"Oh, I am glad. I am glad," she cried. All her heart was in her voice and tuned it to a note full and low and wonderfully sweet. Harry was moved by the music of it. There was a joy, a tenderness, which he had noticed more than once of late, but which had never rung so clear as it did to-night. He planted himself in front of her with a wry sort of smile upon his face.
"Cynthia."
"Yes."
"You want me to go on--just as I am going? You are satisfied? There have been times when you have wanted more----"
But Cynthia broke in upon him. She shut her eyes upon her ideals and her dreams. They were for the girl steeped to the lips in romance, not for the woman made real by love. Something had come between them. Something secret. Something which threatened even such community of life as they had. She was in revolt against it.
"Yes, yes," she cried passionately. "I do want you to go on. I want you to make a great career. I want my share in it, my pride in it. I shall be satisfied. I shall be thankful. Oh, my dear, are you blind?" She rose abruptly and stood in front of him. "What I want and all that I want is to keep you." If she had never spoken the words, the eagerness of her voice and the prayer of her clasped hands would have uttered them for her. But she had spoken them deliberately. She knew very well the danger for a woman in telling a man who does not love her, that she loves him. But she accepted the danger. She was playing for a great stake that night, and great stakes are not to be won without great risks. She laid her reticence aside and made her appeal. But it seemed that her appeal failed. Harry Rames stood watching her, at a loss for words, with a face which concealed carefully all his thoughts. Cynthia stooped and gathered up her gloves which had fallen to the floor.
"I shall go up now," she said.
Yet she waited; and Harry still was silent. A moment of passion had caught him unprepared with any words.
"What are you thinking about, Harry, so profoundly?" Cynthia asked in an indifferent voice. His silence was a rebuff most bitter to her. But she would not betray herself a second time. Her eyes and her hands were busy with some imaginary fault in the fit of her dress.
"That you have never shown me yourself before," he said, moving toward her. She stood quite still as he came close. He put his arm about her and she asked quietly: