the slightest wish to know, and
then very quickly she seemed to know quite a lot of people. The artistic
circle brought in people, Lady Marayne brought in people; they spread.
It was manifest the Benhams were a very bright young couple; he would
certainly do something considerable presently, and she was bright and
daring, jolly to look at and excellent fun, and, when you came to talk
to her, astonishingly well informed. They passed from one hostess's hand
to another: they reciprocated. The Clynes people and the Rushtones took
her up; Mr. Evesham was amused by her, Lady Beach Mandarin proclaimed
her charm like a trumpet, the Young Liberal people made jealous
advances, Lord Moggeridge found she listened well, she lit one of the
brightest weekend parties Lady Marayne had ever gathered at Chexington.
And her descriptions of recent danger and adventure in Albania not
only entertained her hearers but gave her just that flavour of personal
courage which completes the fascination of a young woman. People in the
gaps of a halting dinner-table conversation would ask: "Have you met
Mrs. Benham?"

Meanwhile Benham appeared to be talking. A smiling and successful young
woman, who a year ago had been nothing more than a leggy girl with a
good lot of miscellaneous reading in her head, and vaguely engaged, or
at least friendly to the pitch of engagement, to Mr. Rathbone-Sanders,
may be forgiven if in the full tide of her success she does not
altogether grasp the intention of her husband's discourse. It seemed to
her that he was obsessed by a responsibility for civilization and the
idea that he was aristocratic. (Secretly she was inclined to doubt
whether he was justified in calling himself aristocratic; at the best
his mother was county-stuff; but still if he did there was no great
harm in it nowadays.) Clearly his line was Tory-Democracy, social reform
through the House of Lords and friendly intimacy with the more spirited
young peers. And it was only very slowly and reluctantly that she
was forced to abandon this satisfactory solution of his problem. She
reproduced all the equipment and comforts of his Finacue Street study in
their new home, she declared constantly that she would rather forego
any old social thing than interfere with his work, she never made him
go anywhere with her without first asking if his work permitted it. To
relieve him of the burthen of such social attentions she even made a fag
or so. The making of fags out