A woman may love a man whom she is too wise to marry.  There are man-comets, splendid, flashing, unsubstantial, who sweep into the zones of attraction of all the planet sisterhood; but better, if one cannot have a sun all to oneself, is a little cold moon for the companion intimate....  Something that the young man had said or done was pure disturbance to Beth, compatible with no system of development.  She had sent him from her, as one who had stood before her rooted among the second-rate.

Only Beth knew the depth of the hurt.  All the feminine of her had turned to aching iron.  The Shadowy Sister seemed riveted to a hideous clanking thing, and all the dream-children crushed.

Her friends said:  “Who would have thought that after making such a man of her protege, Beth would refuse to marry him?  Ah, Beth loves her pictures better than she could love any mere man.  She was destined to be true to her work.  Only the great women are called upon to make this choice.  Nature keeps them virgin to reveal at the last unshadowed beauty.  This refusal is the signet of her greatness.”

Beth heard a murmur of this talk and laughed bitterly.

“No,” she said to her studio-walls.  “It’s only because Beth is a bit choosey.  She isn’t a very great artist, and if she were, she wouldn’t hesitate to become Mrs. Right Man, though it made her falter forever, eye and hand.”

In her own heart, she would rather have had her visions of happiness in children, than to paint the most exquisite flowers and faces in the comprehension of Art....  For days, for weeks, she had remained in her studio seeing no one.  Some big work was rumored, and she was left alone with understanding among real people, just as was Vina Nettleton....  But she was too maimed within to work.  She wanted to rush off to Asia somewhere, and bury herself alive, but pride kept her at home.  As soon as she was able to move and think coherently, she sought her few friends again.  Even her dearest, Vina Nettleton, had realized but a tithe of the tragedy.

* * * * *

Beth Truba reached her studio again Monday noon.  Among the letters in her post-box, was one she felt instinctively to be from Andrew Bedient, though it was post-marked Albany.  She hesitated to open the letter at first, for fear that he had attempted to explain his presence in Mrs. Wordling’s room.  This would affix him eternally to commonness in her mind.  He had a right to go to Mrs. Wordling’s room, but she had thought him other than the sort which pursues such obvious attractions.  Especially after what Cairns had said, she was hurt to meet him there....  Beth found herself thinking at a furious rate, on the mere hazard that the letter was from Bedient....

Were there really such men in the world as the Bedient whom Cairns pictured, and believed in?  Personally, she didn’t care to experiment, but there was a strange reliance in the thought that there were such men....  The fine nature she wanted to believe in—­wouldn’t have written!...  This one letter alone remained unopened—­when the telephone rang.