Cynthia moved indignantly. The poor woman must be off her head. But if she did not know what good speaking was, she might at all events hold her tongue. She looked down again into the well of the House and became perplexed. The benches were actually emptying. The double doors opposite to her which led from the chamber to the lobby were swinging silently backward and forward with a perpetual motion as the members passed out, and the space just in front of those doors where members may stand and where she had seen them stand packed on other days while Harry spoke, was almost empty. There were just one or two standing there, but they were obtaining orders for the galleries from the sergeant-at-arms. Then the voice at her elbow spoke again in an accent of resignation. "He is very, very dull." Cynthia clenched her hands. She would have dearly liked to have boxed her neighbor's ears. Was he dull she asked? And the dreadful continuous buzz of voices, which always rises when a speaker has lost the attention of the House, rose from the benches below to answer her. With a sob only half suppressed Cynthia was forced to admit the truth. The incredible thing was happening. Harry Rames at the crisis of his fortunes was signally failing. "If he fails it's partly my fault," she thought. "I helped in the preparation of the speech." For it was word for word the prepared speech which he was delivering, the very phrases chosen for their simplicity and their force were uttered in their due place. Yet the effect was dreary beyond measure. Even the ardent spirits beneath the gallery had ceased to applaud; they sat back in the shadow, all their enthusiasm quenched. A still worse sign, Mr. Devenish had laid his writing pad and his fountain-pen on the table in front of him; he took no more notes, he leaned back with his arms folded and his eyes closed, a typical picture of a Cabinet Minister, a man inured to patience and the bed-fellow of boredom. "Why is Harry failing?" Cynthia asked of herself despairingly. And the answer came from her neighbor. "You know, my dear, I don't believe that what he's saying is nonsense if one only had the necessary concentration to follow it. But his delivery's so bad that he makes attention impossible." Again Cynthia was constrained to admit the criticism. The chosen sentences were uttered, but no conviction winged them. Harry's gifts of speech were that afternoon quite hidden. He was as one delivering a recitation which by constant repetition had become at once meaningless and automatic. His voice trailed away into lassitude. There was no spirit behind any word.