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 round she saw a multitude of
curious, great-eyed, black heads, something like the heads of boys, and
something like the heads of dogs, thrusting from the water, and flashing
under it again at sight of them with a swish that sent the spray into the
air. She sprang to her feet. "Oh, look at those things! Look at them!
Look at them!" She laid vehement hands upon the young man, and pushed him
in the direction in which she wished him to look, at some risk of pushing
him overboard, while he laughed at her ecstasy.

"They're seals. The bay's full of them. Did you never see them on the
reef at Jocelyn's?"