rt restaurant, the clustering little acute adventures of a great
reception of gay people, just as she had already made him understand and
sympathize with dogs. She picked up the art world where he had laid
it down, and she forced him to feel dense and slow before he rebelled
against her multitudinous enthusiasms and admirations. South Harting had
had its little group of artistic people; it is not one of your sleepy
villages, and she slipped back at once into the movement. Those were
the great days of John, the days before the Post Impressionist outbreak.
John, Orpen, Tonks, she bought them with vigour. Artistic circles began
to revolve about her. Very rapidly she was in possession.... And among
other desirable things she had, it seemed, pounced upon and captured
Lady Marayne.

At any rate it was clear that that awful hostile silence and aloofness
was to end. Benham never quite mastered how it was done. But Amanda
had gone in one morning to Desborough Street, very sweetly and
chastely dressed, had abased herself and announced a possible (though
subsequently disproved) grandchild. And she had appreciated the little
lady so highly and openly, she had so instantly caught and reproduced
her tone, that her success, though only temporary in its completeness,
was immediate. In the afternoon Benham was amazed by the apparition of
his mother amidst the scattered unsettled furnishings of the new home
Amanda had chosen in Lancaster Gate. He was in the hall, the door stood
open awaiting packing-cases from a van without. In the open doorway she
shone, looking the smallest of dainty things. There was no effect of her
coming but only of her having arrived there, as a little blue butterfly
will suddenly alight on a flower.

"Well, Poff!" said Lady Marayne, ignoring abysses, "What are you up to
now, Poff? Come and embrace me...."

"No, not so," she said, "stiffest of sons...."

She laid hold of his ears in the old fashion and kissed one eye.

"Congratulations, dear little Poff. Oh! congratulations! In heaps. I'm
so GLAD."

Now what was that for?

And then Amanda came out upon the landing upstairs, saw the encounter
with an involuntary cry of joy, and came downstairs with arms wide open.
It was the first intimation he had of their previous meeting. He was for
some minutes a stunned, entirely inadequate Benham....

4

At first Amanda knew nobody in London, except a few people in the
Hampstead Garden suburb that she had not