“Why have you come back?” Sir Philip Easton found his voice to ask.

“Sit down,” Benham spat, and Easton obeyed unwillingly.

“I came back,” Benham went on, “to see to all this.  Why else?  I don’t—­now I see you—­feel very fierce about it.  But it has distressed me.  You look changed, Amanda, and fagged.  And your hair is untidy.  It’s as if something had happened to you and made you a stranger. . . .  You two people are lovers.  Very natural and simple, but I want to get out of it.  Yes, I want to get out of it.  That wasn’t quite my idea, but now I see it is.  It’s queer, but on the whole I feel sorry for you.  All of us, poor humans—.  There’s reason to be sorry for all of us.  We’re full of lusts and uneasiness and resentments that we haven’t the will to control.  What do you two people want me to do to you?  Would you like a divorce, Amanda?  It’s the clean, straight thing, isn’t it?  Or would the scandal hurt you?”

Amanda sat crouched together, with her eyes on Benham.

“Give us a divorce,” said Easton, looking to her to confirm him.

Amanda shook her head.

“I don’t want a divorce,” she said.

“Then what do you want?” asked Benham with sudden asperity.

“I don’t want a divorce,” she repeated.  “Why do you, after a long silence, come home like this, abruptly, with no notice?”

“It was the way it took me,” said Benham, after a little interval.

“You have left me for long months.”

“Yes.  I was angry.  And it was ridiculous to be angry.  I thought I wanted to kill you, and now I see you I see that all I want to do is to help you out of this miserable mess—­and then get away from you.  You two would like to marry.  You ought to be married.”

“I would die to make Amanda happy,” said Easton.

“Your business, it seems to me, is to live to make her happy.  That you may find more of a strain.  Less tragic and more tiresome.  I, on the other hand, want neither to die nor live for her.”  Amanda moved sharply.  “It’s extraordinary what amazing vapours a lonely man may get into his head.  If you don’t want a divorce then I suppose things might go on as they are now.”

“I hate things as they are now,” said Easton.  “I hate this falsehood and deception.”

“You would hate the scandal just as much,” said Amanda.

“I would not care what the scandal was unless it hurt you.”

“It would be only a temporary inconvenience,” said Benham.  “Every one would sympathize with you. . . .  The whole thing is so natural. . . .  People would be glad to forget very soon.  They did with my mother.”

“No,” said Amanda, “it isn’t so easy as that.”

She seemed to come to a decision.

“Pip,” she said.  “I want to talk to—­him—­alone.”

Easton’s brown eyes were filled with distress and perplexity.  “But why?” he asked.