Benham was always wary and Prothero
always appreciative. It peeped out in the distribution of their
time, in the direction of their glances. Whenever women walked
about, Prothero gave way to a sort of ethnological excitement.
"That girl--a wonderful racial type." But in Moscow he was
sentimental. He insisted on going again to the Cosmopolis Bazaar,
and when he had ascertained that Anna Alexievna had vanished and
left no trace he prowled the streets until the small hours.
In the eastward train he talked intermittently of her. "I should
have defied Cambridge," he said.
But at every stopping station he got out upon the platform
ethnologically alert. . . .
Theoretically Benham was disgusted with Prothero. Really he was not
disgusted at all. There was something about Prothero like a
sparrow, like a starling, like a Scotch terrier. . . . These, too,
are morally objectionable creatures that do not disgust. . . .
Prothero discoursed much upon the essential goodness of Russians.
He said they were a people of genius, that they showed it in their
faults and failures just as much as in their virtues and
achievements.
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