"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. She turned suddenly toward him. "Do you remember the supper party at Ludsey?" she asked. "Of course," he replied: "And the little Frenchman, Monsieur Poizat." "I was not thinking of him," said Cynthia. A sentence or two spoken at that table by Colonel Challoner had leaped into her memory. Politics meant color in the lives of men. It was the craving for color which fired enthusiasm in the towns of the provinces. Well, she herself craved for bright colors in her life too. Might she not get them out of the paint-pot of politics just as men did? "If I were to say yes," she remarked, "I would not be content to be merely the witness of your success. I must share the fears which go to make it. I could not sit quiet and twirl my thumbs, shut out from the hopes and apprehensions and endeavors, and just smile admiringly at the result. I must share everything." "Of course," said Harry Rames. "From the moment you say 'yes,' you share everything. I meant that too when I said that I needed your help." He spoke gravely and sincerely, and again Cynthia said, "Thank you." She sat for a little while longer, hesitating upon the brink. To say "yes" would solve the question of a companion. Oh, certainly, there were practical advantages in the acceptance of Harry Rames's proposal. She would have to abandon the hope of beauty in her life. Color, excitement, interest, she might get. But the beautiful life would not be for her. Still, under no circumstances, perhaps, might it have been for her. No one, she reflected, and with some sadness--no one by his approach had ever set her heart beating to a quicker tune. Perhaps there was some defect in her, some want of human passion, she reflected, which placed her in the second rank of women. When Cynthia was humble there was no girl so humble as Cynthia. And, after all, Harry Rames was honest. To that one stable point all her questions brought her back.