. . .
"If she was a goddess to me, should it be any affair of mine that
she was not a goddess to herself; that she could hold all this that
has been between us more cheaply than I did? It does not change one
jot of it for me. At the time she did not hold it cheaply. She
forgets where I do not forget. . . ."
25
Such were the things that Benham could think and set down.
Yet for whole days he was possessed by the thought of killing Amanda
and himself.
He did not at once turn homeward. It was in Ceylon that he dropped
his work and came home. At Colombo he found a heap of letters
awaiting him, and there were two of these that had started at the
same time. They had been posted in London on one eventful
afternoon. Lady Marayne and Amanda had quarrelled violently. Two
earnest, flushed, quick-breathing women, full of neat but belated
repartee, separated to write their simultaneous letters. Each
letter trailed the atmosphere of that truncated encounter. Lady
Marayne told her story ruthlessly. Amanda, on the other hand,
generalized, and explained.
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