re connected with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders
that ought never to have been entangled....

"A human being," White read, "the simplest human being, is a clustering
mass of aspects. No man will judge another justly who judges everything
about him. And of love in particular is this true. We love not persons
but revelations. The woman one loves is like a goddess hidden in a
shrine; for her sake we live on hope and suffer the kindred priestesses
that make up herself. The art of love is patience till the gleam
returns...."

Sunday and Monday did much to develop this idea of the intricate
complexity of humanity in Benham's mind. On Monday morning he went
up from the Ship again to get Amanda alone and deliver his ultimatum
against a further secrecy, so that he could own her openly and have no
more of the interventions and separations that had barred him from any
intimate talk with her throughout the whole of Sunday. The front door
stood open, the passage hall was empty, but as he hesitated whether he
should proclaim himself with the knocker or walk through, the door of
the little drawing-room flew open and a black-clad cylindrical clerical
person entirely unknown to Benham stumbled over the threshold, blundered
blindly against him, made a sound like "MOO" and a pitiful gesture with
his arm, and fled forth....

It was a curate and he was weeping bitterly....

Benham stood in the doorway and watched a clumsy broken-hearted flight
down the village street.

He had been partly told and partly left to infer, and anyhow he was
beginning to understand about Mr. Rathbone-Sanders. That he could
dismiss. But--why was the curate in tears?

12

He found Amanda standing alone in the room from which this young man
had fled. She had a handful of daffodils in her hand, and others were
scattered over the table. She had been arranging the big bowl of flowers
in the centre. He left the door open behind him and stopped short with
the table between them. She looked up at him--intelligently and calmly.
Her pose had a divine dignity.

"I want to tell them now," said Benham without a word of greeting.

"Yes," she said, "tell them now."

They heard steps in the passage outside. "Betty!" cried Amanda.

Her mother's voice answered, "Do you want Betty?"

"We want you all," answered Amanda. "We have something to tell you...."

"Carrie!" they heard Mrs. Morris call her sister after an interval, and
her voice sounded faint and flat and unusual.