So that when at last he saw her he was amazed to see her, and see that she was just a creature of common size and quality, a rather tired and very frightened-looking white-faced young woman, in an evening-dress of unfamiliar fashion, with little common trinkets of gold and colour about her wrists and neck.

In that instant’s confrontation he forgot all that had brought him homeward.  He stared at her as one stares at a stranger whom one has greeted in mistake for an intimate friend.

For he saw that she was no more the Amanda he hated and desired to kill than she had ever been the Amanda he had loved.

27

He took them by surprise.  It had been his intention to take them by surprise.  Such is the inelegance of the jealous state.

He reached London in the afternoon and put up at a hotel near Charing Cross.  In the evening about ten he appeared at the house in Lancaster Gate.  The butler was deferentially amazed.  Mrs. Benham was, he said, at a theatre with Sir Philip Easton, and he thought some other people also.  He did not know when she would be back.  She might go on to supper.  It was not the custom for the servants to wait up for her.

Benham went into the study that reduplicated his former rooms in Finacue Street and sat down before the fire the butler lit for him.  He sent the man to bed, and fell into profound meditation.

It was nearly two o’clock when he heard the sound of her latchkey and went out at once upon the landing.

The half-door stood open and Easton’s car was outside.  She stood in the middle of the hall and relieved Easton of the gloves and fan he was carrying.

“Good-night,” she said, “I am so tired.”

“My wonderful goddess,” he said.

She yielded herself to his accustomed embrace, then started, stared, and wrenched herself out of his arms.

Benham stood at the top of the stairs looking down upon them, white-faced and inexpressive.  Easton dropped back a pace.  For a moment no one moved nor spoke, and then very quietly Easton shut the half-door and shut out the noises of the road.

For some seconds Benham regarded them, and as he did so his spirit changed. . . .

Everything he had thought of saying and doing vanished out of his mind.

He stuck his hands into his pockets and descended the staircase.  When he was five or six steps above them, he spoke.  “Just sit down here,” he said, with a gesture of one hand, and sat down himself upon the stairs.  “Do sit down,” he said with a sudden testiness as they continued standing.  “I know all about this affair.  Do please sit down and let us talk. . . .  Everybody’s gone to bed long ago.”

“Cheetah!” she said.  “Why have you come back like this?”

Then at his mute gesture she sat down at his feet.

“I wish you would sit down, Easton,” he said in a voice of subdued savagery.