She stood with her fingers clenched upon her palms whilst Harry inserted the blade of his knife in the chink of the drawer, ran it along until it touched the lock, and then forced apart the fastenings. There was a crack as of splintering wood. Harry Rames replaced his knife in his pocket, pulled out the drawer, and carried it over to his writing-table. "There it is," he said, moving away from it to the fireplace. Cynthia bent over the drawer and turned on the light of a reading lamp which stood upon the table. "This is your own chart upon the top, Harry?" "Yes. It is the last one, you see. Hemming may be bringing back another." "Will you show me exactly the point you reached?" It seemed to Harry as if she was bent on trying him to the last point of endurance. "It is marked there quite plainly, Cynthia," he said. Cynthia leaned over the drawer--for a long time. Harry Rames was quite surprised at the closeness of her scrutiny. It was so long since she had shown any interest in his journey or indeed in anything except his political career. As a matter of fact, Cynthia saw of that map nothing but a blur: for her eyes were dim with tears, and she bent so low over its configurations simply because in that attitude her face was hidden. She moved. "What is this?" She took up a brown package, tied up with string, which lay in a corner of the drawer. "I don't know," said Rames with a puzzled face. "I have forgotten." "May I open it?" "Of course." Cynthia cut the string and, one after another, perhaps a score of brown telegraph envelopes slipped out in a cascade and fell upon the table in front of her. "Telegrams," she said curiously. "Unopened, too! Oh, Harry!" this with a mocking laugh of reproach. Then she looked at the address of one of the telegrams. It ran: Rames, S. S. Perhaps, Tilbury Docks. As she read her face changed. There came a look of introspection in her dark, wide-open eyes. She swept back in her thoughts over the course of years and took note of the irony of things and of the surprising changes in a life like hers which, to all the world, was uneventful and prescribed. "I remember," she said. "These are the good wishes sent to you when you started. You once told me that you never opened them." "I hadn't the time. We had to catch the tide out of London. We were late getting away. I had forgotten that I had kept them all." "I am going to open them." "It is too late to answer them." "I wonder." Cynthia opened the telegrams until she came upon one about half through the number which arrested her attention. This she spread out before her and smiled at its phrasing. "Harry!" she said. Rames turned about. "Yes?" "Come and read this." He stood behind Cynthia's chair and read aloud the message still legible upon the form.