nd 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."

On both sides of them now the trees were, in girth, enormous; the red
light, gleaming out fitfully, did not seem to belong to them or to their
torches, but to be an independent glow, coming from no one knew where.

"If we had the grace to have any imagination left in this bicycle
century of ours," remarked Winthrop, "we should certainly be expecting
to see some mammoth water creature, fifty feet long, lifting a flabby
head here. For my own part, I am afraid my imagination, never very
brilliant, is defunct; the most I can do is to think of the thousands of
snakes there must be, squirming about under all this water,--not
prehistoric at all, nor mammoths, but just nice natural every-day little
moccasins, say about seven feet long."

Margaret shuddered.

He stopped his banter, his voice changed. "Do let me take you home," he
urged. "You're tired out; give this thing up."

"I am not tired."

"You have been tired to the verge of death for months!"

"You know nothing about that," she said, coldly.

"Yes, I do. I have seen your face, and I know its expressions now; I
didn't at first, but now I do. There's no use in your trying to deceive
me Margaret, I know what your life is; remember, Lanse told m