“But I’m not going back to live in London in the old way, theatres, dinner-parties, chatter—­”

“Oh no!  We aren’t going to do that sort of thing.  We aren’t going to join the ruck.  We’ll go about in holiday times all over the world.  I want to see Fusiyama.  I mean to swim in the South Seas.  With you.  We’ll dodge the sharks.  But all the same we shall have to have a house in London.  We have to be felt there.”

She met his consternation fairly.  She lifted her fine eyebrows.  Her little face conveyed a protesting reasonableness.

“Well, mustn’t we?”

She added, “If we want to alter the world we ought to live in the world.”

Since last they had disputed the question she had thought out these new phrases.

“Amanda,” he said, “I think sometimes you haven’t the remotest idea of what I am after.  I don’t believe you begin to suspect what I am up to.”

She put her elbows on her knees, dropped her chin between her hands and regarded him impudently.  She had a characteristic trick of looking up with her face downcast that never failed to soften his regard.

“Look here, Cheetah, don’t you give way to your early morning habit of calling your own true love a fool,” she said.

“Simply I tell you I will not go back to London.”

“You will go back with me, Cheetah.”

“I will go back as far as my work calls me there.”

“It calls you through the voice of your mate and slave and doormat to just exactly the sort of house you ought to have. . . .  It is the privilege and duty of the female to choose the lair.”

For a space Benham made no reply.  This controversy had been gathering for some time and he wanted to state his view as vividly as possible.  The Benham style of connubial conversation had long since decided for emphasis rather than delicacy.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that this wanting to take London by storm is a beastly vulgar thing to want to do.”

Amanda compressed her lips.

“I want to work out things in my mind,” he went on.  “I do not want to be distracted by social things, and I do not want to be distracted by picturesque things.  This life—­it’s all very well on the surface, but it isn’t real.  I’m not getting hold of reality.  Things slip away from me.  God! but how they slip away from me!”

He got up and walked to the side of the boat.

She surveyed his back for some moments.  Then she went and leant over the rail beside him.

“I want to go to London,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Where I can see into the things that hold the world together.”

“I have loved this wandering—­I could wander always.  But . . .  Cheetah!  I tell you I want to go to London.”

He looked over his shoulder into her warm face.  “No,” he said.