第90章 CHAPTER THE FIFTH(21)

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 Isuppose 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.

"I do," she said.

"But this is a thing for US."

"Pip, I want to talk to him alone.There is something--something Ican't say before you...."

Sir Philip rose slowly to his feet.

"Shall I wait outside?"

"No, Pip.Go home.Yes,--there are some things you must leave to me."She stood up too and turned so that she and Benham both faced the younger man.The strangest uneasiness mingled with his resolve to be at any cost splendid.He felt--and it was a most unexpected and disconcerting feeling--that he was no longer confederated with Amanda; that prior, more fundamental and greater associations prevailed over his little new grip upon her mind and senses.He stared at husband and wife aghast in this realization.Then his resolute romanticism came to his help."I would trust you--" he began."If you tell me to go--"Amanda seemed to measure her hold upon him.

She laid her hand upon his arm."Go, my dear Pip," she said."Go."He had a moment of hesitation, of anguish, and it seemed to Benham as though he eked himself out with unreality, as though somewhen, somewhere, he had seen something of the sort in a play and filled in a gap that otherwise he could not have supplied.

Then the door had closed upon him, and Amanda, pale and darkly dishevelled, faced her husband, silently and intensely.

"WELL?" said Benham.

She held out her arms to him.

"Why did you leave me, Cheetah? Why did you leave me?"28

Benham affected to ignore those proffered arms.But they recalled in a swift rush the animal anger that had brought him back to England.To remind him of desire now was to revive an anger stronger than any desire.He spoke seeking to hurt her.

"I am wondering now," he said, "why the devil I came back.""You had to come back to me."

"I could have written just as well about these things.""CHEETAH," she said softly, and came towards him slowly, stooping forward and looking into his eyes, "you had to come back to see your old Leopard.Your wretched Leopard.Who has rolled in the dirt.

And is still yours."

"Do you want a divorce? How are we to fix things, Amanda?""Cheetah, I will tell you how we will fix things."She dropped upon the step below him.She laid her hands with a deliberate softness upon him, she gave a toss so that her disordered hair was a little more disordered, and brought her soft chin down to touch his knees.Her eyes implored him.

"Cheetah," she said."You are going to forgive."He sat rigid, meeting her eyes.

"Amanda," he said at last, "you would be astonished if I kicked you away from me and trampled over you to the door.That is what I want to do.""Do it," she said, and the grip of her hands tightened."Cheetah, dear! I would love you to kill me.""I don't want to kill you."

Her eyes dilated."Beat me."

"And I haven't the remotest intention of making love to you," he said, and pushed her soft face and hands away from him as if he would stand up.

She caught hold of him again."Stay with me," she said.

He made no effort to shake off her grip.He looked at the dark cloud of her hair that had ruled him so magically, and the memory of old delights made him grip a great handful almost inadvertently as he spoke."Dear Leopard," he said, "we humans are the most streaky of conceivable things.I thought I hated you.I do.I hate you like poison.And also I do not hate you at all."Then abruptly he was standing over her.

She rose to her knees.

"Stay here, old Cheetah!" she said."This is your house.I am your wife."He went towards the unfastened front door.

"Cheetah!" she cried with a note of despair.

He halted at the door.

"Amanda, I will come to-morrow.I will come in the morning, in the sober London daylight, and then we will settle things."He stared at her, and to her amazement he smiled.He spoke as one who remarks upon a quite unexpected fact....

"Never in my life, Amanda, have I seen a human being that I wanted so little to kill."29

White found a fragment that might have been written within a week of those last encounters of Benham and Amanda.

"The thing that astonished me most in Amanda was the change in her mental quality.

"With me in the old days she had always been a sincere person; she had deceived me about facts, but she had never deceived me about herself.Her personal, stark frankness had been her essential strength.And it was gone.I came back to find Amanda an accomplished actress, a thing of poses and calculated effects.She was a surface, a sham, a Lorelei.Beneath that surface I could not discover anything individual at all.Fear and a grasping quality, such as God gave us all when he gave us hands; but the individual Iknew, the humorous wilful Spotless Leopard was gone.Whither, Icannot imagine.An amazing disappearance.Clean out of space and time like a soul lost for ever.

"When I went to see her in the morning, she was made up for a scene, she acted an intricate part, never for a moment was she there in reality....