to terms with the limitations of life, with those desires and dreams
and discretions that, to say the least of it, qualify our nobility,
we take refuge in our sense of humour and congratulate ourselves on
a certain amiable freedom from priggishness or presumption, but for
Benham that easy declension to a humorous acceptance of life as it
is did not occur. He found his limitations soon enough; he was
perpetually rediscovering them, but out of these interments of the
spirit he rose again--remarkably. When we others have decided that,
to be plain about it, we are not going to lead the noble life at
all, that the thing is too ambitious and expensive even to attempt,
we have done so because there were other conceptions of existence
that were good enough for us, we decided that instead of that
glorious impossible being of ourselves, we would figure in our own
eyes as jolly fellows, or sly dogs, or sane, sound, capable men or
brilliant successes, and so forth--practicable things. For Benham,
exceptionally, there were not these practicable things. He
blundered, he fell short of himself, he had--as you will be told--
some astonishing rebuffs, but they never turned him aside for long.
He went by nature for this preposterous idea of nobility as a linnet
hatched in a cage will try to fly.

And when he discovered--and in this he was assisted not a little by
his friend at his elbow--when he discovered that Nobility was not
the simple thing he had at first supposed it to be, he set himself
in a mood only slightly disconcerted to the discovery of Nobility.
When it dawned upon him, as it did, that one cannot be noble, so to
speak, IN VACUO, he set himself to discover a Noble Society. He
began with simple beliefs and fine attitudes and ended in a
conscious research. If he could not get through by a stride, then
it followed that he must get through by a climb. He spent the