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!”