n adroit distinction. Well, they are certainly the more objectionable
of the two,' said Knight.

'Is vanity a mortal or a venial sin? You know what life is: tell me.'

'I am very far from knowing what life is. A just conception of life is
too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through
it.'

'Will the fact of a woman being fond of jewellery be likely to make her
life, in its higher sense, a failure?'

'Nobody's life is altogether a failure.'

'Well, you know what I mean, even though my words are badly selected and
commonplace,' she said impatiently. 'Because I utter commonplace words,
you must not suppose I think only commonplace thoughts. My poor stock
of words are like a limited number of rough moulds I have to cast all my
materials in, good and bad; and the novelty or delicacy of the substance
is often lost in the coarse triteness of the form.'

'Very well; I'll believe that ingenious representation. As to the
subject in hand--lives which are failures--you need not trouble
yourself. Anybody's life may be just as romantic and strange and
interesting if he or she fails as if he or she succeed. All the
difference is, that the last chapter is wanting in the story. If a man
of power tries to do a great deed, and just falls short of it by an
accident not his fault, up to that time his history had as much in it as
that of a great man who has done his great deed. It is whimsical of the
world to hold that particulars of how a lad went to school and so on
should be as an interesting romance or as nothing to them, precisely in
proportion to his after renown.'

They were walking between the sunset and the moonrise. With the dropping
of the sun a nearly full moon had begun to raise itself. Their shadows,
as cast by the western glare, showed signs of becoming obliterated in
the interest of a rival pair in the opposite direction which the moon
was bringing to distinctness.

'I consider my life to some extent a failure,' said Knight again after a
pause, during which he had noticed the antagonistic shadows.

'You! How?'

'I don't precisely know. But in some way I have missed the mark.'

'Really? To have done it is not much to be sad about, but to feel that
you have done it must be a cause of sorrow. Am I right?'

'Partly, though not quite. For a sensation of being profoundly
experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are conscious
of having taken wrong turnings. Contradictory as it