there is no one about
making a fuss against you.

"Perhaps, after all, there is something to be said for shirking it.
We'll both be able to get at the boy then. You'll not hurt him, and
I shall want to see him. It's better for the boy anyhow not to have a
divorce.

"I'll not stand in your way. I'll get a little flat and I shan't come
too much to London, and when I do, you can get out of town. You must be
discreet about Easton, and if people say anything about him, send them
to me. After all, this is our private affair.

"We'll go on about money matters as we have been going. I trust to you
not to run me into overwhelming debts. And, of course, if at any time,
you do want to marry--on account of children or anything--if nobody
knows of this conversation we can be divorced then...."

Benham threw out these decisions in little dry sentences while Amanda
gathered her forces for her last appeal.

It was an unsuccessful appeal, and at the end she flung herself down
before him and clung to his knees. He struggled ridiculously to get
himself clear, and when at last he succeeded she dropped prostrate on
the floor with her dishevelled hair about her.

She heard the door close behind him, and still she lay there, a dark
Guinevere, until with a start she heard a step upon the thick carpet
without. He had come back. The door reopened. There was a slight pause,
and then she raised her face and met the blank stare of the second
housemaid. There are moments, suspended fragments of time rather than
links in its succession, when the human eye is more intelligible than
any words.

The housemaid made a rapid apologetic noise and vanished with a click of
the door.

"DAMN!" said Amanda.

Then slowly she rose to her knees.

She meditated through vast moments.

"It's a cursed thing to be a woman," said Amanda. She stood up. She put
her hand on the telephone in the corner and then she forgot about it.
After another long interval of thought she spoke.

"Cheetah!" she said, "Old Cheetah!...

"I didn't THINK it of you...."

Then presently with the even joyless movements of one who does a
reasonable business, with something indeed of the manner of one who
packs a trunk, she rang up Sir Philip Easton.

30

The head chambermaid on the first floor of the Westwood Hotel in
Danebury Street had a curious and perplexing glimpse of Benham's private
processes the morning after this affair.

Benham had taken Room 27 on the afte