Amanda was struggling with profound problems.  “Why didn’t you drive down in the first place?” she asked.  “Without going back.”

“The landlord annoyed me,” he said.  “I had to go back. . . .  I wish I had kicked him.  Hairy beast!  If anything had happened, you see, he would have had his mean money.  I couldn’t bear to leave him.”

“And why didn’t you let him drive?” She indicated the driver by a motion of the head.

“I was angry,” said Benham.  “I was angry at the whole thing.”

“Still—­”

“You see I think I did that because he might have jumped off if I hadn’t been up there to prevent him—­I mean if we had had a smash.  I didn’t want him to get out of it.”

“But you too—­”

“You see I was angry. . . .”

“It’s been as good as a switchback,” said Amanda after reflection.  “But weren’t you a little careless about me, Cheetah?”

“I never thought of you,” said Benham, and then as if he felt that inadequate:  “You see—­I was so annoyed.  It’s odd at times how annoyed one gets.  Suddenly when that horse shied I realized what a beastly business life was—­as those brutes up there live it.  I want to clear out the whole hot, dirty, little aimless nest of them. . . .”

“No, I’m sure,” he repeated after a pause as though he had been digesting something “I wasn’t thinking about you at all.”

4

The suppression of his discovery that his honeymoon was not in the least the great journey of world exploration he had intended, but merely an impulsive pleasure hunt, was by no means the only obscured and repudiated conflict that disturbed the mind and broke out upon the behaviour of Benham.  Beneath that issue he was keeping down a far more intimate conflict.  It was in those lower, still less recognized depths that the volcanic fire arose and the earthquakes gathered strength.  The Amanda he had loved, the Amanda of the gallant stride and fluttering skirt was with him still, she marched rejoicing over the passes, and a dearer Amanda, a soft whispering creature with dusky hair, who took possession of him when she chose, a soft creature who was nevertheless a fierce creature, was also interwoven with his life.  But—­ But there was now also a multitude of other Amandas who had this in common that they roused him to opposition, that they crossed his moods and jarred upon his spirit.  And particularly there was the Conquering Amanda not so much proud of her beauty as eager to test it, so that she was not unmindful of the stir she made in hotel lounges, nor of the magic that may shine memorably through the most commonplace incidental conversation.  This Amanda was only too manifestly pleased to think that she made peasant lovers discontented and hotel porters unmercenary; she let her light shine before men.  We lovers, who had deemed our own subjugation a profound privilege, love not this further expansiveness of our lady’s empire.  But Benham knew that