ped with something like a sob and stood regarding the dusky
mystery of her face. She stood quite still, she was just a beautiful
outline in the twilight, her face was an indistinctness under the black
shadow of her hair, with eyes that were two patches of darkness.

He looked at his watch, lifting it close to his face to see the time.
His voice changed. "Well--if you provoke a man enough, you see he makes
speeches. Let it be a lesson to you, Amanda. Here we are talking instead
of going to our dinners. The car has been waiting ten minutes."

Amanda, so still, was the most disconcerting of all Amandas....

A strange exaltation seized upon her very suddenly. In an instant she
had ceased to plot against him. A vast wave of emotion swept her forward
to a resolution that astonished her.

"Cheetah!" she said, and the very quality of her voice had changed,
"give me one thing. Stay until June with me."

"Why?" he asked.

Her answer came in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper.

"Because--now--no, I don't want to keep you any more--I am not trying to
hold you any more.... I want...."

She came forward to him and looked up closely at his face.

"Cheetah," she whispered almost inaudibly, "Cheetah--I didn't
understand. But now--. I want to bear your child."

He was astonished. "Old Leopard!" he said.

"No," she answered, putting her hands upon his shoulders and drawing
very close to him, "Queen---if I can be--to your King."

"You want to bear me a child!" he whispered, profoundly moved.

8

The Hindu agitators at the cavernous dinner under the House of Commons
came to the conclusion that Benham was a dreamer. And over against
Amanda at her dinner-party sat Sir Sidney Umber, one of those men who
know that their judgments are quoted.

"Who is the beautiful young woman who is seeing visions?" he asked of
his neighbour in confidential undertones....

He tittered. "I think, you know, she ought to seem just SLIGHTLY aware
that the man to her left is talking to her...."

9

A few days later Benham went down to Cambridge, where Prothero was now a
fellow of Trinity and Brissenden Trust Lecturer....

All through Benham's writing there was manifest a persuasion that in
some way Prothero was necessary to his mind. It was as if he looked to
Prothero to keep him real. He suspected even while he obeyed that upward
flourish which was his own essential characteristic. He had a peculiar
feeling that somehow t