responsively. Yet her tremor was piteous
and in mute thought she said again, at high speed:

"My brother, oh, my brother! I'll be back in a minute. This ain't for my
own silly self, you know, honey. It's for them that need it; for all the
people, up stairs and down, and for--for the boat!--as any of
her--owners--would do for any of our boats. You said you wished _you_
could do some fine thing for somebody--in a fire--or explosion, and this
is just as awful only not so sudden, and I'm doing this in your place,
honey boy; yes, I am, this is just as if you did it yourself!"

The applause was still summoning her as she ended. A hand, probably Mrs.
Gilmore's, had tried the locked door. From the lower deck leaked up the
sad "peck, peck" of the carpenter driving his nails, and close outside
the door sounded sharp footsteps and the mingled voices of the pilot's
cub and the actor calling with suppressed vehemence to one of the
pantrymen: "Here, boy! Here! Go below like a shot and tell 'Chips' to
stop that pounding this instant! He can saw if he must but he mustn't
hammer!"

Then as if carried there by some force not her own she found herself
again in the bewildering sheen of the footlights, smiling merrily to the
hushed, half-seen assemblage, and suddenly aware of every throb of the
_Votaress's_ bosom, every fall of her winged feet, every tinkle of her
cabin's candelabra, and, most vivid of all, horribly out of time with
all, the still insistent "rap, tap, tap" of the carpenter's hammer.

At the same time, unconfessedly, the eager audience took note of quite
another group of facts, emphasized by the appearance of Hugh in a back
row of seats, by the presence of Hayle's twins in the dusk of the front
row, with war even in the back of their heads, and by the illuminated
form of the singer just drawing a last breath of preparation to exhale
it in melody. Hardly in the gathering was there one who had not by this
time learned the whole state of affairs between all Hayles, all
Courteneys, and all those others whom its schemings, aggressions,
discomfitures, tirades, and prophetic threats had entangled with them.
Every one thought he knew precisely both Hugh's and Ramsey's varied
relations to each and all those persons, his and her effects upon them,
and his and her ludicrously dissimilar ways of getting those effects.
They knew this warfare was still on and was here before them now. In
every phase of it in which Ramsey had taken par