this world as a whole; as one great multitudinous entity with a
stronger, higher claim on each mere part's sympathy, service, sacrifice,
than any mere part can ever hold on it.

In a word, Hugh Courteney, baby elephant, born tyrant, egotist--or
egoist, whichever it was--self-confessed egotist, stone-faced
egoist--with his big-wig airs and big-fiddle voice--was nearer right
than she would _ever_ submit to confess to him: there _were_ things
stronger than kin, bigger every way; and other things bigger than those
bigger things, and yet others still bigger than those, and so on and on
to the world's circumference. Staggering discovery. Yet how infinitely
old it looked the moment she clearly saw it: old, obvious, beautiful,
and ugly as the man in the moon. It chanced that right there and then
she was forced to accept its practical application. A white-jacket said
to her in a muffled voice:

"Ef you please--to not to move up to'a'ds de stage whilse de play
a-goin' on."

"Oh, but I must," she explained. "I'm on business; business that can't
wait any longer. I've already been delayed--" Her last word faltered.
Something occurring on the stage held her eyes, while two or three
auditors who had turned on her a glance of annoyance changed it to a
gaze of astonishment. The cub pilot came to her on tiptoe.

"Oh, Mr. So-and-so," she smilingly whispered as she edged on, "I want my
twin brothers. Mom-a wants them, right away, up-stairs."

He nodded at each word and began softly to say that this act would be
finished in a minute; but she broke in, still inching along: "I can't
wait a minute. I've no right to be this late. Basile wants the twins and
he's so sick that--that he can't, he mustn't wait."

"Missy," pleadingly whispered old Joy at their backs, "missy!" But
neither she nor the cub pilot could stop the messenger. Nor did she heed
the growing number of those seated all about her whose attention she
attracted, though now they were a dozen, a score, glancing, in a
suppressed flutter, from her to the stage and from the stage to her and
one another.

Yet she stopped. For on the stage, in the play, in the part that was to
have been hers, she beheld "Harriet" doing that part so well, and
winning such lively approval, that doing it better would have distorted
the play. Rouged and coifed to reduce her apparent age as much as
Ramsey's was to have been increased, she was at all points so like what
Ramsey would have been that the bu