"Yes. I have known death before now, but never death without any dignity. That's what I find terrible." He paused for a moment and then said in a low and distinct voice:
"I am to blame for it, Cynthia."
"You?" she exclaimed.
"Yes. I ought to have left him alone. I ought never to have taken advantage of his disappointments. I dragged him into the revolt to serve myself--yes, that's the truth, Cynthia. We both know it. I dragged him in without giving him and his character a thought. He was the real party hack. To him the men upon the treasury bench were as gods walking the earth. A nod from one of them in a passage, a hand-shake in a drawing-room, a little private conversation with a Cabinet Minister in the Division Lobby--that was the kind of food which sustained him through how many years! And he was a good cavalry officer once, I am told." Harry Rames suddenly swung round toward his wife. "That's strange, isn't it? Very strange. He must have come into the House of Commons twenty years ago a very different man. But I suppose the walls closed round him and crushed the vitality out of him. You had a phrase about such men--the prisoners of the House of Commons. He was one of them. I did a cruel thing when I enlisted him. For I might have known that he must desert. I am to blame for his death."
"No," Cynthia protested.
"Yes."
"Even if you might have known that he must desert, you couldn't have foreseen that he would hide from you till the last moment."
"That's just what he would do."
"Even so, you didn't know, Harry, that he had heart disease."
"Would it have made any difference to me if I had?" And that question silenced Cynthia.