"But how wonderful when real companions catch a glimpse of each other across some room of the world!" he said quietly.
"A tragedy more often than not," she finished. "One of them so often has built his house, and must abide. Real companions never build their house upon the ruins of another."
"That has a sound ring."
"What is the reason for this everywhere, this forever loneliness?" she demanded, without lifting her eyes from the work.
"Something must drive," he replied. "You call it loneliness this morning. It's as good as any. Great things come from yearning. People of the crowd choose each other at random, under the pressure of passionate loneliness. Greater human hearts vision their One. Once in a while the One appears and answers the need—and then there is happiness. There is nothing quite so important as the happiness in each other of two great human hearts. Don't you see, it can exist hardly a moment, until it is adjusted to all time—until its relation to eternity is firmly established? When that comes, the world has another beautiful centre of pure energy to look at and admire and aspire to. And the spirit of such a union never dies, but goes on augmenting until it becomes a great river in the world.
"It is very clear to me," he went on, trying to fight the shadows, "that something like this must happen before great world-forces come into being. First, the two happy ones learn that love is giving. Their love goes on and on into a bigger thing than love for each other, and becomes love for the race. That's the greater glory. Avatars have that. The children of real lovers have such a chance for that vaster spirit! Indeed, you can almost always trace a great man's lineage back to some lustrous point of this kind."
Beth regarded him deeply for a moment. She could not adjust him to commonness. She was suffering. Bedient saw only the mystic light of that suffering. He had never loved her as at this moment.
"I always wish I could paint you, as you look when you are thinking about such things!" she said. "Just as you looked when you spoke about two people who have illumined each other, so that they turn their great anguish of loving upon the race…. Yes, I see it: prophets might indeed come from that kind of love."
Beth worked with uncommon energy for many minutes. All-forgetting—time, place, tension and the man near. Her spirit was strangely sustained under his eyes. The work flew, and left little traces of its processes in her mind—her concentration was deeper than memory.
* * * * *