of gold and rose faded out of the radius of the sun. As they went they startled seagulls whose strange behaviour attracted her attention.
“They’re catching toheroas,” said Dane. “They watch for the air bubbles, and then they bore into the sand. They have to be awfully smart, for even the little fellows suck down amazingly fast. Then they fly up and drop them, and if the first fall does not break the shell they take it up again. Let’s catch some. It will take you all your time to get a big one out.”
They sat down together and soon saw the little bubbles of a creature coming under the surface to breathe. She dug fast with her two hands as the shell-fish sucked away from her spitting as it went. She had quite a tussle to get it out.
“I wonder if it feels any fear,” he said.
“How queer it must be to have a blind instinct without consciousness.”
“Well, a vast number of the human race have little else. Except for physical pain they have no vivid sense that anything is going on about them. They are no more alive than that—why, it has gone already.”
“So it has.” She gazed at a little patch of heaving sand. “Yes, I know what you mean. Beauty everywhere, and no eyes to see it. That struck me as a child. I remember once two of my old aunts sat on the verandah one glorious spring morning and fought about whether Queen Victoria had ever really appreciated Prince Albert or not; they gorged on details of the Royal Family, and they got so furious about it that they did not speak to each other for a week afterwards. I listened to them for a whole hour. There was the lovely garden and beds of flowers just beside them. And that’s what they were doing! And I wondered why I was supposed to love and
