He was astonished that
for a moment he could have forgotten that he was vowed to the
splendid life.
"Continence by preoccupation;" he tried the phrase. . . .
"A man must not give in to fear; neither must he give in to sex.
It's the same thing really. The misleading of instinct."
This set the key of his thought throughout the afternoon--until
Amanda happened to him.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
AMANDA
1
Amanda happened to Benham very suddenly.
From Haslemere he had gone on to further heaths and gorse beyond
Liphook, and thence he had wandered into a pretty district beset
with Hartings. He had found himself upon a sandy ridge looking very
beautifully into a sudden steep valley that he learnt was Harting
Coombe; he had been through a West Harting and a South Harting and
read finger-posts pointing to others of the clan; and in the
evening, at the foot of a steep hill where two roads met, he sat
down to consider whether he should go back and spend the night in
one of the two kindly-looking inns of the latter place or push on
over the South Downs towards the unknown luck of Singleton or
Chichester.
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