r
clearly explained, and at the end of it they found Prothero's body flung
out upon a waste place near a little temple on the river bank, stabbed
while he was asleep....

And from the broken fragments of description that Benham let fall, White
had an impression of him hunting for all those three days through the
strange places of a Chinese city, along narrow passages, over queer
Venetian-like bridges, through the vast spaces of empty warehouses, in
the incense-scented darkness of temple yards, along planks that passed
to the dark hulls of secret barges, in quick-flying boats that slipped
noiselessly among the larger craft, and sometimes he hunted alone,
sometimes in company, sometimes black figures struggled in the darkness
against dim-lit backgrounds and sometimes a swarm of shining yellow
faces screamed and shouted through the torn paper windows.... And
then at the end of this confused effect of struggle, this Chinese
kinematograph film, one last picture jerked into place and stopped and
stood still, a white wall in the sunshine come upon suddenly round a
corner, a dirty flagged passage and a stiff crumpled body that had for
the first time an inexpressive face....

14

Benham sat at a table in the smoking-room of the Sherborough Hotel
at Johannesburg and told of these things. White watched him from an
armchair. And as he listened he noted again the intensification of
Benham's face, the darkness under his brows, the pallor of his skin, the
touch of red in his eyes. For there was still that red gleam in Benham's
eyes; it shone when he looked out of a darkness into a light. And he
sat forward with his arms folded under him, or moved his long lean hand
about over the things on the table.

"You see," he said, "this is a sort of horror in my mind. Things like
this stick in my mind. I am always seeing Prothero now, and it will take
years to get this scar off my memory again. Once before--about a horse,
I had the same kind of distress. And it makes me tender, sore-minded
about everything. It will go, of course, in the long run, and it's just
like any other ache that lays hold of one. One can't cure it. One has to
get along with it....

"I know, White, I ought to have sent that money, but how was I to know
then that it was so imperative to send that money?...

"At the time it seemed just pandering to his vices....

"I was angry. I shall never subdue that kind of hastiness altogether.
It takes me by surprise. Bef