sis of White's thought. You will find in all Benham's story,
if only it can be properly told, now subdued, now loud and amazed and
distressed, but always traceable, this startled, protesting question,
"BUT WHY THE DEVIL AREN'T WE?" As though necessarily we ought to be.
He never faltered in his persuasion that behind the dingy face of this
world, the earthy stubbornness, the baseness and dulness of himself
and all of us, lurked the living jewels of heaven, the light of glory,
things unspeakable. At first it seemed to him that one had only just to
hammer and will, and at the end, after a life of willing and hammering,
he was still convinced there was something, something in the nature of
an Open Sesame, perhaps a little more intricate than one had supposed
at first, a little more difficult to secure, but still in that nature,
which would suddenly roll open for mankind the magic cave of the
universe, that precious cave at the heart of all things, in which one
must believe.

And then life--life would be the wonder it so perplexingly just
isn't....

2

Benham did not go about the world telling people of this consuming
research. He was not the prophet or preacher of his idea. It was too
living and intricate and uncertain a part of him to speak freely about.
It was his secret self; to expose it casually would have shamed him. He
drew all sorts of reserves about him, he wore his manifest imperfections
turned up about him like an overcoat in bitter wind. He was content
to be inexplicable. His thoughts led him to the conviction that this
magnificent research could not be, any more than any other research
can be, a solitary enterprise, but he delayed expression; in a mighty
writing and stowing away of these papers he found a relief from the
unpleasant urgency to confess and explain himself prematurely. So that
White, though he knew Benham with the intimacy of an old schoolfellow
who had renewed his friendship, and had shared his last days and been a
witness of his death, read the sheets of manuscript often with surprise
and with a sense of added elucidation.

And, being also a trained maker of books, White as he read was more
and more distressed that an accumulation so interesting should be so
entirely unshaped for publication. "But this will never make a book,"
said White with a note of personal grievance. His hasty promise in their
last moments together had bound him, it seemed, to a task he now found
impossible. He w