"I ought to have done that," said Harry Rames.
"Oh, no. You were making speeches," replied Cynthia with a laugh. She was at all events not offended by his omission.
"And you are glad that I have won?" he asked. And again she waited a while before she answered; and when she did speak it was with that little spirit of resentment which Rames had heard before in her voice.
"Well,--since your heart was so much set on winning,--yes, there you have your triumph--I am glad that you won."
Cynthia meant what she said, but she was reluctant to mean it. She spoke, too, under a constraint to speak. She had a picture before her eyes of the man at the other end of the line quietly waiting upon her, certain perhaps of what she would say. And the picture and the sense of compulsion were both an offence to her.
"Good-night," she added curtly and with a sharp, quick movement she hung up the receiver. The little clang of metal travelled along the line to Harry Rames and emphasized her resentment.
But he was not disturbed by that. On the whole he looked upon it as a favorable sign. So definite a resentment implied that she was interested and set a value on their friendship. Rames went upstairs to bed, but he was too tired to sleep and his thoughts raced ahead and scouted in the future. He had leaped the first obstacle in the race, but that once leaped and looked back upon became a tiny thing compared with those which lay ahead.
"Will she? Will she not?" he asked. All hung upon the answers to those questions. He was poor. He must marry. He must marry money and even money was not enough. Other qualities were needed to help him to the great career. But they were all there, a few miles away, possessed by the young mistress of the White House. She had looks and manners and a distinction of her own. You could not be in a room with her, however crowded, and be long unaware that she was present too. Only--would she?
He had very little to offer her--beyond this earnest of future success which he had won to-night. And six hundred and seventy others would have won just the same opportunity before the year was a fortnight older. Moreover, Cynthia was romantic and he was not. For all her friendliness he was a bitter disappointment to her. He recognized it all and began to regret that he had not donned the glittering cloak of romance which so often she had held out to him. But his foresight came to console him.
"I could never have lived up to it," he reflected. "She would have found me out. I have been honest with her and she likes honesty."