Rames, S. S. Perhaps, Tilbury Docks.

As she read her face changed. There came a look of introspection in her dark, wide-open eyes. She swept back in her thoughts over the course of years and took note of the irony of things and of the surprising changes in a life like hers which, to all the world, was uneventful and prescribed.

"I remember," she said. "These are the good wishes sent to you when you started. You once told me that you never opened them."

"I hadn't the time. We had to catch the tide out of London. We were late getting away. I had forgotten that I had kept them all."

"I am going to open them."

"It is too late to answer them."

"I wonder."

Cynthia opened the telegrams until she came upon one about half through the number which arrested her attention. This she spread out before her and smiled at its phrasing.

"Harry!" she said.

Rames turned about.

"Yes?"

"Come and read this."

He stood behind Cynthia's chair and read aloud the message still legible upon the form.

"Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey from an unknown friend in--;" and then he stopped with an intake of his breath. "In South America," he resumed, and so stood quite still for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds. Then he leaned forward and looked at the name of the telegraph office from which the message had been sent.

"Daventry," he cried.

"Yes," said Cynthia with a little laugh upon which her voice broke.

"We had a telegraph office on the estancia. We were very proud of it, I can tell you"; and then the amus.e.m.e.nt died away from her voice, and "oh!" she whispered in a long sigh, as she felt his arm about her.

"You sent that! You! Cynthia! Before I knew you, before we met."

"Yes, dear, I sent it."

"Just think," he cried. "It reached me at Tilbury. It travelled out with me to the South. It was in the desk in my cabin for three long dark winters. It came back with me to England. By chance I met you----"

"No, not by chance, Harry," Cynthia interrupted. "I sent Mr. Benoliel to fetch you."

"Yes, you did," he agreed, with a laugh. "We met, and we married, and through all these changes it has lain here unopened. Why didn't I open it? That was conceit, Cynthia. I was haughty. I was going out to discover the South Pole. I didn't open my telegrams."

"But if you had opened it, Harry, you would only have laughed. For it's just the message of a schoolgirl, isn't it? You were one of my heroes--oh, not the only one but the latest one--I had just let you in past the turnstile to my enchanted garden. I was seventeen on the very day I sent it. I drove down to the office--oh in such a condition of importance. I pictured to myself you, the unknown you, sitting in your cabin and wondering and wondering and wondering who your little friend was in South America. Then I drove back and"--she stopped and went on again slowly--"yes, other things happened to me that day." She looked down again at the telegram. "Yes, the message of a foolish and romantic school-girl."

"I should like to be able to think, Cynthia," said her husband, "that I had opened it when it came."

"But you didn't," said Cynthia, "and so--" she broke off her sentence.

She took the telegram form, folded it, and replaced it in its envelope. She took a brush from a little bottle of gum which stood ready upon the table by the inkstand and, smearing the inner border of the envelope, stuck it down again. Then she stood up and turned to her husband. "And so," she continued, "you must take it, Harry, as though it were despatched to you by me only to-day for the first time and delivered to you here now at midnight."

She held out to him the telegram and he took it, gazing at her with a look of wonder. And then hope flamed in his eyes. Cynthia turned away abruptly. To her that swift flame of hope, of life, was almost intolerable.

"Then you knew," he cried.

Cynthia nodded her head, but she kept her face averted.

"I have known a long time," she answered in a low voice. "Ever since the letter came to you with the Rexland stamp."

The sound of her voice and her att.i.tude pierced to Rames's heart. His exultation gave way to concern.

"I am very sorry, Cynthia," he said gently. "I tried to hide it."

"Oh, my dear, I know you did. With all your strength you tried to hide it. You watched yourself each minute. But," and she turned to him with a little smile of tenderness, "I watched you closer still, and the longing grew too big to be hidden."

Harry Rames made no pretence to deny the truth of her words, knowing full well that all denial would be vain. The screen was down between them.

"Yes," he said; "but Cynthia, I keep my bargain."

"My dear, there is no longer any bargain between us," she answered, "for on both sides there is love. Of that I am very sure."

She held out her hands to him and he caught them and held her against his breast.

"You said you had rather that drawer was not unlocked until both of us were dead," she whispered. "My dear, if that drawer was not to be unlocked, we might both of us be dead at once for all the value our lives were going to be. So you will go, you must, unless we are to be wrecked altogether. We have been most unhappy, both of us. I, because I thought of the dangers," and she suddenly caught him close as though even now she dared not let him go, "and could not bring myself to make the sacrifice and let you run the risk--you, because the call was always in your ears. It couldn't go on. That's the truth, Harry.

Especially now that you know that your secret's no longer a secret to me. We should grow estranged, embittered, each one thinking the other horribly selfish. Perhaps, even hatred might come."

"No," protested Harry.

"Oh, yes, yes. It has come from smaller causes often enough. It might come, Harry, and that would be terrible. I have thought it out, my dear. All the time we were cruising down in the West I was thinking our position over and over and over. And it seemed to me that you must win this Hickleton election first--and then I would tell you that I understood your great trouble and let you go. But you had to win first. I couldn't let you go while people might be able to say that you had gone because you had been beaten in your political ambitions.

I was too proud of you, my dear, to allow that. You must lay down your career at a moment of success, leaving behind you a good name amongst your colleagues and perhaps a great many regrets. But you have won the election now, you have made good, as they say, and so, for both our sakes, you must go."

She drew herself out of his arms and moved away to the fire.

"Of course it's just what I wanted when I first met you, isn't it?"

she said with a wavering effort of a laugh. "I urged you to go back and finish your work the first time I met you--one night at the Admiralty. Only things have changed a good deal since then, haven't they?"

Her voice, which had been steady up till now, broke, and with a sob she suddenly hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Harry," she cried as though her heart was breaking, and he hurried to her, exclaiming:

"Cynthia, I am a brute. I can't leave you here for three years alone."

She held him off with her arm outstretched, dreading lest she should weaken and take her advantage of his remorse and so have to go through all this heart-rending renunciation again at some future time.

"You won't, Harry," she said, drying her eyes with her handkerchief.

"I have thought it all out. My father asked me on his death-bed not to desert the Daventry estancia altogether. He loved it so himself that he did not wish to think that he would die and that no one of his own people would ever see it again and make sure that all was going well with it. And here's the opportunity. While you go down to the Antarctic I will go back to the Daventry estancia. I couldn't live here day after day with you away amidst the storms and the snow. There I shall be able to. I will have the estancia to look after. When will you go?"

"Not so very soon, Cynthia, after all," he said. "It will take me a year before the preparations are complete. Besides, there's the money to be raised."

Cynthia raised her shoulders in a gesture of reproach.