"Sounds a queer sort of story, the way they tell it," he observed, glancing at his companion. "Oh, I don't know," she replied. "Men have done this sort of thing before--but it isn't often," she went on, "that a man has done it for the sake of another man." He smiled. "You have the old-fashioned idea of man's devotion to woman. Can't you believe that there may be ties between two men stronger even than between a man and the woman he loves?" "I can believe that," she assented, "but the men must have something in common. I should find it hard to believe, for instance, that they existed between you and the man downstairs." He shrugged his shoulders very slightly. "You forget," he observed, "that a man does not look at his best after such an illness as Phillips has had. You find him, perhaps, a little insignificant. You are probably aware of his vocation and station in life." "I am." "And these things," he went on, "make it difficult for you to believe that there is any great tie between us two. Yet it is the exception which proves the rule, you know. I will not say that your patient has ever saved my life or performed any immortal action, yet believe me he has courage and a grit you would scarcely believe in, and I am speaking seriously when I tell you that not only I but others are under deep obligations to him." He rose to his feet with the air of one who has closed the subject. Katharine also threw off her rugs. "You are going to walk?" she asked. "Please take me with you. I don't know why, but I feel restless this evening." They paced side by side up and down the deck, pausing now and then to watch the destroyers and indulging in a very spasmodic conversation. At their fourth promenade, as they reached the stern extremity of their deck, the woman paused, and, holding to the railing with one hand, looked steadily back towards New York. The colour was fading slowly from the sky now, but it was still marvellously clear. "Are you homesick for what lies beneath those clouds?" he enquired lightly. She took no immediate account of his words. Her eyes were fixed upon one spot in that distant curtain of sky. Suddenly she pointed with her finger. "What's that?" she asked. "No, the mast's dipping now--you can't see. There--the other side." He followed her outstretched finger, and slowly his fine black eyebrows grew closer and closer together. Far away, at a certain spot in the clear evening sky, was a little speck of black, hidden every now and then by the mast of the ship as she rolled, but distinctly there all the time, a little smudge in an amber setting, too small for a cloud, yet a visible and tangible object. Katharine felt her companion's arm tighten upon hers, and she saw his face grow like a piece of marble. "It's a seaplane," he muttered, "coming from the New Jersey coast."