“One likes to know. . . .  Possibly one wants to know too much. . . .  In phases of fatigue, and particularly in phases of sleeplessness, when one is leaving all that one cares for behind, it becomes an irrational torment. . . .

“And it is not only in oneself that I am astonished by the power of this base motive.  I see, too, in the queer business of Prothero how strongly jealousy, how strongly the sense of proprietorship, weighs with a man. . . .

“There is no clear reason why one should insist upon another human being being one’s ownest own—­utterly one’s own. . . .

“There is, of course, no clear reason for most human motives. . . .

“One does. . . .

“There is something dishonouring in distrust—­to both the distrusted and the one who distrusts. . . .”

After that, apparently, it had been too hot and stuffy to continue.

20

Benham did not see Amanda again until after the birth of their child.  He spent his Christmas in Moscow, watching the outbreak, the fitful fighting and the subsequent break-up, of the revolution, and taking care of a lost and helpless English family whose father had gone astray temporarily on the way home from Baku.  Then he went southward to Rostov and thence to Astrakhan.  Here he really began his travels.  He determined to get to India by way of Herat and for the first time in his life rode out into an altogether lawless wilderness.  He went on obstinately because he found himself disposed to funk the journey, and because discouragements were put in his way.  He was soon quite cut off from all the ways of living he had known.  He learnt what it is to be flea-bitten, saddle-sore, hungry and, above all, thirsty.  He was haunted by a dread of fever, and so contrived strange torments for himself with overdoses of quinine.  He ceased to be traceable from Chexington in March, and he reappeared in the form of a telegram from Karachi demanding news in May.  He learnt he was the father of a man-child and that all was well with Amanda.

He had not expected to be so long away from any communication with the outer world, and something in the nature of a stricken conscience took him back to England.  He found a second William Porphyry in the world, dominating Chexington, and Amanda tenderly triumphant and passionate, the Madonna enthroned.  For William Porphyry he could feel no emotion.  William Porphyry was very red and ugly and protesting, feeble and aggressive, a matter for a skilled nurse.  To see him was to ignore him and dispel a dream.  It was to Amanda Benham turned again.

For some days he was content to adore his Madonna and listen to the familiar flatteries of her love.  He was a leaner, riper man, Amanda said, and wiser, so that she was afraid of him. . . .

And then he became aware that she was requiring him to stay at her side.  “We have both had our adventures,” she said, which struck him as an odd phrase.