Chalmers Payne strode around the after-cabin, and then ran to the spot where he had left Helen Curtis. She was still there. She sat up and put both her hands in his. “I knew you'd be here as soon as you could, so I didn't move! I didn't want to put you to the trouble to look for me!” He held her hands hard. “I don't think it is much of anything,” he said. “It can't be. There's no smell of fire. The sea is not heavy. At the very worst--” “Be sure, won't you, that we're not separated? One of us might be put in one boat and one in another, you know, if it should really be--be fire or something. Then, if a storm came up and--” People were running with vague rumors. They called out this and that alarm. It was possible to feel the panic gathering. “Remember,” Helen Curtis whispered, “whatever comes, that we belong together.” “We do!” he acquiesced, saying the words between his teeth. “I have known it a long time. But you--” “Oh, so have I! But what made you so sure? What was there about your home and your work and yourself to make you so perfectly sure I would be interested in them all my life? You didn't lay out any scheme for me at all, or act as if you thought I had any dreams or aspirations. I was to come and observe you become distinguished--I was to watch what you could do! Oh, Chalmers, I was willing, but what made you so sure?” “Then you loved me? You loved me?” She looked white and scared, and he could feel her hands chill and tremble. “How ready you are to use that word! I'm afraid of it. I always said I wouldn't speak it till I _had_ to. It frightens me--it means so much. If I said it to you I could never say it to any one else, no matter how--” “Not on any account! Say it, Helen!” “I wish to explain. I--I couldn't stand the aimlessness of life after you left. I began to suspect that it was you who made everything so interesting. I wasn't so enamoured with the ancients as I thought I was; but I was enamoured with your contemplation of my pose. Oh, I've been dissecting myself! Should I really have cared so much for Lucerne and Nuremberg if you hadn't been with me? I concluded that I should not. Well, said I to myself, if he can make the Old World so fascinating, can he not do something for the New World, too?” An alarmist rushed by. “They are going to lower the boats!” he cried. “Better get your valuables together.” “There's a panic in the steerage,” another cried. “Oh, Helen! Go on. Don't let anything interrupt you.” “I won't. I realize that you ought to be told that I love you. I do. I love you. I'm twenty-three, and I never said the words to any one else, even though I'm an American girl. And I'll never speak them to any one but you. I'm sure of it now. But I wouldn't say it till I was quite, quite sure.” The captain came pacing down the deck leisurely. He lifted his hat as he passed Payne and Miss Curtis.