,
a quiet alertness, that gave her a touch of kinship with Amanda. And
if she liked old Prothero-- And, indeed, she must like old Prothero or
could she possibly have made him so deeply in love with her?

They must stick to each other, and then, presently, Prothero's soul
would wake up and face the world again. What did it matter what she had
been?

Through stray shots and red conflict, long tediums of strained anxiety
and the physical dangers of a barbaric country staggering towards
revolution, Benham went with his own love like a lamp within him
and this affair of Prothero's reflecting its light, and he was quite
prepared for the most sympathetic and liberal behaviour when he came
back to Moscow to make the lady's acquaintance. He intended to help
Prothero to marry and take her back to Cambridge, and to assist by every
possible means in destroying and forgetting the official yellow ticket
that defined her status in Moscow. But he reckoned without either
Prothero or the young lady in this expectation.

It only got to him slowly through his political preoccupations
that there were obscure obstacles to this manifest course. Prothero
hesitated; the lady expressed doubts.

On closer acquaintance her resemblance to Amanda diminished. It was
chiefly a similarity of complexion. She had a more delicate face than
Amanda, and its youthful brightness was deadened; she had none of
Amanda's glow, and she spoke her mother's language with a pretty halting
limp that was very different from Amanda's clear decisions.

She put her case compactly.

"I would not DO in Cambridge," she said with an infinitesimal glance at
Prothero.

"Mr. Benham," she said, and her manner had the gravity of a woman
of affairs, "now do you see me in Cambridge? Now do you see me? Kept
outside the walls? In a little DATCHA? With no occupation? Just to amuse
him."

And on another occasion when Prothero was not with her she achieved
still completer lucidity.

"I would come if I thought he wanted me to come," she said. "But you see
if I came he would not want me to come. Because then he would have me
and so he wouldn't want me. He would just have the trouble. And I am not
sure if I should be happy in Cambridge. I am not sure I should be happy
enough to make him happy. It is a very learned and intelligent and
charming society, of course; but here, THINGS HAPPEN. At Cambridge
nothing happens--there is only education. There is no revolution in
Cambridge; t