He never found her again. Moscow and
Russia had swallowed her up.
Of course she and Prothero parted; that was a foregone conclusion.
But Prothero's manner of parting succeeded in being at every phase a
shock to Benham's ideas. It was clear he went off almost callously;
it would seem there was very little crying. Towards the end it was
evident that the two had quarrelled. The tears only came at the
very end of all. It was almost as if he had got through the passion
and was glad to go. Then came regret, a regret that increased in
geometrical proportion with every mile of distance.
In Warsaw it was that grief really came to Prothero. He had some
hours there and he prowled the crowded streets, seeing girls and
women happy with their lovers, abroad upon bright expeditions and
full of delicious secrets, girls and women who ever and again
flashed out some instant resemblance to Anna. . . .
In Berlin he stopped a night and almost decided that he would go
back. "But now I had the damned frontier," he wrote, "between us."
It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let
the "damned frontier" tip the balance against him.
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