But some things that Benham did not talk about at all, left by their mere marked absence an impression on White's mind.And occasionally after Benham had been talking for a long time there would be an occasional aphasia, such as is often apparent in the speech of men who restrain themselves from betraying a preoccupation.He would say nothing about Amanda or about women in general, he was reluctant to speak of Prothero, and another peculiarity was that he referred perhaps half a dozen times or more to the idea that he was a "prig."He seemed to be defending himself against some inner accusation, some unconquerable doubt of the entire adventure of his life.These half hints and hints by omission exercised the quick intuitions of White's mind very keenly, and he drew far closer to an understanding of Benham's reserves than Benham ever suspected....
At first after his parting from Amanda in London Benham had felt completely justified in his treatment of her.She had betrayed him and he had behaved, he felt, with dignity and self-control.He had no doubt that he had punished her very effectively, and it was only after he had been travelling in China with Prothero for some time and in the light of one or two chance phrases in her letters that he began to have doubts whether he ought to have punished her at all.
And one night at Shanghai he had a dream in which she stood before him, dishevelled and tearful, his Amanda, very intensely his Amanda, and said that she was dirty and shameful and spoilt for ever, because he had gone away from her.Afterwards the dream became absurd: she showed him the black leopard's fur as though it was a rug, and it was now moth-eaten and mangey, the leopard skin that had been so bright and wonderful such a little time ago, and he awoke before he could answer her, and for a long time he was full of unspoken answers explaining that in view of her deliberate unfaithfulness the position she took up was absurd.She had spoilt her own fur.But what was more penetrating and distressing in this dream was not so much the case Amanda stated as the atmosphere of unconquerable intimacy between them, as though they still belonged to each other, soul to soul, as though nothing that had happened afterwards could have destroyed their common responsibility and the common interest of their first unstinted union.She was hurt, and of course he was hurt.He began to see that his marriage to Amanda was still infinitely more than a technical bond.
And having perceived that much he presently began to doubt whether she realized anything of the sort.Her letters fluctuated very much in tone, but at times they were as detached and guarded as a schoolgirl writing to a cousin.Then it seemed to Benham an extraordinary fraud on her part that she should presume to come into his dream with an entirely deceptive closeness and confidence.She began to sound him in these latter letters upon the possibility of divorce.This, which he had been quite disposed to concede in London, now struck him as an outrageous suggestion.He wrote to ask her why, and she responded exasperatingly that she thought it was "better." But, again, why better? It is remarkable that although his mind had habituated itself to the idea that Easton was her lover in London, her thought of being divorced, no doubt to marry again, filled him with jealous rage.She asked him to take the blame in the divorce proceedings.There, again, he found himself ungenerous.
He did not want to do that.Why should he do that? As a matter of fact he was by no means reconciled to the price he had paid for his Research Magnificent; he regretted his Amanda acutely.He was regretting her with a regret that grew when by all the rules of life it ought to be diminishing.
It was in consequence of that regret and his controversies with Prothero while they travelled together in China that his concern about what he called priggishness arose.It is a concern that one may suppose has a little afflicted every reasonably self-conscious man who has turned from the natural passionate personal life to religion or to public service or any abstract devotion.These things that are at least more extensive than the interests of flesh and blood have a trick of becoming unsubstantial, they shine gloriously and inspiringly upon the imagination, they capture one and isolate one and then they vanish out of sight.It is far easier to be entirely faithful to friend or lover than it is to be faithful to a cause or to one's country or to a religion.In the glow of one's first service that larger idea may be as closely spontaneous as a handclasp, but in the darkness that comes as the glow dies away there is a fearful sense of unreality.It was in such dark moments that Benham was most persecuted by his memories of Amanda and most distressed by this suspicion that the Research Magnificent was a priggishness, a pretentious logomachy.Prothero could indeed hint as much so skilfully that at times the dream of nobility seemed an insult to the sunshine, to the careless laughter of children, to the good light in wine and all the warm happiness of existence.And then Amanda would peep out of the dusk and whisper, "Of course if you could leave me--! Was I not LIFE? Even now if you cared to come back to me-- For I loved you best and loved you still, old Cheetah, long after you had left me to follow your dreams....
