“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.
“We shall be on our way in a few minutes,” he said, agreeably. “I hope this young lady has not suffered any alarm.”
Helen showed him a face on which anything was written rather than fear.
“The port shaft broke off somewhere near the truss-block at the mouth of the sleeve of the shaft, and the outer end of the shaft and the propeller dropped to the bottom of the sea. It's quite inexplicable, but I find in my experience that inexplicable things frequently happen. We shall finish our run with the starboard shaft only, and shall be obliged to reduce our speed to an average of three hundred and sixty knots daily.”