hings got themselves put away and the talk moved
into a smaller room with several armchairs and a fire. Mrs. Wilder and
the cousins and Amanda each smoked a cigarette as if it were symbolical,
and they were joined by a grave grey-bearded man with a hyphenated name
and slightly Socratic manner, dressed in a very blue linen shirt
and collar, a very woolly mustard-coloured suit and loose tie, and
manifestly devoted to one of those branches of exemplary domestic
decoration that grow upon Socialist soil in England. He joined Betty in
the opinion that the duty of a free and wealthy young man was to remain
in England and give himself to democratic Socialism and the abolition
of "profiteering." "Consider that chair," he said. But Benham had little
feeling for the craftsmanship of chairs.

Under cross-examination Mr. Rathbone-Sanders became entangled and
prophetic. It was evident he had never thought out his "democratic," he
had rested in some vague tangle of idealism from which Benham now set
himself with the zeal of a specialist to rout him. Such an argument
sprang up as one meets with rarely beyond the happy undergraduate's
range. Everybody lived in the discussion, even Amanda's mother listened
visibly. Betty said she herself was certainly democratic and Mrs. Wilder
had always thought herself to be so, and outside the circle round the
fire Amanda hovered impatiently, not quite sure of her side as yet, but
eager to come down with emphasis at the first flash of intimation.

She came down vehemently on Benham's.

And being a very clear-cutting personality with an instinct for the
material rendering of things, she also came and sat beside him on the
little square-cornered sofa.

"Of course, Mr. Rathbone-Sanders," she said, "of course the world must
belong to the people who dare. Of course people aren't all alike, and
dull people, as Mr. Benham says, and spiteful people, and narrow people
have no right to any voice at all in things...."

4

In saying this she did but echo Benham's very words, and all she
said and did that evening was in quick response to Benham's earnest
expression of his views. She found Benham a delightful novelty. She
liked to argue because there was no other talk so lively, and she had
perhaps a lurking intellectual grudge against Mr. Rathbone-Sanders
that made her welcome an ally. Everything from her that night that even
verges upon the notable has been told, and yet it sufficed, together
with so