life and
be driven home by rheumatic fever. One should not therefore incur the
risk of rheumatic fever.

Something squealed in the bushes.

It was impossible to collect one's thoughts in this place. He stood up.
The night was going to be bitterly cold, savagely, cruelly cold....

No. There was no thinking to be done here, no thinking at all. He would
go on along the track and presently he would strike a road and so come
to an inn. One can solve no problems when one is engaged in a struggle
with the elements. The thing to do now was to find that track again....

It took Benham two hours of stumbling and walking, with a little fence
climbing and some barbed wire thrown in, before he got down into Shere
to the shelter of a friendly little inn. And then he negotiated a
satisfying meal, with beef-steak as its central fact, and stipulated for
a fire in his bedroom.

The landlord was a pleasant-faced man; he attended to Benham himself and
displayed a fine sense of comfort. He could produce wine, a half-bottle
of Australian hock, Big Tree brand No. 8, a virile wine, he thought of
sardines to precede the meal, he provided a substantial Welsh rarebit
by way of a savoury, he did not mind in the least that it was nearly ten
o'clock. He ended by suggesting coffee. "And a liqueur?"

Benham had some Benedictine!

One could not slight such sympathetic helpfulness. The Benedictine was
genuine. And then came the coffee.

The cup of coffee was generously conceived and honestly made.

A night of clear melancholy ensued....

17

Hitherto Benham had not faced in any detail the problem of how to break
with Mrs. Skelmersdale. Now he faced it pessimistically. She would, he
knew, be difficult to break with. (He ought never to have gone there
to lunch.) There would be something ridiculous in breaking off. In all
sorts of ways she might resist. And face to face with her he might
find himself a man divided against himself. That opened preposterous
possibilities. On the other hand it was out of the question to do the
business by letter. A letter hits too hard; it lies too heavy on the
wound it has made. And in money matters he could be generous. He must be
generous. At least financial worries need not complicate her distresses
of desertion. But to suggest such generosities on paper, in cold ink,
would be outrageous. And, in brief--he ought not to have gone there
to lunch. After that he began composing letters at a great rate.
Del