He made a good case for his modern version of the
Grand Tour, and he gave them something of his intellectual
enthusiasm for the distances and views, the cities and seas, the
multitudinous wide spectacle of the world he was to experience. He
had been reading about Benares and North China. As he talked
Amanda, who had been animated at first, fell thoughtful and silent.
And then it was discovered that the night was wonderfully warm and
the moon shining. They drifted out into the garden, but Mr.
Rathbone-Sanders was suddenly entangled and drawn back by Mrs.
Wilder and the young woman from London upon some technical point,
and taken to the work-table in the corner of the dining-room to
explain. He was never able to get to the garden.
Benham found himself with Amanda upon a side path, a little isolated
by some swaggering artichokes and a couple of apple trees and so
forth from the general conversation. They cut themselves off from
the continuation of that by a little silence, and then she spoke
abruptly and with the quickness of a speaker who has thought out
something to say and fears interruption: "Why did you come down
here?"
"I wanted to see you before I went.
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