etimes you haven't the remotest idea of
what I am after. I don't believe you begin to suspect what I am up to."

She put her elbows on her knees, dropped her chin between her hands and
regarded him impudently. She had a characteristic trick of looking up
with her face downcast that never failed to soften his regard.

"Look here, Cheetah, don't you give way to your early morning habit of
calling your own true love a fool," she said.

"Simply I tell you I will not go back to London."

"You will go back with me, Cheetah."

"I will go back as far as my work calls me there."

"It calls you through the voice of your mate and slave and doormat to
just exactly the sort of house you ought to have.... It is the privilege
and duty of the female to choose the lair."

For a space Benham made no reply. This controversy had been gathering
for some time and he wanted to state his view as vividly as possible.
The Benham style of connubial conversation had long since decided for
emphasis rather than delicacy.

"I think," he said slowly, "that this wanting to take London by storm is
a beastly VULGAR thing to want to do."

Amanda compressed her lips.

"I want to work out things in my mind," he went on. "I do not want to
be distracted by social things, and I do not want to be distracted by
picturesque things. This life--it's all very well on the surface, but it
isn't real. I'm not getting hold of reality. Things slip away from me.
God! but how they slip away from me!"

He got up and walked to the side of the boat.

She surveyed his back for some moments. Then she went and leant over the
rail beside him.

"I want to go to London," she said.

"I don't."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Where I can see into the things that hold the world together."

"I have loved this wandering--I could wander always. But... Cheetah! I
tell you I WANT to go to London."

He looked over his shoulder into her warm face. "NO," he said.

"But, I ask you."

He shook his head.

She put her face closer and whispered. "Cheetah! big beast of my heart.
Do you hear your mate asking for something?"

He turned his eyes back to the mountains. "I must go my own way."

"Haven't I, so far, invented things, made life amusing, Cheetah? Can't
you trust the leopard's wisdom?"

He stared at the coast inexorably.

"I wonder," she whispered.

"What?"

"You ARE that, Cheetah, that lank, long, EAGER beast--."

Suddenly with a nimble hand she had unbutto