It isn't even a question, sometimes, of one's getting to the dock--one has to take a header and splash about in the water.

Call our having remained here together to-night, call the accident of my having put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my companion's track--for I grant you this as a practical result of our combination--call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off the deck, inevitable for each of us.

Why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable--and, above all, as not endangering life or limb?
We shan't drown, we shan't sink--at least I can answer for myself.

Mrs.
Verver too, moreover--do her the justice--visibly knows how to swim." He could easily go on, for she didn't interrupt him; Fanny felt now that she wouldn't have interrupted him for the world.

She found his eloquence precious; there was not a drop of it that she didn't, in a manner, catch, as it came, for immediate bottling, for future preservation.