"Yes, because you are not modern at all. Oh, Jim, it is a great puzzle! Supposing every girl had to feel that there was absolutely only one man in the world for her, and supposing every man had to feel that here, and here alone was his destiny, before he married, do you think we should have an increase of the marriage returns? I am afraid not. And people being what they are, do you think that this celibacy would have a good effect on morals? It is no use advocating counsels of perfection when you are dealing with the human race and its obvious imperfections. At least, that, I suppose, may eventually come; but for practical purposes the highest motive does not always secure such good results as a lower one." "So you advised her to marry him," said Jim slowly. "No, I advised her not to. All the excellent reasons which I have given you why she should marry him were present in my mind; I even told them her. But at the back of my mind--mind or soul, call it what you will--there was a great 'but.' I dare say it was unreasonable; it was certainly not clear to me what it was. But whatever it was, it said 'No.' It wanted me not to impose what I called my experience of the world on a girl. After all, what does one's experience amount to? The recollection of one's mistakes." She spoke the last words more to herself than him as she leaned back in her low chair, her violet-coloured eyes looking "out and beyond," focused, not by the limit of her vision, but that of her thoughts. Quick, uneven breaths disturbed the slow rise and fall of her bosom, and the rose she had fastened in her dress shed half its fragrant petals on her lap. And because he was a man, he looked at her with kindled eye; and because he was a man who loved her, his blood also was kindled. More than ever before he knew how idle had been his flight from her; the _cælum non animum_ suddenly leaped in his mind from the dingy ranks of truisms to the austere array of the things that are true. He drew his chair a little closer to hers and laid his hand on its arm. "Your mistakes, Marie?" he said. It took her an appreciable fraction of time to recall herself, and realize what was meant by his burning look; but it took her no time at all, when once she had realized that, to answer him. "Yes, one's mistakes," she said--"all the occasions on which one has failed to grasp the true import of what one was doing, and, in particular, all the mistakes one has seen other people making and their consequences. I always think that one's experience means much more what one has observed in other people than what one has done one's self. Of course, all observation passes through the crucible of one's personality, whether one observes things in one's self or other people, and that certainly transforms it, crystallizes it, what you will. But if one has a grain of imagination, other people's experiences are as vivid to one's self as one's own, and as potentially profitable. Don't you think so?"