"Let myself go? You use strange expressions."
"A man isn't responsible for what he says in here."
"You say that a second time! You know there was no other way; the only hope of getting Lanse home before the storm was to start at once."
"The storm—to be sure. I don't believe it ever storms in here."
She turned towards him. "You know I had to come."
"I know you thought so; you thought we should find Lanse sitting encamped on two cypress knees, with the wreck of his canoe for a seat. We should dawn upon him like comets. And he would say, 'How long you've been! It's precious damp in here, you know!'"
She turned impatiently towards the channel again.
"Don't demand too much, Margaret," he went on. "Jesting's safe, at any rate. Sympathy I haven't got—sympathy for this expedition of yours into this jungle at this time of night."
She had now recovered her composure. "So long as you paddle the boat, sympathy isn't necessary."
"Oh, I'll paddle! But I shall have to paddle forever, we shall never get out. We've come to an antediluvian forest—don't you see? a survival. But we sha'n't survive. They'll write our biographies; I was wondering the other day if there was any other kind of literature so completely composed of falsehoods, owing to half being kept back, as biographies; I decided that there was one other—autobiographies."