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Was he not also fleeing in the morning sunlight from the City
of Destruction? Was he not also seeking that better city whose name
is Peace? And there was a bundle on his back. It was the bundle, I
think, that seized most firmly upon the too literary imagination of
White.
But the analogy of the bundle was a superficial one. Benham had not
the slightest desire to lose it from his shoulders. It would have
inconvenienced him very greatly if he had done so. It did not
contain his sins. Our sins nowadays are not so easily separated.
It contained a light, warm cape-coat he had bought in Switzerland
and which he intended to wrap about him when he slept under the
stars, and in addition Merkle had packed it with his silk pyjamas,
an extra pair of stockings, tooth-brush, brush and comb, a safety
razor. . . . And there were several sheets of the Ordnance map.

12

The urgency of getting away from something dominated Benham to the
exclusion of any thought of what he might be getting to. That
muddle of his London life had to be left behind.


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