"Well, we shall know to-morrow night. We are in the ice-pack now, but we are coming to the outer rim of it. We can see the blue water already. We shall be sailing smoothly upon it this time to-morrow night."
He had been chary of references to the voyage which had made his reputation; all the more, therefore, this one struck home. He sat down tempestuously acclaimed, and turning in his chair held out his hand to Cynthia Daventry.
"I am glad that you came," he said. "I have achieved two triumphs to-night. I have brought you and Mr. Benoliel to your first political meeting and both of you are on my platform."
He shook hands with Isaac Benoliel and with Diana Royle. Cynthia leaned a little forward.
"I, too, am glad that I came," she returned with a smile. Because of those last words of his, friendship was warm in her toward Harry Rames. She added, "You knew then that I was here--just behind you?"
Rames nodded.
"Yes, but I was too nervous to turn to you before I had made my speech. The flesh wears a little thin after three weeks of this. One gets jumpy. Even the tattered corner of blind hanging down there from the skylight seemed to-night charged with some important message." He spoke, ridiculing the fancy, and Cynthia, with a smile and a quick lift of her eyebrows, cried:
"I noticed that too."
"Then for the first time," said Rames, "we have something in common. You and I are probably the only people in the hall who noticed it. We have a bond of union."
"A strip of tattered blind!" said Cynthia.