It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the “damned frontier” tip the balance against him.
Then came a scrawl of passionate confession, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured. “I can't stand this business,” he wrote. “It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance—you can have no idea! In the train—luckily I was alone in the compartment—I sat and thought, and suddenly, I could not help it, I was weeping—noisy weeping, an uproar! A beastly German came and stood in the corridor to stare. I had to get out of the train. It is disgraceful, it is monstrous we should be made like this....
“Here I am stranded in Hanover with nothing to do but to write to you about my dismal feelings....”
After that surely there was nothing before a broken-hearted Prothero but to go on with his trailing wing to Trinity and a life of inappeasable regrets; but again Benham reckoned without the invincible earthliness of his friend. Prothero stayed three nights in Paris.
“There is an extraordinary excitement about Paris,” he wrote. “A levity. I suspect the gypsum in the subsoil—some as yet undescribed radiations. Suddenly the world looks brightly cynical.... None of those tear-compelling German emanations....
“And, Benham, I have found a friend.
“A woman. Of course you will laugh, you will sneer. You do not understand these things.... Yet they are so simple. It was the strangest accident brought us together. There was something that drew us together. A sort of instinct. Near the Boulevard Poissoniere....”
“Good heavens!” said Benham. “A sort of instinct!”
“I told her all about Anna!”
“Good Lord!” cried Benham.