The “Beths” were no more frequent than usual, however.  The artist had grown used to this from certain people.  It appeared that her name was so to the point, that many kept it juggling through their conversation with her, like a ball in a fountain....  The poster, Beth had consented to do in a weak moment.  It was to be framed for theatre-lobbies.  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.  Beth often wished she did not discern so critically....