he delayed expression; in a mighty writing and stowing away of these
papers he found a relief from the unpleasant urgency to confess and
explain himself prematurely. So that White, though he knew Benham
with the intimacy of an old schoolfellow who had renewed his
friendship, and had shared his last days and been a witness of his
death, read the sheets of manuscript often with surprise and with a
sense of added elucidation.

And, being also a trained maker of books, White as he read was more
and more distressed that an accumulation so interesting should be so
entirely unshaped for publication. "But this will never make a
book," said White with a note of personal grievance. His hasty
promise in their last moments together had bound him, it seemed, to
a task he now found impossible. He would have to work upon it
tremendously; and even then he did not see how it could be done.

This collection of papers was not a story, not an essay, not a
confession, not a diary. It was--nothing definable. It went into
no conceivable covers. It was just, White decided, a proliferation.
A vast proliferation. It wanted even a title. There were signs
that Benham had intended to call it THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE, and that
he had tried at some other time the title of AN ESSAY ON
ARISTOCRACY. Moreover, it would seem that towards the end he had
been disposed to drop the word "aristocratic" altogether, and adopt
some such phrase as THE LARGER LIFE. Once it was LIFE SET FREE. He
had fallen away more and more from nearly everything that one
associates with aristocracy--at the end only its ideals of
fearlessness and generosity remained.

Of all these titles THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE seemed at first most like