tures that he did not want to buy
and explain away pictures that he did. He bought one or two modern
achievements, and began to doubt if art and aristocracy had any
necessary connection. At first he had accepted the assumption that they
had. After all, he reflected, one lives rather for life and things than
for pictures of life and things or pictures arising out of life and
things. This Art had an air of saying something, but when one came to
grips with it what had it to say? Unless it was Yah! The drama, and more
particularly the intellectual drama, challenged his attention. In the
hands of Shaw, Barker, Masefield, Galsworthy, and Hankin, it, too, had
an air of saying something, but he found it extremely difficult to join
on to his own demands upon life anything whatever that the intellectual
drama had the air of having said. He would sit forward in the front row
of the dress-circle with his cheek on his hand and his brow slightly
knit. His intentness amused observant people. The drama that did not
profess to be intellectual he went to with Lady Marayne, and usually
on first nights. Lady Marayne loved a big first night at St. James's
Theatre or His Majesty's. Afterwards, perhaps, Sir Godfrey would join
them at a supper party, and all sorts of clever and amusing people would
be there saying keen intimate things about each other. He met Yeats, who
told amusing stories about George Moore, and afterwards he met George
Moore, who told amusing stories about Yeats, and it was all, he felt,
great fun for the people who were in it. But he was not in it, and he
had no very keen desire to be in it. It wasn't his stuff. He had,
though they were nowadays rather at the back of his mind, quite other
intentions. In the meanwhile all these things took up his time and
distracted his attention.

There was, as yet, no practicable aviation to beguile a young man of
spirit, but there were times when Benham found himself wondering whether
there might not be something rather creditable in the possession and
control of a motor-car of exceptional power. Only one might smash people
up. Should an aristocrat be deterred by the fear of smashing people up?
If it is a selfish fear of smashing people up, if it is nerves rather
than pity? At any rate it did not come to the car.

6

Among other things that delayed Benham very greatly in the development
of his aristocratic experiments was the advice that was coming to him
from every quarter. It