o bring me here.... There was a sort of understanding we were working
together.... We aren't.... The long and short of it is, Benham, I want
to pay you for my journey here and go on my own--independently."

His eye and voice achieved a fierceness that Benham found nearly
incredible in him.

Something that had got itself overlooked in the press of other matters
jerked back into Benham's memory. It popped back so suddenly that for an
instant he wanted to laugh. He turned towards the window, picked his
way among Prothero's carelessly dropped garments, and stood for a moment
staring into the square, with its drifting, assembling and dispersing
fleet of trains and its long line of blue-coated IZVOSHTCHIKS. Then he
turned.

"Billy," he said, "didn't I see you the other evening driving towards
the Hermitage?"

"Yes," said Prothero, and added, "that's it."

"You were with a lady."

"And she IS a lady," said Prothero, so deeply moved that his face
twitched as though he was going to weep.

"She's a Russian?"

"She had an English mother. Oh, you needn't stand there and look so
damned ironical! She's--she's a woman. She's a thing of kindness...."

He was too full to go on.

"Billy, old boy," said Benham, distressed, "I don't want to be
ironical--"

Prothero had got his voice again.

"You'd better know," he said, "you'd better know. She's one of those
women who live in this hotel."

"Live in this hotel!"

"On the fourth floor. Didn't you know? It's the way in most of these big
Russian hotels. They come down and sit about after lunch and dinner. A
woman with a yellow ticket. Oh! I don't care. I don't care a rap. She's
been kind to me; she's--she's dear to me. How are you to understand? I
shall stop in Moscow. I shall take her to England. I can't live without
her, Benham. And then-- And then you come worrying me to come to your
damned Odessa!"

And suddenly this extraordinary young man put his hands to his face
as though he feared to lose it and would hold it on, and after an
apoplectic moment burst noisily into tears. They ran between his
fingers. "Get out of my room," he shouted, suffocatingly. "What business
have you to come prying on me?"

Benham sat down on a chair in the middle of the room and stared
round-eyed at his friend. His hands were in his pockets. For a time he
said nothing.

"Billy," he began at last, and stopped again. "Billy, in this country
somehow one wants to talk like a Russian. Billy, my