nd came home. At Colombo he found a heap of letters awaiting him,
and there were two of these that had started at the same time. They had
been posted in London on one eventful afternoon. Lady Marayne and Amanda
had quarrelled violently. Two earnest, flushed, quick-breathing women,
full of neat but belated repartee, separated to write their simultaneous
letters. Each letter trailed the atmosphere of that truncated encounter.
Lady Marayne told her story ruthlessly. Amanda, on the other hand,
generalized, and explained. Sir Philip's adoration of her was a
love-friendship, it was beautiful, it was pure. Was there no trust nor
courage in the world? She would defy all jealous scandal. She would not
even banish him from her side. Surely the Cheetah could trust her. But
the pitiless facts of Lady Marayne went beyond Amanda's explaining. The
little lady's dignity had been stricken. "I have been used as a cloak,"
she wrote.

Her phrases were vivid. She quoted the very words of Amanda, words she
had overheard at Chexington in the twilight. They were no invention.
They were the very essence of Amanda, the lover. It was as sure as if
Benham had heard the sound of her voice, as if he had peeped and seen,
as if she had crept by him, stooping and rustling softly. It brought
back the living sense of her, excited, flushed, reckless; his
wild-haired Amanda of infinite delight.... All day those words of hers
pursued him. All night they flared across the black universe. He buried
his face in the pillows and they whispered softly in his ear.

He walked his room in the darkness longing to smash and tear.

He went out from the house and shook his ineffectual fists at the
stirring quiet of the stars.

He sent no notice of his coming back. Nor did he come back with a
definite plan. But he wanted to get at Amanda.

26

It was with Amanda he had to reckon. Towards Easton he felt scarcely any
anger at all. Easton he felt only existed for him because Amanda willed
to have it so.

Such anger as Easton did arouse in him was a contemptuous anger. His
devotion filled Benham with scorn. His determination to serve Amanda at
any price, to bear the grossest humiliations and slights for her,
his humility, his service and tenderness, his care for her moods and
happiness, seemed to Benham a treachery to human nobility. That rage
against Easton was like the rage of a trade-unionist against a blackleg.
Are all the women to fall to the men who will