The note that came from Beth Truba, saying that she would see him about the portrait at two on Tuesday, Bedient regarded as one of the happiest things that ever befell.  It was delivered at the Club by messenger that Monday night.  Very well he knew, that she gracefully might have declined, and would have, had she not been able to look above a certain misleading event.

There were moments in which he seemed always to have known Beth Truba.  Had he come back after long world-straying?

There was a painting of Bernhardt in an upper gallery at the Club, that he had regarded with no little emotion during past days.  The face of the greatest actress, so intensely feminine, in strangely effective profile between a white feathery collar and a white fur hat, had made him think of Beth Truba in a score of subtle ways.  They told him that the painting had been done by a young Italian, who had shown the good taste to worship the creator of La Samaritaine....  Bedient wished he could paint the russet-gold hair and the lustrous pallor of ivory which shone from Beth’s skin, and put upon the canvas at the last, what had been a revelation to him, and which had carried credentials to the Bedient throne, to the very crown-cabinet of his empire, the fine and enduring spirit in her brilliant eyes.

They met in the studio on the business basis.  It was a gray day, one of those soft, misty, growing days.  She was a trifle taller than he had thought.  Something of the world-habit was about her, or world-wear, a professionalism that work had taught her, and a bit of humor now and then.  The studio was filled with pictures, many studies of her own, bits of Paris and Florence, many flowers and heads.  There was one door which opened into a little white room.  The door was only partly open, and it was shut altogether presently.  Bedient had only looked within it once, but reverently.  Besides, there was a screen which covered an arcanum, from which tea and cakes and sandwiches came on occasion.  An upright piano, some shelves of books, an old-fashioned mantle and fire-place; and the rest—­pictures and yellow-brown hangings and lounges.  He wondered if anyone ever saw Beth’s pictures so deeply as he....  She was in her blouse.  The gray light subdued the richness of her hair, but made her pallor more luminous.  She was very swift and still in her own house.

A chair was placed for him, and Beth went back to her stool under the light.  Occasionally she asked him to look at certain pictures in her room, studying him as he turned.  She told him of adorable springtimes in Florence; how once she had asked a beautiful Italian peasant boy to help her with an easel, and some other matters, up a long flight of marble steps, and he had answered, with drowsy gentleness, “Please ask another boy, Signorina.  I have dined to-day."...  And Bedient watched, when her head was bowed over the board upon her knee.  Her hair, so wonderful now in the shadows, made amazing promises for sunlit days.  Uncommon energy was in his heart, and a buoyant activity of mind that formed, one after another, ideals for her happiness.