vorce proceedings. There, again, he found himself
ungenerous. He did not want to do that. Why should he do that? As a
matter of fact he was by no means reconciled to the price he had paid
for his Research Magnificent; he regretted his Amanda acutely. He was
regretting her with a regret that grew when by all the rules of life it
ought to be diminishing.

It was in consequence of that regret and his controversies with Prothero
while they travelled together in China that his concern about what he
called priggishness arose. It is a concern that one may suppose has a
little afflicted every reasonably self-conscious man who has turned from
the natural passionate personal life to religion or to public service
or any abstract devotion. These things that are at least more extensive
than the interests of flesh and blood have a trick of becoming
unsubstantial, they shine gloriously and inspiringly upon the
imagination, they capture one and isolate one and then they vanish out
of sight. It is far easier to be entirely faithful to friend or lover
than it is to be faithful to a cause or to one's country or to a
religion. In the glow of one's first service that larger idea may be as
closely spontaneous as a handclasp, but in the darkness that comes as
the glow dies away there is a fearful sense of unreality. It was in such
dark moments that Benham was most persecuted by his memories of Amanda
and most distressed by this suspicion that the Research Magnificent was
a priggishness, a pretentious logomachy. Prothero could indeed hint as
much so skilfully that at times the dream of nobility seemed an insult
to the sunshine, to the careless laughter of children, to the good light
in wine and all the warm happiness of existence. And then Amanda would
peep out of the dusk and whisper, "Of course if you could leave me--!
Was I not LIFE? Even now if you cared to come back to me-- For I loved
you best and loved you still, old Cheetah, long after you had left me to
follow your dreams.... Even now I am drifting further into lies and the
last shreds of dignity drop from me; a dirty, lost, and shameful
leopard I am now, who was once clean and bright.... You could come back,
Cheetah, and you could save me yet. If you would love me...."

In certain moods she could wring his heart by such imagined speeches,
the very quality of her voice was in them, a softness that his ear had
loved, and not only could she distress him, but when Benham was in this
hea