ure has left in the vermiform appendix, a thing no use in
itself and of no significance, but a gathering-place for mischief. The
extremest case of race-feeling is the Jewish case, and even here, I am
convinced, it is the Bible and the Talmud and the exertions of those
inevitable professional champions who live upon racial feeling, far more
than their common distinction of blood, which holds this people together
banded against mankind."

Between the lines of such general propositions as this White read little
scraps of intimation that linked with the things Benham let fall in
Johannesburg to reconstruct the Kieff adventure.

Benham had been visiting a friend in the country on the further side
of the Dnieper. As they drove back along dusty stretches of road amidst
fields of corn and sunflower and through bright little villages, they
saw against the evening blue under the full moon a smoky red glare
rising from amidst the white houses and dark trees of the town. "The
pogrom's begun," said Benham's friend, and was surprised when Benham
wanted to end a pleasant day by going to see what happens after the
beginning of a pogrom.

He was to have several surprises before at last he left Benham in
disgust and went home by himself.

For Benham, with that hastiness that so flouted his exalted theories,
passed rapidly from an attitude of impartial enquiry to active
intervention. The two men left their carriage and plunged into
the network of unlovely dark streets in which the Jews and traders
harboured.... Benham's first intervention was on behalf of a crouching
and yelping bundle of humanity that was being dragged about and kicked
at a street corner. The bundle resolved itself into a filthy little old
man, and made off with extraordinary rapidity, while Benham remonstrated
with the kickers. Benham's tallness, his very Gentile face, his good
clothes, and an air of tense authority about him had its effect, and
the kickers shuffled off with remarks that were partly apologies. But
Benham's friend revolted. This was no business of theirs.

Benham went on unaccompanied towards the glare of the burning houses.

For a time he watched. Black figures moved between him and the glare,
and he tried to find out the exact nature of the conflict by enquiries
in clumsy Russian. He was told that the Jews had insulted a religious
procession, that a Jew had spat at an ikon, that the shop of a cheating
Jew trader had been set on fire, and that the