remendous experiences with a minimum of exertion, and if
presently its gifts diminish one need but increase the quantity.
Moreover, it quickens the garrulous mind, and steadies the happiness of
love. Across the varied adventures of Benham's journey in China fell the
shadow first of a suspicion and then of a certainty....

The perfected and ancient vices of China wrapped about Prothero like
some tainted but scented robe, and all too late Benham sought to drag
him away. And then in a passion of disgust turned from him.

"To this," cried Benham, "one comes! Save for pride and fierceness!"

"Better this than cruelty," said Prothero talking quickly and clearly
because of the evil thing in his veins. "You think that you are the only
explorer of life, Benham, but while you toil up the mountains I board
the house-boat and float down the stream. For you the stars, for me the
music and the lanterns. You are the son of a mountaineering don, and I
am a Chinese philosopher of the riper school. You force yourself beyond
fear of pain, and I force myself beyond fear of consequences. What
are we either of us but children groping under the black cloak of our
Maker?--who will not blind us with his light. Did he not give us also
these lusts, the keen knife and the sweetness, these sensations that are
like pineapple smeared with saltpetre, like salted olives from heaven,
like being flayed with delight.... And did he not give us dreams
fantastic beyond any lust whatever? What is the good of talking? Speak
to your own kind. I have gone, Benham. I am lost already. There is
no resisting any more, since I have drugged away resistance. Why then
should I come back? I know now the symphonies of the exalted nerves; I
can judge; and I say better lie and hear them to the end than come back
again to my old life, to my little tin-whistle solo, my--effort! My
EFFORT!... I ruin my body. I know. But what of that?... I shall soon be
thin and filthy. What of the grape-skin when one has had the pulp?"

"But," said Benham, "the cleanness of life!"

"While I perish," said Prothero still more wickedly, "I say good
things...."

13

White had a vision of a great city with narrow crowded streets, hung
with lank banners and gay with vertical vermilion labels, and of a
pleasant large low house that stood in a garden on a hillside, a garden
set with artificial stones and with beasts and men and lanterns of white
porcelain, a garden which overlooked this c