The visit to the gallery, too, had given Beth much to think over.  What he had said about the pictures, especially before the one he had called The Race Mother, had revealed his processes of mind, and made her feel very small for a while.  She saw that all her own talk had not lifted from herself, from her own troubles, and certain hateful aspects of the world; while his thoughts had concerned the sufferings of all women, and the fruitage that was to come from them.  She had talked for herself; he for the race.  But he had merely observed the life of women, while she had lived that life.

Why did Andrew Bedient continue to show her seemingly inexhaustible sources of fineness, ways so delicate and wise that the Shadowy Sister was conquered daily, and was difficult to live with?  It is true that Bedient asked nothing.  But if the hour of asking struck, what should she say to him? (Here Shadowy Sister was firmly commanded to begone.) Beth had not been able to answer alone....  Could Vina Nettleton be right?  Was her studio honored by a man who was beyond the completing of any woman?  If so, why did Shadowy Sister so delight in him?  Or was this proof that he was not designed to be the human mate of woman?  These were mighty quandaries.  Beth determined to talk about prophets when he came again....  Her friends told her she hadn’t looked so well in years.

Beth drew forth at length a picture of the Other Man, that she had painted recently from a number of kodak prints.  The work of a miniature had been put upon it.  A laughing face, a reckless face, but huge and handsome.  Before her, was the contrasting work of the new portrait.  The two pictures interested her together....  Bedient was at the door.  It was his hour.  Beth placed the smaller picture upon the mantle, instead of in its hidden niche—­and admitted the Shadowy Sister’s Knight....

“I saw Vina yesterday,” she observed, after work was begun.  “She was still talking about prophets and those other things you said——­”

“What a real interest she has,” Bedient answered.  “She has asked me for a Credo—­in two or three hundred words—­to embody the main outline of the talk that day.  Perhaps it can be done.  I’m trying.”

“How interesting!”

“If one could put all his thinking into a few pages, that would be big work."...

After a pause, Beth said: 

“Don’t think I’m flippant if I ask:  How do these men who, in their maturity, become great spiritual forces, escape being caught young by some perceiving woman?”

“I’m not so sure the question could be put better,” Bedient said.  “There is often a time in the youth of men, to whom illumination comes later, when they hang divided between the need of woman and some inner austerity that commands them to go alone.”

“If they disobey, does the light fail to come?” Beth asked.