"He saw Challoner. He was standing by the entrance door of our lobby. We were in the 'No' Lobby, for the question we had to vote upon was that the original words of the Address 'stand part,' and to enter the 'Aye' Lobby a man must pass our entrance door and traverse the House. Monro saw Challoner hurry past the door, and thinking that he had mistaken our lobby and was under the impression that the question he had to vote upon was that the amendment be substituted--in which case, of course, we should all have been in the 'Aye' Lobby--he called to the Colonel. Challoner didn't hear, or wouldn't hear. He hurried on, and once inside the Government Lobby, collapsed onto the bench which runs along the sides. He died within a couple of minutes." Harry Rames ceased. The shock of this swift calamity had driven from Cynthia's thoughts all her indignation against the Challoners. She pictured to herself that old, unhappy, disappointed man, dropping at last between the shafts, the pack-horse of politics. Not even the insignificance of an Under Secretaryship had come to requite him for his tedious years of service. And it never could have fallen to him. That she recognized. Again the silence was broken by the tap-tap of the paper-knife upon the blotting-pad. "It's a Juggernaut, that House, isn't it? You said that once, Cynthia," said Rames. "I did? I don't remember." Cynthia was perplexed by his distress. Sensibility was not to be counted amongst his qualities. Yet he sat there with trouble heavy upon him, and every now and then a shiver of the shoulders, a shiver of repugnance. "This has shocked you terribly, Harry," she said. "Yes. I have known death before now, but never death without any dignity. That's what I find terrible." He paused for a moment and then said in a low and distinct voice: "I am to blame for it, Cynthia." "You?" she exclaimed. "Yes. I ought to have left him alone. I ought never to have taken advantage of his disappointments. I dragged him into the revolt to serve myself--yes, that's the truth, Cynthia. We both know it. I dragged him in without giving him and his character a thought. He was the real party hack. To him the men upon the treasury bench were as gods walking the earth. A nod from one of them in a passage, a hand-shake in a drawing-room, a little private conversation with a Cabinet Minister in the Division Lobby--that was the kind of food which sustained him through how many years! And he was a good cavalry officer once, I am told." Harry Rames suddenly swung round toward his wife. "That's strange, isn't it? Very strange. He must have come into the House of Commons twenty years ago a very different man. But I suppose the walls closed round him and crushed the vitality out of him. You had a phrase about such men--the prisoners of the House of Commons. He was one of them. I did a cruel thing when I enlisted him. For I might have known that he must desert. I am to blame for his death." "No," Cynthia protested. "Yes."