“And Mr. Bedient comes out of India with this Christian conception?”

“Beth,” Vina said solemnly, “I believe there is meaning in that, too.  The beauty and simplicity of that Sacrifice has been husked in dogmas for centuries, and we here have not torn them all away.  He had just the Book and the Silence, and his own rare mind!”

* * * * *

“But, Vina, how could these things of pure religious fervor and beauty bring about that other rebellion of yours—­the Mary McCullom one?”

“Oh, in a hundred ways; I’m all tired out now, but they’ll come back.  In a hundred ways, Beth, he spoke of women—­with that same fervor and beauty.  Just as he cleared and made exalted the Mystic Motherhood of the Christ, he pointed out how it works among us.  Why, he says that there is nothing worth reading nor regarding nor listening to in the world of art, that has not that visioning feminine quality.  The artist must be evolving through spirit, before his book or painting or symphony begins to live.  All the rest of art is a mere squabbling over the letter of past prophecies, as the Jews did with the living Christ in their streets!...  What a mother he must have had!  I seemed to see her—­to sense her—­beside him.  It was as if she looked into my heart and the Grey One’s heart, and with her hand on her big boy’s head, said to us, smiling and happily:  ’This is my art—­and he lives!  You have but to look into your own hearts, you listening women, to know that he lives!’...  Oh, Beth, her work does live to bless her!  Can’t you see how dead-cold the clay felt to my fingers after that?”

“Did he speak of his mother?”

“No.”

Beth arose.  “Vina,” she said, “we are absolutely detached from the centres of sanity.  We shall now walk Broadway, not the Avenue, but Broadway, to get back to markets and mere men.  You’re too powerful for this poor little room——­”

“You always talk and laugh, Beth, but you’re confronted and you know it.  Confronted—­that’s the thing!  Woman or artist—­there’s no word so naked and empty to me as just artist——­”

“Only spinster,” Beth suggested, shivering.

Vina stretched out her frail arms wearily, and her eyes suddenly fastened upon a fresh heather-plant on the corner of the writing-table.  “Oh, please, drop a veil over that little bush,” she pleaded.  “It’s arrayed like a bride——­”

“A bridal veil, dear?”

“’No, no, a shawl, a rug!”

* * * * *

Beth returned alone at dusk.  In some ways the afternoon was memorable.  It was hard for her to keep her doubts about Bedient.  Most of all that impressed her was Vina’s sense of the mother’s nearness to the man.  She had thought of that at once, as she listened to his story.  And he had not told Vina nor the Grey One about his mother...  She sat down at her table and drew forth the opened but unread letter from Albany.