"Yes, that's a specimen of woman's daring," she said, with a
self-scornful curl of the lip, which presently softened into a wistful
smile. "How lovely it all is!" she sighed.

"Yes, there's nothing better in all the world than a sail. It is all the
world while it lasts. A boat's like your own fireside for snugness."

A dreamier light came into her eye, which wandered, with a turn of the
head giving him the tender curve of her cheek, over the levels of the
bay, roughened everywhere by the breeze, but yellowish green in the
channels and dark with the thick growth of eel-grass in the shallows;
then she lifted her face to the pale blue heavens in an effort that
slanted towards him the soft round of her chin, and showed her full
throat.

"This is the kind of afternoon," she said, still looking at the sky,
"that you think will never end."

"I wish it would n't," he answered.

She lowered her eyes to his, and asked: "Do you have times when you are
sorry that you ever tried to do anything--when it seems foolish to have
tried?"

"I have the other kind of times,--when I wish that I had tried to do
something."

"Oh yes, I have those, too. It's wholesome to be ashamed of not having
tried to do anything; but to be ashamed of having tried--it's like
death. There seems no recovery from that."

He did not take advantage of her confession, or try to tempt her to
further confidence; and women like men who have this wisdom, or this
instinctive generosity, and trust them further.

"And the worst of it is that you can't go back and be like those that
have never tried at all. If you could, that would be some consolation
for having failed. There is nothing left of you but your mistake."

"Well," he said, "some people are not even mistakes. I suppose that
almost any sort of success looks a good deal like failure from the
inside. It must be a poor creature that comes up to his own mark. The
best way is not to have any mark, and then you're in no danger of not
coming up to it." He laughed, but she smiled sadly.

"You don't believe in thinking about yourself," she said.

"Oh, I try a little introspection, now and then. But I soon get through:
there isn't much of me to think about."

"No, don't talk in that way," she pleaded, and she was very charming
in her earnestness: it was there that her charm lay. "I want you to be
serious with me, and tell me--tell me how men feel when."--

A sudden splashing startled her, and looking ro