"We ought to be in in about twenty minutes," he said. "Have you noticed that the tossing of the ship has almost stopped? The land protects us. How clear the town is growing! I wonder if you will remember any of your French, Helena? I almost wish I was like you, seeing a foreign country for the first time. Spence is the real _voyageur_ though. He's been all over the world for his paper." The vicar came up to them again, just as there was a general movement of the passengers towards the deck. A hooting cry from the steam whistle wailed over the water and the boat began to move slowly. In a few more minutes they had passed the breakwater and were gliding slowly past the wharves towards the landing-stage. Suddenly Helena clutched hold of Basil's arm. "O Basil," she whispered, "how beautiful--look! Guarding the harbour!" He turned and followed the direction of her glance. An enormous crucifix, more than life size, planted in the ground, rose from the low cliffs on the right for all entering the harbour to see. They watched the symbol in silence as the passengers chattered on every side and gathered up their rugs and hand-bags. Gortre slipped his arm through Helena's. The reminder was so vivid and sudden it affected them powerfully. They were both people of the world, living in it and enjoying the pleasures of life that came in their way. Gortre was not one of those narrow, and even ill-bred, young priests with a text for ever on his lips, a sort of inopportune concordance, with an unpleasant flavour of omniscience. His religion and Helena's was too deep and fibrous a thing for commonplaces about it. It did not continually effervesce within and break forth in minute and constant bubbles, losing all its sincerity and beauty by the vulgar wear and tear of a verbal trick. But it was always and for ever with him a transmuting force which changed his life each hour in a way of which the nominal believer has no conception. A letter he had once written to Helena during a holiday compressed all his belief, and his joy in his belief, into a few short lines. Thus had run the sincere and simple statement, unadorned by any effort of literary grace to give it point and force:-- "Day by day as your letters come I go on saying my prayers for you, and with you, in fresh faith and confidence. You know that I absolutely trust the Lord Jesus Christ, who is, I believe, the God who made the worlds, and that I pray to Him continually, relying on His promises.