True, the clearness of channel--this channel in the upper air--was not absolute, but its obstacles nettled mostly the pilots. To Ramsey, even to Hugh, obstacles were almost welcome, as enabling them to show to a prying world that nothing beyond the grayest commonplace was occurring between them. One such interruption was the upcoming and passing of Mrs. Gilmore and the physician to the sick-room and the cub pilot's parting with them to join the younger pair. The boy found Hugh confessing that he should not know exactly how to word Phyllis's "free papers" but adding that the first clerk would be pleased to make them out at once if Ramsey's eagerness so dictated. It did, and presently the modest intruder was hurrying away on a double errand: to bear this confidential request to the clerk and then to seek the Brothers Ambrosia and with them and the two under-clerks arrange for the evening performance, the giving of which, however, Ramsey insisted, must depend on the captain's condition when evening should come. "Wish it were here now," she said as they watched the messenger go. "Don't you?" "I could," he replied, "but it will be here soon enough." The conversation which followed remained in their memory through years of separation. She spoke again in her new tone: "You think your father will get well, don't you?" "No, Ramsey." At those words her heart did two things at once: stopped on the first, rebounded on the second. But it fell again as he added: "I fear I must lose my father to-night." She stood mute, looking into his eyes and pondering every light and shadow of the severe young face that to her seemed so imperially unlike all others. "He's great," she said in her heart. "And he loves with his greatness. 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."