"Aren't there discoveries to be made, maps to be drawn of that continent and something to be learned from the soundings?" asked Cynthia, recollecting Harry Rames's own book upon his voyage. He shook his head. "That's all trimmings, Cynthia. You have got to surround your expedition with a scientific halo. It gets you money, and official support, and the countenance of the learned societies. But the man who goes south into the Antarctic goes with just one reason--to reach the Pole. Why? You can't give a rational answer to that Cynthia. No one can. Such men are just driven on by a torment of their souls." No stranger watching Harry Rames as he speculated with an indulgent smile upon the aimlessness of Walter Hemming's long itinerary could have imagined that he had once himself led just such an expedition. Even Cynthia found the fact difficult of belief. By so complete a dissociation of spirit he was cut off from the race of the wanderers. "Let a man become insane in the East," he continued, "and he's looked upon as a holy man, touched by the finger of God. The fellows who go South and North are our holy men of the West." He turned back again to his newspaper, and then uttered an exclamation: "They have offered that Under Secretaryship to Edgington!" "Of course he'll refuse it," said Cynthia. "He has taken it. There's the first defection." "A traitor. I never liked him. He was thinking of himself all the while," said Cynthia, with a heat which made Harry look toward her curiously. She had not been wont to side so heartily with him and his plans in the days of the contest at Ludsey. He became suddenly aware of the remarkable change which had come over her character since that date. She who had blamed him with all the enthusiasm of a romantic girl because he would not take the high road, now walked the low road herself with her eyes concentrated, even more closely than his, upon the pathway at her feet. A pang of remorse made him wince. "I shouldn't wonder," he answered drily, "if Devenish says the same of me."