re,
excitement and deliciousness, there is scarcely more to be found than
a soiled twig, a dirty seed, a dead leaf, black mould or a rotting
feather....

White held the ten or twelve pencilled pages that told how Benham and
Amanda drifted into antagonism and estrangement and as he held it he
thought of the laughter and delight they must have had together, the
exquisite excitements of her eye, the racing colour of her cheek, the
gleams of light upon her skin, the flashes of wit between them, the
sense of discovery, the high rare paths they had followed, the pools in
which they had swum together. And now it was all gone into nothingness,
there was nothing left of it, nothing at all, but just those sheets of
statement, and it may be, stored away in one single mind, like things
forgotten in an attic, a few neglected faded memories....

And even those few sheets of statement were more than most love leaves
behind it. For a time White would not read them. They lay neglected on
his knee as he sat back in Benham's most comfortable chair and enjoyed
an entirely beautiful melancholy.

White too had seen and mourned the spring.

Indeed, poor dear! he had seen and mourned several springs....

With a sigh he took up the manuscript and read Benham's desiccated story
of intellectual estrangement, and how in the end he had decided to
leave his wife and go out alone upon that journey of inquiry he had been
planning when first he met her.

3

Amanda had come back to England in a state of extravagantly vigorous
womanhood. Benham's illness, though it lasted only two or three
weeks, gave her a sense of power and leadership for which she had been
struggling instinctively ever since they came together. For a time at
Locarno he was lax-minded and indolent, and in that time she formed her
bright and limited plans for London. Benham had no plans as yet but
only a sense of divergence, as though he was being pulled in opposite
directions by two irresistible forces. To her it was plain that he
needed occupation, some distinguished occupation, and she could imagine
nothing better for him than a political career. She perceived he had
personality, that he stood out among men so that his very silences were
effective. She loved him immensely, and she had tremendous ambitions for
him and through him.

And also London, the very thought of London, filled her with appetite.
Her soul thirsted for London. It was like some enormous juicy fruit