Prothero stuck up his knees and rested his night-shirted arms upon
them. "I don't want to leave Moscow," he said, "and I'm not going
to do so."
"But haven't we done--"
Prothero interrupted. "You may. But I haven't. We're not after
the same things. Things that interest you, Benham, don't interest
me. I've found--different things."
His expression was extraordinarily defiant.
"I want," he went on, "to put our affairs on a different footing.
Now you've opened the matter we may as well go into it. You were
good enough to bring me here. . . . There was a sort of
understanding we were working together. . . . We aren't. . . . The
long and short of it is, Benham, I want to pay you for my journey
here and go on my own--independently."
His eye and voice achieved a fierceness that Benham found nearly
incredible in him.
Something that had got itself overlooked in the press of other
matters jerked back into Benham's memory. It popped back so
suddenly that for an instant he wanted to laugh. He turned towards
the window, picked his way among Prothero's carelessly dropped
garments, and stood for a moment staring into the square, with its
drifting, assembling and dispersing fleet of trains and its long
line of blue-coated IZVOSHTCHIKS.
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