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