"All that I thought so fine, so well worth having--the fight with other men for mastery, the conquest with what conquest would bring--power and rule and governing--it's extraordinary how completely all desire for it has vanished out of me!" he continued. "Do you remember the account I gave you of my maiden speech?" "Yes." Cynthia's hand had gone to her breast, but her voice was steady. "There was a fragment of time when the world went blank, when I lost the thread of my speech, and stood dumb. A fragment of time so short that it wasn't noticeable to any one in the House except myself." "Yes." "Well, these three years of politics seem to me just such an unnoticeable interruption of my real life. The fight which I revelled in appears to me now a squabble made ignoble with intrigues, bitter with mean disappointments, the victory not worth the fight. No doubt I am wrong. I went into the House of Commons, you see, without ideas," and Cynthia started at the word so familiar to her fancies. "Now I have one, a big one, and it has mastered me." And so Harry Rames passed at last through the turnstile into Cynthia's private garden. But it was in accordance with the irony of their lives that she wished with every drop of her blood that he had remained outside. "I long for simple things, not shifts and intrigues and bitterness; the gray mists on glaciers; the day's journey over the snow, with its wind ridges and its storms; the hard, lean life of it all; the fight, not with men, but with enormous things of nature, some dangerous, some serene, but, whether dangerous or serene, wholly indifferent." He gazed for a little while into the fire, seeking in the analysis of his emotions his apologia. "I think, Cynthia," he continued, "that once a man has gone far into the empty spaces of the earth, he has the mark of them upon him. Voices call from them over all the leagues of all the seas and need no receivers at the end." "Yes," said Cynthia, and once more her memories travelled back to the death-bed of old Daventry in the dark room of the white house. He had given her reasons for his great love of his estancia on the wide plains of Argentina. But there had been another reason, she remembered, which his failing wits had not allowed his tongue to formulate. Cynthia had often wondered what that reason was. She had no doubt that her husband had explained it now. "Yes, my father also heard those voices." After a short silence Harry Rames reached out his hand and took hers. "I think, my dear," he said gently, "that things would have been different, that I should not have wanted to go, had we been fortunate enough to have children--" and with a cry Cynthia turned to him fiercely. "No, no!" she exclaimed. "During this hour, for the first time, I have been thanking God we had no children. For if we had, you would still have wanted to go just as much as you do now, and that I could not have borne."