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It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the "damned frontier" tip the balance against him. Then came a scrawl of passionate confession, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured. "I can't stand this business," he wrote. "It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance you can have no idea!
Its foci were Sylvia Huntington, the beautiful multi-millionairess, and Richard Benham, nephew of Minim, the Cosmetic King and head of the Talcum Trust. Sylvia, tired of being sought for her wealth, and yearning to be loved for herself alone, has run away to Bohemia and installed herself in an attic over a studio occupied by two penniless artists, one a poet, the other a musician.
It would be plain sailing, for Mrs. Earle had more than once invited her to send copy to the Benham Sentinel, and there was no form of occupation which would be more to her liking than newspaper work. It was almost with the mien of a prisoner escaped from jail that she walked in upon her friend and said: "I have left my husband. He has been unfaithful to me." In Mrs.
Lucille's empty seat stared at him mournfully, increasing his sense of desolation. He was half-way through his lunch, when the chair opposite ceased to be vacant. Archie, transferring his gaze from the scenery outside the window, perceived that his friend, George Benham, the playwright, had materialised from nowhere and was now in his midst. "Hallo!" he said.
But Benham did not leave England again until he had had an encounter with Lady Marayne. The little lady came to her son in a state of extraordinary anger and distress. Never had she seemed quite so resolute nor quite so hopelessly dispersed and mixed.
They were left to smoke after lunch, and then it was he took advantage of a pause to commit his little indiscretion. "Mrs. Benham," he said, "looks amazingly well extraordinarily well, don't you think?" "Yes," said Benham, startled. "Yes. She certainly keeps very well." "She misses you terribly," said Sir Philip; "it is a time when a woman misses her husband.
But his jaws set as he felt the flesh of his legs quivering; he grinned the derisive grin of the fighter whose will and courage outlast his physical strength. He felt a pulse of contempt for himself, and mingling with it was a strange elation the thought that Rosalind Benham had strengthened his failing body, had provided it with the fuel necessary to keep it going for hours yet as it must.
Benham became divided in opinion as to the merits of this controversy, and Selma received a number of anonymous letters through the post approving her stand in behalf of advanced, independent thought. Among the physicians who were opposed to her administration of the hospital she recognized with satisfaction the name of a Dr. Hallett Taylor's medical adviser.
Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt or question. Oh, Mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are, and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside that. I have been blind, blind, blind!... Tell me one thing. Why did Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?" "He had to leave it," she said, wondering.
Benham had come to seem to her remote and primitive, yet she preferred, and was in the mood, to think that it represented the principles which were dear to her, and that she had been appreciated there far better than in her present sphere. She was still tied to Benham by correspondence with Mrs. Earle.
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