unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary prophet,
Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of the future,
had a care to spy upon the present: warned haply by The Pilgrim's Scrip,
of which he was a diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically:
"Could we see Time's full face, we were wise of him." Now to see Time's
full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the
veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek and grimacing
confusion on the other behind the curtain. Decency and a sense of honour
restrain most of us from being thus wise and miserable for ever.
Benson's excuse was that he believed in his master, who was menaced. And
moreover, notwithstanding his previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was
sweet to him. So he peeped, and he saw a sight. He saw Time's full
face; or, in other words, he saw the wiles of woman and the weakness of
man: which is our history, as Benson would have written it, and a great
many poets and philosophers have written it.

Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had seen:
a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring one: very
innocent! Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks
she has, a reason or two about the roots. She is not all instinct. "For
this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him to be the flower
of men, I give myself to him!" She makes that lofty inward exclamation
while the hand is detaching her from the roots. Even so strong a self-
justification she requires. She has not that blind glory in excess which
her younger sister can gild the longest leap with. And if, moth-like,
she desires the star, she is nervously cautious of candles. Hence her
circles about the dangerous human flame are wide and shy. She must be
drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh reason. She loves to sentimentalize.
Lady Blandish had been sentimentalizing for ten years. She would have
preferred to pursue the game. The dark-eyed dame was pleased with her