“She understood. Perfectly. None of your so-called 'respectable' women could have understood.... At first I intended merely to talk to her....”
Benham crumpled the letter in his hand.
“Little Anna Alexievna!” he said, “you were too clean for him.”
16
Benham had a vision of Prothero returning from all this foreign travel meekly, pensively, a little sadly, and yet not without a kind of relief, to the grey mildness of Trinity. He saw him, capped and gowned, and restored to academic dignity again, nodding greetings, resuming friendships.
The little man merged again into his rare company of discreet Benedicts and restrained celibates at the high tables. They ate on in their mature wisdom long after the undergraduates had fled. Presently they would withdraw processionally to the combination room....
There would be much to talk about over the wine.
Benham speculated what account Prothero would give of Moscow....
He laughed abruptly.
And with that laugh Prothero dropped out of Benham's world for a space of years. There may have been other letters, but if so they were lost in the heaving troubles of a revolution-strained post-office. Perhaps to this day they linger sere and yellow in some forgotten pigeon-hole in Kishinev or Ekaterinoslav....