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.