"It's the other men," he said,
"it's the things that have been. Don't you understand? Can't you
understand? The memories--she must have memories--they come between
us. It's something deeper than reason. It's in one's spine and
under one's nails. One could do anything, I perceive, for one's
very own woman. . . ."
"MAKE her your very own woman, said the exponent of heroic love.
"I shirk deeds, Benham, but you shirk facts. How could any man make
her his very own woman now? You--you don't seem to understand--
ANYTHING. She's nobody's woman--for ever. That--that might-have-
been has gone for ever. . . . It's nerves--a passion of the nerves.
There's a cruelty in life and-- She's KIND to me. She's so kind to
me. . . ."
And then again Prothero was weeping like a vexed child.
15
The end of Prothero's first love affair came to Benham in broken
fragments in letters. When he looked for Anna Alexievna in
December--he never learnt her surname--he found she had left the
Cosmopolis Bazaar soon after Prothero's departure and he could not
find whither she had gone.
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