"Well, there was nothing at all before," said Captain Rames, and he suddenly turned back to his seat. For the tall, gaunt man was on his legs.
Cynthia neither heard his name nor followed his speech with any particular attention. It was indeed difficult to follow. He was an old hack of the platform with all the sounding phrases at the tip of his tongue. Rolling sentences, of the copybook, flowed out of him; declamations too vague to be understood were delivered with the vigor of a prophet. But he interspersed them with the familiar clichés of the day and each one received its salvo of applause. To Cynthia he was a man not so much stupid as out of place. She could imagine him at the head of a cavalry squadron. Here he seemed simply grotesque.
On the other hand, Captain Rames did not; and the contrast between the two men bent her to consider whether, after all, she had not been wrong in her condemnation of his new career. She was in the mood to admit it; and when the meeting broke up and the crowd was pouring through the doors into the street, and those upon the platform were descending its steps, she found herself alone for a second on the rostrum with Harry Rames.
"Perhaps I was wrong," she said. "I remember what you told me of Mr. Smale. A vivid gift of phrase--he thought that necessary. You have it."
"On the platform--yes. But the platform's not the House," said Rames. "Smale told me that too. I have yet to see whether I shall carry the House."
"Yet those last words," said Cynthia--"about the city and the continuity of its life and your pride to have a little share in it. Oh, that was finely done."
And upon Rames's face there came a grin.
"Yes, I thought that would fetch 'em," he said.
Cynthia stepped back. Once again it occurred to Rames, as it had done on the night of their first meeting at the Admiralty, that just so would she look if he struck her a blow.
"Then--then--the city is still a polling-booth," she stammered.