"It's a word you are not accustomed to employing," she answered.
His study of her face was brief yet comprehensive.
"You think so?"
"I know it. It took you a long while to say it without hesitating. And it does not—well, harmonize with other things that you say."
"All right; I'll quit it, Miss Chalmers."
"You helped me out of a rather bad situation a little while ago," she said slowly.
She wanted to thank him, yet felt instinctively that he did not wish to be thanked.
"Well, I got you into it; that was why."
"Yet if I had left your island alone I would undoubtedly have been caught in the same storm."
"Oh, perhaps!"