ould have to work upon it tremendously; and even then he
did not see how it could be done.

This collection of papers was not a story, not an essay, not a
confession, not a diary. It was--nothing definable. It went into no
conceivable covers. It was just, White decided, a proliferation. A vast
proliferation. It wanted even a title. There were signs that Benham had
intended to call it THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE, and that he had tried at some
other time the title of AN ESSAY ON ARISTOCRACY. Moreover, it would
seem that towards the end he had been disposed to drop the word
"aristocratic" altogether, and adopt some such phrase as THE LARGER
LIFE. Once it was LIFE SET FREE. He had fallen away more and more from
nearly everything that one associates with aristocracy--at the end only
its ideals of fearlessness and generosity remained.

Of all these titles THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE seemed at first most like
a clue to White. Benham's erratic movements, his sudden impulses, his
angers, his unaccountable patiences, his journeys to strange places, and
his lapses into what had seemed to be pure adventurousness, could all be
put into system with that. Before White had turned over three pages of
the great fascicle of manuscript that was called Book Two, he had found
the word "Bushido" written with a particularly flourishing capital
letter and twice repeated. "That was inevitable," said White with the
comforting regret one feels for a friend's banalities. "And it dates...
[unreadable] this was early...."

"Modern aristocracy, the new aristocracy," he read presently, "has still
to be discovered and understood. This is the necessary next step for
mankind. As far as possible I will discover and understand it, and as
far as I know it I will be it. This is the essential disposition of my
mind. God knows I have appetites and sloths and habits and blindnesses,
but so far as it is in my power to release myself I will escape to
this...."

3

White sat far into the night and for several nights turning over papers
and rummaging in untidy drawers. Memories came back to him of his dead
friend and pieced themselves together with other memories and joined
on to scraps in this writing. Bold yet convincing guesses began to leap
across the gaps. A story shaped itself....

The story began with the schoolfellow he had known at Minchinghampton
School.

Benham had come up from his father's preparatory school at Seagate. He
had been a boy reserved rath