ham, I have found a friend.

"A woman. Of course you will laugh, you will sneer. You do not
understand these things.... Yet they are so simple. It was the strangest
accident brought us together. There was something that drew us together.
A sort of instinct. Near the Boulevard Poissoniere...."

"Good heavens!" said Benham. "A sort of instinct!"

"I told her all about Anna!"

"Good Lord!" cried Benham.

"She understood. Perfectly. None of your so-called 'respectable' women
could have understood.... At first I intended merely to talk to her...."

Benham crumpled the letter in his hand.

"Little Anna Alexievna!" he said, "you were too clean for him."

16

Benham had a vision of Prothero returning from all this foreign travel
meekly, pensively, a little sadly, and yet not without a kind of relief,
to the grey mildness of Trinity. He saw him, capped and gowned,
and restored to academic dignity again, nodding greetings, resuming
friendships.

The little man merged again into his rare company of discreet Benedicts
and restrained celibates at the high tables. They ate on in their mature
wisdom long after the undergraduates had fled. Presently they would
withdraw processionally to the combination room....

There would be much to talk about over the wine.

Benham speculated what account Prothero would give of Moscow....

He laughed abruptly.

And with that laugh Prothero dropped out of Benham's world for a space
of years. There may have been other letters, but if so they were lost
in the heaving troubles of a revolution-strained post-office. Perhaps
to this day they linger sere and yellow in some forgotten pigeon-hole in
Kishinev or Ekaterinoslav....

17

In November, after an adventure in the trader's quarter of Kieff which
had brought him within an inch of death, and because an emotional wave
had swept across him and across his correspondence with Amanda, Benham
went back suddenly to England and her. He wanted very greatly to see her
and also he wanted to make certain arrangements about his property. He
returned by way of Hungary, and sent telegrams like shouts of excitement
whenever the train stopped for a sufficient time. "Old Leopard, I am
coming, I am coming," he telegraphed, announcing his coming for the
fourth time. It was to be the briefest of visits, very passionate, the
mutual refreshment of two noble lovers, and then he was returning to
Russia again.

Amanda was at Chexington, and ther