e and madame, the first mate, the twins,
Ramsey, and the committee of seven--who, we shall see, were not taking
discomfiture meekly--were scarlet threads in the story's swiftly weaving
fabric--cogent reasons, themselves, why these two ladies had helped vote
Ramsey to the seat next Hugh.

His face, Hugh's, was not easy reading. Certain shadows cast on it by
that part of his mind just then busiest were quite unintelligible.
Deciphered they would have meant a solemn joy for his broadening
accountability; an awesome anxiety and distressed eagerness to meet and
fill that accountability as fast as it broadened. He was just then
recalling one of Ramsey's queries of the evening before, when she had
seemed so much younger than now, and when, nevertheless, a germ of
fellowship had sprung up between them; that word of hers about "feeling
oneself widen out of oneself," etc. He did not at present feel himself
nearly so much as he felt things round about him growing and growing.

The _Votaress_ had grown, grown wonderfully, and the story happening,
the play being acted on her three decks at once, was neither story nor
play to him. Which fact was one of the few things the two gentle
students of his face made out to read. However, it quite rewarded them;
it went, itself, so well into the story.

And certainly, as even the Gilmores would have said, it is not when our
spiritual vision sees things at their completest values that _all_ the
world's a stage and its men and women _merely_ players. Nor is it at our
best that we discern our own story, as a story, while it happens. It is
a poor eye that sees itself. When Ramsey arrived at the table Hugh's
gaze was so big with the reality, not the romance, of things on all the
three decks that she had to laugh a little to keep her balance.

Yet her question was an earnest and eager one: "Is my brother better, or
is he worse?"

The toll of the bell on the deck above--to land, as we have said, near
Point Breeze--came like a spectral reply, invoking, as it did, new
trouble unknown to her though just beneath her feet.

"He's better not to be worse," said Hugh, and when she frowned
whimsically he explained: "His sickness is not quite the same as that on
the lower deck."

"How is it different?" she asked, unconsciously keeping the whole
company of the ladies' table on their feet. At the gentlemen's table,
just forward of them and tapering slenderly away in the long cabin's
white-and-gilt perspe