“Why not?” She spoke lightly, even a little teasingly. “It’s a sort of rough diamond, my talisman. Or”—her sunny look flashed in his face—“perhaps it’s adamant. Which is the most unyielding?” Then, with sudden gravity, “It’s a wonderful thing, the trust you make people feel. Nothing can shake it.” “I thought we were talking about talismans.” “It makes every difficult thing seem easy. And it makes every dangerous thing seem safe.” “Well, it’s the very last effect I intend to produce!” She swept his declaration aside. “Impossible to feel anything can go very wrong now that you’re here.” His face was so unmoved by this handsome tribute that she found herself venturing further. “I don’t know why I should pretend I don’t appreciate. I’ve been so afraid these last days—” He caught at that. “Afraid, were you?” “Afraid that one of us two would die before I had a chance to tell you.” Should she go on? She had meant to write—it was different saying it. “Tell me what?” “That I’ve got over minding your having opposed me so.” If she expected any outburst of joy on his part she was denied the spectacle. “I’ve come to understand such a lot of things on board this ship.” She waited an instant, but he leaned over the railing quite silent, staring down into the water. “Among other things,” she went on, “I see when I look back that you’ve always been the one to bring me strength. A feeling that I’d set my feet upon the rock—” “And it wasn’t rock, after all, what you set your feet on,” he said quietly. She tightened her hands on the railing, and something like veiled warning crept into the words: “You’ve made me feel _safer_, Louis, than any one else in the world. I owe you a great deal for that.” “Oh, _owe_!” He turned away impatiently. Not the sea-birds sweeping so low over the water that their white feather brooms raised a dust of silver in the sunlight; not the motley crew upon the ship half as clear to the girl’s vision as that little figure with the flags in his hat patroling a deserted street in the dawn. “One reason people depend on you so is, I suppose, because they see as I do, it isn’t only that you’re good to some particular one. You’d be good to anybody.” “Oh, would I!” “Just as you gave up your Fourth of July to be watchman for the neighbor’s boy.” “How did you get hold of that yarn?” “Barbara—” “Well, look here”—he moved his square shoulders uneasily, like one in an ill-fitting coat. “Look here, if you’re thinking of trying to make a hero out of me—it isn’t any earthly—” “Hero? Nonsense. We were talking about talismans,” she said, with recovered gaiety. “I haven’t brought along a machine of any sort, and I haven’t got a black cook. Not even a banjo! But I’ve got a friend!” she triumphed. “So I can’t be scared now any more than the rest of the wild adventurers.” “Then you were scared?” “Oh, here she is! Mrs. Locke! This is ‘the sort o’ watchman’ I was telling you about.”