these projects in his mind, each at its different level, the greater
impalpable one and the lesser concrete one within it. In some
unimaginable way he could suppose that the one by some miracle of
ennoblement--and neglecting the Frenchman, the Russian, the German,
the American, the Indian, the Chinaman, and, indeed, the greater
part of mankind from the problem--might become the other. . . .

All of which is recorded here, without excess of comment, as it
happened, and as, in a mood of astonished reminiscences, he came
finally to perceive it, and set it down for White's meditative
perusal.



4


But to the enthusiasm of the young, dreams have something of the
substance of reality and realities, something of the magic of
dreams. The London to which Benham came from Cambridge and the
disquisitions of Prothero was not the London of a mature and
disillusioned vision. It was London seen magnified and distorted
through the young man's crystalline intentions. It had for him a
quality of multitudinous, unquenchable activity. Himself filled
with an immense appetite for life, he was unable to conceive of
London as fatigued. He could not suspect these statesmen he now
began to meet and watch, of jaded wills and petty spites, he
imagined that all the important and influential persons in this
large world of affairs were as frank in their private lives and as
unembarrassed in their financial relationships as his untainted