expect," answered Mallory.

"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily. "Do
you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get
myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the
world to get me out of it."

She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so
pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.

"Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to
just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure--quite,
quite sure--that there will be someone at hand, even if it's only
me"--quaintly.

"The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a
difficulty," she protested.

"I think I should always know if you were in trouble," he said quietly.

There was a new quality in the familiar lazy drawl--something that was
very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word
"you," yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an
emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just
uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.

"Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in
the quicksands," she answered.

"I should come," he said deliberately, "whether you wanted me to come