“I belong in a cabinet,” she sighed.  “I guess I’m a letter-file instead of a lady."...

There was a large square envelope from Equatoria....  With stinging cheeks, Beth resented the buoyant happiness of the first few lines.  Until a clearer understanding came, it seemed that he was blessing her refusal of him.  How unwarranted afterward this thought appeared!  The letter lifted her above her own suffering.  Her mind was held by the great vital experience of a soul, a soul faring forth on its supreme adventure.  He did not say what had happened in words, but she saw his descent in the flesh and his upward flight of spirit—­the low ebb and the flashing heights....  How well she knew the cool brightness of his eyes, as he wrote!  The god she had liberated that sunlit day was dead—­not dead to her alone, but to any woman of Shore or Mountain or Isle....  With a gasp, she recalled Vina Nettleton’s first conception, that Bedient was past, or rapidly passing beyond the attraction of a single woman.

Beth saw that she had helped to bring him to this greater dimension.  There was a thrill in the thought.  There would have been a positive and enduring joy, had he not gone from her to another.  Truly, that was an inauspicious beginning for Illumination—­but miracles happened.  This thought fascinated her now:  Had she seen clearly and made the great sacrifice of withholding herself—­that he might rise to prophecy—­there would have been gladness in that!  She felt she could have done that—­the iron Beth—­given him to the world and not retained him for her own heart.  He said that other women had done so.  What an instrument!

But strength did come from his letter; there was a certain magic in his praise and blessing.  It gave her something like the natural virtues of mountain coolness and ocean air.  Austerely pure, it was.  Plainly, pleasure had not made him tarry long.

* * * * *

Beth and Miss Mallory had talked an hour before the name of Jim Framtree was innocently mentioned by the newspaperwoman.  It was not Beth’s way to betray her fresh start of interest, even though she gained her first clue to the meaning of the fine light she had seen in Bedient’s eyes at parting....  The blood seemed to harden in her heart.  The familiar sounds of the summer street came up through the open windows with a sudden horror, as if she were a captive on cannibal shores.

“No one knows why he wanted this talk with Mr. Framtree,” Miss Mallory was saying.  “He wanted it vitally—­and you see what came of it—­a revolution averted—­the fortunes of the whole Island altered for the better—­and yet, those were only incidents.  He was so ill—­that another man would have fallen—­and yet he went to The Pleiad—­and aboard the Spaniard’s yacht, as you read....  I knew his courage before—­from the Hedda Gabler night—­but it was true, he didn’t know me!  The only result I know was that Mr. Framtree came to New York——­”