Benham found himself with Amanda upon a side path, a little isolated by some swaggering artichokes and a couple of apple trees and so forth from the general conversation.  They cut themselves off from the continuation of that by a little silence, and then she spoke abruptly and with the quickness of a speaker who has thought out something to say and fears interruption:  “Why did you come down here?”

“I wanted to see you before I went.”

“You disturb me.  You fill me with envy.”

“I didn’t think of that.  I wanted to see you again.”

“And then you will go off round the world, you will see the Tropics, you will see India, you will go into Chinese cities all hung with vermilion, you will climb mountains.  Oh! men can do all the splendid things.  Why do you come here to remind me of it?  I have never been anywhere, anywhere at all.  I never shall go anywhere.  Never in my life have I seen a mountain.  Those Downs there—­look at them!—­are my highest.  And while you are travelling I shall think of you—­and think of you. . . .”

“Would you like to travel?” he asked as though that was an extraordinary idea.

“Do you think every girl wants to sit at home and rock a cradle?”

“I never thought you did.”

“Then what did you think I wanted?”

“What do you want?”

She held her arms out widely, and the moonlight shone in her eyes as she turned her face to him.

“Just what you want,” she said; “—­The whole world!

“Life is like a feast,” she went on; “it is spread before everybody and nobody must touch it.  What am I?  Just a prisoner.  In a cottage garden.  Looking for ever over a hedge.  I should be happier if I couldn’t look.  I remember once, only a little time ago, there was a cheap excursion to London.  Our only servant went.  She had to get up at an unearthly hour, and I—­I got up too.  I helped her to get off.  And when she was gone I went up to my bedroom again and cried.  I cried with envy for any one, any one who could go away.  I’ve been nowhere—­except to school at Chichester and three or four times to Emsworth and Bognor—­for eight years.  When you go”—­the tears glittered in the moonlight—­“I shall cry.  It will be worse than the excursion to London. . . .  Ever since you were here before I’ve been thinking of it.”

It seemed to Benham that here indeed was the very sister of his spirit.  His words sprang into his mind as one thinks of a repartee.  “But why shouldn’t you come too?” he said.

She stared at him in silence.  The two white-lit faces examined each other.  Both she and Benham were trembling.

“Come too?” she repeated.

“Yes, with me.”

“But—­how?”

Then suddenly she was weeping like a child that is teased; her troubled eyes looked out from under puckered brows.  “You don’t mean it,” she said.  “You don’t mean it.”