The two ladies glanced about as if listlessly noting the cabin's lavish arabesques and gilding, while each really studied and knew the other was studying the captain's son. For this tale which we tell, they saw. It was "a-happmin'" before their eyes and, in degree, to themselves. Hugh and his father, the commodore 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."