No doubt if she had not been here we should have been off with Dalfin at once with light hearts.
"Then I do stay you," she said, catching my meaning.
Whereon it came to me that I had better say what I meant outright.
"We need no better reason for staying.

That we have you to care for is good, and in that care is more honour to us than we might win in fighting in a quarrel which is not ours." "Little honour can you win here, Malcolm," she said half sadly, and yet smiling.

"Yet I know what you mean, and I thank you both." Now, a thought which had been growing up in my heart for these many days came to the surface, as it were, and I had almost spoken it.

I knew that if this charge were taken from me I should be lonely indeed, and that it were honour enough for me to care for and guard Gerda through all my life as the one thing that I could care for.

I think that it would have been strange if this had not come to me in these long hours of companionship with her, seeing what she was in all respects, whether as she stood here on the windy shore with her fair hair tossed by the sea breeze, fair and full of health and life, or as I had seen her on the decks of the doomed ship, brave and steadfast, with the cruel terror of the pirates on her.
But here and now I could say nothing of this that was so near to me.