She awaited his explanations.  Benham looked for a moment like his father.

“I’m not getting on, mother,” he said.  “I’m scattering myself.  I’m getting no grip.  I want to get a better hold upon life, or else I do not see what is to keep me from going to pieces—­and wasting existence.  It’s rather difficult sometimes to tell what one thinks and feels—­”

She had not really listened to him.

“Who is that woman,” she interrupted suddenly, “Mrs. Fly-by-Night, or some such name, who rings you up on the telephone?”

Benham hesitated, blushed, and regretted it.

“Mrs. Skelmersdale,” he said after a little pause.

“It’s all the same.  Who is she?”

“She’s a woman I met at a studio somewhere, and I went with her to one of those Dolmetsch concerts.”

He stopped.

Lady Marayne considered him in silence for a little while.  “All men,” she said at last, “are alike.  Husbands, sons and brothers, they are all alike.  Sons!  One expects them to be different.  They aren’t different.  Why should they be?  I suppose I ought to be shocked, Poff.  But I’m not.  She seems to be very fond of you.”

“She’s—­she’s very good—­in her way.  She’s had a difficult life. . . .”

“You can’t leave a man about for a moment,” Lady Marayne reflected.  “Poff, I wish you’d fetch me a glass of water.”

When he returned she was looking very fixedly into the fire.  “Put it down,” she said, “anywhere.  Poff! is this Mrs. Helter-Skelter a discreet sort of woman?  Do you like her?” She asked a few additional particulars and Benham made his grudging admission of facts.  “What I still don’t understand, Poff, is why you have been away.”

“I went away,” said Benham, “because I want to clear things up.”

“But why?  Is there some one else?”

“No.”

“You went alone?  All the time?”

“I’ve told you I went alone.  Do you think I tell you lies, mother?”

“Everybody tells lies somehow,” said Lady Marayne.  “Easy lies or stiff ones.  Don’t flourish, Poff.  Don’t start saying things like a moral windmill in a whirlwind.  It’s all a muddle.  I suppose every one in London is getting in or out of these entanglements—­or something of the sort.  And this seems a comparatively slight one.  I wish it hadn’t happened.  They do happen.”

An expression of perplexity came into her face.  She looked at him.  “Why do you want to throw her over?”

“I want to throw her over,” said Benham.

He stood up and went to the hearthrug, and his mother reflected that this was exactly what all men did at just this phase of a discussion.  Then things ceased to be sensible.

From overhead he said to her:  “I want to get away from this complication, this servitude.  I want to do some—­some work.  I want to get my mind clear and my hands clear.  I want to study government and the big business of the world.”