appreciative. It peeped out in the distribution of their time, in the
direction of their glances. Whenever women walked about, Prothero gave
way to a sort of ethnological excitement. "That girl--a wonderful racial
type." But in Moscow he was sentimental. He insisted on going again to
the Cosmopolis Bazaar, and when he had ascertained that Anna Alexievna
had vanished and left no trace he prowled the streets until the small
hours.

In the eastward train he talked intermittently of her. "I should have
defied Cambridge," he said.

But at every stopping station he got out upon the platform
ethnologically alert....

Theoretically Benham was disgusted with Prothero. Really he was not
disgusted at all. There was something about Prothero like a sparrow,
like a starling, like a Scotch terrier.... These, too, are morally
objectionable creatures that do not disgust....

Prothero discoursed much upon the essential goodness of Russians. He
said they were a people of genius, that they showed it in their faults
and failures just as much as in their virtues and achievements. He
extolled the "germinating disorder" of Moscow far above the "implacable
discipline" of Berlin. Only a people of inferior imagination, a base
materialist people, could so maintain its attention upon precision and
cleanliness. Benham was roused to defence against this paradox. "But all
exaltation neglects," said Prothero. "No religion has ever boasted that
its saints were spick and span." This controversy raged between them in
the streets of Irkutsk. It was still burning while they picked their way
through the indescribable filth of Pekin.

"You say that all this is a fine disdain for material things," said
Benham. "But look out there!"

Apt to their argument a couple of sturdy young women came shuffling
along, cleaving the crowd in the narrow street by virtue of a single
word and two brace of pails of human ordure.

"That is not a fine disdain for material things," said Benham. "That is
merely individualism and unsystematic living."

"A mere phase of frankness. Only frankness is left to them now. The
Manchus crippled them, spoilt their roads and broke their waterways.
European intervention paralyses every attempt they make to establish
order on their own lines. In the Ming days China did not reek.... And,
anyhow, Benham, it's better than the silly waste of London...."

And in a little while Prothero discovered that China had tried Benham
and found him w