they all seemed a little surprised, and,
except Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, they all seemed pleased to see him again
so soon. His explanation of why he hadn't gone back to London from
Chichester struck him as a little unconvincing in the cold light of Mr.
Rathbone-Sanders' eye. But Amanda was manifestly excited by his return,
and he told them his impressions of Chichester and described the
entertainment of the evening guest at a country inn and suddenly
produced his copy of the REPUBLIC. "I found this in a book-shop," he
said, "and I brought it for you, because it describes one of the best
dreams of aristocracy there has ever been dreamt."

At first she praised it as a pretty book in the dearest little binding,
and then realized that there were deeper implications, and became
grave and said she would read it through and through, she loved such
speculative reading.

She came to the door with the others and stayed at the door after they
had gone in again. When he looked back at the corner of the road to
Petersfield she was still at the door and waved farewell to him.

He only saw a light slender figure, but when she came back into the
sitting-room Mr. Rathbone-Sanders noted the faint flush in her cheek and
an unwonted abstraction in her eye.

And in the evening she tucked her feet up in the armchair by the lamp
and read the REPUBLIC very intently and very thoughtfully, occasionally
turning over a page.

5

When Benham got back to London he experienced an unwonted desire to
perform his social obligations to the utmost.

So soon as he had had some dinner at his club he wrote his South Harting
friends a most agreeable letter of thanks for their kindness to him. In
a little while he hoped he should see them again. His mother, too, was
most desirous to meet them.... That done, he went on to his flat and to
various aspects of life for which he was quite unprepared.

But here we may note that Amanda answered him. Her reply came some four
days later. It was written in a square schoolgirl hand, it covered
three sheets of notepaper, and it was a very intelligent essay upon the
REPUBLIC of Plato. "Of course," she wrote, "the Guardians are inhuman,
but it was a glorious sort of inhumanity. They had a spirit--like sharp
knives cutting through life."

It was her best bit of phrasing and it pleased Benham very much.
But, indeed, it was not her own phrasing, she had culled it from a
disquisition into which she had led Mr. Rat