One breathed her in the winds of the sea. She had taken
to herself the greatness of elemental things. . . .
So that when at last he saw her he was amazed to see her, and see
that she was just a creature of common size and quality, a rather
tired and very frightened-looking white-faced young woman, in an
evening-dress of unfamiliar fashion, with little common trinkets of
gold and colour about her wrists and neck.
In that instant's confrontation he forgot all that had brought him
homeward. He stared at her as one stares at a stranger whom one has
greeted in mistake for an intimate friend.
For he saw that she was no more the Amanda he hated and desired to
kill than she had ever been the Amanda he had loved.
27
He took them by surprise. It had been his intention to take them by
surprise. Such is the inelegance of the jealous state.
He reached London in the afternoon and put up at a hotel near
Charing Cross. In the evening about ten he appeared at the house in
Lancaster Gate. The butler was deferentially amazed. Mrs. Benham
was, he said, at a theatre with Sir Philip Easton, and he thought
some other people also.
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