From that day a change came over her. She flung herself with a veritable fever of energy upon those opportunities which enable a woman to identify herself with politics. The work she had undertaken in Ludsey, she undertook in London on a wider scale, and with infinitely greater effort. She was elected upon the central committees of the various women's associations connected with her husband's party; she travelled far and wide throughout the country on the business of organizations; she made speeches; she sought the presence of Cabinet Ministers at her dinner-table; she lost her color, her buoyancy. What she did was done doggedly. To go to bed each night tired out, that was her ambition. "If Harry wears himself out, why should not I?" she said when any of her friends remonstrated with her, but not one of them was allowed to guess that the secret of all her energy was remorse. She was seeking her rest in fatigue. For her remorse grew. Night after night Harry sat faithfully, as he had promised to Hamlin, in his seat on the front bench below the gangway. He took his part in the debates, he recovered the ground which he had lost. He was once more a man marked for high office. But it was all labor now, and unloved labor. And the strain of it was visible. He went out and in without that happy mien of confidence which once Cynthia had been wont to resent, but for which she vainly hungered now. There was one Friday evening toward the end of June when she was impelled to approach the dangerous subject of her own accord. She and Harry had been dining with the Prime-Minister in Downing Street. All that week the House had been sitting into the small hours. The Prime-Minister himself had taken her aside and given her a warning. They returned home soon after eleven, and as they sat over a final cigarette in Harry's study, Cynthia could not shut her eyes to his restlessness, the nervous flickering of his fingers, the unsteady intonations of his voice. "Aren't you doing too much, Harry?" she asked. "Not more than you, Cynthia," he replied as he poured himself out a whiskey and soda. "Much more. And women who are doing what they want to do can stand a great deal more than men who are not." Harry looked across at her quickly. "But, of course, I am doing just what I have always planned to do, just what you are helping me to do--just what I sought your help to enable me to do." "Sure?" "Of course."