ot very
helpful, towards the vast problem of moral and material adjustment
before the race. That problem is incurably miscellaneous and intricate,
and only by great multitudes of generous workers, one working at this
point and one at that, secretly devoted knights of humanity, hidden
and dispersed kings, unaware of one another, doubting each his right
to count himself among those who do these kingly services, is this
elaborate rightening of work and guidance to be done."

So from these most fundamental social difficulties he came back to his
panacea. All paths and all enquiries led him back to his conception of
aristocracy, conscious, self-disciplined, devoted, self-examining yet
secret, making no personal nor class pretences, as the supreme need not
only of the individual but the world.

10

It was the Labour trouble in the Transvaal which had brought the two
schoolfellows together again. White had been on his way to Zimbabwe.
An emotional disturbance of unusual intensity had driven him to seek
consolations in strange scenery and mysterious desolations. It was as if
Zimbabwe called to him. Benham had come to South Africa to see into the
question of Indian immigration, and he was now on his way to meet Amanda
in London. Neither man had given much heed to the gathering social
conflict on the Rand until the storm burst about them. There had been
a few paragraphs in the papers about a dispute upon a point of labour
etiquette, a question of the recognition of Trade Union officials, a
thing that impressed them both as technical, and then suddenly a long
incubated quarrel flared out in rioting and violence, the burning of
houses and furniture, attacks on mines, attempts to dynamite trains.
White stayed in Johannesburg because he did not want to be stranded up
country by the railway strike that was among the possibilities of
the situation. Benham stayed because he was going to London very
reluctantly, and he was glad of this justification for a few days'
delay. The two men found themselves occupying adjacent tables in the
Sherborough Hotel, and White was the first to recognize the other. They
came together with a warmth and readiness of intimacy that neither would
have displayed in London.

White had not seen Benham since the social days of Amanda at Lancaster
Gate, and he was astonished at the change a few years had made in him.
The peculiar contrast of his pallor and his dark hair had become more
marked, his skin