Rames rose amidst vociferous applause from his own group and some cheers from the opposition. The personal question flashed into Cynthia's mind.
"Will he look up toward the gallery in which I am sitting?"
He threw his head back. It seemed that he did look up. Cynthia leaned forward as though across that distance her eyes could answer and sustain him. She forgot that the only light in the gallery was fixed against the wall behind her, and that nothing more individual of her was visible upon the floor of the chamber than the wide sphere of her hat.
He was not so nervous, she realized at once, as he usually was. Nervousness gave to his voice a peculiar vibration which was not without its effect in arresting attention. Cynthia missed it now. But the sentences which she already knew by heart followed one behind the other spaced and regular as the waves of a calm sea. She forgot that little significant omission of manner. She followed the argument as she knew it, and it was developed step by step as it had been prepared. Harry Rames had spoken for five minutes when a lady on Cynthia's left whispered in an audible voice to her neighbor on the right:
"I thought you told me that Captain Rames was a brilliant speaker."
"Not I, dear," came the reply. "These men of action are seldom effective in their speeches. I shouldn't expect him to do better than he is doing."
Cynthia moved indignantly. The poor woman must be off her head. But if she did not know what good speaking was, she might at all events hold her tongue. She looked down again into the well of the House and became perplexed. The benches were actually emptying. The double doors opposite to her which led from the chamber to the lobby were swinging silently backward and forward with a perpetual motion as the members passed out, and the space just in front of those doors where members may stand and where she had seen them stand packed on other days while Harry spoke, was almost empty. There were just one or two standing there, but they were obtaining orders for the galleries from the sergeant-at-arms. Then the voice at her elbow spoke again in an accent of resignation.
"He is very, very dull."
Cynthia clenched her hands. She would have dearly liked to have boxed her neighbor's ears. Was he dull she asked? And the dreadful continuous buzz of voices, which always rises when a speaker has lost the attention of the House, rose from the benches below to answer her. With a sob only half suppressed Cynthia was forced to admit the truth. The incredible thing was happening. Harry Rames at the crisis of his fortunes was signally failing.
"If he fails it's partly my fault," she thought. "I helped in the preparation of the speech."