"So even then you were thinking that if you succeeded in Parliament--this afternoon would come?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps even before then?"

"Yes, even before then."

Cynthia nodded her head. With a smile in which there was irony and a little of her old resentment, she remarked:

"Yes, you have always looked ahead."

Harry replied simply and gravely:

"Always."

"Thank you," said Cynthia.

She thanked him because he was so perfectly honest with her. He admitted--for his words were no less than such an admission--that he had deliberately thought of her because she had money. On the other hand, it was true that he had stood by and left the opportunity open for any one to s.n.a.t.c.h until he could himself bring something into the partnership. That weighed with her in his favor.

"Will you tell me when you first began to think of me in this way?"

she asked with an earnestness which to Harry Rames appeared quite singular. To his direct mind the one question which needed answering was whether she meant to marry him or no.

"Does the exact date matter?"

"Very much."

Rebellion again broke out in Cynthia. "I believe it is quite a usual question for maidens to ask on these occasions. But no doubt I ought to have asked it with a deeper bashfulness."

Harry reflected. Here was one of the nice subtleties of the feminine mind which somehow he must satisfy.

"It was after I had driven out once or twice from Ludsey to see you.

That is as near as I can put it. It was after I had got to know you a little."

"As soon, in a word, as you concluded that I would suit the place."

Though the sentence was phrased still in the ironical form, the irony had suddenly gone from her voice. She was so relieved that a smile trembled about her lips. Her next words gave the reason of her relief.

"So really and truly you want me personally--as well."

The question would have sounded vague to a stranger, but these two understood that it was her fortune which she omitted to name. Cynthia knew, as she could not but know, that her wealth had first set his thoughts running toward her. But it was some personal quality which in the end had decided him to ask for her. He must have money--yes, but other help than money as well. It was a satisfaction to her pride that he found it in her.

"Yes," he returned. "A wife can do so much for a man in politics if she is the right wife. I should be very glad if you would marry me,"

Rames resumed. "I think that we should get along together very well, and together we might do important things."

"Be important things," Cynthia corrected.

Harry Rames smiled.

"That's an old quarrel of ours, Cynthia. I mean 'do' this time."

Cynthia looked at him quickly. She was in the mood to find in that hope the strongest of appeals.

"You really think so?"

"I do. I should owe so very much to you. I should be conscious of my debt. I should try with all my strength to pay it back."

Cynthia gave him her face frankly now. A smile of confidence quite lit it up.

"I have no doubt of that," she said; and then the smile faded, and there came a look of longing.

"But I would rather, of course, that it were work for love of me, than work to repay me. There's a difference, isn't there? But I suppose one can't have everything, and--perhaps--I might be content to help you on."

She fell again to a wistful silence, pursuing the vision of a happiness which might have been down an avenue of bright imagined years. The happiness did exist. She had seen the evidences of it often enough. All men were not _tant soit peu cochons_, as she had once heard an unhappy French lady describe them, nor were all women neurotic. She had heard of lovers who felt that they had been waiting for one another since the beginning of the world. But it seemed that such happiness was for others, not for her.

"Tell me!" she said. "When you were making your speech, after the agitation had pa.s.sed and when you were master of yourself, you looked up to the ladies' gallery, you said, and noticed the women behind the grille?"

"Yes."

"Well--it is a little difficult to ask the question--But"--she stopped for a moment or two, and then went on with an appealing timidity, while the color once more mounted into her face--"but I suppose that then--when you knew you were making a success--it never came into your mind that you would have liked to have got me up there in the gallery while you were speaking?"

The temptation to lie was strong upon Harry Rames now. The very timidity of her appeal moved him. It taught him that the truth would hurt her much more than he had ever dreamed. He hesitated. For the first time in her company he was at a loss.

"The truth, please," she pleaded earnestly. "You said that your mind was free, that you could stand outside yourself and look on at what you were doing, as artists do. It never once occurred to you that you wanted me up there in the ladies' gallery, too, at the moment of your success, to witness it--to--yes, to share it with you?"

The word was out at last--the word which she had been striving with her modesty to reach.

"Be frank, please," she prayed.

Harry Rames was at a loss how to wrap the brutal truth up so that it should not hurt overmuch. He had no other intention at this moment. He was for once not considering what effect his answer would have upon his own prospects and future.

"You were in my thoughts," he said. "That's true. For I was thinking that now I could come to you. But, yes, I wanted to be sure of myself first."

"Yes," said Cynthia slowly, and with humility she a.n.a.lyzed the meaning of his words. "You never thought of me as a kind of inspiration to an even greater success in the future if you succeeded now, or as a kind of consolation if you failed. It may be vanity to say so, but I think that is what a woman in whom you were interested, and who was interested in you, would have liked you to have thought. I was, after all, shut out, wasn't I? I was to hear of the achievement after it was done and over, and I was neither to share the preliminary fears, nor feel the revulsion when the triumph came."

"Yes, but look at it from my point of view. There are many who want to marry you--men with something to offer. It wouldn't have been fair if I didn't bring something in my basket too."

"Fair!" cried Cynthia scornfully. "Oh, I know, that's the point of view of the man--at least," and as she realized that she had been unjust, her face dimpled to smiles, "of the men one rather likes." For it occurred to her that Lord Helmsdale would have been troubled by no such scruples.

"No," she said. "You wouldn't have borrowed another man's thoroughbred so that you might cut a dashing figure while you proposed."

Rames had no idea of what she meant, and he behaved as he usually did when unintelligible things were said to him by women. He asked for no explanations and just took no notice of Cynthia's words. He sat quietly at her side and waited.

The clock struck the hour. He put his hand into his pocket, and at the movement Cynthia started.

"There is no hurry," said Harry Rames. "I was only getting out my cigarette case. May I smoke?"

"Of course," replied Cynthia; she was relieved that she need not answer upon the moment. She was still in a great perplexity; and while Harry Rames smoked his cigarette she sought this way and that for a light to guide her. Here was not the marriage of which she had dreamed. No. But he was honest. It was possible, too, that she might be able to help him on, as he had said. And it might be well worth doing. It might be true that the ambitious men are the world's best servants, and not the men possessed with ideas. Ideas, she remembered, with a bitter little smile at her folly, had once given the right of entrance to her enchanted garden. But she had travelled far from its gateway, and the flowers were all dead in it, and its pathways overgrown. It might be that the fixed idea meant the narrow vision.

Harry Rames might be right; and if he were, by helping him on, she would make her money of real and great value. It was a gray world anyway--and Harry Rames was honest. She could trust him--though he wounded her.