Beth smiled, and went on deliberating before the picture.  Presently, the tension possessed her again.  She looked very white in the North light.

“Did you ever doubt if you were really in the world?” she asked after a moment, but did not wait, nor seem to expect an answer....  “I have,” she added, “and concluded that I only thought I was here—­queer sense of unreality that has more than once sent me flying to the telephone after a day’s work alone—­to hear my own voice and be answered.  But, even if one proves that one is indeed here, one can never get an answer to the eternal—­What for?...  I shall do a story, sometime, and call it Miss What For....  A young girl who came into the world with greatness of vitality and enthusiasm, alive as few humans are, and believing in everything and everybody.  Before she was fully grown, she realized that she was not sought after so much as certain friends whose fathers had greater possessions.  This was terrible.  It took long for her to believe that nothing counted so much as money.  It made the world a nightmare, but she set to work to become her own heiress....  In this struggle she must at last lose faith.  This can be brought about by long years, smashing blows and incredible suffering, but the result must be made complete—­to fit the title.”

“But, why do you try to fit such a poor shivering little title?”

She smiled wearily.  “I was trying, perhaps, to picture one of your spiritual mothers, centres of pure and radiant energy, in one of the other moments, that the world seldom sees.  The power is almost always turned on, when the world is looking.”

She had made him writhe inwardly, as no one else could.

“But there are many such women,” she went on, “victims of your transition period, caught between the new and the old, helpers, perhaps, of the Great Forces at work which will bring better conditions; but oh, so helpless!...  They may bring a little cheer to passing souls who quickly forget; they may even inspire genius, as you say, but what of themselves when they, all alone, see that they have no real place in the world, no lasting effect, leaving no image, having no part in the plan of the Builder?”

Bedient arose.  Beth saw he was not ready to answer.

“A visit to the galleries is tempting,” she said.  “It may give me an idea....  I never had quite such a patron.  You are so little curious to see what I have done, that I sometimes wonder why you wanted the portrait, and why you came to me for it....  I wonder if it’s the day or my eyes—­it’s so much easier to talk aimlessly than to work——­”

“It’s really gray, and the sparrows have decided upon a shower.”

She regarded him whimsically.

“And you look so well in your raincoat,” he added.

They took the ’bus up the Avenue....  She pointed out the tremendous vitalities of the Rodin marbles, intimated their visions, and remarked that he should hear Vina Nettleton on this subject.