waiting for her pretty white teeth, a place almost large enough to give
her avidity the sense of enough. She felt it waiting for her, household,
servants, a carriage, shops and the jolly delight of buying and
possessing things, the opera, first-nights, picture exhibitions, great
dinner-parties, brilliant lunch parties, crowds seen from a point
of vantage, the carriage in a long string of fine carriages with the
lamplit multitude peering, Amanda in a thousand bright settings, in a
thousand various dresses. She had had love; it had been glorious, it
was still glorious, but her love-making became now at times almost
perfunctory in the contemplation of these approaching delights and
splendours and excitements.

She knew, indeed, that ideas were at work in Benham's head; but she
was a realist. She did not see why ideas should stand in the way of a
career. Ideas are a brightness, the good looks of the mind. One talks
ideas, but THE THING THAT IS, IS THE THING THAT IS. And though she
believed that Benham had a certain strength of character of his own, she
had that sort of confidence in his love for her and in the power of her
endearments that has in it the assurance of a faint contempt. She had
mingled pride and sense in the glorious realization of the power over
him that her wit and beauty gave her. She had held him faint with her
divinity, intoxicated with the pride of her complete possession, and she
did not dream that the moment when he should see clearly that she could
deliberately use these ultimate delights to rule and influence him,
would be the end of their splendour and her power. Her nature, which
was just a nest of vigorous appetites, was incapable of suspecting his
gathering disillusionment until it burst upon her.

Now with her attention set upon London ahead he could observe her.
In the beginning he had never seemed to be observing her at all, they
dazzled one another; it seemed extraordinary now to him to note how much
he had been able to disregard. There were countless times still when he
would have dropped his observation and resumed that mutual exaltation
very gladly, but always now other things possessed her mind....

There was still an immense pleasure for him in her vigour; there was
something delightful in her pounce, even when she was pouncing on things
superficial, vulgar or destructive. She made him understand and share
the excitement of a big night at the opera, the glitter and prettiness
of a sma