"I think," she said, "that this is the very first time you have gone beyond the truth to say a pleasant thing to me."
"It is the truth," he insisted. "I almost did more than come to you. I almost asked you to let me inflict my speech on you before I made it in the House."
"Oh, I wish you had!" cried Cynthia. "It would have made a difference to me this last week--a great difference." Then she turned swiftly toward Harry Rames with a glance of distrust. "Why didn't you come then?" she asked coldly. "There was nothing to hinder you. You knew that you would be very welcome. I should like to have known beforehand what you were going to say;" and once more a gentle wistfulness crept into her voice. "I should have liked also to have heard you in the House. I should have liked, in a word--not to have been shut out."
"You weren't shut out," Harry Rames exclaimed. "You mustn't fancy that! It's not true. If I did not come, it was really because I had you in my thoughts. Yes. I stayed away deliberately because of a saying of Smale's which I know to be true, which I quoted to you at Ludsey."
The distrust grew stronger in Cynthia's mind. What had Smale to do with the matter? Her face hardened. Harry Rames had, till this moment, at all events, been honest, had always stood apart in her eyes by reason of his honesty. Must she strip him now of that quality even as she had to do of the other, the imagined ones?
"What saying?" she asked.
"That many a man may cut a great figure upon the platforms who will never get the ear of the House of Commons. I wanted to be sure that I was not one of those--before I came to you."
A particular significance in the intonation of the words warned her--and then troubled her. She looked at him swiftly, and as swiftly looked away. The blood mounted into her face and flushed her throat.
"I wanted to be sure that I should come not quite empty-handed," he continued.
Cynthia made no pretence to misunderstand him, and no answer. All was explained to her now: why he had stayed away, why he now returned--all those particulars which he had told her she might have guessed, and not one of which had to this moment entered her head. She had never stepped beyond the border-line of friendship in her thoughts of Harry Rames--never once. She was startled now that she was asked to. She needed time to adjust herself to the new point of view. He had been honest with her, after all. That was her first instinctive recollection.