“That’s the point, Beth.  New York is crowded with voyagers, and men of mileage to the moon, but what made this powerful unlettered boy look for the inside of things?  What made him different from the packers and cooks and sailors around the world, boys of the open who never become men except physically?”

Beth answered:  “I think we’ll find that has to do with Mr. Bedient’s mother, David.”

“I know he’d be thrilled to hear you say that.”

“Is she still living?”

“No, or he’d be with her....  He has never spoken to me of her.  And yet I’m sure she is the unseen glow upon his life.  I think he would tell you about her.  Only a woman could draw that from him....  He saw no one but you last night; did all his talking to you, Beth.”

“I’m the flaringest, flauntingest posy in the garden.  I call the bees first,” she said dryly, but there was a flitting of ghostly memories through her mind.  “And then I’m an extraordinary listener.”

“Beth,” he said solemnly, “no one knows better than I, that it is you who send the bees away.”

She laughed at him.  “We found each other out in time, David....  Too much artist between us.  We’d surely taint each other, don’t you see?”

“I never could see that——­”

“That’s being polite; and one must be polite....  We are really fine friends, better than ever after to-day, and that’s something for a pair of incomplete New Yorkers.”

There was a pause.

“Beth,” said Cairns.  “Shall I bring Bedient over to-morrow?”

“No, please.  At least not to-morrow.”

He was surprised.  Beth saw it; saw, too, that he had observed how Bedient talked to her last night.  Mrs. Wordling had not missed comment here....  Cairns must not think, however, that she would avoid Andrew Bedient.  She fell into her old resource of laughing at the whole matter.

“I can’t afford to take any chances, David.  He’s too attractive.  Falling in love is pure dissipation to one of my temperament, and I have too many contracts to fill.  I’m afraid of your sailor-man.  Think of the character you built about him to-day in this room.  If he didn’t prove up to that, what a pity for us all!  And if he did, what a pity for poor Beth, if he started coming here!...  Anyway, I’ve ceased to be a bachelor-girl.  I’m a spinster....  That word hypnotizes me.  I’m all ice again.  I shall know Mr. Bedient ethically and not otherwise.”

Cairns laughed with her, but something within hurt.  His relation with Beth Truba had been long, and increasingly delightful, since the ordeal of becoming just a friend was safely past.  He realized that only a beautiful woman could speak this way, even in fun to an old friend....  His work dealt with wars, diplomacy and politics; his fictions were twenty-year-old appeals, so that Beth felt her present depth of mood to be fathoms deeper than his story instinct.