ness. Loves even his father that way; not as I love mine or love
anybody, or ever shall or can, or could wish to, unless I were a man and
as great as him--he. I never could have dreamt of any one loving me that
way, but if any ever should I'd worship him." Suddenly her sympathy rose
high.

"Oh, why not just think to yourself: 'He _will_ live'?"

"Why should I? Should I be fit to live myself if I were not true to
myself?"

"You are! You always are!"

"No one can be who isn't truthful to himself."

Ramsey gazed again. A sense of his suffering benumbed her, and for
relief she asked: "Is that why you don't wish it were evening, when
really you do?"

He smiled. "I can't wish the sun to get out of my way. That's what it
would mean, isn't it?"

She fell to thinking what it meant. All at once she pointed: "That's the
First Chickasaw Bluff.... Yes, I s'pose it does mean that.... It's
terrible how thoughtless I am."

"It doesn't terrify me. I promise you it never shall."

Was he making game of her? She narrowed her lids and looked at him
sidewise. No, plainly he was not; so plainly that she took refuge in
another question. "Don't you like night better than day sometimes?"

"I do, often."

"Why?"

"For one thing, we can see so much farther."

"Oh, ridiculous! we can't see nearly so far!"

"We can see so much farther and wider, deeper, clearer. The day blinds
us. Spoils our sense of proportion. At night we see more of what
creation really is. Our sun becomes one little star among thousands of
greater ones, and we are humbled into a reasonableness which is very
hard not to lose in the bewilderments of daylight."

Ramsey sank to the arm of a chair, but when he remained standing she
stood again. "Wasn't you saying something like that the evening we left
New Orleans?" she asked.

"To my father, yes. I couldn't have said it in daylight then. I couldn't
say it in daylight now to any one but you, Ramsey."

Her heart leaped again. Her eyes looked straight into his; could not
look away. He spoke on:

"You're a kind of evening to me, yourself; evening star."

Her bosom pounded. She glanced up behind to the pilots. Watson had the
wheel. As she strenuously pushed back her curls she felt her temples
burn. She could have cried aloud for Hugh to cease, yet was mad for him
to go on.

And so he did. "You are my evening star in this nightfall of affliction.
I tell you so not in weakness but in strength and in defiance: in