Harry Rames looked at her quickly.
"It's rather curious that you should have said that; for, a few years ago, I was actually thinking of the city, and wondering whether I could make a fortune quickly there."
Cynthia laughed suddenly. Her suggestion had been uttered in sarcasm. Youth is disinclined to rate the making of money high in its standard of careers. Captain Ramos would never have passed the turnstile had she spoken with him when the turnstile was.
"What held me back," he continued, quite unconscious that he was toppling off a hero's perch,--and indeed he would have been totally indifferent had he known,--"what held me back was the knowledge that I should be beginning too old. One has so very little time," he exclaimed with a touch of passion in his voice. "I would like to go on living and living and living for a century. As it is, one begins at twenty at the earliest, and then with luck one may have fifty-five years--that's all," and the prospect of the disintegration of his powers at the early age of seventy-five affected him with so much melancholy that Cynthia laughed again, but this time with a clear and joyous ring of amusement.
"Never mind, Captain Rames, I am sure you will live every day of your fifty-five years, and that is more than all can say."
"They are only thirty-five now," he grumbled. "However,"--he was not to be diverted from the pleasant business of unfolding his character,--"I might still have gone into the city, when one morning in June, as I was walking round the corner of Buckingham Palace to Constitution Hill, I saw on the other side of the road the president of the Geographical Society. I knew him slightly. I had read of the expedition; I was aware that he was organizing it. It came upon me in a flash, 'By George, here's my chance at last,' and I ran across the road and applied for the command."
Cynthia nodded her head.
"So that's how you became connected with the expedition--a pure piece of chance," she said slowly. "If you hadn't turned round that corner to Constitution Hill----"
"Oh, I should have dropped across something else, no doubt," said Rames.
"And now you are going into Parliament."