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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Roderick Hudson
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #176]
+Last Updated: September 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODERICK HUDSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+RODERICK HUDSON
+
+by Henry James
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.    Rowland
+     II.   Roderick
+     III.  Rome
+     IV.   Experience
+     V.    Christina
+     VI.   Frascati
+     VII.  St. Cecilia’s
+     VIII. Provocation
+     IX.   Mary Garland
+     X.    The Cavaliere
+     XI.   Mrs. Hudson
+     XII.  The Princess Casamassima
+     XIII. Switzerland
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. Rowland
+
+Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first
+of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he
+determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of
+his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell
+might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently
+preferred by this lady. It was not that the young man disliked her; on
+the contrary, he regarded her with a tender admiration, and he had not
+forgotten how, when his cousin had brought her home on her marriage, he
+had seemed to feel the upward sweep of the empty bough from which the
+golden fruit had been plucked, and had then and there accepted the
+prospect of bachelorhood. The truth was, that, as it will be part of
+the entertainment of this narrative to exhibit, Rowland Mallet had an
+uncomfortably sensitive conscience, and that, in spite of the seeming
+paradox, his visits to Cecilia were rare because she and her misfortunes
+were often uppermost in it. Her misfortunes were three in number: first,
+she had lost her husband; second, she had lost her money (or the
+greater part of it); and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts.
+Mallet’s compassion was really wasted, because Cecilia was a very clever
+woman, and a most skillful counter-plotter to adversity. She had made
+herself a charming home, her economies were not obtrusive, and there
+was always a cheerful flutter in the folds of her crape. It was the
+consciousness of all this that puzzled Mallet whenever he felt tempted
+to put in his oar. He had money and he had time, but he never could
+decide just how to place these gifts gracefully at Cecilia’s service.
+He no longer felt like marrying her: in these eight years that fancy had
+died a natural death. And yet her extreme cleverness seemed somehow to
+make charity difficult and patronage impossible. He would rather chop
+off his hand than offer her a check, a piece of useful furniture, or
+a black silk dress; and yet there was some sadness in seeing such a
+bright, proud woman living in such a small, dull way. Cecilia had,
+moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty
+feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a lurking
+scratch in it. Rowland remembered that, for him, she was all smiles, and
+suspected, awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of
+the irony of things. And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his
+opportunities, what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of
+his uselessness. Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was
+personally giving her little girl the education of a princess.
+
+This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way
+of activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe
+and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the
+early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination
+of floral perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half
+hostess, doing the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening,
+was a phenomenon to which the young man’s imagination was able to do
+ample justice. Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was
+almost joyous. She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was
+a private reason for it--a reason quite distinct from her pleasure in
+receiving her honored kinsman. The next day he flattered himself he was
+on the way to discover it.
+
+For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch, while
+Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying
+her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia
+insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself.
+
+“What is it you mean to do in Europe?” she asked, lightly, giving a
+turn to the frill of her sleeve--just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to
+bring out all the latent difficulties of the question.
+
+“Why, very much what I do here,” he answered. “No great harm.”
+
+“Is it true,” Cecilia asked, “that here you do no great harm? Is not a
+man like you doing harm when he is not doing positive good?”
+
+“Your compliment is ambiguous,” said Rowland.
+
+“No,” answered the widow, “you know what I think of you. You have a
+particular aptitude for beneficence. You have it in the first place in
+your character. You are a benevolent person. Ask Bessie if you don’t
+hold her more gently and comfortably than any of her other admirers.”
+
+“He holds me more comfortably than Mr. Hudson,” Bessie declared,
+roundly.
+
+Rowland, not knowing Mr. Hudson, could but half appreciate the eulogy,
+and Cecilia went on to develop her idea. “Your circumstances, in
+the second place, suggest the idea of social usefulness. You are
+intelligent, you are well-informed, and your charity, if one may call it
+charity, would be discriminating. You are rich and unoccupied, so that
+it might be abundant. Therefore, I say, you are a person to do something
+on a large scale. Bestir yourself, dear Rowland, or we may be taught to
+think that virtue herself is setting a bad example.”
+
+“Heaven forbid,” cried Rowland, “that I should set the examples of
+virtue! I am quite willing to follow them, however, and if I don’t
+do something on the grand scale, it is that my genius is altogether
+imitative, and that I have not recently encountered any very striking
+models of grandeur. Pray, what shall I do? Found an orphan asylum, or
+build a dormitory for Harvard College? I am not rich enough to do either
+in an ideally handsome way, and I confess that, yet awhile, I feel
+too young to strike my grand coup. I am holding myself ready for
+inspiration. I am waiting till something takes my fancy irresistibly. If
+inspiration comes at forty, it will be a hundred pities to have tied up
+my money-bag at thirty.”
+
+“Well, I give you till forty,” said Cecilia. “It ‘s only a word to
+the wise, a notification that you are expected not to run your course
+without having done something handsome for your fellow-men.”
+
+Nine o’clock sounded, and Bessie, with each stroke, courted a closer
+embrace. But a single winged word from her mother overleaped her
+successive intrenchments. She turned and kissed her cousin, and
+deposited an irrepressible tear on his moustache. Then she went and
+said her prayers to her mother: it was evident she was being admirably
+brought up. Rowland, with the permission of his hostess, lighted a cigar
+and puffed it awhile in silence. Cecilia’s interest in his career seemed
+very agreeable. That Mallet was without vanity I by no means intend to
+affirm; but there had been times when, seeing him accept, hardly less
+deferentially, advice even more peremptory than the widow’s, you
+might have asked yourself what had become of his vanity. Now, in the
+sweet-smelling starlight, he felt gently wooed to egotism. There was a
+project connected with his going abroad which it was on his tongue’s end
+to communicate. It had no relation to hospitals or dormitories, and yet
+it would have sounded very generous. But it was not because it would
+have sounded generous that poor Mallet at last puffed it away in
+the fumes of his cigar. Useful though it might be, it expressed most
+imperfectly the young man’s own personal conception of usefulness. He
+was extremely fond of all the arts, and he had an almost passionate
+enjoyment of pictures. He had seen many, and he judged them sagaciously.
+It had occurred to him some time before that it would be the work of a
+good citizen to go abroad and with all expedition and secrecy purchase
+certain valuable specimens of the Dutch and Italian schools as to which
+he had received private proposals, and then present his treasures out of
+hand to an American city, not unknown to aesthetic fame, in which at
+that time there prevailed a good deal of fruitless aspiration toward an
+art-museum. He had seen himself in imagination, more than once, in
+some mouldy old saloon of a Florentine palace, turning toward the deep
+embrasure of the window some scarcely-faded Ghirlandaio or Botticelli,
+while a host in reduced circumstances pointed out the lovely drawing
+of a hand. But he imparted none of these visions to Cecilia, and he
+suddenly swept them away with the declaration that he was of course an
+idle, useless creature, and that he would probably be even more so in
+Europe than at home. “The only thing is,” he said, “that there I shall
+seem to be doing something. I shall be better entertained, and shall be
+therefore, I suppose, in a better humor with life. You may say that that
+is just the humor a useless man should keep out of. He should cultivate
+discontentment. I did a good many things when I was in Europe before,
+but I did not spend a winter in Rome. Every one assures me that this is
+a peculiar refinement of bliss; most people talk about Rome in the same
+way. It is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing: a passive
+life in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality of one’s impressions,
+takes on a very respectable likeness to activity. It is still
+lotus-eating, only you sit down at table, and the lotuses are served up
+on rococo china. It ‘s all very well, but I have a distinct prevision of
+this--that if Roman life does n’t do something substantial to make you
+happier, it increases tenfold your liability to moral misery. It seems
+to me a rash thing for a sensitive soul deliberately to cultivate its
+sensibilities by rambling too often among the ruins of the Palatine, or
+riding too often in the shadow of the aqueducts. In such recreations the
+chords of feeling grow tense, and after-life, to spare your intellectual
+nerves, must play upon them with a touch as dainty as the tread of
+Mignon when she danced her egg-dance.”
+
+“I should have said, my dear Rowland,” said Cecilia, with a laugh, “that
+your nerves were tough, that your eggs were hard!”
+
+“That being stupid, you mean, I might be happy? Upon my word I am not.
+I am clever enough to want more than I ‘ve got. I am tired of myself, my
+own thoughts, my own affairs, my own eternal company. True happiness,
+we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not
+only to get out--you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some
+absorbing errand. Unfortunately, I ‘ve got no errand, and nobody will
+trust me with one. I want to care for something, or for some one. And I
+want to care with a certain ardor; even, if you can believe it, with
+a certain passion. I can’t just now feel ardent and passionate about a
+hospital or a dormitory. Do you know I sometimes think that I ‘m a man
+of genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of
+expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend
+my days groping for the latch of a closed door.”
+
+“What an immense number of words,” said Cecilia after a pause, “to say
+you want to fall in love! I ‘ve no doubt you have as good a genius for
+that as any one, if you would only trust it.”
+
+“Of course I ‘ve thought of that, and I assure you I hold myself ready.
+But, evidently, I ‘m not inflammable. Is there in Northampton some
+perfect epitome of the graces?”
+
+“Of the graces?” said Cecilia, raising her eyebrows and suppressing too
+distinct a consciousness of being herself a rosy embodiment of several.
+“The household virtues are better represented. There are some excellent
+girls, and there are two or three very pretty ones. I will have them
+here, one by one, to tea, if you like.”
+
+“I should particularly like it; especially as I should give you a chance
+to see, by the profundity of my attention, that if I am not happy, it ‘s
+not for want of taking pains.”
+
+Cecilia was silent a moment; and then, “On the whole,” she resumed, “I
+don’t think there are any worth asking. There are none so very pretty,
+none so very pleasing.”
+
+“Are you very sure?” asked the young man, rising and throwing away his
+cigar-end.
+
+“Upon my word,” cried Cecilia, “one would suppose I wished to keep
+you for myself. Of course I am sure! But as the penalty of your
+insinuations, I shall invite the plainest and prosiest damsel that can
+be found, and leave you alone with her.”
+
+Rowland smiled. “Even against her,” he said, “I should be sorry to
+conclude until I had given her my respectful attention.”
+
+This little profession of ideal chivalry (which closed the conversation)
+was not quite so fanciful on Mallet’s lips as it would have been on
+those of many another man; as a rapid glance at his antecedents may help
+to make the reader perceive. His life had been a singular mixture of the
+rough and the smooth. He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had
+been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life
+than of its privileges and pleasures. His progenitors had submitted in
+the matter of dogmatic theology to the relaxing influences of recent
+years; but if Rowland’s youthful consciousness was not chilled by the
+menace of long punishment for brief transgression, he had at least been
+made to feel that there ran through all things a strain of right and of
+wrong, as different, after all, in their complexions, as the texture, to
+the spiritual sense, of Sundays and week-days. His father was a chip of
+the primal Puritan block, a man with an icy smile and a stony frown. He
+had always bestowed on his son, on principle, more frowns than smiles,
+and if the lad had not been turned to stone himself, it was because
+nature had blessed him, inwardly, with a well of vivifying waters. Mrs.
+Mallet had been a Miss Rowland, the daughter of a retired sea-captain,
+once famous on the ships that sailed from Salem and Newburyport. He
+had brought to port many a cargo which crowned the edifice of fortunes
+already almost colossal, but he had also done a little sagacious trading
+on his own account, and he was able to retire, prematurely for so
+sea-worthy a maritime organism, upon a pension of his own providing. He
+was to be seen for a year on the Salem wharves, smoking the best tobacco
+and eying the seaward horizon with an inveteracy which superficial
+minds interpreted as a sign of repentance. At last, one evening, he
+disappeared beneath it, as he had often done before; this time,
+however, not as a commissioned navigator, but simply as an amateur of an
+observing turn likely to prove oppressive to the officer in command of
+the vessel. Five months later his place at home knew him again, and made
+the acquaintance also of a handsome, blonde young woman, of redundant
+contours, speaking a foreign tongue. The foreign tongue proved, after
+much conflicting research, to be the idiom of Amsterdam, and the young
+woman, which was stranger still, to be Captain Rowland’s wife. Why
+he had gone forth so suddenly across the seas to marry her, what had
+happened between them before, and whether--though it was of questionable
+propriety for a good citizen to espouse a young person of mysterious
+origin, who did her hair in fantastically elaborate plaits, and in whose
+appearance “figure” enjoyed such striking predominance--he would
+not have had a heavy weight on his conscience if he had remained an
+irresponsible bachelor; these questions and many others, bearing with
+varying degrees of immediacy on the subject, were much propounded but
+scantily answered, and this history need not be charged with resolving
+them. Mrs. Rowland, for so handsome a woman, proved a tranquil neighbor
+and an excellent housewife. Her extremely fresh complexion, however, was
+always suffused with an air of apathetic homesickness, and she played
+her part in American society chiefly by having the little squares of
+brick pavement in front of her dwelling scoured and polished as nearly
+as possible into the likeness of Dutch tiles. Rowland Mallet remembered
+having seen her, as a child--an immensely stout, white-faced lady,
+wearing a high cap of very stiff tulle, speaking English with a
+formidable accent, and suffering from dropsy. Captain Rowland was a
+little bronzed and wizened man, with eccentric opinions. He advocated
+the creation of a public promenade along the sea, with arbors and little
+green tables for the consumption of beer, and a platform, surrounded by
+Chinese lanterns, for dancing. He especially desired the town library
+to be opened on Sundays, though, as he never entered it on week-days,
+it was easy to turn the proposition into ridicule. If, therefore, Mrs.
+Mallet was a woman of an exquisite moral tone, it was not that she had
+inherited her temper from an ancestry with a turn for casuistry.
+Jonas Mallet, at the time of his marriage, was conducting with silent
+shrewdness a small, unpromising business. Both his shrewdness and his
+silence increased with his years, and at the close of his life he was an
+extremely well-dressed, well-brushed gentleman, with a frigid gray eye,
+who said little to anybody, but of whom everybody said that he had
+a very handsome fortune. He was not a sentimental father, and the
+roughness I just now spoke of in Rowland’s life dated from his early
+boyhood. Mr. Mallet, whenever he looked at his son, felt extreme
+compunction at having made a fortune. He remembered that the fruit had
+not dropped ripe from the tree into his own mouth, and determined it
+should be no fault of his if the boy was corrupted by luxury. Rowland,
+therefore, except for a good deal of expensive instruction in foreign
+tongues and abstruse sciences, received the education of a poor man’s
+son. His fare was plain, his temper familiar with the discipline of
+patched trousers, and his habits marked by an exaggerated simplicity
+which it really cost a good deal of money to preserve unbroken. He was
+kept in the country for months together, in the midst of servants who
+had strict injunctions to see that he suffered no serious harm, but
+were as strictly forbidden to wait upon him. As no school could be found
+conducted on principles sufficiently rigorous, he was attended at home
+by a master who set a high price on the understanding that he was to
+illustrate the beauty of abstinence not only by precept but by example.
+Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly, during his
+younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy who had inherited
+nothing whatever that was to make life easy. He was passive,
+pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of
+trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of
+the fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his
+measurement around the waist, when he was about ten years old, quite
+alarmingly large. This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he
+became afterwards a fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was never
+accused of anything worse than a tendency to corpulence. He emerged from
+childhood a simple, wholesome, round-eyed lad, with no suspicion that a
+less roundabout course might have been taken to make him happy, but with
+a vague sense that his young experience was not a fair sample of human
+freedom, and that he was to make a great many discoveries. When he was
+about fifteen, he achieved a momentous one. He ascertained that his
+mother was a saint. She had always been a very distinct presence in his
+life, but so ineffably gentle a one that his sense was fully opened to
+it only by the danger of losing her. She had an illness which for many
+months was liable at any moment to terminate fatally, and during her
+long-arrested convalescence she removed the mask which she had worn for
+years by her husband’s order. Rowland spent his days at her side and
+felt before long as if he had made a new friend. All his impressions at
+this period were commented and interpreted at leisure in the future, and
+it was only then that he understood that his mother had been for fifteen
+years a perfectly unhappy woman. Her marriage had been an immitigable
+error which she had spent her life in trying to look straight in the
+face. She found nothing to oppose to her husband’s will of steel but the
+appearance of absolute compliance; her spirit sank, and she lived for
+a while in a sort of helpless moral torpor. But at last, as her child
+emerged from babyhood, she began to feel a certain charm in patience, to
+discover the uses of ingenuity, and to learn that, somehow or other, one
+can always arrange one’s life. She cultivated from this time forward a
+little private plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded precinct
+that, before her death, she gave her son the key. Rowland’s allowance at
+college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and as soon as
+he graduated, he was taken into his father’s counting-house, to do small
+drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living
+as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office.
+Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was
+known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his
+son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local
+charities. Rowland’s third was an easy competence, and he never felt
+a moment’s jealousy of his fellow-pensioners; but when one of the
+establishments which had figured most advantageously in his father’s
+will bethought itself to affirm the existence of a later instrument, in
+which it had been still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a
+sudden passionate need to repel the claim by process of law. There was a
+lively tussle, but he gained his case; immediately after which he made,
+in another quarter, a donation of the contested sum. He cared nothing
+for the money, but he had felt an angry desire to protest against a
+destiny which seemed determined to be exclusively salutary. It seemed to
+him that he would bear a little spoiling. And yet he treated himself
+to a very modest quantity, and submitted without reserve to the great
+national discipline which began in 1861. When the Civil War broke out he
+immediately obtained a commission, and did his duty for three long years
+as a citizen soldier. His duty was obscure, but he never lost a certain
+private satisfaction in remembering that on two or three occasions
+it had been performed with something of an ideal precision. He had
+disentangled himself from business, and after the war he felt a profound
+disinclination to tie the knot again. He had no desire to make money,
+he had money enough; and although he knew, and was frequently reminded,
+that a young man is the better for a fixed occupation, he could discover
+no moral advantage in driving a lucrative trade. Yet few young men of
+means and leisure ever made less of a parade of idleness, and indeed
+idleness in any degree could hardly be laid at the door of a young
+man who took life in the serious, attentive, reasoning fashion of
+our friend. It often seemed to Mallet that he wholly lacked the prime
+requisite of a graceful flaneur--the simple, sensuous, confident relish
+of pleasure. He had frequent fits of extreme melancholy, in which he
+declared that he was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. He was
+neither an irresponsibly contemplative nature nor a sturdily practical
+one, and he was forever looking in vain for the uses of the things
+that please and the charm of the things that sustain. He was an awkward
+mixture of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity,
+and yet he would have made a most ineffective reformer and a very
+indifferent artist. It seemed to him that the glow of happiness must be
+found either in action, of some immensely solid kind, on behalf of
+an idea, or in producing a masterpiece in one of the arts. Oftenest,
+perhaps, he wished he were a vigorous young man of genius, without a
+penny. As it was, he could only buy pictures, and not paint them; and
+in the way of action, he had to content himself with making a rule to
+render scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples of it in others. On
+the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty. With his blooming complexion
+and his serene gray eye, he felt the friction of existence more than was
+suspected; but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he assumed
+that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no excuse
+for taking an ill-natured view of life, and he undertook constantly to
+believe that all women were fair, all men were brave, and the world was
+a delightful place of sojourn, until the contrary had been distinctly
+proved.
+
+Cecilia’s blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to
+repose and a cigar, that she reproached him the next morning with
+indifference to her little parlor, not less, in its way, a monument to
+her ingenious taste. “And by the way,” she added as he followed her in,
+“if I refused last night to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show
+you a pretty boy.”
+
+She threw open a window and pointed to a statuette which occupied the
+place of honor among the ornaments of the room. Rowland looked at it a
+moment and then turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. She
+gave him a rapid glance, perceived that her statuette was of altogether
+exceptional merit, and then smiled, knowingly, as if this had long been
+an agreeable certainty.
+
+“Who did it? where did you get it?” Rowland demanded.
+
+“Oh,” said Cecilia, adjusting the light, “it ‘s a little thing of Mr.
+Hudson’s.”
+
+“And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?” asked Rowland. But he was absorbed;
+he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less
+than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The
+attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet,
+with his legs a little apart; his back was slightly hollowed, his head
+thrown back, and both hands raised to support the rustic cup. There was
+a loosened fillet of wild flowers about his head, and his eyes, under
+their drooped lids, looked straight into the cup. On the base was
+scratched the Greek word Δἱψα, Thirst. The figure might have
+been some beautiful youth of ancient fable,--Hylas or Narcissus, Paris
+or Endymion. Its beauty was the beauty of natural movement; nothing had
+been sought to be represented but the perfection of an attitude. This
+had been most attentively studied, and it was exquisitely rendered.
+Rowland demanded more light, dropped his head on this side and that,
+uttered vague exclamations. He said to himself, as he had said more than
+once in the Louvre and the Vatican, “We ugly mortals, what beautiful
+creatures we are!” Nothing, in a long time, had given him so much
+pleasure. “Hudson--Hudson,” he asked again; “who is Hudson?”
+
+“A young man of this place,” said Cecilia.
+
+“A young man? How old?”
+
+“I suppose he is three or four and twenty.”
+
+“Of this place, you say--of Northampton, Massachusetts?”
+
+“He lives here, but he comes from Virginia.”
+
+“Is he a sculptor by profession?”
+
+“He ‘s a law-student.”
+
+Rowland burst out laughing. “He has found something in Blackstone that I
+never did. He makes statues then simply for his pleasure?”
+
+Cecilia, with a smile, gave a little toss of her head. “For mine!”
+
+“I congratulate you,” said Rowland. “I wonder whether he could be
+induced to do anything for me?”
+
+“This was a matter of friendship. I saw the figure when he had modeled
+it in clay, and of course greatly admired it. He said nothing at the
+time, but a week ago, on my birthday, he arrived in a buggy, with
+this. He had had it cast at the foundry at Chicopee; I believe it ‘s a
+beautiful piece of bronze. He begged me to accept.”
+
+“Upon my word,” said Mallet, “he does things handsomely!” And he fell to
+admiring the statue again.
+
+“So then,” said Cecilia, “it ‘s very remarkable?”
+
+“Why, my dear cousin,” Rowland answered, “Mr. Hudson, of Virginia, is
+an extraordinary--” Then suddenly stopping: “Is he a great friend of
+yours?” he asked.
+
+“A great friend?” and Cecilia hesitated. “I regard him as a child!”
+
+“Well,” said Rowland, “he ‘s a very clever child. Tell me something
+about him: I should like to see him.”
+
+Cecilia was obliged to go to her daughter’s music-lesson, but she
+assured Rowland that she would arrange for him a meeting with the young
+sculptor. He was a frequent visitor, and as he had not called for some
+days it was likely he would come that evening. Rowland, left alone,
+examined the statuette at his leisure, and returned more than once
+during the day to take another look at it. He discovered its weak
+points, but it wore well. It had the stamp of genius. Rowland envied the
+happy youth who, in a New England village, without aid or encouragement,
+without models or resources, had found it so easy to produce a lovely
+work.
+
+In the evening, as he was smoking his cigar on the veranda, a light,
+quick step pressed the gravel of the garden path, and in a moment a
+young man made his bow to Cecilia. It was rather a nod than a bow, and
+indicated either that he was an old friend, or that he was scantily
+versed in the usual social forms. Cecilia, who was sitting near the
+steps, pointed to a neighboring chair, but the young man seated himself
+abruptly on the floor at her feet, began to fan himself vigorously with
+his hat, and broke out into a lively objurgation upon the hot weather.
+“I ‘m dripping wet!” he said, without ceremony.
+
+“You walk too fast,” said Cecilia. “You do everything too fast.”
+
+“I know it, I know it!” he cried, passing his hand through his abundant
+dark hair and making it stand out in a picturesque shock. “I can’t
+be slow if I try. There ‘s something inside of me that drives me. A
+restless fiend!”
+
+Cecilia gave a light laugh, and Rowland leaned forward in his hammock.
+He had placed himself in it at Bessie’s request, and was playing that he
+was her baby and that she was rocking him to sleep. She sat beside him,
+swinging the hammock to and fro, and singing a lullaby. When he raised
+himself she pushed him back and said that the baby must finish its nap.
+“But I want to see the gentleman with the fiend inside of him,” said
+Rowland.
+
+“What is a fiend?” Bessie demanded. “It ‘s only Mr. Hudson.”
+
+“Very well, I want to see him.”
+
+“Oh, never mind him!” said Bessie, with the brevity of contempt.
+
+“You speak as if you did n’t like him.”
+
+“I don’t!” Bessie affirmed, and put Rowland to bed again.
+
+The hammock was swung at the end of the veranda, in the thickest shade
+of the vines, and this fragment of dialogue had passed unnoticed.
+Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself
+with listening to Mr. Hudson’s voice. It was a soft and not altogether
+masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat
+plaintive and pettish key. The young man’s mood seemed fretful; he
+complained of the heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having
+gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found the
+person he was in search of had left Northampton an hour before.
+
+“Won’t you have a cup of tea?” Cecilia asked. “Perhaps that will restore
+your equanimity.”
+
+“Aye, by keeping me awake all night!” said Hudson. “At the best, it ‘s
+hard enough to go down to the office. With my nerves set on edge by a
+sleepless night, I should perforce stay at home and be brutal to my poor
+mother.”
+
+“Your mother is well, I hope.”
+
+“Oh, she ‘s as usual.”
+
+“And Miss Garland?”
+
+“She ‘s as usual, too. Every one, everything, is as usual. Nothing ever
+happens, in this benighted town.”
+
+“I beg your pardon; things do happen, sometimes,” said Cecilia. “Here
+is a dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to congratulate you on your
+statuette.” And she called to Rowland to come and be introduced to
+Mr. Hudson. The young man sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland, coming
+forward to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected
+from the parlor window. Something seemed to shine out of Hudson’s face
+as a warning against a “compliment” of the idle, unpondered sort.
+
+“Your statuette seems to me very good,” Rowland said gravely. “It has
+given me extreme pleasure.”
+
+“And my cousin knows what is good,” said Cecilia. “He ‘s a connoisseur.”
+
+Hudson smiled and stared. “A connoisseur?” he cried, laughing. “He ‘s
+the first I ‘ve ever seen! Let me see what they look like;” and he drew
+Rowland nearer to the light. “Have they all such good heads as that? I
+should like to model yours.”
+
+“Pray do,” said Cecilia. “It will keep him a while. He is running off to
+Europe.”
+
+“Ah, to Europe!” Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence, as they sat
+down. “Happy man!”
+
+But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random, for he
+perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk.
+Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and
+intelligent face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive
+vivacity, but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome.
+The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile
+played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of
+the young man’s whole structure was an excessive want of breadth. The
+forehead, though it was high and rounded, was narrow; the jaw and
+the shoulders were narrow; and the result was an air of insufficient
+physical substance. But Mallet afterwards learned that this fair, slim
+youth could draw indefinitely upon a mysterious fund of nervous
+force, which outlasted and outwearied the endurance of many a sturdier
+temperament. And certainly there was life enough in his eye to furnish
+an immortality! It was a generous dark gray eye, in which there came
+and went a sort of kindling glow, which would have made a ruder visage
+striking, and which gave at times to Hudson’s harmonious face an
+altogether extraordinary beauty. There was to Rowland’s sympathetic
+sense a slightly pitiful disparity between the young sculptor’s delicate
+countenance and the shabby gentility of his costume. He was dressed for
+a visit--a visit to a pretty woman. He was clad from head to foot in a
+white linen suit, which had never been remarkable for the felicity of
+its cut, and had now quite lost that crispness which garments of this
+complexion can as ill spare as the back-scene of a theatre the radiance
+of the footlights. He wore a vivid blue cravat, passed through a ring
+altogether too splendid to be valuable; he pulled and twisted, as he
+sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves; he emphasized his conversation with
+great dashes and flourishes of a light, silver-tipped walking-stick,
+and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched
+sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or
+Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very picturesque, in
+spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he sat nursing it
+and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly
+be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant
+accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This was visible in
+his talk, which abounded in the florid and sonorous. He liked words with
+color in them.
+
+Rowland, who was but a moderate talker, sat by in silence, while
+Cecilia, who had told him that she desired his opinion upon her friend,
+used a good deal of characteristic finesse in leading the young man to
+expose himself. She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for
+an hour with a volubility in which boyish unconsciousness and manly
+shrewdness were singularly combined. He gave his opinion on twenty
+topics, he opened up an endless budget of local gossip, he described
+his repulsive routine at the office of Messrs. Striker and Spooner,
+counselors at law, and he gave with great felicity and gusto an account
+of the annual boat-race between Harvard and Yale, which he had lately
+witnessed at Worcester. He had looked at the straining oarsmen and the
+swaying crowd with the eye of the sculptor. Rowland was a good deal
+amused and not a little interested. Whenever Hudson uttered some
+peculiarly striking piece of youthful grandiloquence, Cecilia broke into
+a long, light, familiar laugh.
+
+“What are you laughing at?” the young man then demanded. “Have I said
+anything so ridiculous?”
+
+“Go on, go on,” Cecilia replied. “You are too delicious! Show Mr. Mallet
+how Mr. Striker read the Declaration of Independence.”
+
+Hudson, like most men with a turn for the plastic arts, was an excellent
+mimic, and he represented with a great deal of humor the accent and
+attitude of a pompous country lawyer sustaining the burden of this
+customary episode of our national festival. The sonorous twang, the
+see-saw gestures, the odd pronunciation, were vividly depicted. But
+Cecilia’s manner, and the young man’s quick response, ruffled a little
+poor Rowland’s paternal conscience. He wondered whether his cousin was
+not sacrificing the faculty of reverence in her clever protege to
+her need for amusement. Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland’s
+compliment on his statuette until he rose to go. Rowland wondered
+whether he had forgotten it, and supposed that the oversight was a sign
+of the natural self-sufficiency of genius. But Hudson stood a moment
+before he said good night, twirled his sombrero, and hesitated for the
+first time. He gave Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then, with
+a wonderfully frank, appealing smile: “You really meant,” he
+asked, “what you said a while ago about that thing of mine? It is
+good--essentially good?”
+
+“I really meant it,” said Rowland, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder.
+“It is very good indeed. It is, as you say, essentially good. That is
+the beauty of it.”
+
+Hudson’s eyes glowed and expanded; he looked at Rowland for some time in
+silence. “I have a notion you really know,” he said at last. “But if you
+don’t, it does n’t much matter.”
+
+“My cousin asked me to-day,” said Cecilia, “whether I supposed you knew
+yourself how good it is.”
+
+Hudson stared, blushing a little. “Perhaps not!” he cried.
+
+“Very likely,” said Mallet. “I read in a book the other day that
+great talent in action--in fact the book said genius--is a kind of
+somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not
+wake him up, lest he should lose his balance.”
+
+“Oh, when he ‘s back in bed again!” Hudson answered with a laugh. “Yes,
+call it a dream. It was a very happy one!”
+
+“Tell me this,” said Rowland. “Did you mean anything by your young
+Water-drinker? Does he represent an idea? Is he a symbol?”
+
+Hudson raised his eyebrows and gently scratched his head. “Why, he ‘s
+youth, you know; he ‘s innocence, he ‘s health, he ‘s strength, he ‘s
+curiosity. Yes, he ‘s a good many things.”
+
+“And is the cup also a symbol?”
+
+“The cup is knowledge, pleasure, experience. Anything of that kind!”
+
+“Well, he ‘s guzzling in earnest,” said Rowland.
+
+Hudson gave a vigorous nod. “Aye, poor fellow, he ‘s thirsty!” And on
+this he cried good night, and bounded down the garden path.
+
+“Well, what do you make of him?” asked Cecilia, returning a short
+time afterwards from a visit of investigation as to the sufficiency of
+Bessie’s bedclothes.
+
+“I confess I like him,” said Rowland. “He ‘s very immature,--but there
+‘s stuff in him.”
+
+“He ‘s a strange being,” said Cecilia, musingly.
+
+“Who are his people? what has been his education?” Rowland asked.
+
+“He has had no education, beyond what he has picked up, with little
+trouble, for himself. His mother is a widow, of a Massachusetts country
+family, a little timid, tremulous woman, who is always on pins and
+needles about her son. She had some property herself, and married a
+Virginian gentleman of good estates. He turned out, I believe, a very
+licentious personage, and made great havoc in their fortune. Everything,
+or almost everything, melted away, including Mr. Hudson himself. This
+is literally true, for he drank himself to death. Ten years ago his wife
+was left a widow, with scanty means and a couple of growing boys.
+She paid her husband’s debts as best she could, and came to establish
+herself here, where by the death of a charitable relative she had
+inherited an old-fashioned ruinous house. Roderick, our friend, was her
+pride and joy, but Stephen, the elder, was her comfort and support.
+I remember him, later; he was an ugly, sturdy, practical lad, very
+different from his brother, and in his way, I imagine, a very fine
+fellow. When the war broke out he found that the New England blood ran
+thicker in his veins than the Virginian, and immediately obtained
+a commission. He fell in some Western battle and left his mother
+inconsolable. Roderick, however, has given her plenty to think about,
+and she has induced him, by some mysterious art, to abide, nominally at
+least, in a profession that he abhors, and for which he is about as fit,
+I should say, as I am to drive a locomotive. He grew up a la grace de
+Dieu, and was horribly spoiled. Three or four years ago he graduated at
+a small college in this neighborhood, where I am afraid he had given a
+good deal more attention to novels and billiards than to mathematics and
+Greek. Since then he has been reading law, at the rate of a page a day.
+If he is ever admitted to practice I ‘m afraid my friendship won’t avail
+to make me give him my business. Good, bad, or indifferent, the boy is
+essentially an artist--an artist to his fingers’ ends.”
+
+“Why, then,” asked Rowland, “does n’t he deliberately take up the
+chisel?”
+
+“For several reasons. In the first place, I don’t think he more than
+half suspects his talent. The flame is smouldering, but it is never
+fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to
+help him to self-knowledge. He ‘s hopelessly discontented, but he
+does n’t know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one
+day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists
+exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people without their
+clothes on. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality,
+and for a young man of a passionate disposition she considers the law a
+much safer investment. Her father was a judge, she has two brothers at
+the bar, and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in the
+same line. She wishes the tradition to be perpetuated. I ‘m pretty sure
+the law won’t make Roderick’s fortune, and I ‘m afraid it will, in the
+long run, spoil his temper.”
+
+“What sort of a temper is it?”
+
+“One to be trusted, on the whole. It is quick, but it is generous. I
+have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o’clock in the evening,
+and soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It ‘s a very entertaining
+temper to observe. I, fortunately, can do so dispassionately, for I ‘m
+the only person in the place he has not quarreled with.”
+
+“Has he then no society? Who is Miss Garland, whom you asked about?”
+
+“A young girl staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin; a good
+plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor’s eye. Roderick has
+a goodly share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic
+temperament. He will have nothing to do with the small towns-people; he
+says they ‘re ‘ignoble.’ He cannot endure his mother’s friends--the
+old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to
+death. So he comes and lounges here and rails at everything and every
+one.”
+
+This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later, and
+confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland’s part. He
+was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly, and
+asked Rowland a number of rather naif questions about the condition of
+the fine arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, when he had gone, said
+that this was the wholesome effect of Rowland’s praise of his statuette.
+Roderick was acutely sensitive, and Rowland’s tranquil commendation had
+stilled his restless pulses. He was ruminating the full-flavored verdict
+of culture. Rowland felt an irresistible kindness for him, a mingled
+sense of his personal charm and his artistic capacity. He had an
+indefinable attraction--the something divine of unspotted, exuberant,
+confident youth. The next day was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they
+should take a long walk and that Roderick should show him the country.
+The young man assented gleefully, and in the morning, as Rowland at the
+garden gate was giving his hostess Godspeed on her way to church, he
+came striding along the grassy margin of the road and out-whistling the
+music of the church bells. It was one of those lovely days of August
+when you feel the complete exuberance of summer just warned and checked
+by autumn. “Remember the day, and take care you rob no orchards,” said
+Cecilia, as they separated.
+
+The young men walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale, through
+woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy elevation
+studded with mossy rocks and red cedars. Just beneath them, in a great
+shining curve, flowed the goodly Connecticut. They flung themselves
+on the grass and tossed stones into the river; they talked like old
+friends. Rowland lit a cigar, and Roderick refused one with a grimace
+of extravagant disgust. He thought them vile things; he did n’t see how
+decent people could tolerate them. Rowland was amused, and wondered what
+it was that made this ill-mannered speech seem perfectly inoffensive
+on Roderick’s lips. He belonged to the race of mortals, to be pitied
+or envied according as we view the matter, who are not held to a strict
+account for their aggressions. Looking at him as he lay stretched in the
+shade, Rowland vaguely likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless,
+bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the
+tremulous delicacy of its structure, and be graceful even when they
+were most inconvenient. Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke,
+listened to the gurgle of the river, and sniffed the balsam of the
+pines. A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits, and brought
+the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river meadows. He
+sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading
+view. It seemed to him beautiful, and suddenly a strange feeling of
+prospective regret took possession of him. Something seemed to tell
+him that later, in a foreign land, he would remember it lovingly and
+penitently.
+
+“It ‘s a wretched business,” he said, “this practical quarrel of ours
+with our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it. Is
+one’s only safety then in flight? This is an American day, an American
+landscape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and
+some day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy, I shall accuse
+myself of having slighted them.”
+
+Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that America was
+good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an
+honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it along. He had
+evidently thought nothing whatever about it, and was launching his
+doctrine on the inspiration of the moment. The doctrine expanded with
+the occasion, and he declared that he was above all an advocate for
+American art. He did n’t see why we should n’t produce the greatest
+works in the world. We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the
+biggest conceptions. The biggest conceptions of course would bring forth
+in time the biggest performances. We had only to be true to ourselves,
+to pitch in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our
+eyes upon our National Individuality. “I declare,” he cried, “there ‘s
+a career for a man, and I ‘ve twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to
+embrace it--to be the consummate, typical, original, national American
+artist! It ‘s inspiring!”
+
+Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice
+better than his theory, and that a saner impulse than this had inspired
+his little Water-drinker. Roderick took no offense, and three minutes
+afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme, but half heeded
+by his companion, who had returned to his cogitations. At last Rowland
+delivered himself of the upshot of these. “How would you like,” he
+suddenly demanded, “to go to Rome?”
+
+Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our
+National Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it
+reasonably well. “And I should like, by the same token,” he added,
+“to go to Athens, to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of
+Benares, where there is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall.”
+
+“Nay,” said Rowland soberly, “if you were to go to Rome, you should
+settle down and work. Athens might help you, but for the present I
+should n’t recommend Benares.”
+
+“It will be time to arrange details when I pack my trunk,” said Hudson.
+
+“If you mean to turn sculptor, the sooner you pack your trunk the
+better.”
+
+“Oh, but I ‘m a practical man! What is the smallest sum per annum, on
+which one can keep alive the sacred fire in Rome?”
+
+“What is the largest sum at your disposal?”
+
+Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then
+announced with mock pomposity: “Three hundred dollars!”
+
+“The money question could be arranged,” said Rowland. “There are ways of
+raising money.”
+
+“I should like to know a few! I never yet discovered one.”
+
+“One consists,” said Rowland, “in having a friend with a good deal more
+than he wants, and not being too proud to accept a part of it.”
+
+Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed. “Do you mean--do you
+mean?”.... he stammered. He was greatly excited.
+
+Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet. “In
+three words, if you are to be a sculptor, you ought to go to Rome and
+study the antique. To go to Rome you need money. I ‘m fond of fine
+statues, but unfortunately I can’t make them myself. I have to order
+them. I order a dozen from you, to be executed at your convenience. To
+help you, I pay you in advance.”
+
+Roderick pushed off his hat and wiped his forehead, still gazing at his
+companion. “You believe in me!” he cried at last.
+
+“Allow me to explain,” said Rowland. “I believe in you, if you are
+prepared to work and to wait, and to struggle, and to exercise a great
+many virtues. And then, I ‘m afraid to say it, lest I should disturb
+you more than I should help you. You must decide for yourself. I simply
+offer you an opportunity.”
+
+Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative. “You have not seen my
+other things,” he said suddenly. “Come and look at them.”
+
+“Now?”
+
+“Yes, we ‘ll walk home. We ‘ll settle the question.”
+
+He passed his hand through Rowland’s arm and they retraced their steps.
+They reached the town and made their way along a broad country street,
+dusky with the shade of magnificent elms. Rowland felt his companion’s
+arm trembling in his own. They stopped at a large white house, flanked
+with melancholy hemlocks, and passed through a little front garden,
+paved with moss-coated bricks and ornamented with parterres bordered
+with high box hedges. The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but
+it had seen its best days, and evidently sheltered a shrunken household.
+Mrs. Hudson, Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden of a
+morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal
+horticulture. Roderick’s studio was behind, in the basement; a large,
+empty room, with the paper peeling off the walls. This represented, in
+the fashion of fifty years ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes
+of a hideous pattern, and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away
+in great scraps, in moments of aesthetic exasperation. On a board in
+a corner was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall,
+stood some dozen medallions, busts, and figures, in various stages of
+completion. To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on
+the end of a long packing-box, which served as a pedestal. He did so
+silently, making no explanations, and looking at them himself with a
+strange air of quickened curiosity. Most of the things were portraits;
+and the three at which he looked longest were finished busts. One was a
+colossal head of a negro, tossed back, defiant, with distended nostrils;
+one was the portrait of a young man whom Rowland immediately perceived,
+by the resemblance, to be his deceased brother; the last represented a
+gentleman with a pointed nose, a long, shaved upper lip, and a tuft on
+the end of his chin. This was a face peculiarly unadapted to sculpture;
+but as a piece of modeling it was the best, and it was admirable. It
+reminded Rowland in its homely veracity, its artless artfulness, of
+the works of the early Italian Renaissance. On the pedestal was cut
+the name--Barnaby Striker, Esq. Rowland remembered that this was the
+appellation of the legal luminary from whom his companion had undertaken
+to borrow a reflected ray, and although in the bust there was naught
+flagrantly set down in malice, it betrayed, comically to one who could
+relish the secret, that the features of the original had often been
+scanned with an irritated eye. Besides these there were several rough
+studies of the nude, and two or three figures of a fanciful kind. The
+most noticeable (and it had singular beauty) was a small modeled design
+for a sepulchral monument; that, evidently, of Stephen Hudson. The young
+soldier lay sleeping eternally, with his hand on his sword, like an old
+crusader in a Gothic cathedral.
+
+Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgment.
+“Upon my word,” cried Hudson at last, “they seem to me very good.”
+
+And in truth, as Rowland looked, he saw they were good. They were
+youthful, awkward, and ignorant; the effort, often, was more apparent
+than the success. But the effort was signally powerful and intelligent;
+it seemed to Rowland that it needed only to let itself go to compass
+great things. Here and there, too, success, when grasped, had something
+masterly. Rowland turned to his companion, who stood with his hands in
+his pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance.
+The light of admiration was in Rowland’s eyes, and it speedily kindled a
+wonderful illumination on Hudson’s handsome brow. Rowland said at last,
+gravely, “You have only to work!”
+
+“I think I know what that means,” Roderick answered. He turned away,
+threw himself on a rickety chair, and sat for some moments with his
+elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Work--work?” he said at
+last, looking up, “ah, if I could only begin!” He glanced round the
+room a moment and his eye encountered on the mantel-shelf the vivid
+physiognomy of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished, and he stared at
+it with an air of concentrated enmity. “I want to begin,” he cried, “and
+I can’t make a better beginning than this! Good-by, Mr. Striker!” He
+strode across the room, seized a mallet that lay at hand, and before
+Rowland could interfere, in the interest of art if not of morals, dealt
+a merciless blow upon Mr. Striker’s skull. The bust cracked into a
+dozen pieces, which toppled with a great crash upon the floor. Rowland
+relished neither the destruction of the image nor his companion’s look
+in working it, but as he was about to express his displeasure the door
+opened and gave passage to a young girl. She came in with a rapid step
+and startled face, as if she had been summoned by the noise. Seeing the
+heap of shattered clay and the mallet in Roderick’s hand, she gave a
+cry of horror. Her voice died away when she perceived that Rowland was a
+stranger, but she murmured reproachfully, “Why, Roderick, what have you
+done?”
+
+Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments. “I ‘ve driven
+the money-changers out of the temple!” he cried.
+
+The traces retained shape enough to be recognized, and she gave a little
+moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young man’s allegory, but
+yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must be an evil
+one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive
+that Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with
+a sharp, frank mistrust, and turned away through the open door. Rowland
+looked after her with extraordinary interest.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. Roderick
+
+Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend.
+Roderick was in a state of extreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by
+a certain amount of righteous wrath. He had had a domestic struggle, but
+he had remained master of the situation. He had shaken the dust of Mr.
+Striker’s office from his feet.
+
+“I had it out last night with my mother,” he said. “I dreaded the scene,
+for she takes things terribly hard. She does n’t scold nor storm, and
+she does n’t argue nor insist. She sits with her eyes full of tears
+that never fall, and looks at me, when I displease her, as if I were
+a perfect monster of depravity. And the trouble is that I was born to
+displease her. She does n’t trust me; she never has and she never will.
+I don’t know what I have done to set her against me, but ever since I
+can remember I have been looked at with tears. The trouble is,” he went
+on, giving a twist to his moustache, “I ‘ve been too absurdly docile.
+I ‘ve been sprawling all my days by the maternal fireside, and my dear
+mother has grown used to bullying me. I ‘ve made myself cheap! If I ‘m
+not in my bed by eleven o’clock, the girl is sent out to explore with
+a lantern. When I think of it, I fairly despise my amiability. It ‘s
+rather a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner! I
+should like for six months to lead Mrs. Hudson the life some fellows
+lead their mothers!”
+
+“Allow me to believe,” said Rowland, “that you would like nothing of
+the sort. If you have been a good boy, don’t spoil it by pretending you
+don’t like it. You have been very happy, I suspect, in spite of your
+virtues, and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too
+well. I have not had the pleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay
+you a wager that that is the trouble. She is passionately fond of you,
+and her hopes, like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears.”
+ Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful
+young fellow must be loved by his female relatives.
+
+Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, “I do her justice,” he
+cried. “May she never do me less!” Then after a moment’s hesitation, “I
+‘ll tell you the perfect truth,” he went on. “I have to fill a double
+place. I have to be my brother as well as myself. It ‘s a good deal to
+ask of a man, especially when he has so little talent as I for being
+what he is not. When we were both young together I was the curled
+darling. I had the silver mug and the biggest piece of pudding, and I
+stayed in-doors to be kissed by the ladies while he made mud-pies in the
+garden and was never missed, of course. Really, he was worth fifty of
+me! When he was brought home from Vicksburg with a piece of shell in
+his skull, my poor mother began to think she had n’t loved him enough. I
+remember, as she hung round my neck sobbing, before his coffin, she told
+me that I must be to her everything that he would have been. I swore in
+tears and in perfect good faith that I would, but naturally I have
+not kept my promise. I have been utterly different. I have been idle,
+restless, egotistical, discontented. I have done no harm, I believe, but
+I have done no good. My brother, if he had lived, would have made
+fifty thousand dollars and put gas and water into the house. My mother,
+brooding night and day on her bereavement, has come to fix her ideal in
+offices of that sort. Judged by that standard I ‘m nowhere!”
+
+Rowland was at loss how to receive this account of his friend’s domestic
+circumstances; it was plaintive, and yet the manner seemed to him
+over-trenchant. “You must lose no time in making a masterpiece,” he
+answered; “then with the proceeds you can give her gas from golden
+burners.”
+
+“So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or
+in proceeds. She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her
+a snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the
+law, like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I ‘m in sight. ‘It
+‘s a more regular occupation!’ that ‘s all I can get out of her. A
+more regular damnation! Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such
+wicked men? I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n’t
+confute her with an example. She had the advantage of me, because she
+formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in
+black lace mittens (you may see it on the parlor table), who used to
+drink raw brandy and beat his wife. I promised her that, whatever I
+might do to my wife, I would never beat my mother, and that as for
+brandy, raw or diluted, I detested it. She sat silently crying for an
+hour, during which I expended treasures of eloquence. It ‘s a good thing
+to have to reckon up one’s intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my
+cause, I was most agreeably impressed with the elevated character of
+my own. I kissed her solemnly at last, and told her that I had said
+everything and that she must make the best of it. This morning she has
+dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is n’t a cheerful house. I long to
+be out of it!”
+
+“I ‘m extremely sorry,” said Rowland, “to have been the prime cause of
+so much suffering. I owe your mother some amends; will it be possible
+for me to see her?”
+
+“If you ‘ll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the
+truth she ‘ll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an
+agent of the foul fiend. She does n’t see why you should have come
+here and set me by the ears: you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and
+desolate doting mothers. I leave it to you, personally, to answer these
+charges. You see, what she can’t forgive--what she ‘ll not really ever
+forgive--is your taking me off to Rome. Rome is an evil word, in my
+mother’s vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, as you ‘d say ‘damnation.’
+Northampton is in the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying
+dusk, into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate. And there
+was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository of every virtue,
+Mr. Striker’s office!”
+
+“And does Mr. Striker know of your decision?” asked Rowland.
+
+“To a certainty! Mr. Striker, you must know, is not simply a
+good-natured attorney, who lets me dog’s-ear his law-books. He’s a
+particular friend and general adviser. He looks after my mother’s
+property and kindly consents to regard me as part of it. Our opinions
+have always been painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his
+zealous attempts to unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part
+before. He never understood me, and it was useless to try to make him.
+We speak a different language--we ‘re made of a different clay. I had a
+fit of rage yesterday when I smashed his bust, at the thought of all the
+bad blood he had stirred up in me; it did me good, and it ‘s all over
+now. I don’t hate him any more; I ‘m rather sorry for him. See how you
+‘ve improved me! I must have seemed to him wilfully, wickedly stupid,
+and I ‘m sure he only tolerated me on account of his great regard for my
+mother. This morning I grasped the bull by the horns. I took an armful
+of law-books that have been gathering the dust in my room for the last
+year and a half, and presented myself at the office. ‘Allow me to put
+these back in their places,’ I said. ‘I shall never have need for
+them more--never more, never more, never more!’ ‘So you ‘ve learned
+everything they contain?’ asked Striker, leering over his spectacles.
+‘Better late than never.’ ‘I ‘ve learned nothing that you can teach me,’
+I cried. ‘But I shall tax your patience no longer. I ‘m going to be a
+sculptor. I ‘m going to Rome. I won’t bid you good-by just yet; I shall
+see you again. But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four
+detested walls--to this living tomb! I did n’t know till now how I hated
+it! My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have not
+made of me!’”
+
+“I ‘m glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again,” Rowland answered,
+correcting a primary inclination to smile. “You certainly owe him a
+respectful farewell, even if he has not understood you. I confess you
+rather puzzle me. There is another person,” he presently added, “whose
+opinion as to your new career I should like to know. What does Miss
+Garland think?”
+
+Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush. Then, with a conscious
+smile, “What makes you suppose she thinks anything?” he asked.
+
+“Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as
+a very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions.”
+
+The smile on Roderick’s mobile face passed rapidly into a frown. “Oh,
+she thinks what I think!” he answered.
+
+Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as
+harmonious a shape as possible to his companion’s scheme. “I have
+launched you, as I may say,” he said, “and I feel as if I ought to see
+you into port. I am older than you and know the world better, and
+it seems well that we should voyage a while together. It ‘s on my
+conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you through the
+Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay. I sail on the fifth
+of September; can you make your preparations to start with me?”
+
+Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in
+his friend’s wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges. “I have no
+preparations to make,” he said with a smile, raising his arms and
+letting them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition. “What I
+am to take with me I carry here!” and he tapped his forehead.
+
+“Happy man!” murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light
+stowage, in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and
+of the heavy one in deposit at his banker’s, of bags and boxes.
+
+When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia. She
+was sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low
+chintz-covered chair. He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with
+her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder. At
+last he told her of Roderick’s decision and of his own influence in
+it. Cecilia, besides an extreme surprise, exhibited a certain fine
+displeasure at his not having asked her advice.
+
+“What would you have said, if I had?” he demanded.
+
+“I would have said in the first place, ‘Oh for pity’s sake don’t carry
+off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!’ I would have said
+in the second place, ‘Nonsense! the boy is doing very well. Let well
+alone!’”
+
+“That in the first five minutes. What would you have said later?”
+
+“That for a man who is generally averse to meddling, you were suddenly
+rather officious.”
+
+Rowland’s countenance fell. He frowned in silence. Cecilia looked at him
+askance; gradually the spark of irritation faded from her eye.
+
+“Excuse my sharpness,” she resumed at last. “But I am literally in
+despair at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the
+past year, have kept me alive. They have given a silver tip to leaden
+days. I don’t say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he
+is of a different one. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly
+is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work and
+women must weep!”
+
+“Decidedly not!” said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis. He had
+suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia had treated
+herself to a private social luxury; he had then discovered that she
+found it in Hudson’s lounging visits and boyish chatter, and he had felt
+himself wondering at last whether, judiciously viewed, her gain in the
+matter was not the young man’s loss. It was evident that Cecilia was not
+judicious, and that her good sense, habitually rigid under the demands
+of domestic economy, indulged itself with a certain agreeable laxity on
+this particular point. She liked her young friend just as he was; she
+humored him, flattered him, laughed at him, caressed him--did
+everything but advise him. It was a flirtation without the benefits of
+a flirtation. She was too old to let him fall in love with her, which
+might have done him good; and her inclination was to keep him young, so
+that the nonsense he talked might never transgress a certain line. It
+was quite conceivable that poor Cecilia should relish a pastime; but if
+one had philanthropically embraced the idea that something considerable
+might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her
+friendship was not what might be called tonic. So Rowland reflected, in
+the glow of his new-born sympathy. There was a later time when he would
+have been grateful if Hudson’s susceptibility to the relaxing influence
+of lovely women might have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as
+he rendered the excellent Cecilia.
+
+“I only desire to remind you,” she pursued, “that you are likely to have
+your hands full.”
+
+“I ‘ve thought of that, and I rather like the idea; liking, as I do, the
+man. I told you the other day, you know, that I longed to have something
+on my hands. When it first occurred to me that I might start our
+young friend on the path of glory, I felt as if I had an unimpeachable
+inspiration. Then I remembered there were dangers and difficulties,
+and asked myself whether I had a right to step in between him and his
+obscurity. My sense of his really having the divine flame answered the
+question. He is made to do the things that humanity is the happier for!
+I can’t do such things myself, but when I see a young man of genius
+standing helpless and hopeless for want of capital, I feel--and it ‘s
+no affectation of humility, I assure you--as if it would give at least a
+reflected usefulness to my own life to offer him his opportunity.”
+
+“In the name of humanity, I suppose, I ought to thank you. But I want,
+first of all, to be happy myself. You guarantee us at any rate, I hope,
+the masterpieces.”
+
+“A masterpiece a year,” said Rowland smiling, “for the next quarter of a
+century.”
+
+“It seems to me that we have a right to ask more: to demand that you
+guarantee us not only the development of the artist, but the security of
+the man.”
+
+Rowland became grave again. “His security?”
+
+“His moral, his sentimental security. Here, you see, it ‘s perfect. We
+are all under a tacit compact to preserve it. Perhaps you believe in
+the necessary turbulence of genius, and you intend to enjoin upon your
+protege the importance of cultivating his passions.”
+
+“On the contrary, I believe that a man of genius owes as much deference
+to his passions as any other man, but not a particle more, and I confess
+I have a strong conviction that the artist is better for leading a quiet
+life. That is what I shall preach to my protege, as you call him, by
+example as well as by precept. You evidently believe,” he added in a
+moment, “that he will lead me a dance.”
+
+“Nay, I prophesy nothing. I only think that circumstances, with our
+young man, have a great influence; as is proved by the fact that
+although he has been fuming and fretting here for the last five years,
+he has nevertheless managed to make the best of it, and found it easy,
+on the whole, to vegetate. Transplanted to Rome, I fancy he ‘ll put
+forth a denser leafage. I should like vastly to see the change. You must
+write me about it, from stage to stage. I hope with all my heart that
+the fruit will be proportionate to the foliage. Don’t think me a bird of
+ill omen; only remember that you will be held to a strict account.”
+
+“A man should make the most of himself, and be helped if he needs help,”
+ Rowland answered, after a long pause. “Of course when a body begins to
+expand, there comes in the possibility of bursting; but I nevertheless
+approve of a certain tension of one’s being. It ‘s what a man is meant
+for. And then I believe in the essential salubrity of genius--true
+genius.”
+
+“Very good,” said Cecilia, with an air of resignation which made
+Rowland, for the moment, seem to himself culpably eager. “We ‘ll drink
+then to-day at dinner to the health of our friend.”
+
+* * *
+
+Having it much at heart to convince Mrs. Hudson of the purity of his
+intentions, Rowland waited upon her that evening. He was ushered into a
+large parlor, which, by the light of a couple of candles, he perceived
+to be very meagrely furnished and very tenderly and sparingly used. The
+windows were open to the air of the summer night, and a circle of three
+persons was temporarily awed into silence by his appearance. One
+of these was Mrs. Hudson, who was sitting at one of the windows,
+empty-handed save for the pocket-handkerchief in her lap, which was held
+with an air of familiarity with its sadder uses. Near her, on the sofa,
+half sitting, half lounging, in the attitude of a visitor outstaying
+ceremony, with one long leg flung over the other and a large foot in a
+clumsy boot swinging to and fro continually, was a lean, sandy-haired
+gentleman whom Rowland recognized as the original of the portrait of Mr.
+Barnaby Striker. At the table, near the candles, busy with a substantial
+piece of needle-work, sat the young girl of whom he had had a moment’s
+quickened glimpse in Roderick’s studio, and whom he had learned to
+be Miss Garland, his companion’s kinswoman. This young lady’s limpid,
+penetrating gaze was the most effective greeting he received. Mrs.
+Hudson rose with a soft, vague sound of distress, and stood looking at
+him shrinkingly and waveringly, as if she were sorely tempted to
+retreat through the open window. Mr. Striker swung his long leg a trifle
+defiantly. No one, evidently, was used to offering hollow welcomes or
+telling polite fibs. Rowland introduced himself; he had come, he might
+say, upon business.
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Hudson tremulously; “I know--my son has told me. I
+suppose it is better I should see you. Perhaps you will take a seat.”
+
+With this invitation Rowland prepared to comply, and, turning, grasped
+the first chair that offered itself.
+
+“Not that one,” said a full, grave voice; whereupon he perceived that a
+quantity of sewing-silk had been suspended and entangled over the back,
+preparatory to being wound on reels. He felt the least bit irritated at
+the curtness of the warning, coming as it did from a young woman whose
+countenance he had mentally pronounced interesting, and with regard to
+whom he was conscious of the germ of the inevitable desire to produce a
+responsive interest. And then he thought it would break the ice to say
+something playfully urbane.
+
+“Oh, you should let me take the chair,” he answered, “and have the
+pleasure of holding the skeins myself!”
+
+For all reply to this sally he received a stare of undisguised amazement
+from Miss Garland, who then looked across at Mrs. Hudson with a glance
+which plainly said: “You see he ‘s quite the insidious personage we
+feared.” The elder lady, however, sat with her eyes fixed on the ground
+and her two hands tightly clasped. But touching her Rowland felt much
+more compassion than resentment; her attitude was not coldness, it was
+a kind of dread, almost a terror. She was a small, eager woman, with a
+pale, troubled face, which added to her apparent age. After looking at
+her for some minutes Rowland saw that she was still young, and that she
+must have been a very girlish bride. She had been a pretty one, too,
+though she probably had looked terribly frightened at the altar. She
+was very delicately made, and Roderick had come honestly by his physical
+slimness and elegance. She wore no cap, and her flaxen hair, which was
+of extraordinary fineness, was smoothed and confined with Puritanic
+precision. She was excessively shy, and evidently very humble-minded; it
+was singular to see a woman to whom the experience of life had conveyed
+so little reassurance as to her own resources or the chances of things
+turning out well. Rowland began immediately to like her, and to feel
+impatient to persuade her that there was no harm in him, and that,
+twenty to one, her son would make her a well-pleased woman yet. He
+foresaw that she would be easy to persuade, and that a benevolent
+conversational tone would probably make her pass, fluttering, from
+distrust into an oppressive extreme of confidence. But he had an
+indefinable sense that the person who was testing that strong young
+eyesight of hers in the dim candle-light was less readily beguiled
+from her mysterious feminine preconceptions. Miss Garland, according
+to Cecilia’s judgment, as Rowland remembered, had not a countenance to
+inspire a sculptor; but it seemed to Rowland that her countenance might
+fairly inspire a man who was far from being a sculptor. She was not
+pretty, as the eye of habit judges prettiness, but when you made the
+observation you somehow failed to set it down against her, for you had
+already passed from measuring contours to tracing meanings. In Mary
+Garland’s face there were many possible ones, and they gave you the more
+to think about that it was not--like Roderick Hudson’s, for instance--a
+quick and mobile face, over which expression flickered like a candle in
+a wind. They followed each other slowly, distinctly, gravely, sincerely,
+and you might almost have fancied that, as they came and went, they gave
+her a sort of pain. She was tall and slender, and had an air of maidenly
+strength and decision. She had a broad forehead and dark eyebrows, a
+trifle thicker than those of classic beauties; her gray eye was clear
+but not brilliant, and her features were perfectly irregular. Her mouth
+was large, fortunately for the principal grace of her physiognomy was
+her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent amplitude. Rowland,
+indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something assured him that her
+rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart. She wore a scanty white dress,
+and had a nameless rustic air which would have led one to speak of her
+less as a young lady than as a young woman. She was evidently a girl
+of a great personal force, but she lacked pliancy. She was hemming
+a kitchen towel with the aid of a large steel thimble. She bent her
+serious eyes at last on her work again, and let Rowland explain himself.
+
+“I have become suddenly so very intimate with your son,” he said at
+last, addressing himself to Mrs. Hudson, “that it seems just I should
+make your acquaintance.”
+
+“Very just,” murmured the poor lady, and after a moment’s hesitation was
+on the point of adding something more; but Mr. Striker here interposed,
+after a prefatory clearance of the throat.
+
+“I should like to take the liberty,” he said, “of addressing you a
+simple question. For how long a period of time have you been acquainted
+with our young friend?” He continued to kick the air, but his head was
+thrown back and his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, as if in aversion
+to the spectacle of Rowland’s inevitable confusion.
+
+“A very short time, I confess. Hardly three days.”
+
+“And yet you call yourself intimate, eh? I have been seeing Mr. Roderick
+daily these three years, and yet it was only this morning that I felt as
+if I had at last the right to say that I knew him. We had a few moments’
+conversation in my office which supplied the missing links in the
+evidence. So that now I do venture to say I ‘m acquainted with Mr.
+Roderick! But wait three years, sir, like me!” and Mr. Striker laughed,
+with a closed mouth and a noiseless shake of all his long person.
+
+Mrs. Hudson smiled confusedly, at hazard; Miss Garland kept her eyes on
+her stitches. But it seemed to Rowland that the latter colored a little.
+“Oh, in three years, of course,” he said, “we shall know each other
+better. Before many years are over, madam,” he pursued, “I expect the
+world to know him. I expect him to be a great man!”
+
+Mrs. Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious device
+for increasing her distress by the assistance of irony. Then reassured,
+little by little, by Rowland’s benevolent visage, she gave him an
+appealing glance and a timorous “Really?”
+
+But before Rowland could respond, Mr. Striker again intervened. “Do
+I fully apprehend your expression?” he asked. “Our young friend is to
+become a great man?”
+
+“A great artist, I hope,” said Rowland.
+
+“This is a new and interesting view,” said Mr. Striker, with an
+assumption of judicial calmness. “We have had hopes for Mr. Roderick,
+but I confess, if I have rightly understood them, they stopped short of
+greatness. We should n’t have taken the responsibility of claiming
+it for him. What do you say, ladies? We all feel about him here--his
+mother, Miss Garland, and myself--as if his merits were rather in the
+line of the”--and Mr. Striker waved his hand with a series of fantastic
+flourishes in the air--“of the light ornamental!” Mr. Striker bore his
+recalcitrant pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both to be
+fair and to respect the susceptibilities of his companions. But he was
+unversed in the mysterious processes of feminine emotion. Ten minutes
+before, there had been a general harmony of sombre views; but on hearing
+Roderick’s limitations thus distinctly formulated to a stranger, the two
+ladies mutely protested. Mrs. Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and
+Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with
+a short, cold glance.
+
+“I ‘m afraid, Mrs. Hudson,” Rowland pursued, evading the discussion
+of Roderick’s possible greatness, “that you don’t at all thank me for
+stirring up your son’s ambition on a line which leads him so far from
+home. I suspect I have made you my enemy.”
+
+Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully
+perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being
+impolite. “My cousin is no one’s enemy,” Miss Garland hereupon declared,
+gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made
+Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.
+
+“Does she leave that to you?” Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.
+
+“We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments,” said Mr. Striker;
+“Miss Garland perhaps most of all. Miss Garland,” and Mr. Striker
+waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been
+regrettably omitted, “is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter
+of a minister, the sister of a minister.” Rowland bowed deferentially,
+and the young girl went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently,
+either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts.
+Mr. Striker continued: “Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated
+to converse with you freely. She will allow me to address you a few
+questions. Would you kindly inform her, as exactly as possible, just
+what you propose to do with her son?”
+
+The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland’s face and seemed
+to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would
+have expressed it less defiantly. But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker’s
+many-wrinkled light blue eye, shrewd at once and good-natured, that
+he had no intention of defiance, and that he was simply pompous and
+conceited and sarcastically compassionate of any view of things in which
+Roderick Hudson was regarded in a serious light.
+
+“Do, my dear madam?” demanded Rowland. “I don’t propose to do anything.
+He must do for himself. I simply offer him the chance. He ‘s to study,
+to work--hard, I hope.”
+
+“Not too hard, please,” murmured Mrs. Hudson, pleadingly, wheeling about
+from recent visions of dangerous leisure. “He ‘s not very strong, and I
+‘m afraid the climate of Europe is very relaxing.”
+
+“Ah, study?” repeated Mr. Striker. “To what line of study is he to
+direct his attention?” Then suddenly, with an impulse of disinterested
+curiosity on his own account, “How do you study sculpture, anyhow?”
+
+“By looking at models and imitating them.”
+
+“At models, eh? To what kind of models do you refer?”
+
+“To the antique, in the first place.”
+
+“Ah, the antique,” repeated Mr. Striker, with a jocose intonation. “Do
+you hear, madam? Roderick is going off to Europe to learn to imitate the
+antique.”
+
+“I suppose it ‘s all right,” said Mrs. Hudson, twisting herself in a
+sort of delicate anguish.
+
+“An antique, as I understand it,” the lawyer continued, “is an image of
+a pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no
+nose, and no clothing. A precious model, certainly!”
+
+“That ‘s a very good description of many,” said Rowland, with a laugh.
+
+“Mercy! Truly?” asked Mrs. Hudson, borrowing courage from his urbanity.
+
+“But a sculptor’s studies, you intimate, are not confined to the
+antique,” Mr. Striker resumed. “After he has been looking three or four
+years at the objects I describe”--
+
+“He studies the living model,” said Rowland.
+
+“Does it take three or four years?” asked Mrs. Hudson, imploringly.
+
+“That depends upon the artist’s aptitude. After twenty years a real
+artist is still studying.”
+
+“Oh, my poor boy!” moaned Mrs. Hudson, finding the prospect, under every
+light, still terrible.
+
+“Now this study of the living model,” Mr. Striker pursued. “Inform Mrs.
+Hudson about that.”
+
+“Oh dear, no!” cried Mrs. Hudson, shrinkingly.
+
+“That too,” said Rowland, “is one of the reasons for studying in Rome.
+It ‘s a handsome race, you know, and you find very well-made people.”
+
+“I suppose they ‘re no better made than a good tough Yankee,” objected
+Mr. Striker, transposing his interminable legs. “The same God made us.”
+
+“Surely,” sighed Mrs. Hudson, but with a questioning glance at her
+visitor which showed that she had already begun to concede much weight
+to his opinion. Rowland hastened to express his assent to Mr. Striker’s
+proposition.
+
+Miss Garland looked up, and, after a moment’s hesitation: “Are the Roman
+women very beautiful?” she asked.
+
+Rowland too, in answering, hesitated; he was looking straight at the
+young girl. “On the whole, I prefer ours,” he said.
+
+She had dropped her work in her lap; her hands were crossed upon it, her
+head thrown a little back. She had evidently expected a more impersonal
+answer, and she was dissatisfied. For an instant she seemed inclined to
+make a rejoinder, but she slowly picked up her work in silence and drew
+her stitches again.
+
+Rowland had for the second time the feeling that she judged him to be
+a person of a disagreeably sophisticated tone. He noticed too that the
+kitchen towel she was hemming was terribly coarse. And yet his answer
+had a resonant inward echo, and he repeated to himself, “Yes, on the
+whole, I prefer ours.”
+
+“Well, these models,” began Mr. Striker. “You put them into an attitude,
+I suppose.”
+
+“An attitude, exactly.”
+
+“And then you sit down and look at them.”
+
+“You must not sit too long. You must go at your clay and try to build up
+something that looks like them.”
+
+“Well, there you are with your model in an attitude on one side,
+yourself, in an attitude too, I suppose, on the other, and your pile of
+clay in the middle, building up, as you say. So you pass the morning.
+After that I hope you go out and take a walk, and rest from your
+exertions.”
+
+“Unquestionably. But to a sculptor who loves his work there is no time
+lost. Everything he looks at teaches or suggests something.”
+
+“That ‘s a tempting doctrine to young men with a taste for sitting by
+the hour with the page unturned, watching the flies buzz, or the frost
+melt on the window-pane. Our young friend, in this way, must have laid
+up stores of information which I never suspected!”
+
+“Very likely,” said Rowland, with an unresentful smile, “he will prove
+some day the completer artist for some of those lazy reveries.”
+
+This theory was apparently very grateful to Mrs. Hudson, who had never
+had the case put for her son with such ingenious hopefulness, and found
+herself disrelishing the singular situation of seeming to side against
+her own flesh and blood with a lawyer whose conversational tone betrayed
+the habit of cross-questioning.
+
+“My son, then,” she ventured to ask, “my son has great--what you would
+call great powers?”
+
+“To my sense, very great powers.”
+
+Poor Mrs. Hudson actually smiled, broadly, gleefully, and glanced at
+Miss Garland, as if to invite her to do likewise. But the young girl’s
+face remained serious, like the eastern sky when the opposite sunset is
+too feeble to make it glow. “Do you really know?” she asked, looking at
+Rowland.
+
+“One cannot know in such a matter save after proof, and proof takes
+time. But one can believe.”
+
+“And you believe?”
+
+“I believe.”
+
+But even then Miss Garland vouchsafed no smile. Her face became graver
+than ever.
+
+“Well, well,” said Mrs. Hudson, “we must hope that it is all for the
+best.”
+
+Mr. Striker eyed his old friend for a moment with a look of some
+displeasure; he saw that this was but a cunning feminine imitation of
+resignation, and that, through some untraceable process of transition,
+she was now taking more comfort in the opinions of this insinuating
+stranger than in his own tough dogmas. He rose to his feet,
+without pulling down his waistcoat, but with a wrinkled grin at the
+inconsistency of women. “Well, sir, Mr. Roderick’s powers are nothing to
+me,” he said, “nor no use he makes of them. Good or bad, he ‘s no son
+of mine. But, in a friendly way, I ‘m glad to hear so fine an account
+of him. I ‘m glad, madam, you ‘re so satisfied with the prospect.
+Affection, sir, you see, must have its guarantees!” He paused a moment,
+stroking his beard, with his head inclined and one eye half-closed,
+looking at Rowland. The look was grotesque, but it was significant, and
+it puzzled Rowland more than it amused him. “I suppose you ‘re a very
+brilliant young man,” he went on, “very enlightened, very cultivated,
+quite up to the mark in the fine arts and all that sort of thing. I ‘m a
+plain, practical old boy, content to follow an honorable profession in a
+free country. I did n’t go off to the Old World to learn my business; no
+one took me by the hand; I had to grease my wheels myself, and, such as
+I am, I ‘m a self-made man, every inch of me! Well, if our young friend
+is booked for fame and fortune, I don’t suppose his going to Rome will
+stop him. But, mind you, it won’t help him such a long way, either. If
+you have undertaken to put him through, there ‘s a thing or two you ‘d
+better remember. The crop we gather depends upon the seed we sow. He may
+be the biggest genius of the age: his potatoes won’t come up without his
+hoeing them. If he takes things so almighty easy as--well, as one or two
+young fellows of genius I ‘ve had under my eye--his produce will never
+gain the prize. Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch
+by inch, and does n’t believe that we ‘ll wake up to find our work done
+because we ‘ve lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is
+devilish hard to do! If your young protajay finds things easy and has
+a good time and says he likes the life, it ‘s a sign that--as I may
+say--you had better step round to the office and look at the books. That
+‘s all I desire to remark. No offense intended. I hope you ‘ll have a
+first-rate time.”
+
+Rowland could honestly reply that this seemed pregnant sense, and he
+offered Mr. Striker a friendly hand-shake as the latter withdrew. But
+Mr. Striker’s rather grim view of matters cast a momentary shadow on his
+companions, and Mrs. Hudson seemed to feel that it necessitated between
+them some little friendly agreement not to be overawed.
+
+Rowland sat for some time longer, partly because he wished to please the
+two women and partly because he was strangely pleased himself. There
+was something touching in their unworldly fears and diffident hopes,
+something almost terrible in the way poor little Mrs. Hudson seemed
+to flutter and quiver with intense maternal passion. She put forth one
+timid conversational venture after another, and asked Rowland a number
+of questions about himself, his age, his family, his occupations, his
+tastes, his religious opinions. Rowland had an odd feeling at last that
+she had begun to consider him very exemplary, and that she might
+make, later, some perturbing discovery. He tried, therefore, to invent
+something that would prepare her to find him fallible. But he could
+think of nothing. It only seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly
+mistrusted him, and that he must leave her to render him the service,
+after he had gone, of making him the object of a little firm derogation.
+Mrs. Hudson talked with low-voiced eagerness about her son.
+
+“He ‘s very lovable, sir, I assure you. When you come to know him you
+‘ll find him very lovable. He ‘s a little spoiled, of course; he has
+always done with me as he pleased; but he ‘s a good boy, I ‘m sure he ‘s
+a good boy. And every one thinks him very attractive: I ‘m sure he ‘d be
+noticed, anywhere. Don’t you think he ‘s very handsome, sir? He features
+his poor father. I had another--perhaps you ‘ve been told. He was
+killed.” And the poor little lady bravely smiled, for fear of doing
+worse. “He was a very fine boy, but very different from Roderick.
+Roderick is a little strange; he has never been an easy boy. Sometimes
+I feel like the goose--was n’t it a goose, dear?” and startled by the
+audacity of her comparison she appealed to Miss Garland--“the goose, or
+the hen, who hatched a swan’s egg. I have never been able to give him
+what he needs. I have always thought that in more--in more brilliant
+circumstances he might find his place and be happy. But at the same time
+I was afraid of the world for him; it was so large and dangerous and
+dreadful. No doubt I know very little about it. I never suspected, I
+confess, that it contained persons of such liberality as yours.”
+
+Rowland replied that, evidently, she had done the world but scanty
+justice. “No,” objected Miss Garland, after a pause, “it is like
+something in a fairy tale.”
+
+“What, pray?”
+
+“Your coming here all unknown, so rich and so polite, and carrying off
+my cousin in a golden cloud.”
+
+If this was badinage Miss Garland had the best of it, for Rowland almost
+fell a-musing silently over the question whether there was a possibility
+of irony in that transparent gaze. Before he withdrew, Mrs. Hudson made
+him tell her again that Roderick’s powers were extraordinary. He had
+inspired her with a clinging, caressing faith in his wisdom. “He will
+really do great things,” she asked, “the very greatest?”
+
+“I see no reason in his talent itself why he should not.”
+
+“Well, we ‘ll think of that as we sit here alone,” she rejoined. “Mary
+and I will sit here and talk about it. So I give him up,” she went on,
+as he was going. “I ‘m sure you ‘ll be the best of friends to him,
+but if you should ever forget him, or grow tired of him, or lose your
+interest in him, and he should come to any harm or any trouble, please,
+sir, remember”--And she paused, with a tremulous voice.
+
+“Remember, my dear madam?”
+
+“That he is all I have--that he is everything--and that it would be very
+terrible.”
+
+“In so far as I can help him, he shall succeed,” was all Rowland could
+say. He turned to Miss Garland, to bid her good night, and she rose and
+put out her hand. She was very straightforward, but he could see that if
+she was too modest to be bold, she was much too simple to be shy. “Have
+you no charge to lay upon me?” he asked--to ask her something.
+
+She looked at him a moment and then, although she was not shy, she
+blushed. “Make him do his best,” she said.
+
+Rowland noted the soft intensity with which the words were uttered. “Do
+you take a great interest in him?” he demanded.
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Then, if he will not do his best for you, he will not do it for me.”
+ She turned away with another blush, and Rowland took his leave.
+
+He walked homeward, thinking of many things. The great Northampton
+elms interarched far above in the darkness, but the moon had risen and
+through scattered apertures was hanging the dusky vault with silver
+lamps. There seemed to Rowland something intensely serious in the scene
+in which he had just taken part. He had laughed and talked and braved it
+out in self-defense; but when he reflected that he was really meddling
+with the simple stillness of this little New England home, and that he
+had ventured to disturb so much living security in the interest of a
+far-away, fantastic hypothesis, he paused, amazed at his temerity. It
+was true, as Cecilia had said, that for an unofficious man it was a
+singular position. There stirred in his mind an odd feeling of annoyance
+with Roderick for having thus peremptorily enlisted his sympathies. As
+he looked up and down the long vista, and saw the clear white houses
+glancing here and there in the broken moonshine, he could almost have
+believed that the happiest lot for any man was to make the most of life
+in some such tranquil spot as that. Here were kindness, comfort, safety,
+the warning voice of duty, the perfect hush of temptation. And as
+Rowland looked along the arch of silvered shadow and out into the lucid
+air of the American night, which seemed so doubly vast, somehow, and
+strange and nocturnal, he felt like declaring that here was beauty
+too--beauty sufficient for an artist not to starve upon it. As he stood,
+lost in the darkness, he presently heard a rapid tread on the other side
+of the road, accompanied by a loud, jubilant whistle, and in a moment
+a figure emerged into an open gap of moonshine. He had no difficulty
+in recognizing Hudson, who was presumably returning from a visit to
+Cecilia. Roderick stopped suddenly and stared up at the moon, with his
+face vividly illumined. He broke out into a snatch of song:--
+
+“The splendor falls on castle walls
+And snowy summits old in story!”
+
+And with a great, musical roll of his voice he went swinging off into
+the darkness again, as if his thoughts had lent him wings. He was
+dreaming of the inspiration of foreign lands,--of castled crags and
+historic landscapes. What a pity, after all, thought Rowland, as he went
+his own way, that he should n’t have a taste of it!
+
+It had been a very just remark of Cecilia’s that Roderick would change
+with a change in his circumstances. Rowland had telegraphed to New York
+for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came
+Hudson’s spirits rose to incalculable heights. He was radiant with
+good-humor, and his kindly jollity seemed the pledge of a brilliant
+future. He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old
+grievances, and seemed every way reconciled to a world in which he was
+going to count as an active force. He was inexhaustibly loquacious and
+fantastic, and as Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that
+it was only to be feared he was going to start not for Europe but for
+heaven. He took long walks with Rowland, who felt more and more the
+fascination of what he would have called his giftedness. Rowland
+returned several times to Mrs. Hudson’s, and found the two ladies doing
+their best to be happy in their companion’s happiness. Miss Garland, he
+thought, was succeeding better than her demeanor on his first visit had
+promised. He tried to have some especial talk with her, but her extreme
+reserve forced him to content himself with such response to his rather
+urgent overtures as might be extracted from a keenly attentive smile.
+It must be confessed, however, that if the response was vague, the
+satisfaction was great, and that Rowland, after his second visit, kept
+seeing a lurking reflection of this smile in the most unexpected places.
+It seemed strange that she should please him so well at so slender
+a cost, but please him she did, prodigiously, and his pleasure had
+a quality altogether new to him. It made him restless, and a trifle
+melancholy; he walked about absently, wondering and wishing. He
+wondered, among other things, why fate should have condemned him to
+make the acquaintance of a girl whom he would make a sacrifice to know
+better, just as he was leaving the country for years. It seemed to him
+that he was turning his back on a chance of happiness--happiness of a
+sort of which the slenderest germ should be cultivated. He asked himself
+whether, feeling as he did, if he had only himself to please, he would
+give up his journey and--wait. He had Roderick to please now, for whom
+disappointment would be cruel; but he said to himself that certainly, if
+there were no Roderick in the case, the ship should sail without him.
+He asked Hudson several questions about his cousin, but Roderick,
+confidential on most points, seemed to have reasons of his own for
+being reticent on this one. His measured answers quickened Rowland’s
+curiosity, for Miss Garland, with her own irritating half-suggestions,
+had only to be a subject of guarded allusion in others to become
+intolerably interesting. He learned from Roderick that she was the
+daughter of a country minister, a far-away cousin of his mother,
+settled in another part of the State; that she was one of a half-a-dozen
+daughters, that the family was very poor, and that she had come a couple
+of months before to pay his mother a long visit. “It is to be a very
+long one now,” he said, “for it is settled that she is to remain while I
+am away.”
+
+The fermentation of contentment in Roderick’s soul reached its climax a
+few days before the young men were to make their farewells. He had been
+sitting with his friends on Cecilia’s veranda, but for half an hour past
+he had said nothing. Lounging back against a vine-wreathed column and
+gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling softly to himself with that
+indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, and which
+in him had a sort of pleading grace. At last, springing up: “I want to
+strike out, hard!” he exclaimed. “I want to do something violent, to let
+off steam!”
+
+“I ‘ll tell you what to do, this lovely weather,” said Cecilia. “Give a
+picnic. It can be as violent as you please, and it will have the merit
+of leading off our emotion into a safe channel, as well as yours.”
+
+Roderick laughed uproariously at Cecilia’s very practical remedy for his
+sentimental need, but a couple of days later, nevertheless, the picnic
+was given. It was to be a family party, but Roderick, in his magnanimous
+geniality, insisted on inviting Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland
+mentally applauded. “And we ‘ll have Mrs. Striker, too,” he said, “if
+she ‘ll come, to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we
+‘ll have Miss Striker--the divine Petronilla!” The young lady thus
+denominated formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland, and Cecilia, the
+feminine half of the company. Mr. Striker presented himself, sacrificing
+a morning’s work, with a magnanimity greater even than Roderick’s, and
+foreign support was further secured in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the
+young Orthodox minister. Roderick had chosen the feasting-place; he
+knew it well and had passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his
+length on the grass and gazing at the blue undulations of the horizon.
+It was a meadow on the edge of a wood, with mossy rocks protruding
+through the grass and a little lake on the other side. It was a
+cloudless August day; Rowland always remembered it, and the scene, and
+everything that was said and done, with extraordinary distinctness.
+Roderick surpassed himself in friendly jollity, and at one moment, when
+exhilaration was at the highest, was seen in Mr. Striker’s high white
+hat, drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup to Mr. Striker’s health.
+Miss Striker had her father’s pale blue eye; she was dressed as if she
+were going to sit for her photograph, and remained for a long time with
+Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake. Mrs. Hudson sat
+all day with a little meek, apprehensive smile. She was afraid of an
+“accident,” though unless Miss Striker (who indeed was a little of
+a romp) should push Roderick into the lake, it was hard to see what
+accident could occur. Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and uncrumpled
+at the end of the festival as at the beginning. Mr. Whitefoot, who but
+a twelvemonth later became a convert to episcopacy and was already
+cultivating a certain conversational sonority, devoted himself to
+Cecilia. He had a little book in his pocket, out of which he read to
+her at intervals, lying stretched at her feet, and it was a lasting joke
+with Cecilia, afterwards, that she would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot’s
+little book had been. Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland,
+while the feasting went forward on the grass. She wore a so-called gypsy
+hat--a little straw hat, tied down over her ears, so as to cast her
+eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it. When the company
+dispersed, after lunch, he proposed to her to take a stroll in the
+wood. She hesitated a moment and looked toward Mrs. Hudson, as if for
+permission to leave her. But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker,
+who sat gossiping to her with relaxed magniloquence, his waistcoat
+unbuttoned and his hat on his nose.
+
+“You can give your cousin your society at any time,” said Rowland. “But
+me, perhaps, you ‘ll never see again.”
+
+“Why then should we wish to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?”
+ she asked, with homely logic. But by this time she had consented, and
+they were treading the fallen pine-needles.
+
+“Oh, one must take all one can get,” said Rowland. “If we can be friends
+for half an hour, it ‘s so much gained.”
+
+“Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?”
+
+“‘Never’ is a good deal to say. But I go to Europe for a long stay.”
+
+“Do you prefer it so much to your own country?”
+
+“I will not say that. But I have the misfortune to be a rather idle man,
+and in Europe the burden of idleness is less heavy than here.”
+
+She was silent for a few minutes; then at last, “In that, then, we are
+better than Europe,” she said. To a certain point Rowland agreed with
+her, but he demurred, to make her say more.
+
+“Would n’t it be better,” she asked, “to work to get reconciled to
+America, than to go to Europe to get reconciled to idleness?”
+
+“Doubtless; but you know work is hard to find.”
+
+“I come from a little place where every one has plenty,” said Miss
+Garland. “We all work; every one I know works. And really,” she added
+presently, “I look at you with curiosity; you are the first unoccupied
+man I ever saw.”
+
+“Don’t look at me too hard,” said Rowland, smiling. “I shall sink into
+the earth. What is the name of your little place?”
+
+“West Nazareth,” said Miss Garland, with her usual sobriety. “It is not
+so very little, though it ‘s smaller than Northampton.”
+
+“I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth,” Rowland said.
+
+“You would not like it,” Miss Garland declared reflectively. “Though
+there are far finer woods there than this. We have miles and miles of
+woods.”
+
+“I might chop down trees,” said Rowland. “That is, if you allow it.”
+
+“Allow it? Why, where should we get our firewood?” Then, noticing that
+he had spoken jestingly, she glanced at him askance, though with no
+visible diminution of her gravity. “Don’t you know how to do anything?
+Have you no profession?”
+
+Rowland shook his head. “Absolutely none.”
+
+“What do you do all day?”
+
+“Nothing worth relating. That ‘s why I am going to Europe. There, at
+least, if I do nothing, I shall see a great deal; and if I ‘m not a
+producer, I shall at any rate be an observer.”
+
+“Can’t we observe everywhere?”
+
+“Certainly; and I really think that in that way I make the most of my
+opportunities. Though I confess,” he continued, “that I often remember
+there are things to be seen here to which I probably have n’t done
+justice. I should like, for instance, to see West Nazareth.”
+
+She looked round at him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she exactly
+supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not
+necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior
+motive. In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives. The girl
+beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that her charm
+was essentially her own and not reflected from social circumstance,
+he wished to give himself the satisfaction of contrasting her with the
+meagre influences of her education. Miss Garland’s second movement was
+to take him at his word. “Since you are free to do as you please, why
+don’t you go there?”
+
+“I am not free to do as I please now. I have offered your cousin to bear
+him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm, and I cannot
+retract.”
+
+“Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?”
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment. “I think I may almost say so.”
+
+Miss Garland walked along in silence. “Do you mean to do a great deal
+for him?” she asked at last.
+
+“What I can. But my power of helping him is very small beside his power
+of helping himself.”
+
+For a moment she was silent again. “You are very generous,” she said,
+almost solemnly.
+
+“No, I am simply very shrewd. Roderick will repay me. It ‘s an
+investment. At first, I think,” he added shortly afterwards, “you would
+not have paid me that compliment. You distrusted me.”
+
+She made no attempt to deny it. “I did n’t see why you should wish to
+make Roderick discontented. I thought you were rather frivolous.”
+
+“You did me injustice. I don’t think I ‘m that.”
+
+“It was because you are unlike other men--those, at least, whom I have
+seen.”
+
+“In what way?”
+
+“Why, as you describe yourself. You have no duties, no profession, no
+home. You live for your pleasure.”
+
+“That ‘s all very true. And yet I maintain I ‘m not frivolous.”
+
+“I hope not,” said Miss Garland, simply. They had reached a point where
+the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks which lost
+themselves in a verdurous tangle. Miss Garland seemed to think that the
+difficulty of choice between them was a reason for giving them up and
+turning back. Rowland thought otherwise, and detected agreeable grounds
+for preference in the left-hand path. As a compromise, they sat down on
+a fallen log. Looking about him, Rowland espied a curious wild shrub,
+with a spotted crimson leaf; he went and plucked a spray of it and
+brought it to Miss Garland. He had never observed it before, but she
+immediately called it by its name. She expressed surprise at his not
+knowing it; it was extremely common. He presently brought her a specimen
+of another delicate plant, with a little blue-streaked flower. “I
+suppose that ‘s common, too,” he said, “but I have never seen it--or
+noticed it, at least.” She answered that this one was rare, and
+meditated a moment before she could remember its name. At last she
+recalled it, and expressed surprise at his having found the plant in the
+woods; she supposed it grew only in open marshes. Rowland complimented
+her on her fund of useful information.
+
+“It ‘s not especially useful,” she answered; “but I like to know the
+names of plants as I do those of my acquaintances. When we walk in the
+woods at home--which we do so much--it seems as unnatural not to know
+what to call the flowers as it would be to see some one in the town with
+whom we were not on speaking terms.”
+
+“Apropos of frivolity,” Rowland said, “I ‘m sure you have very little
+of it, unless at West Nazareth it is considered frivolous to walk in the
+woods and nod to the nodding flowers. Do kindly tell me a little about
+yourself.” And to compel her to begin, “I know you come of a race of
+theologians,” he went on.
+
+“No,” she replied, deliberating; “they are not theologians, though they
+are ministers. We don’t take a very firm stand upon doctrine; we are
+practical, rather. We write sermons and preach them, but we do a great
+deal of hard work beside.”
+
+“And of this hard work what has your share been?”
+
+“The hardest part: doing nothing.”
+
+“What do you call nothing?”
+
+“I taught school a while: I must make the most of that. But I confess I
+did n’t like it. Otherwise, I have only done little things at home, as
+they turned up.”
+
+“What kind of things?”
+
+“Oh, every kind. If you had seen my home, you would understand.”
+
+Rowland would have liked to make her specify; but he felt a more urgent
+need to respect her simplicity than he had ever felt to defer to the
+complex circumstance of certain other women. “To be happy, I imagine,”
+ he contented himself with saying, “you need to be occupied. You need to
+have something to expend yourself upon.”
+
+“That is not so true as it once was; now that I am older, I am sure I am
+less impatient of leisure. Certainly, these two months that I have been
+with Mrs. Hudson, I have had a terrible amount of it. And yet I have
+liked it! And now that I am probably to be with her all the while that
+her son is away, I look forward to more with a resignation that I don’t
+quite know what to make of.”
+
+“It is settled, then, that you are to remain with your cousin?”
+
+“It depends upon their writing from home that I may stay. But that is
+probable. Only I must not forget,” she said, rising, “that the ground
+for my doing so is that she be not left alone.”
+
+“I am glad to know,” said Rowland, “that I shall probably often hear
+about you. I assure you I shall often think about you!” These words were
+half impulsive, half deliberate. They were the simple truth, and he had
+asked himself why he should not tell her the truth. And yet they were
+not all of it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she
+received this. She received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without
+a shadow of coquetry, of any apparent thought of listening to it
+gracefully, but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation, which
+seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step. Evidently, if
+Rowland was to take pleasure in hearing about her, it would have to be a
+highly disinterested pleasure. She answered nothing, and Rowland too,
+as he walked beside her, was silent; but as he looked along the
+shadow-woven wood-path, what he was really facing was a level three
+years of disinterestedness. He ushered them in by talking composed
+civility until he had brought Miss Garland back to her companions.
+
+He saw her but once again. He was obliged to be in New York a couple of
+days before sailing, and it was arranged that Roderick should overtake
+him at the last moment. The evening before he left Northampton he went
+to say farewell to Mrs. Hudson. The ceremony was brief. Rowland soon
+perceived that the poor little lady was in the melting mood, and, as he
+dreaded her tears, he compressed a multitude of solemn promises into a
+silent hand-shake and took his leave. Miss Garland, she had told him,
+was in the back-garden with Roderick: he might go out to them. He did
+so, and as he drew near he heard Roderick’s high-pitched voice ringing
+behind the shrubbery. In a moment, emerging, he found Miss Garland
+leaning against a tree, with her cousin before her talking with great
+emphasis. He asked pardon for interrupting them, and said he wished only
+to bid her good-by. She gave him her hand and he made her his bow in
+silence. “Don’t forget,” he said to Roderick, as he turned away. “And
+don’t, in this company, repent of your bargain.”
+
+“I shall not let him,” said Miss Garland, with something very like
+gayety. “I shall see that he is punctual. He must go! I owe you an
+apology for having doubted that he ought to.” And in spite of the dusk
+Rowland could see that she had an even finer smile than he had supposed.
+
+Roderick was punctual, eagerly punctual, and they went. Rowland for
+several days was occupied with material cares, and lost sight of his
+sentimental perplexities. But they only slumbered, and they were
+sharply awakened. The weather was fine, and the two young men always sat
+together upon deck late into the evening. One night, toward the last,
+they were at the stern of the great ship, watching her grind the solid
+blackness of the ocean into phosphorescent foam. They talked on these
+occasions of everything conceivable, and had the air of having no
+secrets from each other. But it was on Roderick’s conscience that this
+air belied him, and he was too frank by nature, moreover, for permanent
+reticence on any point.
+
+“I must tell you something,” he said at last. “I should like you to know
+it, and you will be so glad to know it. Besides, it ‘s only a question
+of time; three months hence, probably, you would have guessed it. I am
+engaged to Mary Garland.”
+
+Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm, it seemed to him that the
+ship gave a great dizzying lurch. But in a moment he contrived to
+answer coherently: “Engaged to Miss Garland! I never supposed--I never
+imagined”--
+
+“That I was in love with her?” Roderick interrupted. “Neither did I,
+until this last fortnight. But you came and put me into such ridiculous
+good-humor that I felt an extraordinary desire to tell some woman that I
+adored her. Miss Garland is a magnificent girl; you know her too little
+to do her justice. I have been quietly learning to know her, these
+past three months, and have been falling in love with her without
+being conscious of it. It appeared, when I spoke to her, that she had
+a kindness for me. So the thing was settled. I must of course make some
+money before we can marry. It ‘s rather droll, certainly, to engage
+one’s self to a girl whom one is going to leave the next day, for years.
+We shall be condemned, for some time to come, to do a terrible deal
+of abstract thinking about each other. But I wanted her blessing on my
+career and I could not help asking for it. Unless a man is unnaturally
+selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure
+I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that fine
+creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news of my greatness. If ever I
+am a dull companion and over-addicted to moping, remember in justice
+to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart is five thousand miles
+away.”
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a sort of feeling that fortune had
+played him an elaborately-devised trick. It had lured him out into
+mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a
+singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him
+a thumping blow in mid-chest. “Yes,” he said, after an attempt at the
+usual formal congratulation, “you certainly ought to do better--with
+Miss Garland waiting for you at Northampton.”
+
+Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was eloquent and rung a hundred
+changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man. Then at last,
+suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that he must go to bed.
+Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late, between sea and sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. Rome
+
+One warm, still day, late in the Roman autumn, our two young men were
+sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed pines of the Villa Ludovisi.
+They had been spending an hour in the mouldy little garden-house, where
+the colossal mask of the famous Juno looks out with blank eyes from that
+dusky corner which must seem to her the last possible stage of a lapse
+from Olympus. Then they had wandered out into the gardens, and
+were lounging away the morning under the spell of their magical
+picturesqueness. Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that,
+after the Juno, it was a profanation to look at anything but sky and
+trees. There was a fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had
+seen it on his former visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects.
+But Roderick, though he had never seen it, declared that it could n’t
+be worth a fig, and that he did n’t care to look at ugly things. He
+remained stretched on his overcoat, which he had spread on the grass,
+while Rowland went off envying the intellectual comfort of genius, which
+can arrive at serene conclusions without disagreeable processes. When
+the latter came back, his friend was sitting with his elbows on his
+knees and his head in his hands. Rowland, in the geniality of a mood
+attuned to the mellow charm of a Roman villa, found a good word to say
+for the Guercino; but he chiefly talked of the view from the little
+belvedere on the roof of the casino, and how it looked like the prospect
+from a castle turret in a fairy tale.
+
+“Very likely,” said Roderick, throwing himself back with a yawn. “But I
+must let it pass. I have seen enough for the present; I have reached the
+top of the hill. I have an indigestion of impressions; I must work them
+off before I go in for any more. I don’t want to look at any more of
+other people’s works, for a month--not even at Nature’s own. I want to
+look at Roderick Hudson’s. The result of it all is that I ‘m not afraid.
+I can but try, as well as the rest of them! The fellow who did that
+gazing goddess yonder only made an experiment. The other day, when I
+was looking at Michael Angelo’s Moses, I was seized with a kind
+of defiance--a reaction against all this mere passive enjoyment of
+grandeur. It was a rousing great success, certainly, that rose there
+before me, but somehow it was not an inscrutable mystery, and it seemed
+to me, not perhaps that I should some day do as well, but that at least
+I might!”
+
+“As you say, you can but try,” said Rowland. “Success is only passionate
+effort.”
+
+“Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely.
+It came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since
+I left Northampton. I can’t believe it!”
+
+“It certainly seems more.”
+
+“It seems like ten years. What an exquisite ass I was!”
+
+“Do you feel so wise now?”
+
+“Verily! Don’t I look so? Surely I have n’t the same face. Have n’t I a
+different eye, a different expression, a different voice?”
+
+“I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition. But it ‘s very
+likely. You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized. I
+dare say,” added Rowland, “that Miss Garland would think so.”
+
+“That ‘s not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted.”
+
+Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened
+narrowly to his companion’s voluntary observations.
+
+“Are you very sure?” he replied.
+
+“Why, she ‘s a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance
+that I had become a cynical sybarite.” Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian
+watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third
+finger of his left hand.
+
+“Will you think I take a liberty,” asked Rowland, “if I say you judge
+her superficially?”
+
+“For heaven’s sake,” cried Roderick, laughing, “don’t tell me she ‘s
+not a moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her, and with rigid
+virtue in her person.”
+
+“She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one. That ‘s more
+than a difference in degree; it ‘s a difference in kind. I don’t know
+whether I ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely. There is
+nothing narrow about her but her experience; everything else is large.
+My impression of her is of a person of great capacity, as yet wholly
+unmeasured and untested. Some day or other, I ‘m sure, she will judge
+fairly and wisely of everything.”
+
+“Stay a bit!” cried Roderick; “you ‘re a better Catholic than the Pope.
+I shall be content if she judges fairly of me--of my merits, that is.
+The rest she must not judge at all. She ‘s a grimly devoted little
+creature; may she always remain so! Changed as I am, I adore her none
+the less. What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions,” he went
+on, after a long pause, “all the material of thought that life pours
+into us at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these?
+There are twenty moments a week--a day, for that matter, some days--that
+seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate, that appear to
+form an intellectual era. But others come treading on their heels and
+sweeping them along, and they all melt like water into water and settle
+the question of precedence among themselves. The curious thing is that
+the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all
+one’s ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different
+corners of a room, and take boarders.”
+
+“I fancy it is our peculiar good luck that we don’t see the limits of
+our minds,” said Rowland. “We are young, compared with what we may one
+day be. That belongs to youth; it is perhaps the best part of it. They
+say that old people do find themselves at last face to face with a solid
+blank wall, and stand thumping against it in vain. It resounds, it seems
+to have something beyond it, but it won’t move! That ‘s only a reason
+for living with open doors as long as we can!”
+
+“Open doors?” murmured Roderick. “Yes, let us close no doors that open
+upon Rome. For this, for the mind, is eternal summer! But though my
+doors may stand open to-day,” he presently added, “I shall see no
+visitors. I want to pause and breathe; I want to dream of a statue.
+I have been working hard for three months; I have earned a right to a
+reverie.”
+
+Rowland, on his side, was not without provision for reflection, and
+they lingered on in broken, desultory talk. Rowland felt the need for
+intellectual rest, for a truce to present care for churches, statues,
+and pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as
+he had really been living Roderick’s intellectual life the past three
+months, as well as his own. As he looked back on these full-flavored
+weeks, he drew a long breath of satisfaction, almost of relief.
+Roderick, thus far, had justified his confidence and flattered his
+perspicacity; he was rapidly unfolding into an ideal brilliancy. He was
+changed even more than he himself suspected; he had stepped, without
+faltering, into his birthright, and was spending money, intellectually,
+as lavishly as a young heir who has just won an obstructive lawsuit.
+Roderick’s glance and voice were the same, doubtless, as when they
+enlivened the summer dusk on Cecilia’s veranda, but in his person,
+generally, there was an indefinable expression of experience rapidly
+and easily assimilated. Rowland had been struck at the outset with the
+instinctive quickness of his observation and his free appropriation of
+whatever might serve his purpose. He had not been, for instance, half
+an hour on English soil before he perceived that he was dressed like
+a rustic, and he had immediately reformed his toilet with the most
+unerring tact. His appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for
+everything characteristically foreign, as it presented itself, he had an
+extravagant greeting; but in half an hour the novelty had faded, he had
+guessed the secret, he had plucked out the heart of the mystery and was
+clamoring for a keener sensation. At the end of a month, he presented,
+mentally, a puzzling spectacle to his companion. He had caught,
+instinctively, the key-note of the old world. He observed and enjoyed,
+he criticised and rhapsodized, but though all things interested him and
+many delighted him, none surprised him; he had divined their logic
+and measured their proportions, and referred them infallibly to their
+categories. Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution
+on the general spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments felt
+vaguely uneasy for the future; the boy was living too fast, he would
+have said, and giving alarming pledges to ennui in his later years. But
+we must live as our pulses are timed, and Roderick’s struck the hour
+very often. He was, by imagination, though he never became in manner, a
+natural man of the world; he had intuitively, as an artist, what one may
+call the historic consciousness. He had a relish for social subtleties
+and mysteries, and, in perception, when occasion offered him an inch he
+never failed to take an ell. A single glimpse of a social situation of
+the elder type enabled him to construct the whole, with all its complex
+chiaroscuro, and Rowland more than once assured him that he made him
+believe in the metempsychosis, and that he must have lived in European
+society, in the last century, as a gentleman in a cocked hat and
+brocaded waistcoat. Hudson asked Rowland questions which poor Rowland
+was quite unable to answer, and of which he was equally unable to
+conceive where he had picked up the data. Roderick ended by answering
+them himself, tolerably to his satisfaction, and in a short time he
+had almost turned the tables and become in their walks and talks the
+accredited source of information. Rowland told him that when he turned
+sculptor a capital novelist was spoiled, and that to match his eye for
+social detail one would have to go to Honore de Balzac. In all this
+Rowland took a generous pleasure; he felt an especial kindness for his
+comrade’s radiant youthfulness of temperament. He was so much younger
+than he himself had ever been! And surely youth and genius, hand in
+hand, were the most beautiful sight in the world. Roderick added to this
+the charm of his more immediately personal qualities. The vivacity of
+his perceptions, the audacity of his imagination, the picturesqueness
+of his phrase when he was pleased,--and even more when he was
+displeased,--his abounding good-humor, his candor, his unclouded
+frankness, his unfailing impulse to share every emotion and impression
+with his friend; all this made comradeship a pure felicity, and
+interfused with a deeper amenity their long evening talks at cafe doors
+in Italian towns.
+
+They had gone almost immediately to Paris, and had spent their days at
+the Louvre and their evenings at the theatre. Roderick was divided in
+mind as to whether Titian or Mademoiselle Delaporte was the greater
+artist. They had come down through France to Genoa and Milan, had spent
+a fortnight in Venice and another in Florence, and had now been a month
+in Rome. Roderick had said that he meant to spend three months in simply
+looking, absorbing, and reflecting, without putting pencil to paper. He
+looked indefatigably, and certainly saw great things--things greater,
+doubtless, at times, than the intentions of the artist. And yet he made
+few false steps and wasted little time in theories of what he ought to
+like and to dislike. He judged instinctively and passionately, but
+never vulgarly. At Venice, for a couple of days, he had half a fit of
+melancholy over the pretended discovery that he had missed his way, and
+that the only proper vestment of plastic conceptions was the coloring
+of Titian and Paul Veronese. Then one morning the two young men had
+themselves rowed out to Torcello, and Roderick lay back for a couple
+of hours watching a brown-breasted gondolier making superb muscular
+movements, in high relief, against the sky of the Adriatic, and at the
+end jerked himself up with a violence that nearly swamped the gondola,
+and declared that the only thing worth living for was to make a colossal
+bronze and set it aloft in the light of a public square. In Rome his
+first care was for the Vatican; he went there again and again. But the
+old imperial and papal city altogether delighted him; only there he
+really found what he had been looking for from the first--the complete
+antipodes of Northampton. And indeed Rome is the natural home of those
+spirits with which we just now claimed fellowship for Roderick--the
+spirits with a deep relish for the artificial element in life and
+the infinite superpositions of history. It is the immemorial city of
+convention. The stagnant Roman air is charged with convention; it colors
+the yellow light and deepens the chilly shadows. And in that still
+recent day the most impressive convention in all history was visible to
+men’s eyes, in the Roman streets, erect in a gilded coach drawn by four
+black horses. Roderick’s first fortnight was a high aesthetic revel.
+He declared that Rome made him feel and understand more things than
+he could express: he was sure that life must have there, for all one’s
+senses, an incomparable fineness; that more interesting things must
+happen to one than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that
+he meant to live freely and largely, and be as interested as occasion
+demanded. Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of
+dissipation, because, in the first place, there was in all dissipation,
+refine it as one might, a grossness which would disqualify it for
+Roderick’s favor, and because, in the second, the young sculptor was
+a man to regard all things in the light of his art, to hand over his
+passions to his genius to be dealt with, and to find that he could live
+largely enough without exceeding the circle of wholesome curiosity.
+Rowland took immense satisfaction in his companion’s deep impatience to
+make something of all his impressions. Some of these indeed found their
+way into a channel which did not lead to statues, but it was none the
+less a safe one. He wrote frequent long letters to Miss Garland; when
+Rowland went with him to post them he thought wistfully of the
+fortune of the great loosely-written missives, which cost Roderick
+unconscionable sums in postage. He received punctual answers of a more
+frugal form, written in a clear, minute hand, on paper vexatiously thin.
+If Rowland was present when they came, he turned away and thought of
+other things--or tried to. These were the only moments when his
+sympathy halted, and they were brief. For the rest he let the days go by
+unprotestingly, and enjoyed Roderick’s serene efflorescence as he would
+have done a beautiful summer sunrise. Rome, for the past month, had been
+delicious. The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and sunny
+leisure seemed to brood over the city.
+
+Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento
+of the great Juno. Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel, and the
+young men, looking up, saw three persons advancing. One was a woman
+of middle age, with a rather grand air and a great many furbelows. She
+looked very hard at our friends as she passed, and glanced back over her
+shoulder, as if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed
+her. She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she
+must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in
+a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly
+buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a
+pair of soiled light gloves. He was a grotesque-looking personage,
+and might have passed for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by
+adversity to playing cicerone to foreigners of distinction. He had a
+little black eye which glittered like a diamond and rolled about like a
+ball of quicksilver, and a white moustache, cut short and stiff, like a
+worn-out brush. He was smiling with extreme urbanity, and talking in a
+low, mellifluous voice to the lady, who evidently was not listening
+to him. At a considerable distance behind this couple strolled a young
+girl, apparently of about twenty. She was tall and slender, and dressed
+with extreme elegance; she led by a cord a large poodle of the most
+fantastic aspect. He was combed and decked like a ram for sacrifice; his
+trunk and haunches were of the most transparent pink, his fleecy head
+and shoulders as white as jeweler’s cotton, and his tail and ears
+ornamented with long blue ribbons. He stepped along stiffly and solemnly
+beside his mistress, with an air of conscious elegance. There was
+something at first slightly ridiculous in the sight of a young lady
+gravely appended to an animal of these incongruous attributes, and
+Roderick, with his customary frankness, greeted the spectacle with a
+confident smile. The young girl perceived it and turned her face full
+upon him, with a gaze intended apparently to enforce greater deference.
+It was not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled,
+submissive admiration; Roderick’s smile fell dead, and he sat eagerly
+staring. A pair of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass of dusky hair
+over a low forehead, a blooming oval of perfect purity, a flexible
+lip, just touched with disdain, the step and carriage of a tired
+princess--these were the general features of his vision. The young lady
+was walking slowly and letting her long dress rustle over the gravel;
+the young men had time to see her distinctly before she averted her
+face and went her way. She left a vague, sweet perfume behind her as she
+passed.
+
+“Immortal powers!” cried Roderick, “what a vision! In the name of
+transcendent perfection, who is she?” He sprang up and stood looking
+after her until she rounded a turn in the avenue. “What a movement, what
+a manner, what a poise of the head! I wonder if she would sit to me.”
+
+“You had better go and ask her,” said Rowland, laughing. “She is
+certainly most beautiful.”
+
+“Beautiful? She ‘s beauty itself--she ‘s a revelation. I don’t believe
+she is living--she ‘s a phantasm, a vapor, an illusion!”
+
+“The poodle,” said Rowland, “is certainly alive.”
+
+“Nay, he too may be a grotesque phantom, like the black dog in Faust.”
+
+“I hope at least that the young lady has nothing in common with
+Mephistopheles. She looked dangerous.”
+
+“If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton,” said Roderick,
+“she is the incarnation of evil. The mamma and the queer old gentleman,
+moreover, are a pledge of her reality. Who are they all?”
+
+“The Prince and Princess Ludovisi and the principessina,” suggested
+Rowland.
+
+“There are no such people,” said Roderick. “Besides, the little old man
+is not the papa.” Rowland smiled, wondering how he had ascertained
+these facts, and the young sculptor went on. “The old man is a Roman, a
+hanger-on of the mamma, a useful personage who now and then gets asked
+to dinner. The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country; I
+won’t say which.”
+
+“Perhaps from the State of Maine,” said Rowland.
+
+“No, she ‘s not an American, I ‘ll lay a wager on that. She ‘s a
+daughter of this elder world. We shall see her again, I pray my stars;
+but if we don’t, I shall have done something I never expected to--I
+shall have had a glimpse of ideal beauty.” He sat down again and went
+on with his sketch of the Juno, scrawled away for ten minutes, and then
+handed the result in silence to Rowland. Rowland uttered an exclamation
+of surprise and applause. The drawing represented the Juno as to the
+position of the head, the brow, and the broad fillet across the hair;
+but the eyes, the mouth, the physiognomy were a vivid portrait of
+the young girl with the poodle. “I have been wanting a subject,” said
+Roderick: “there ‘s one made to my hand! And now for work!”
+
+They saw no more of the young girl, though Roderick looked hopefully,
+for some days, into the carriages on the Pincian. She had evidently been
+but passing through Rome; Naples or Florence now happily possessed her,
+and she was guiding her fleecy companion through the Villa Reale or the
+Boboli Gardens with the same superb defiance of irony. Roderick went to
+work and spent a month shut up in his studio; he had an idea, and he was
+not to rest till he had embodied it. He had established himself in
+the basement of a huge, dusky, dilapidated old house, in that long,
+tortuous, and preeminently Roman street which leads from the Corso to
+the Bridge of St. Angelo. The black archway which admitted you might
+have served as the portal of the Augean stables, but you emerged
+presently upon a mouldy little court, of which the fourth side was
+formed by a narrow terrace, overhanging the Tiber. Here, along the
+parapet, were stationed half a dozen shapeless fragments of sculpture,
+with a couple of meagre orange-trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an
+oleander that never flowered. The unclean, historic river swept beneath;
+behind were dusky, reeking walls, spotted here and there with hanging
+rags and flower-pots in windows; opposite, at a distance, were the bare
+brown banks of the stream, the huge rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with
+its seraphic statue, the dome of St. Peter’s, and the broad-topped pines
+of the Villa Doria. The place was crumbling and shabby and melancholy,
+but the river was delightful, the rent was a trifle, and everything was
+picturesque. Roderick was in the best humor with his quarters from the
+first, and was certain that the working mood there would be intenser
+in an hour than in twenty years of Northampton. His studio was a huge,
+empty room with a vaulted ceiling, covered with vague, dark traces of an
+old fresco, which Rowland, when he spent an hour with his friend, used
+to stare at vainly for some surviving coherence of floating draperies
+and clasping arms. Roderick had lodged himself economically in the same
+quarter. He occupied a fifth floor on the Ripetta, but he was only at
+home to sleep, for when he was not at work he was either lounging in
+Rowland’s more luxurious rooms or strolling through streets and churches
+and gardens.
+
+Rowland had found a convenient corner in a stately old palace not far
+from the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home to which books and
+pictures and prints and odds and ends of curious furniture gave an air
+of leisurely permanence. He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half
+his afternoons ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers,
+and often made his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart of
+impecunious Roman households, which had been prevailed upon to
+listen--with closed doors and an impenetrably wary smile--to proposals
+for an hereditary “antique.” In the evening, often, under the lamp,
+amid dropped curtains and the scattered gleam of firelight upon polished
+carvings and mellow paintings, the two friends sat with their heads
+together, criticising intaglios and etchings, water-color drawings and
+illuminated missals. Roderick’s quick appreciation of every form of
+artistic beauty reminded his companion of the flexible temperament of
+those Italian artists of the sixteenth century who were indifferently
+painters and sculptors, sonneteers and engravers. At times when he saw
+how the young sculptor’s day passed in a single sustained pulsation,
+while his own was broken into a dozen conscious devices for disposing of
+the hours, and intermingled with sighs, half suppressed, some of them,
+for conscience’ sake, over what he failed of in action and missed in
+possession--he felt a pang of something akin to envy. But Rowland had
+two substantial aids for giving patience the air of contentment: he
+was an inquisitive reader and a passionate rider. He plunged into bulky
+German octavos on Italian history, and he spent long afternoons in
+the saddle, ranging over the grassy desolation of the Campagna. As the
+season went on and the social groups began to constitute themselves, he
+found that he knew a great many people and that he had easy opportunity
+for knowing others. He enjoyed a quiet corner of a drawing-room beside
+an agreeable woman, and although the machinery of what calls itself
+society seemed to him to have many superfluous wheels, he accepted
+invitations and made visits punctiliously, from the conviction that
+the only way not to be overcome by the ridiculous side of most of such
+observances is to take them with exaggerated gravity. He introduced
+Roderick right and left, and suffered him to make his way himself--an
+enterprise for which Roderick very soon displayed an all-sufficient
+capacity. Wherever he went he made, not exactly what is called a
+favorable impression, but what, from a practical point of view, is
+better--a puzzling one. He took to evening parties as a duck to water,
+and before the winter was half over was the most freely and frequently
+discussed young man in the heterogeneous foreign colony. Rowland’s
+theory of his own duty was to let him run his course and play his
+cards, only holding himself ready to point out shoals and pitfalls,
+and administer a friendly propulsion through tight places. Roderick’s
+manners on the precincts of the Pincian were quite the same as his
+manners on Cecilia’s veranda: that is, they were no manners at all. But
+it remained as true as before that it would have been impossible, on the
+whole, to violate ceremony with less of lasting offense. He interrupted,
+he contradicted, he spoke to people he had never seen, and left his
+social creditors without the smallest conversational interest on their
+loans; he lounged and yawned, he talked loud when he should have
+talked low, and low when he should have talked loud. Many people, in
+consequence, thought him insufferably conceited, and declared that he
+ought to wait till he had something to show for his powers, before he
+assumed the airs of a spoiled celebrity. But to Rowland and to most
+friendly observers this judgment was quite beside the mark, and the
+young man’s undiluted naturalness was its own justification. He
+was impulsive, spontaneous, sincere; there were so many people at
+dinner-tables and in studios who were not, that it seemed worth while
+to allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action. If Roderick
+took the words out of your mouth when you were just prepared to deliver
+them with the most effective accent, he did it with a perfect good
+conscience and with no pretension of a better right to being heard, but
+simply because he was full to overflowing of his own momentary thought
+and it sprang from his lips without asking leave. There were persons who
+waited on your periods much more deferentially, who were a hundred
+times more capable than Roderick of a reflective impertinence. Roderick
+received from various sources, chiefly feminine, enough finely-adjusted
+advice to have established him in life as an embodiment of the
+proprieties, and he received it, as he afterwards listened to criticisms
+on his statues, with unfaltering candor and good-humor. Here and there,
+doubtless, as he went, he took in a reef in his sail; but he was too
+adventurous a spirit to be successfully tamed, and he remained at
+most points the florid, rather strident young Virginian whose serene
+inflexibility had been the despair of Mr. Striker. All this was what
+friendly commentators (still chiefly feminine) alluded to when they
+spoke of his delightful freshness, and critics of harsher sensibilities
+(of the other sex) when they denounced his damned impertinence. His
+appearance enforced these impressions--his handsome face, his radiant,
+unaverted eyes, his childish, unmodulated voice. Afterwards, when those
+who loved him were in tears, there was something in all this unspotted
+comeliness that seemed to lend a mockery to the causes of their sorrow.
+
+Certainly, among the young men of genius who, for so many ages, have
+gone up to Rome to test their powers, none ever made a fairer beginning
+than Roderick. He rode his two horses at once with extraordinary good
+fortune; he established the happiest modus vivendi betwixt work and
+play. He wrestled all day with a mountain of clay in his studio, and
+chattered half the night away in Roman drawing-rooms. It all seemed part
+of a kind of divine facility. He was passionately interested, he was
+feeling his powers; now that they had thoroughly kindled in the glowing
+aesthetic atmosphere of Rome, the ardent young fellow should be pardoned
+for believing that he never was to see the end of them. He enjoyed
+immeasurably, after the chronic obstruction of home, the downright
+act of production. He kept models in his studio till they dropped with
+fatigue; he drew, on other days, at the Capitol and the Vatican, till
+his own head swam with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the
+cold. He had promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called
+an “Adam,” and was pushing it rapidly toward completion. There were
+naturally a great many wiseheads who smiled at his precipitancy, and
+cited him as one more example of Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to
+the great army of those who wish to dance before they can walk. They
+were right, but Roderick was right too, for the success of his statue
+was not to have been foreseen; it partook, really, of the miraculous. He
+never surpassed it afterwards, and a good judge here and there has been
+known to pronounce it the finest piece of sculpture of our modern
+era. To Rowland it seemed to justify superbly his highest hopes of his
+friend, and he said to himself that if he had invested his happiness
+in fostering a genius, he ought now to be in possession of a boundless
+complacency. There was something especially confident and masterly in
+the artist’s negligence of all such small picturesque accessories
+as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar apprehension. If it
+represented the father of the human race and the primal embodiment of
+human sensation, it did so in virtue of its look of balanced physical
+perfection, and deeply, eagerly sentient vitality. Rowland, in fraternal
+zeal, traveled up to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most
+magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it came down to
+Rome, the two young men had a “celebration.” They drove out to Albano,
+breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn, and
+lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo. Roderick’s
+head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with infinite
+spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their
+pedestals before him. He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in
+the streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw
+just missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his
+mind as a kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until, in some
+form or other, he had taken up the glove and set his lance in rest.
+
+The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it. Of the
+criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record;
+over many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month, and
+certain of the formulas of the connoisseurs, restrictive or indulgent,
+furnished Roderick with a permanent supply of humorous catch-words. But
+people enough spoke flattering good-sense to make Roderick feel as if
+he were already half famous. The statue passed formally into Rowland’s
+possession, and was paid for as if an illustrious name had been chiseled
+on the pedestal. Poor Roderick owed every franc of the money. It was not
+for this, however, but because he was so gloriously in the mood, that,
+denying himself all breathing-time, on the same day he had given the
+last touch to the Adam, he began to shape the rough contour of an Eve.
+This went forward with equal rapidity and success. Roderick lost his
+temper, time and again, with his models, who offered but a gross,
+degenerate image of his splendid ideal; but his ideal, as he assured
+Rowland, became gradually such a fixed, vivid presence, that he had only
+to shut his eyes to behold a creature far more to his purpose than
+the poor girl who stood posturing at forty sous an hour. The Eve was
+finished in a month, and the feat was extraordinary, as well as the
+statue, which represented an admirably beautiful woman. When the spring
+began to muffle the rugged old city with its clambering festoons, it
+seemed to him that he had done a handsome winter’s work and had fairly
+earned a holiday. He took a liberal one, and lounged away the lovely
+Roman May, doing nothing. He looked very contented; with himself,
+perhaps, at times, a trifle too obviously. But who could have said
+without good reason? He was “flushed with triumph;” this classic
+phrase portrayed him, to Rowland’s sense. He would lose himself in long
+reveries, and emerge from them with a quickened smile and a heightened
+color. Rowland grudged him none of his smiles, and took an extreme
+satisfaction in his two statues. He had the Adam and the Eve transported
+to his own apartment, and one warm evening in May he gave a little
+dinner in honor of the artist. It was small, but Rowland had meant it
+should be very agreeably composed. He thought over his friends and chose
+four. They were all persons with whom he lived in a certain intimacy.
+
+One of them was an American sculptor of French extraction, or remotely,
+perhaps, of Italian, for he rejoiced in the somewhat fervid name of
+Gloriani. He was a man of forty, he had been living for years in Paris
+and in Rome, and he now drove a very pretty trade in sculpture of the
+ornamental and fantastic sort. In his youth he had had money; but he
+had spent it recklessly, much of it scandalously, and at twenty-six
+had found himself obliged to make capital of his talent. This was quite
+inimitable, and fifteen years of indefatigable exercise had brought
+it to perfection. Rowland admitted its power, though it gave him very
+little pleasure; what he relished in the man was the extraordinary
+vivacity and frankness, not to call it the impudence, of his ideas. He
+had a definite, practical scheme of art, and he knew at least what he
+meant. In this sense he was solid and complete. There were so many of
+the aesthetic fraternity who were floundering in unknown seas, without
+a notion of which way their noses were turned, that Gloriani, conscious
+and compact, unlimitedly intelligent and consummately clever, dogmatic
+only as to his own duties, and at once gracefully deferential and
+profoundly indifferent to those of others, had for Rowland a certain
+intellectual refreshment quite independent of the character of his
+works. These were considered by most people to belong to a very corrupt,
+and by many to a positively indecent school. Others thought them
+tremendously knowing, and paid enormous prices for them; and indeed, to
+be able to point to one of Gloriani’s figures in a shady corner of your
+library was tolerable proof that you were not a fool. Corrupt things
+they certainly were; in the line of sculpture they were quite the latest
+fruit of time. It was the artist’s opinion that there is no essential
+difference between beauty and ugliness; that they overlap and
+intermingle in a quite inextricable manner; that there is no saying
+where one begins and the other ends; that hideousness grimaces at you
+suddenly from out of the very bosom of loveliness, and beauty blooms
+before your eyes in the lap of vileness; that it is a waste of wit to
+nurse metaphysical distinctions, and a sadly meagre entertainment to
+caress imaginary lines; that the thing to aim at is the expressive, and
+the way to reach it is by ingenuity; that for this purpose everything
+may serve, and that a consummate work is a sort of hotch-potch of the
+pure and the impure, the graceful and the grotesque. Its prime duty is
+to amuse, to puzzle, to fascinate, to savor of a complex imagination.
+Gloriani’s statues were florid and meretricious; they looked like
+magnified goldsmith’s work. They were extremely elegant, but they had no
+charm for Rowland. He never bought one, but Gloriani was such an
+honest fellow, and withal was so deluged with orders, that this made
+no difference in their friendship. The artist might have passed for a
+Frenchman. He was a great talker, and a very picturesque one; he was
+almost bald; he had a small, bright eye, a broken nose, and a moustache
+with waxed ends. When sometimes he received you at his lodging, he
+introduced you to a lady with a plain face whom he called Madame
+Gloriani--which she was not.
+
+Rowland’s second guest was also an artist, but of a very different type.
+His friends called him Sam Singleton; he was an American, and he had
+been in Rome a couple of years. He painted small landscapes, chiefly in
+water-colors: Rowland had seen one of them in a shop window, had liked
+it extremely, and, ascertaining his address, had gone to see him and
+found him established in a very humble studio near the Piazza Barberini,
+where, apparently, fame and fortune had not yet found him out. Rowland
+took a fancy to him and bought several of his pictures; Singleton made
+few speeches, but was grateful. Rowland heard afterwards that when he
+first came to Rome he painted worthless daubs and gave no promise
+of talent. Improvement had come, however, hand in hand with patient
+industry, and his talent, though of a slender and delicate order, was
+now incontestable. It was as yet but scantily recognized, and he had
+hard work to live. Rowland hung his little water-colors on the parlor
+wall, and found that, as he lived with them, he grew very fond of
+them. Singleton was a diminutive, dwarfish personage; he looked like
+a precocious child. He had a high, protuberant forehead, a transparent
+brown eye, a perpetual smile, an extraordinary expression of modesty and
+patience. He listened much more willingly than he talked, with a little
+fixed, grateful grin; he blushed when he spoke, and always offered his
+ideas in a sidelong fashion, as if the presumption were against them.
+His modesty set them off, and they were eminently to the point. He was
+so perfect an example of the little noiseless, laborious artist whom
+chance, in the person of a moneyed patron, has never taken by the hand,
+that Rowland would have liked to befriend him by stealth. Singleton had
+expressed a fervent admiration for Roderick’s productions, but had
+not yet met the young master. Roderick was lounging against the
+chimney-piece when he came in, and Rowland presently introduced him. The
+little water-colorist stood with folded hands, blushing, smiling, and
+looking up at him as if Roderick were himself a statue on a pedestal.
+Singleton began to murmur something about his pleasure, his admiration;
+the desire to make his compliment smoothly gave him a kind of grotesque
+formalism. Roderick looked down at him surprised, and suddenly burst
+into a laugh. Singleton paused a moment and then, with an intenser
+smile, went on: “Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all the same!”
+
+Rowland’s two other guests were ladies, and one of them, Miss Blanchard,
+belonged also to the artistic fraternity. She was an American, she
+was young, she was pretty, and she had made her way to Rome alone and
+unaided. She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed
+old serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly neighbor in the
+person of a certain Madame Grandoni, who in various social emergencies
+lent her a protecting wing, and had come with her to Rowland’s dinner.
+Miss Blanchard had a little money, but she was not above selling her
+pictures. These represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses,
+with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and
+a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it. She did backs
+very well, but she was a little weak in faces. Flowers, however, were
+her speciality, and though her touch was a little old-fashioned and
+finical, she painted them with remarkable skill. Her pictures were
+chiefly bought by the English. Rowland had made her acquaintance early
+in the winter, and as she kept a saddle horse and rode a great deal,
+he had asked permission to be her cavalier. In this way they had become
+almost intimate. Miss Blanchard’s name was Augusta; she was slender,
+pale, and elegant looking; she had a very pretty head and brilliant
+auburn hair, which she braided with classical simplicity. She talked in
+a sweet, soft voice, used language at times a trifle superfine, and made
+literary allusions. These had often a patriotic strain, and Rowland had
+more than once been irritated by her quotations from Mrs. Sigourney in
+the cork-woods of Monte Mario, and from Mr. Willis among the ruins of
+Veii. Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her, and was half
+surprised, at times, to find himself treating it as a matter of serious
+moment whether he liked her or not. He admired her, and indeed there
+was something admirable in her combination of beauty and talent, of
+isolation and tranquil self-support. He used sometimes to go into the
+little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and
+find her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement,
+profiled against the deep blue Roman sky. She received him with a
+meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint on a church
+window, receiving the daylight in all her being. The breath of reproach
+passed her by with folded wings. And yet Rowland wondered why he did not
+like her better. If he failed, the reason was not far to seek. There was
+another woman whom he liked better, an image in his heart which refused
+to yield precedence.
+
+On that evening to which allusion has been made, when Rowland was left
+alone between the starlight and the waves with the sudden knowledge
+that Mary Garland was to become another man’s wife, he had made, after a
+while, the simple resolution to forget her. And every day since, like a
+famous philosopher who wished to abbreviate his mourning for a faithful
+servant, he had said to himself in substance--“Remember to forget Mary
+Garland.” Sometimes it seemed as if he were succeeding; then, suddenly,
+when he was least expecting it, he would find her name, inaudibly, on
+his lips, and seem to see her eyes meeting his eyes. All this made him
+uncomfortable, and seemed to portend a possible discord. Discord was not
+to his taste; he shrank from imperious passions, and the idea of finding
+himself jealous of an unsuspecting friend was absolutely repulsive. More
+than ever, then, the path of duty was to forget Mary Garland, and he
+cultivated oblivion, as we may say, in the person of Miss Blanchard. Her
+fine temper, he said to himself, was a trifle cold and conscious, her
+purity prudish, perhaps, her culture pedantic. But since he was obliged
+to give up hopes of Mary Garland, Providence owed him a compensation,
+and he had fits of angry sadness in which it seemed to him that to
+attest his right to sentimental satisfaction he would be capable of
+falling in love with a woman he absolutely detested, if she were the
+best that came in his way. And what was the use, after all, of bothering
+about a possible which was only, perhaps, a dream? Even if Mary Garland
+had been free, what right had he to assume that he would have pleased
+her? The actual was good enough. Miss Blanchard had beautiful hair, and
+if she was a trifle old-maidish, there is nothing like matrimony for
+curing old-maidishness.
+
+Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland’s rides
+an alliance which might have been called defensive on the part of the
+former and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard, was an excessively ugly
+old lady, highly esteemed in Roman society for her homely benevolence
+and her shrewd and humorous good sense. She had been the widow of a
+German archaeologist, who had come to Rome in the early ages as an
+attache of the Prussian legation on the Capitoline. Her good sense had
+been wanting on but a single occasion, that of her second marriage. This
+occasion was certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent,
+are not test cases. A couple of years after her first husband’s death,
+she had accepted the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten
+years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The
+marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of
+using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction. He had
+finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped,
+had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title. He was
+believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small black spot
+in Madame Grandoni’s life, and for ten years she had not mentioned
+his name. She wore a light flaxen wig, which was never very artfully
+adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no secret of it. She
+used to say, “I was not always so ugly as this; as a young girl I had
+beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig.” She had worn
+from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white crape shawl
+embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an
+interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were
+easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer
+to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years’ observation of Roman society had
+sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes,
+but she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic
+sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular
+favor. Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing
+him to get married. She never saw him without whispering to him that
+Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
+
+It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss
+Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind
+the central bouquet at his circular dinner-table. The dinner was very
+prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast.
+He had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this
+occasion he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory.
+He drank freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with
+his hands in his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence.
+Singleton sat gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person
+were talking. Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident
+disposition to draw Roderick out. Rowland was rather regretful, for
+he knew that theory was not his friend’s strong point, and that it was
+never fair to take his measure from his talk.
+
+“As you have begun with Adam and Eve,” said Gloriani, “I suppose you are
+going straight through the Bible.” He was one of the persons who thought
+Roderick delightfully fresh.
+
+“I may make a David,” said Roderick, “but I shall not try any more of
+the Old Testament people. I don’t like the Jews; I don’t like pendulous
+noses. David, the boy David, is rather an exception; you can think of
+him and treat him as a young Greek. Standing forth there on the plain
+of battle between the contending armies, rushing forward to let fly his
+stone, he looks like a beautiful runner at the Olympic games. After that
+I shall skip to the New Testament. I mean to make a Christ.”
+
+“You ‘ll put nothing of the Olympic games into him, I hope,” said
+Gloriani.
+
+“Oh, I shall make him very different from the Christ of tradition;
+more--more”--and Roderick paused a moment to think. This was the first
+that Rowland had heard of his Christ.
+
+“More rationalistic, I suppose,” suggested Miss Blanchard.
+
+“More idealistic!” cried Roderick. “The perfection of form, you know, to
+symbolize the perfection of spirit.”
+
+“For a companion piece,” said Miss Blanchard, “you ought to make a
+Judas.”
+
+“Never! I mean never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made
+anything ugly, and I ‘m a Hellenist; I ‘m not a Hebraist! I have been
+thinking lately of making a Cain, but I should never dream of making
+him ugly. He should be a very handsome fellow, and he should lift up the
+murderous club with the beautiful movement of the fighters in the Greek
+friezes who are chopping at their enemies.”
+
+“There ‘s no use trying to be a Greek,” said Gloriani. “If Phidias were
+to come back, he would recommend you to give it up. I am half Italian
+and half French, and, as a whole, a Yankee. What sort of a Greek should
+I make? I think the Judas is a capital idea for a statue. Much obliged
+to you, madame, for the suggestion. What an insidious little scoundrel
+one might make of him, sitting there nursing his money-bag and his
+treachery! There can be a great deal of expression in a pendulous nose,
+my dear sir, especially when it is cast in green bronze.”
+
+“Very likely,” said Roderick. “But it is not the sort of expression I
+care for. I care only for perfect beauty. There it is, if you want to
+know it! That ‘s as good a profession of faith as another. In future, so
+far as my things are not positively beautiful, you may set them down as
+failures. For me, it ‘s either that or nothing. It ‘s against the taste
+of the day, I know; we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty
+in the large, ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles,
+staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted. But I
+don’t hesitate to proclaim it--I mean to lift them again! I mean to go
+in for big things; that ‘s my notion of my art. I mean to do things
+that will be simple and vast and infinite. You ‘ll see if they won’t be
+infinite! Excuse me if I brag a little; all those Italian fellows in the
+Renaissance used to brag. There was a sensation once common, I am sure,
+in the human breast--a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble
+image newly created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity.
+When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses unveiled in
+the temples of the AEgean, don’t you suppose there was a passionate
+beating of hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror? I mean to bring it
+back; I mean to thrill the world again! I mean to produce a Juno that
+will make you tremble, a Venus that will make you swoon!”
+
+“So that when we come and see you,” said Madame Grandoni, “we must be
+sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few soft sofas
+conveniently placed.”
+
+“Phidias and Praxiteles,” Miss Blanchard remarked, “had the advantage
+of believing in their goddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that
+the pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo
+and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome
+where we sit talking nineteenth century English.”
+
+“Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!” cried Madame Grandoni. “Mr.
+Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno--that ‘s you and
+I--arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver,
+too.”
+
+“But, my dear fellow,” objected Gloriani, “you don’t mean to say you
+are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and
+Hebes.”
+
+“It won’t matter what you call them,” said Roderick. “They shall be
+simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they
+shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That ‘s all
+the Greek divinities were.”
+
+“That ‘s rather abstract, you know,” said Miss Blanchard.
+
+“My dear fellow,” cried Gloriani, “you ‘re delightfully young.”
+
+“I hope you ‘ll not grow any older,” said Singleton, with a flush of
+sympathy across his large white forehead. “You can do it if you try.”
+
+“Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,”
+ Roderick went on. “I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I
+mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I
+mean to make a magnificent statue of America!”
+
+“America--the Mountains--the Moon!” said Gloriani. “You ‘ll find it
+rather hard, I ‘m afraid, to compress such subjects into classic forms.”
+
+“Oh, there ‘s a way,” cried Roderick, “and I shall think it out. My
+figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous
+deal.”
+
+“I ‘m sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo,” said Madame
+Grandoni. “Perhaps you don’t approve of him.”
+
+“Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!” said Roderick, with sublimity. There
+was a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done some fine things.
+
+Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small portfolio of
+prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick’s little statue of
+the youth drinking. It pleased him to see his friend sitting there
+in radiant ardor, defending idealism against so knowing an apostle of
+corruption as Gloriani, and he wished to help the elder artist to be
+confuted. He silently handed him the photograph.
+
+“Bless me!” cried Gloriani, “did he do this?”
+
+“Ages ago,” said Roderick.
+
+Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.
+
+“It ‘s deucedly pretty,” he said at last. “But, my dear young friend,
+you can’t keep this up.”
+
+“I shall do better,” said Roderick.
+
+“You will do worse! You will become weak. You will have to take to
+violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This sort
+of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his
+trousers. He may stand on tiptoe, but he can’t do more. Here you stand
+on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can’t fly; there ‘s no use
+trying.”
+
+“My ‘America’ shall answer you!” said Roderick, shaking toward him a
+tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.
+
+Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little
+murmur of delight.
+
+“Was this done in America?” he asked.
+
+“In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts,” Roderick
+answered.
+
+“Dear old white wooden houses!” said Miss Blanchard.
+
+“If you could do as well as this there,” said Singleton, blushing and
+smiling, “one might say that really you had only to lose by coming to
+Rome.”
+
+“Mallet is to blame for that,” said Roderick. “But I am willing to risk
+the loss.”
+
+The photograph had been passed to Madame Grandoni. “It reminds me,” she
+said, “of the things a young man used to do whom I knew years ago, when
+I first came to Rome. He was a German, a pupil of Overbeck and a votary
+of spiritual art. He used to wear a black velvet tunic and a very low
+shirt collar; he had a neck like a sickly crane, and let his hair grow
+down to his shoulders. His name was Herr Schafgans. He never painted
+anything so profane as a man taking a drink, but his figures were all
+of the simple and slender and angular pattern, and nothing if not
+innocent--like this one of yours. He would not have agreed with Gloriani
+any more than you. He used to come and see me very often, and in those
+days I thought his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of
+genius. His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions; he
+lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody’s
+hair in a little bag round his neck. If he was not a Beato Angelico, it
+was not his own fault. I hope with all my heart that Mr. Hudson will do
+the fine things he talks about, but he must bear in mind the history of
+dear Mr. Schafgans as a warning against high-flown pretensions. One fine
+day this poor young man fell in love with a Roman model, though she
+had never sat to him, I believe, for she was a buxom, bold-faced,
+high-colored creature, and he painted none but pale, sickly women. He
+offered to marry her, and she looked at him from head to foot, gave a
+shrug, and consented. But he was ashamed to set up his menage in Rome.
+They went to Naples, and there, a couple of years afterwards, I saw him.
+The poor fellow was ruined. His wife used to beat him, and he had taken
+to drinking. He wore a ragged black coat, and he had a blotchy, red
+face. Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go and fetch
+the dirty linen. His talent had gone heaven knows where! He was getting
+his living by painting views of Vesuvius in eruption on the little boxes
+they sell at Sorrento.”
+
+“Moral: don’t fall in love with a buxom Roman model,” said Roderick. “I
+‘m much obliged to you for your story, but I don’t mean to fall in love
+with any one.”
+
+Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was looking
+at it curiously. “It ‘s a happy bit of youth,” he said. “But you can’t
+keep it up--you can’t keep it up!”
+
+The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner, in the
+drawing-room. Rowland left them to have it out in a corner, where
+Roderick’s Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight, in vague white
+beauty, like the guardian angel of the young idealist. Singleton was
+listening to Madame Grandoni, and Rowland took his place on the sofa,
+near Miss Blanchard. They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk.
+Every now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them. Miss Blanchard
+at last asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick: who he was,
+where he came from, whether it was true, as she had heard, that Rowland
+had discovered him and brought him out at his own expense. Rowland
+answered her questions; to the last he gave a vague affirmative.
+Finally, after a pause, looking at him, “You ‘re very generous,” Miss
+Blanchard said. The declaration was made with a certain richness of
+tone, but it brought to Rowland’s sense neither delight nor confusion.
+He had heard the words before; he suddenly remembered the grave
+sincerity with which Miss Garland had uttered them as he strolled with
+her in the woods the day of Roderick’s picnic. They had pleased him
+then; now he asked Miss Blanchard whether she would have some tea.
+
+When the two ladies withdrew, he attended them to their carriage. Coming
+back to the drawing-room, he paused outside the open door; he was
+struck by the group formed by the three men. They were standing before
+Roderick’s statue of Eve, and the young sculptor had lifted up the lamp
+and was showing different parts of it to his companions. He was talking
+ardently, and the lamplight covered his head and face. Rowland stood
+looking on, for the group struck him with its picturesque symbolism.
+Roderick, bearing the lamp and glowing in its radiant circle, seemed
+the beautiful image of a genius which combined sincerity with power.
+Gloriani, with his head on one side, pulling his long moustache and
+looking keenly from half-closed eyes at the lighted marble, represented
+art with a worldly motive, skill unleavened by faith, the mere base
+maximum of cleverness. Poor little Singleton, on the other side, with
+his hands behind him, his head thrown back, and his eyes following
+devoutly the course of Roderick’s elucidation, might pass for an
+embodiment of aspiring candor, with feeble wings to rise on. In all
+this, Roderick’s was certainly the beau role.
+
+Gloriani turned to Rowland as he came up, and pointed back with his
+thumb to the statue, with a smile half sardonic, half good-natured. “A
+pretty thing--a devilish pretty thing,” he said. “It ‘s as fresh as the
+foam in the milk-pail. He can do it once, he can do it twice, he can do
+it at a stretch half a dozen times. But--but--”
+
+He was returning to his former refrain, but Rowland intercepted him.
+“Oh, he will keep it up,” he said, smiling, “I will answer for him.”
+
+Gloriani was not encouraging, but Roderick had listened smiling. He
+was floating unperturbed on the tide of his deep self-confidence. Now,
+suddenly, however, he turned with a flash of irritation in his eye, and
+demanded in a ringing voice, “In a word, then, you prophesy that I am to
+fail?”
+
+Gloriani answered imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder. “My
+dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day
+every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay,
+with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain
+for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn
+to do without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your
+studio, don’t waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on
+suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how to console
+yourself.”
+
+“If I break down,” said Roderick, passionately, “I shall stay down.
+If the Muse deserts me, she shall at least have her infidelity on her
+conscience.”
+
+“You have no business,” Rowland said to Gloriani, “to talk lightly of
+the Muse in this company. Mr. Singleton, too, has received pledges from
+her which place her constancy beyond suspicion.” And he pointed out on
+the wall, near by, two small landscapes by the modest water-colorist.
+
+The sculptor examined them with deference, and Singleton himself began
+to laugh nervously; he was trembling with hope that the great
+Gloriani would be pleased. “Yes, these are fresh too,” Gloriani said;
+“extraordinarily fresh! How old are you?”
+
+“Twenty-six, sir,” said Singleton.
+
+“For twenty-six they are famously fresh. They must have taken you a long
+time; you work slowly.”
+
+“Yes, unfortunately, I work very slowly. One of them took me six weeks,
+the other two months.”
+
+“Upon my word! The Muse pays you long visits.” And Gloriani turned
+and looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors.
+Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard. “Oh, you!”
+ said the sculptor; “you ‘ll keep it up!”
+
+A week after his dinner-party, Rowland went into Roderick’s studio and
+found him sitting before an unfinished piece of work, with a hanging
+head and a heavy eye. He could have fancied that the fatal hour foretold
+by Gloriani had struck. Roderick rose with a sombre yawn and flung down
+his tools. “It ‘s no use,” he said, “I give it up!”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“I have struck a shallow! I have been sailing bravely, but for the last
+day or two my keel has been crunching the bottom.”
+
+“A difficult place?” Rowland asked, with a sympathetic inflection,
+looking vaguely at the roughly modeled figure.
+
+“Oh, it ‘s not the poor clay!” Roderick answered. “The difficult place
+is here!” And he struck a blow on his heart. “I don’t know what ‘s the
+matter with me. Nothing comes; all of a sudden I hate things. My old
+things look ugly; everything looks stupid.”
+
+Rowland was perplexed. He was in the situation of a man who has been
+riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop, and of a sudden feels
+him stumble and balk. As yet, he reflected, he had seen nothing but the
+sunshine of genius; he had forgotten that it has its storms. Of course
+it had! And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which would
+float them both safely through the worst weather. “Why, you ‘re tired!”
+ he said. “Of course you ‘re tired. You have a right to be!”
+
+“Do you think I have a right to be?” Roderick asked, looking at him.
+
+“Unquestionably, after all you have done.”
+
+“Well, then, right or wrong, I am tired. I certainly have done a fair
+winter’s work. I want a change.”
+
+Rowland declared that it was certainly high time they should be leaving
+Rome. They would go north and travel. They would go to Switzerland, to
+Germany, to Holland, to England. Roderick assented, his eye brightened,
+and Rowland talked of a dozen things they might do. Roderick walked up
+and down; he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring
+out. He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered, and at last asked him
+what was on his mind. Roderick stopped before him, frowning a little.
+
+“I have such unbounded faith in your good-will,” he said, “that I
+believe nothing I can say would offend you.”
+
+“Try it,” said Rowland.
+
+“Well, then, I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone.
+I need n’t say I prefer your society to that of any man living. For the
+last six months it has been everything to me. But I have a perpetual
+feeling that you are expecting something of me, that you are measuring
+my doings by a terrifically high standard. You are watching me; I don’t
+want to be watched. I want to go my own way; to work when I choose and
+to loaf when I choose. It is not that I don’t know what I owe you; it
+is not that we are not friends. It is simply that I want a taste of
+absolutely unrestricted freedom. Therefore, I say, let us separate.”
+
+Rowland shook him by the hand. “Willingly. Do as you desire, I shall
+miss you, and I venture to believe you ‘ll pass some lonely hours. But I
+have only one request to make: that if you get into trouble of any kind
+whatever, you will immediately let me know.”
+
+They began their journey, however, together, and crossed the Alps
+side by side, muffled in one rug, on the top of the St. Gothard coach.
+Rowland was going to England to pay some promised visits; his companion
+had no plan save to ramble through Switzerland and Germany as fancy
+guided him. He had money, now, that would outlast the summer; when
+it was spent he would come back to Rome and make another statue. At
+a little mountain village by the way, Roderick declared that he would
+stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in
+the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two
+young men walked along the village street, picking their way between
+dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of
+the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them,
+and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt an almost overmastering
+reluctance.
+
+“Say the word,” he exclaimed, “and I will stop too.”
+
+Roderick frowned. “Ah, you don’t trust me; you don’t think I ‘m able
+to take care of myself. That proves that I was right in feeling as if I
+were watched!”
+
+“Watched, my dear fellow!” said Rowland. “I hope you may never have
+anything worse to complain of than being watched in the spirit in which
+I watch you. But I will spare you even that. Good-by!” Standing in his
+place, as the coach rolled away, he looked back at his friend lingering
+by the roadside. A great snow-mountain, behind Roderick, was beginning
+to turn pink in the sunset. The young man waved his hat, still looking
+grave. Rowland settled himself in his place, reflecting after all that
+this was a salubrious beginning of independence. He was among forests
+and glaciers, leaning on the pure bosom of nature. And then--and
+then--was it not in itself a guarantee against folly to be engaged to
+Mary Garland?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. Experience
+
+Rowland passed the summer in England, staying with several old friends
+and two or three new ones. On his arrival, he felt it on his conscience
+to write to Mrs. Hudson and inform her that her son had relieved him of
+his tutelage. He felt that she considered him an incorruptible Mentor,
+following Roderick like a shadow, and he wished to let her know the
+truth. But he made the truth very comfortable, and gave a succinct
+statement of the young man’s brilliant beginnings. He owed it to
+himself, he said, to remind her that he had not judged lightly, and that
+Roderick’s present achievements were more profitable than his inglorious
+drudgery at Messrs. Striker & Spooner’s. He was now taking a well-earned
+holiday and proposing to see a little of the world. He would work none
+the worse for this; every artist needed to knock about and look at
+things for himself. They had parted company for a couple of months, for
+Roderick was now a great man and beyond the need of going about with a
+keeper. But they were to meet again in Rome in the autumn, and then he
+should be able to send her more good news. Meanwhile, he was very happy
+in what Roderick had already done--especially happy in the happiness it
+must have brought to her. He ventured to ask to be kindly commended to
+Miss Garland.
+
+His letter was promptly answered--to his surprise in Miss Garland’s own
+hand. The same mail brought also an epistle from Cecilia. The latter was
+voluminous, and we must content ourselves with giving an extract.
+
+“Your letter was filled with an echo of that brilliant Roman world,
+which made me almost ill with envy. For a week after I got it I thought
+Northampton really unpardonably tame. But I am drifting back again to my
+old deeps of resignation, and I rush to the window, when any one passes,
+with all my old gratitude for small favors. So Roderick Hudson is
+already a great man, and you turn out to be a great prophet? My
+compliments to both of you; I never heard of anything working so
+smoothly. And he takes it all very quietly, and does n’t lose his
+balance nor let it turn his head? You judged him, then, in a day better
+than I had done in six months, for I really did not expect that he would
+settle down into such a jog-trot of prosperity. I believed he would do
+fine things, but I was sure he would intersperse them with a good many
+follies, and that his beautiful statues would spring up out of the midst
+of a straggling plantation of wild oats. But from what you tell me, Mr.
+Striker may now go hang himself..... There is one thing, however, to say
+as a friend, in the way of warning. That candid soul can keep a secret,
+and he may have private designs on your equanimity which you don’t begin
+to suspect. What do you think of his being engaged to Miss Garland? The
+two ladies had given no hint of it all winter, but a fortnight ago, when
+those big photographs of his statues arrived, they first pinned them up
+on the wall, and then trotted out into the town, made a dozen calls, and
+announced the news. Mrs. Hudson did, at least; Miss Garland, I suppose,
+sat at home writing letters. To me, I confess, the thing was a perfect
+surprise. I had not a suspicion that all the while he was coming so
+regularly to make himself agreeable on my veranda, he was quietly
+preferring his cousin to any one else. Not, indeed, that he was ever at
+particular pains to make himself agreeable! I suppose he has picked up
+a few graces in Rome. But he must not acquire too many: if he is too
+polite when he comes back, Miss Garland will count him as one of the
+lost. She will be a very good wife for a man of genius, and such a one
+as they are often shrewd enough to take. She ‘ll darn his stockings and
+keep his accounts, and sit at home and trim the lamp and keep up
+the fire while he studies the Beautiful in pretty neighbors at
+dinner-parties. The two ladies are evidently very happy, and, to do them
+justice, very humbly grateful to you. Mrs. Hudson never speaks of you
+without tears in her eyes, and I am sure she considers you a specially
+patented agent of Providence. Verily, it ‘s a good thing for a woman to
+be in love: Miss Garland has grown almost pretty. I met her the other
+night at a tea-party; she had a white rose in her hair, and sang a
+sentimental ballad in a fine contralto voice.”
+
+Miss Garland’s letter was so much shorter that we may give it entire:--
+
+My dear Sir,--Mrs. Hudson, as I suppose you know, has been for some time
+unable to use her eyes. She requests me, therefore, to answer your favor
+of the 22d of June. She thanks you extremely for writing, and wishes me
+to say that she considers herself in every way under great obligations
+to you. Your account of her son’s progress and the high estimation in
+which he is held has made her very happy, and she earnestly prays that
+all may continue well with him. He sent us, a short time ago, several
+large photographs of his two statues, taken from different points of
+view. We know little about such things, but they seem to us wonderfully
+beautiful. We sent them to Boston to be handsomely framed, and the man,
+on returning them, wrote us that he had exhibited them for a week in
+his store, and that they had attracted great attention. The frames are
+magnificent, and the pictures now hang in a row on the parlor wall.
+Our only quarrel with them is that they make the old papering and the
+engravings look dreadfully shabby. Mr. Striker stood and looked at them
+the other day full five minutes, and said, at last, that if Roderick’s
+head was running on such things it was no wonder he could not learn to
+draw up a deed. We lead here so quiet and monotonous a life that I
+am afraid I can tell you nothing that will interest you. Mrs. Hudson
+requests me to say that the little more or less that may happen to us is
+of small account, as we live in our thoughts and our thoughts are fixed
+on her dear son. She thanks Heaven he has so good a friend. Mrs. Hudson
+says that this is too short a letter, but I can say nothing more.
+
+Yours most respectfully,
+
+Mary Garland.
+
+It is a question whether the reader will know why, but this letter
+gave Rowland extraordinary pleasure. He liked its very brevity and
+meagreness, and there seemed to him an exquisite modesty in its saying
+nothing from the young girl herself. He delighted in the formal address
+and conclusion; they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular
+gesture in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The
+letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost
+rigid simplicity, which Roderick’s betrothed had personally given
+him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life
+concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion
+to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women
+seemed to Rowland’s fancy to follow each other like the tick-tick of a
+great time-piece, marking off the hours which separated them from the
+supreme felicity of clasping the far-away son and lover to lips sealed
+with the excess of joy. He hoped that Roderick, now that he had shaken
+off the oppression of his own importunate faith, was not losing a
+tolerant temper for the silent prayers of the two women at Northampton.
+
+He was left to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick’s actual moods
+and occupations. He knew he was no letter-writer, and that, in the young
+sculptor’s own phrase, he had at any time rather build a monument than
+write a note. But when a month had passed without news of him, he began
+to be half anxious and half angry, and wrote him three lines, in the
+care of a Continental banker, begging him at least to give some sign of
+whether he was alive or dead. A week afterwards came an answer--brief,
+and dated Baden-Baden. “I know I have been a great brute,” Roderick
+wrote, “not to have sent you a word before; but really I don’t know what
+has got into me. I have lately learned terribly well how to be idle. I
+am afraid to think how long it is since I wrote to my mother or to Mary.
+Heaven help them--poor, patient, trustful creatures! I don’t know how to
+tell you what I am doing. It seems all amusing enough while I do it, but
+it would make a poor show in a narrative intended for your formidable
+eyes. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he
+grabbed me by the arm and brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a
+day in the Alps, drinking milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep,
+and thinking it was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never
+do, that the Alps were ‘d----d rot,’ that Baden-Baden was the place, and
+that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him. It is a
+wonderful place, certainly, though, thank the Lord, Baxter departed last
+week, blaspheming horribly at trente et quarante. But you know all about
+it and what one does--what one is liable to do. I have succumbed, in a
+measure, to the liabilities, and I wish I had some one here to give me a
+thundering good blowing up. Not you, dear friend; you would draw it too
+mild; you have too much of the milk of human kindness. I have fits of
+horrible homesickness for my studio, and I shall be devoutly grateful
+when the summer is over and I can go back and swing a chisel. I feel as
+if nothing but the chisel would satisfy me; as if I could rush in a rage
+at a block of unshaped marble. There are a lot of the Roman people here,
+English and American; I live in the midst of them and talk nonsense from
+morning till night. There is also some one else; and to her I don’t talk
+sense, nor, thank heaven, mean what I say. I confess, I need a month’s
+work to recover my self-respect.”
+
+These lines brought Rowland no small perturbation; the more, that what
+they seemed to point to surprised him. During the nine months of their
+companionship Roderick had shown so little taste for dissipation that
+Rowland had come to think of it as a canceled danger, and it greatly
+perplexed him to learn that his friend had apparently proved so pliant
+to opportunity. But Roderick’s allusions were ambiguous, and it was
+possible they might simply mean that he was out of patience with a
+frivolous way of life and fretting wholesomely over his absent work.
+It was a very good thing, certainly, that idleness should prove, on
+experiment, to sit heavily on his conscience. Nevertheless, the letter
+needed, to Rowland’s mind, a key: the key arrived a week later. “In
+common charity,” Roderick wrote, “lend me a hundred pounds! I have
+gambled away my last franc--I have made a mountain of debts. Send me the
+money first; lecture me afterwards!” Rowland sent the money by return of
+mail; then he proceeded, not to lecture, but to think. He hung his head;
+he was acutely disappointed. He had no right to be, he assured himself;
+but so it was. Roderick was young, impulsive, unpracticed in stoicism;
+it was a hundred to one that he was to pay the usual vulgar tribute
+to folly. But his friend had regarded it as securely gained to his own
+belief in virtue that he was not as other foolish youths are, and that
+he would have been capable of looking at folly in the face and passing
+on his way. Rowland for a while felt a sore sense of wrath. What right
+had a man who was engaged to that fine girl in Northampton to behave
+as if his consciousness were a common blank, to be overlaid with coarse
+sensations? Yes, distinctly, he was disappointed. He had accompanied his
+missive with an urgent recommendation to leave Baden-Baden immediately,
+and an offer to meet Roderick at any point he would name. The answer
+came promptly; it ran as follows: “Send me another fifty pounds! I have
+been back to the tables. I will leave as soon as the money comes, and
+meet you at Geneva. There I will tell you everything.”
+
+There is an ancient terrace at Geneva, planted with trees and studded
+with benches, overlooked by gravely aristocratic old dwellings and
+overlooking the distant Alps. A great many generations have made it a
+lounging-place, a great many friends and lovers strolled there, a great
+many confidential talks and momentous interviews gone forward. Here, one
+morning, sitting on one of the battered green benches, Roderick, as he
+had promised, told his friend everything. He had arrived late the
+night before; he looked tired, and yet flushed and excited. He made no
+professions of penitence, but he practiced an unmitigated frankness,
+and his self-reprobation might be taken for granted. He implied in every
+phrase that he had done with it all, and that he was counting the hours
+till he could get back to work. We shall not rehearse his confession in
+detail; its main outline will be sufficient. He had fallen in with some
+very idle people, and had discovered that a little example and a little
+practice were capable of producing on his own part a considerable relish
+for their diversions. What could he do? He never read, and he had no
+studio; in one way or another he had to pass the time. He passed it in
+dangling about several very pretty women in wonderful Paris toilets,
+and reflected that it was always something gained for a sculptor to sit
+under a tree, looking at his leisure into a charming face and saying
+things that made it smile and play its muscles and part its lips and
+show its teeth. Attached to these ladies were certain gentlemen who
+walked about in clouds of perfume, rose at midday, and supped at
+midnight. Roderick had found himself in the mood for thinking them very
+amusing fellows. He was surprised at his own taste, but he let it take
+its course. It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who
+expect you to present them with expensive bouquets, to ride with them in
+the Black Forest on well-looking horses, to come into their opera-boxes
+on nights when Patti sang and prices were consequent, to propose little
+light suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or drives by
+moonlight to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed, trinketed
+and gloved,--that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a
+privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached. But the tables made
+such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables. Roderick
+tried them and found that at first they smoothed his path delightfully.
+This simplification of matters, however, was only momentary, for he soon
+perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it in fact, exposed
+a good-looking young man to peculiar liabilities. At this point of his
+friend’s narrative, Rowland was reminded of Madame de Cruchecassee in
+The Newcomes, and though he had listened in tranquil silence to the rest
+of it, he found it hard not to say that all this had been, under
+the circumstances, a very bad business. Roderick admitted it with
+bitterness, and then told how much--measured simply financially--it had
+cost him. His luck had changed; the tables had ceased to back him, and
+he had found himself up to his knees in debt. Every penny had gone
+of the solid sum which had seemed a large equivalent of those shining
+statues in Rome. He had been an ass, but it was not irreparable; he
+could make another statue in a couple of months.
+
+Rowland frowned. “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “don’t play such
+dangerous games with your facility. If you have got facility, revere
+it, respect it, adore it, treasure it--don’t speculate on it.” And he
+wondered what his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done
+if there had been no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand.
+But he did not formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency
+seemed not to have presented itself to Roderick’s imagination. The young
+sculptor reverted to his late adventures again in the evening, and this
+time talked of them more objectively, as the phrase is; more as if they
+had been the adventures of another person. He related half a dozen droll
+things that had happened to him, and, as if his responsibility had been
+disengaged by all this free discussion, he laughed extravagantly at the
+memory of them. Rowland sat perfectly grave, on principle. Then Roderick
+began to talk of half a dozen statues that he had in his head, and
+set forth his design, with his usual vividness. Suddenly, as it was
+relevant, he declared that his Baden doings had not been altogether
+fruitless, for that the lady who had reminded Rowland of Madame de
+Cruchecassee was tremendously statuesque. Rowland at last said that it
+all might pass if he felt that he was really the wiser for it. “By the
+wiser,” he added, “I mean the stronger in purpose, in will.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk about will!” Roderick answered, throwing back his head
+and looking at the stars. This conversation also took place in the open
+air, on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has
+a monument. “The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can
+answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it ‘s strong? There are
+all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one’s
+will and one’s inclinations. People talk as if the two things were
+essentially distinct; on different sides of one’s organism, like the
+heart and the liver. Mine, I know, are much nearer together. It all
+depends upon circumstances. I believe there is a certain group of
+circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to
+snap like a dry twig.”
+
+“My dear boy,” said Rowland, “don’t talk about the will being
+‘destined.’ The will is destiny itself. That ‘s the way to look at it.”
+
+“Look at it, my dear Rowland,” Roderick answered, “as you find
+most comfortable. One conviction I have gathered from my summer’s
+experience,” he went on--“it ‘s as well to look it frankly in the
+face--is that I possess an almost unlimited susceptibility to the
+influence of a beautiful woman.”
+
+Rowland stared, then strolled away, softly whistling to himself. He
+was unwilling to admit even to himself that this speech had really the
+sinister meaning it seemed to have. In a few days the two young men made
+their way back to Italy, and lingered a while in Florence before
+going on to Rome. In Florence Roderick seemed to have won back his old
+innocence and his preference for the pleasures of study over any others.
+Rowland began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream, or at
+the worst as a mere sporadic piece of disorder, without roots in his
+companion’s character. They passed a fortnight looking at pictures
+and exploring for out the way bits of fresco and carving, and Roderick
+recovered all his earlier fervor of appreciation and comment. In Rome he
+went eagerly to work again, and finished in a month two or three small
+things he had left standing on his departure. He talked the most joyous
+nonsense about finding himself back in his old quarters. On the first
+Sunday afternoon following their return, on their going together to
+Saint Peter’s, he delivered himself of a lyrical greeting to the great
+church and to the city in general, in a tone of voice so irrepressibly
+elevated that it rang through the nave in rather a scandalous fashion,
+and almost arrested a procession of canons who were marching across to
+the choir. He began to model a new statue--a female figure, of which he
+had said nothing to Rowland. It represented a woman, leaning lazily back
+in her chair, with her head drooping as if she were listening, a vague
+smile on her lips, and a pair of remarkably beautiful arms folded in her
+lap. With rather less softness of contour, it would have resembled the
+noble statue of Agrippina in the Capitol. Rowland looked at it and was
+not sure he liked it. “Who is it? what does it mean?” he asked.
+
+“Anything you please!” said Roderick, with a certain petulance. “I call
+it A Reminiscence.”
+
+Rowland then remembered that one of the Baden ladies had been
+“statuesque,” and asked no more questions. This, after all, was a way of
+profiting by experience. A few days later he took his first ride of
+the season on the Campagna, and as, on his homeward way, he was passing
+across the long shadow of a ruined tower, he perceived a small figure
+at a short distance, bent over a sketch-book. As he drew near, he
+recognized his friend Singleton. The honest little painter’s face was
+scorched to flame-color by the light of southern suns, and borrowed an
+even deeper crimson from his gleeful greeting of his most appreciative
+patron. He was making a careful and charming little sketch. On Rowland’s
+asking him how he had spent his summer, he gave an account of his
+wanderings which made poor Mallet sigh with a sense of more contrasts
+than one. He had not been out of Italy, but he had been delving deep
+into the picturesque heart of the lovely land, and gathering a wonderful
+store of subjects. He had rambled about among the unvisited villages of
+the Apennines, pencil in hand and knapsack on back, sleeping on straw
+and eating black bread and beans, but feasting on local color, rioting,
+as it were, on chiaroscuro, and laying up a treasure of pictorial
+observations. He took a devout satisfaction in his hard-earned wisdom
+and his happy frugality. Rowland went the next day, by appointment,
+to look at his sketches, and spent a whole morning turning them over.
+Singleton talked more than he had ever done before, explained them all,
+and told some quaintly humorous anecdote about the production of each.
+
+“Dear me, how I have chattered!” he said at last. “I am afraid you had
+rather have looked at the things in peace and quiet. I did n’t know I
+could talk so much. But somehow, I feel very happy; I feel as if I had
+improved.”
+
+“That you have,” said Rowland. “I doubt whether an artist ever passed a
+more profitable three months. You must feel much more sure of yourself.”
+
+Singleton looked for a long time with great intentness at a knot in the
+floor. “Yes,” he said at last, in a fluttered tone, “I feel much more
+sure of myself. I have got more facility!” And he lowered his voice as
+if he were communicating a secret which it took some courage to impart.
+“I hardly like to say it, for fear I should after all be mistaken. But
+since it strikes you, perhaps it ‘s true. It ‘s a great happiness; I
+would not exchange it for a great deal of money.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose it ‘s a great happiness,” said Rowland. “I shall really
+think of you as living here in a state of scandalous bliss. I don’t
+believe it ‘s good for an artist to be in such brutally high spirits.”
+
+Singleton stared for a moment, as if he thought Rowland was in earnest;
+then suddenly fathoming the kindly jest, he walked about the room,
+scratching his head and laughing intensely to himself. “And Mr. Hudson?”
+ he said, as Rowland was going; “I hope he is well and happy.”
+
+“He is very well,” said Rowland. “He is back at work again.”
+
+“Ah, there ‘s a man,” cried Singleton, “who has taken his start once
+for all, and does n’t need to stop and ask himself in fear and trembling
+every month or two whether he is advancing or not. When he stops, it ‘s
+to rest! And where did he spend his summer?”
+
+“The greater part of it at Baden-Baden.”
+
+“Ah, that ‘s in the Black Forest,” cried Singleton, with profound
+simplicity. “They say you can make capital studies of trees there.”
+
+“No doubt,” said Rowland, with a smile, laying an almost paternal
+hand on the little painter’s yellow head. “Unfortunately trees are not
+Roderick’s line. Nevertheless, he tells me that at Baden he made some
+studies. Come when you can, by the way,” he added after a moment,
+“to his studio, and tell me what you think of something he has lately
+begun.” Singleton declared that he would come delightedly, and Rowland
+left him to his work.
+
+He met a number of his last winter’s friends again, and called upon
+Madame Grandoni, upon Miss Blanchard, and upon Gloriani, shortly after
+their return. The ladies gave an excellent account of themselves.
+Madame Grandoni had been taking sea-baths at Rimini, and Miss Blanchard
+painting wild flowers in the Tyrol. Her complexion was somewhat browned,
+which was very becoming, and her flowers were uncommonly pretty.
+Gloriani had been in Paris and had come away in high good-humor, finding
+no one there, in the artist-world, cleverer than himself. He came in a
+few days to Roderick’s studio, one afternoon when Rowland was present.
+He examined the new statue with great deference, said it was very
+promising, and abstained, considerately, from irritating prophecies. But
+Rowland fancied he observed certain signs of inward jubilation on the
+clever sculptor’s part, and walked away with him to learn his private
+opinion.
+
+“Certainly; I liked it as well as I said,” Gloriani declared in answer
+to Rowland’s anxious query; “or rather I liked it a great deal better. I
+did n’t say how much, for fear of making your friend angry. But one can
+leave him alone now, for he ‘s coming round. I told you he could n’t
+keep up the transcendental style, and he has already broken down. Don’t
+you see it yourself, man?”
+
+“I don’t particularly like this new statue,” said Rowland.
+
+“That ‘s because you ‘re a purist. It ‘s deuced clever, it ‘s deuced
+knowing, it ‘s deuced pretty, but it is n’t the topping high art of
+three months ago. He has taken his turn sooner than I supposed. What has
+happened to him? Has he been disappointed in love? But that ‘s none of
+my business. I congratulate him on having become a practical man.”
+
+Roderick, however, was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken
+it into his head to believe. He was discontented with his work, he
+applied himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did n’t
+know what was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods. “Is
+this of necessity what a fellow must come to”--he asked of Rowland, with
+a sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which seemed to imply that his
+companion had undertaken to insure him against perplexities and was not
+fulfilling his contract--“this damnable uncertainty when he goes to bed
+at night as to whether he is going to wake up in a working humor or in a
+swearing humor? Have we only a season, over before we know it, in which
+we can call our faculties our own? Six months ago I could stand up to my
+work like a man, day after day, and never dream of asking myself whether
+I felt like it. But now, some mornings, it ‘s the very devil to get
+going. My statue looks so bad when I come into the studio that I have
+twenty minds to smash it on the spot, and I lose three or four hours in
+sitting there, moping and getting used to it.”
+
+Rowland said that he supposed that this sort of thing was the lot of
+every artist and that the only remedy was plenty of courage and faith.
+And he reminded him of Gloriani’s having forewarned him against these
+sterile moods the year before.
+
+“Gloriani ‘s an ass!” said Roderick, almost fiercely. He hired a horse
+and began to ride with Rowland on the Campagna. This delicious amusement
+restored him in a measure to cheerfulness, but seemed to Rowland on the
+whole not to stimulate his industry. Their rides were always very
+long, and Roderick insisted on making them longer by dismounting in
+picturesque spots and stretching himself in the sun among a heap of
+overtangled stones. He let the scorching Roman luminary beat down upon
+him with an equanimity which Rowland found it hard to emulate. But in
+this situation Roderick talked so much amusing nonsense that, for the
+sake of his company, Rowland consented to be uncomfortable, and often
+forgot that, though in these diversions the days passed quickly, they
+brought forth neither high art nor low. And yet it was perhaps by their
+help, after all, that Roderick secured several mornings of ardent work
+on his new figure, and brought it to rapid completion. One afternoon,
+when it was finished, Rowland went to look at it, and Roderick asked him
+for his opinion.
+
+“What do you think yourself?” Rowland demanded, not from pusillanimity,
+but from real uncertainty.
+
+“I think it is curiously bad,” Roderick answered. “It was bad from the
+first; it has fundamental vices. I have shuffled them in a measure out
+of sight, but I have not corrected them. I can’t--I can’t--I can’t!” he
+cried passionately. “They stare me in the face--they are all I see!”
+
+Rowland offered several criticisms of detail, and suggested certain
+practicable changes. But Roderick differed with him on each of these
+points; the thing had faults enough, but they were not those faults.
+Rowland, unruffled, concluded by saying that whatever its faults might
+be, he had an idea people in general would like it.
+
+“I wish to heaven some person in particular would buy it, and take it
+off my hands and out of my sight!” Roderick cried. “What am I to do
+now?” he went on. “I have n’t an idea. I think of subjects, but they
+remain mere lifeless names. They are mere words--they are not images.
+What am I to do?”
+
+Rowland was a trifle annoyed. “Be a man,” he was on the point of saying,
+“and don’t, for heaven’s sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous
+voice.” But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the
+studio a loud, peremptory ring at the outer door.
+
+Roderick broke into a laugh. “Talk of the devil,” he said, “and you see
+his horns! If that ‘s not a customer, it ought to be.”
+
+The door of the studio was promptly flung open, and a lady advanced to
+the threshold--an imposing, voluminous person, who quite filled up the
+doorway. Rowland immediately felt that he had seen her before, but he
+recognized her only when she moved forward and disclosed an attendant in
+the person of a little bright-eyed, elderly gentleman, with a bristling
+white moustache. Then he remembered that just a year before he and his
+companion had seen in the Ludovisi gardens a wonderfully beautiful girl,
+strolling in the train of this conspicuous couple. He looked for her
+now, and in a moment she appeared, following her companions with the
+same nonchalant step as before, and leading her great snow-white poodle,
+decorated with motley ribbons. The elder lady offered the two young
+men a sufficiently gracious salute; the little old gentleman bowed and
+smiled with extreme alertness. The young girl, without casting a glance
+either at Roderick or at Rowland, looked about for a chair, and, on
+perceiving one, sank into it listlessly, pulled her poodle towards her,
+and began to rearrange his top-knot. Rowland saw that, even with her
+eyes dropped, her beauty was still dazzling.
+
+“I trust we are at liberty to enter,” said the elder lady, with majesty.
+“We were told that Mr. Hudson had no fixed day, and that we might come
+at any time. Let us not disturb you.”
+
+Roderick, as one of the lesser lights of the Roman art-world, had not
+hitherto been subject to incursions from inquisitive tourists, and,
+having no regular reception day, was not versed in the usual formulas of
+welcome. He said nothing, and Rowland, looking at him, saw that he was
+looking amazedly at the young girl and was apparently unconscious of
+everything else. “By Jove!” he cried precipitately, “it ‘s that goddess
+of the Villa Ludovisi!” Rowland in some confusion, did the honors as he
+could, but the little old gentleman begged him with the most obsequious
+of smiles to give himself no trouble. “I have been in many a studio!” he
+said, with his finger on his nose and a strong Italian accent.
+
+“We are going about everywhere,” said his companion. “I am passionately
+fond of art!”
+
+Rowland smiled sympathetically, and let them turn to Roderick’s statue.
+He glanced again at the young sculptor, to invite him to bestir himself,
+but Roderick was still gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful young mistress
+of the poodle, who by this time had looked up and was gazing straight at
+him. There was nothing bold in her look; it expressed a kind of languid,
+imperturbable indifference. Her beauty was extraordinary; it grew and
+grew as the young man observed her. In such a face the maidenly custom
+of averted eyes and ready blushes would have seemed an anomaly; nature
+had produced it for man’s delight and meant that it should surrender
+itself freely and coldly to admiration. It was not immediately apparent,
+however, that the young lady found an answering entertainment in the
+physiognomy of her host; she turned her head after a moment and looked
+idly round the room, and at last let her eyes rest on the statue of the
+woman seated. It being left to Rowland to stimulate conversation, he
+began by complimenting her on the beauty of her dog.
+
+“Yes, he ‘s very handsome,” she murmured. “He ‘s a Florentine. The dogs
+in Florence are handsomer than the people.” And on Rowland’s caressing
+him: “His name is Stenterello,” she added. “Stenterello, give your hand
+to the gentleman.” This order was given in Italian. “Say buon giorno a
+lei.”
+
+Stenterello thrust out his paw and gave four short, shrill barks; upon
+which the elder lady turned round and raised her forefinger.
+
+“My dear, my dear, remember where you are! Excuse my foolish child,” she
+added, turning to Roderick with an agreeable smile. “She can think of
+nothing but her poodle.”
+
+“I am teaching him to talk for me,” the young girl went on, without
+heeding her mother; “to say little things in society. It will save me
+a great deal of trouble. Stenterello, love, give a pretty smile and say
+tanti complimenti!” The poodle wagged his white pate--it looked like
+one of those little pads in swan’s-down, for applying powder to the
+face--and repeated the barking process.
+
+“He is a wonderful beast,” said Rowland.
+
+“He is not a beast,” said the young girl. “A beast is something black
+and dirty--something you can’t touch.”
+
+“He is a very valuable dog,” the elder lady explained. “He was presented
+to my daughter by a Florentine nobleman.”
+
+“It is not for that I care about him. It is for himself. He is better
+than the prince.”
+
+“My dear, my dear!” repeated the mother in deprecating accents, but with
+a significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak his attention to
+the glory of possessing a daughter who could deal in that fashion with
+the aristocracy.
+
+Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed before
+them, a year previous, in the Villa Ludovisi, Roderick and he had
+exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality.
+Roderick had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland
+now needed no telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a
+fellow-countrywoman. She was a person of what is called a great deal
+of presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there, of
+once brilliant beauty. Her daughter had come lawfully by her loveliness,
+but Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was silly and
+that the daughter was not. The mother had a very silly mouth--a mouth,
+Rowland suspected, capable of expressing an inordinate degree of
+unreason. The young girl, in spite of her childish satisfaction in her
+poodle, was not a person of feeble understanding. Rowland received an
+impression that, for reasons of her own, she was playing a part. What
+was the part and what were her reasons? She was interesting; Rowland
+wondered what were her domestic secrets. If her mother was a daughter
+of the great Republic, it was to be supposed that the young girl was a
+flower of the American soil; but her beauty had a robustness and tone
+uncommon in the somewhat facile loveliness of our western maidenhood.
+She spoke with a vague foreign accent, as if she had spent her life in
+strange countries. The little Italian apparently divined Rowland’s mute
+imaginings, for he presently stepped forward, with a bow like a master
+of ceremonies. “I have not done my duty,” he said, “in not announcing
+these ladies. Mrs. Light, Miss Light!”
+
+Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick
+was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality. He altered
+the light, pulled forward two or three figures, and made an apology
+for not having more to show. “I don’t pretend to have anything of an
+exhibition--I am only a novice.”
+
+“Indeed?--a novice! For a novice this is very well,” Mrs. Light
+declared. “Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this.”
+
+The Cavaliere smiled rapturously. “It is stupendous!” he murmured. “And
+we have been to all the studios.”
+
+“Not to all--heaven forbid!” cried Mrs. Light. “But to a number that I
+have had pointed out by artistic friends. I delight in studios: they are
+the temples of the beautiful here below. And if you are a novice, Mr.
+Hudson,” she went on, “you have already great admirers. Half a dozen
+people have told us that yours were among the things to see.” This
+gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across to
+the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light. “Ah, he
+‘s gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that
+has had his head turned,” Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to
+a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of
+their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate. “The artists are
+all crazy about her. When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the
+pictures. And when she goes into a ball-room what do the other women
+say? Eh, Cavaliere?”
+
+“She is very beautiful,” Rowland said, gravely.
+
+Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little
+at everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random
+murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot. She
+looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as
+a feature of Roderick’s establishment. It was the gaze, Rowland felt,
+which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has
+always at her command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy.
+Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory. “Are you also an
+artist?” she inquired with an almost caressing inflection. It was clear
+that what she meant was something of this kind: “Be so good as to assure
+me without delay that you are really the young man of substance and
+amiability that you appear.”
+
+But Rowland answered simply the formal question--not the latent one.
+“Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson.”
+
+Mrs. Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking
+the Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that
+she could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble.
+Rowland hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of
+Roderick’s renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several of
+his friend’s works and that she was welcome to come and see them at his
+rooms. She bade the Cavaliere make a note of his address. “Ah, you ‘re
+a patron of the arts,” she said. “That ‘s what I should like to be if
+I had a little money. I delight in beauty in every form. But all these
+people ask such monstrous prices. One must be a millionaire, to think
+of such things, eh? Twenty years ago my husband had my portrait painted,
+here in Rome, by Papucci, who was the great man in those days. I was in
+a ball dress, with all my jewels, my neck and arms, and all that. The
+man got six hundred francs, and thought he was very well treated. Those
+were the days when a family could live like princes in Italy for five
+thousand scudi a year. The Cavaliere once upon a time was a great
+dandy--don’t blush, Cavaliere; any one can see that, just as any one can
+see that I was once a pretty woman! Get him to tell you what he made a
+figure upon. The railroads have brought in the vulgarians. That ‘s what
+I call it now--the invasion of the vulgarians! What are poor we to do?”
+
+Rowland had begun to murmur some remedial proposition, when he was
+interrupted by the voice of Miss Light calling across the room, “Mamma!”
+
+“My own love?”
+
+“This gentleman wishes to model my bust. Please speak to him.”
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little chuckle. “Already?” he cried.
+
+Rowland looked round, equally surprised at the promptitude of the
+proposal. Roderick stood planted before the young girl with his arms
+folded, looking at her as he would have done at the Medicean Venus. He
+never paid compliments, and Rowland, though he had not heard him speak,
+could imagine the startling distinctness with which he made his request.
+
+“He saw me a year ago,” the young girl went on, “and he has been
+thinking of me ever since.” Her tone, in speaking, was peculiar; it had
+a kind of studied inexpressiveness, which was yet not the vulgar device
+of a drawl.
+
+“I must make your daughter’s bust--that ‘s all, madame!” cried Roderick,
+with warmth.
+
+“I had rather you made the poodle’s,” said the young girl. “Is it very
+tiresome? I have spent half my life sitting for my photograph, in every
+conceivable attitude and with every conceivable coiffure. I think I have
+posed enough.”
+
+“My dear child,” said Mrs. Light, “it may be one’s duty to pose. But as
+to my daughter’s sitting to you, sir--to a young sculptor whom we don’t
+know--it is a matter that needs reflection. It is not a favor that ‘s to
+be had for the mere asking.”
+
+“If I don’t make her from life,” said Roderick, with energy, “I will
+make her from memory, and if the thing ‘s to be done, you had better
+have it done as well as possible.”
+
+“Mamma hesitates,” said Miss Light, “because she does n’t know whether
+you mean she shall pay you for the bust. I can assure you that she will
+not pay you a sou.”
+
+“My darling, you forget yourself,” said Mrs. Light, with an attempt at
+majestic severity. “Of course,” she added, in a moment, with a change of
+note, “the bust would be my own property.”
+
+“Of course!” cried Roderick, impatiently.
+
+“Dearest mother,” interposed the young girl, “how can you carry a
+marble bust about the world with you? Is it not enough to drag the poor
+original?”
+
+“My dear, you ‘re nonsensical!” cried Mrs. Light, almost angrily.
+
+“You can always sell it,” said the young girl, with the same artful
+artlessness.
+
+Mrs. Light turned to Rowland, who pitied her, flushed and irritated.
+“She is very wicked to-day!”
+
+The Cavaliere grinned in silence and walked away on tiptoe, with his hat
+to his lips, as if to leave the field clear for action. Rowland, on the
+contrary, wished to avert the coming storm. “You had better not refuse,”
+ he said to Miss Light, “until you have seen Mr. Hudson’s things in the
+marble. Your mother is to come and look at some that I possess.”
+
+“Thank you; I have no doubt you will see us. I dare say Mr. Hudson is
+very clever; but I don’t care for modern sculpture. I can’t look at it!”
+
+“You shall care for my bust, I promise you!” cried Roderick, with a
+laugh.
+
+“To satisfy Miss Light,” said the Cavaliere, “one of the old Greeks
+ought to come to life.”
+
+“It would be worth his while,” said Roderick, paying, to Rowland’s
+knowledge, his first compliment.
+
+“I might sit to Phidias, if he would promise to be very amusing and make
+me laugh. What do you say, Stenterello? would you sit to Phidias?”
+
+“We must talk of this some other time,” said Mrs. Light. “We are in
+Rome for the winter. Many thanks. Cavaliere, call the carriage.” The
+Cavaliere led the way out, backing like a silver-stick, and Miss Light,
+following her mother, nodded, without looking at them, to each of the
+young men.
+
+“Immortal powers, what a head!” cried Roderick, when they had gone.
+“There ‘s my fortune!”
+
+“She is certainly very beautiful,” said Rowland. “But I ‘m sorry you
+have undertaken her bust.”
+
+“And why, pray?”
+
+“I suspect it will bring trouble with it.”
+
+“What kind of trouble?”
+
+“I hardly know. They are queer people. The mamma, I suspect, is the
+least bit of an adventuress. Heaven knows what the daughter is.”
+
+“She ‘s a goddess!” cried Roderick.
+
+“Just so. She is all the more dangerous.”
+
+“Dangerous? What will she do to me? She does n’t bite, I imagine.”
+
+“It remains to be seen. There are two kinds of women--you ought to
+know it by this time--the safe and the unsafe. Miss Light, if I am not
+mistaken, is one of the unsafe. A word to the wise!”
+
+“Much obliged!” said Roderick, and he began to whistle a triumphant air,
+in honor, apparently, of the advent of his beautiful model.
+
+In calling this young lady and her mamma “queer people,” Rowland but
+roughly expressed his sentiment. They were so marked a variation from
+the monotonous troop of his fellow-country people that he felt much
+curiosity as to the sources of the change, especially since he doubted
+greatly whether, on the whole, it elevated the type. For a week he
+saw the two ladies driving daily in a well-appointed landau, with the
+Cavaliere and the poodle in the front seat. From Mrs. Light he received
+a gracious salute, tempered by her native majesty; but the young girl,
+looking straight before her, seemed profoundly indifferent to observers.
+Her extraordinary beauty, however, had already made observers numerous
+and given the habitues of the Pincian plenty to talk about. The echoes
+of their commentary reached Rowland’s ears; but he had little taste
+for random gossip, and desired a distinctly veracious informant. He had
+found one in the person of Madame Grandoni, for whom Mrs. Light and her
+beautiful daughter were a pair of old friends.
+
+“I have known the mamma for twenty years,” said this judicious critic,
+“and if you ask any of the people who have been living here as long
+as I, you will find they remember her well. I have held the beautiful
+Christina on my knee when she was a little wizened baby with a very red
+face and no promise of beauty but those magnificent eyes. Ten years ago
+Mrs. Light disappeared, and has not since been seen in Rome, except for
+a few days last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples.
+Then it was you met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens. When I first
+knew her she was the unmarried but very marriageable daughter of an old
+American painter of very bad landscapes, which people used to buy from
+charity and use for fire-boards. His name was Savage; it used to make
+every one laugh, he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman.
+He had married a horrible wife, an Englishwoman who had been on the
+stage. It was said she used to beat poor Savage with his mahl-stick and
+when the domestic finances were low to lock him up in his studio and
+tell him he should n’t come out until he had painted half a dozen of
+his daubs. She had a good deal of showy beauty. She would then go
+forth, and, her beauty helping, she would make certain people take the
+pictures. It helped her at last to make an English lord run away with
+her. At the time I speak of she had quite disappeared. Mrs. Light
+was then a very handsome girl, though by no means so handsome as
+her daughter has now become. Mr. Light was an American consul, newly
+appointed at one of the Adriatic ports. He was a mild, fair-whiskered
+young man, with some little property, and my impression is that he had
+got into bad company at home, and that his family procured him his place
+to keep him out of harm’s way. He came up to Rome on a holiday, fell
+in love with Miss Savage, and married her on the spot. He had not been
+married three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever
+knew how. The young widow came back to Rome, to her father, and here
+shortly afterwards, in the shadow of Saint Peter’s, her little girl was
+born. It might have been supposed that Mrs. Light would marry again,
+and I know she had opportunities. But she overreached herself. She
+would take nothing less than a title and a fortune, and they were not
+forthcoming. She was admired and very fond of admiration; very vain,
+very worldly, very silly. She remained a pretty widow, with a surprising
+variety of bonnets and a dozen men always in her train. Giacosa dates
+from this period. He calls himself a Roman, but I have an impression he
+came up from Ancona with her. He was l’ami de la maison. He used to hold
+her bouquets, clean her gloves (I was told), run her errands, get her
+opera-boxes, and fight her battles with the shopkeepers. For this he
+needed courage, for she was smothered in debt. She at last left Rome
+to escape her creditors. Many of them must remember her still, but she
+seems now to have money to satisfy them. She left her poor old father
+here alone--helpless, infirm and unable to work. A subscription was
+shortly afterwards taken up among the foreigners, and he was sent
+back to America, where, as I afterwards heard, he died in some sort of
+asylum. From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely of Mrs.
+Light as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places. Once
+came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage in England;
+then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left
+her to keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained
+creature. She pretends to be a great lady, but I consider that
+old Filomena, my washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one. But
+certainly, after all, she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on
+a lawsuit about some property, with her husband’s family, and went to
+America to attend to it. She came back triumphant, with a long purse.
+She reappeared in Italy, and established herself for a while in Venice.
+Then she came to Florence, where she spent a couple of years and where
+I saw her. Last year she passed down to Naples, which I should have said
+was just the place for her, and this winter she has laid siege to Rome.
+She seems very prosperous. She has taken a floor in the Palazzo F----,
+she keeps her carriage, and Christina and she, between them, must have
+a pretty milliner’s bill. Giacosa has turned up again, looking as if he
+had been kept on ice at Ancona, for her return.”
+
+“What sort of education,” Rowland asked, “do you imagine the mother’s
+adventures to have been for the daughter?”
+
+“A strange school! But Mrs. Light told me, in Florence, that she had
+given her child the education of a princess. In other words, I suppose,
+she speaks three or four languages, and has read several hundred French
+novels. Christina, I suspect, is very clever. When I saw her, I was
+amazed at her beauty, and, certainly, if there is any truth in faces,
+she ought to have the soul of an angel. Perhaps she has. I don’t judge
+her; she ‘s an extraordinary young person. She has been told twenty
+times a day by her mother, since she was five years old, that she is a
+beauty of beauties, that her face is her fortune, and that, if she plays
+her cards, she may marry a duke. If she has not been fatally corrupted,
+she is a very superior girl. My own impression is that she is a mixture
+of good and bad, of ambition and indifference. Mrs. Light, having failed
+to make her own fortune in matrimony, has transferred her hopes to her
+daughter, and nursed them till they have become a kind of monomania. She
+has a hobby, which she rides in secret; but some day she will let you
+see it. I ‘m sure that if you go in some evening unannounced, you will
+find her scanning the tea-leaves in her cup, or telling her daughter’s
+fortune with a greasy pack of cards, preserved for the purpose. She
+promises her a prince--a reigning prince. But if Mrs. Light is silly,
+she is shrewd, too, and, lest considerations of state should deny
+her prince the luxury of a love-match, she keeps on hand a few common
+mortals. At the worst she would take a duke, an English lord, or even a
+young American with a proper number of millions. The poor woman must be
+rather uncomfortable. She is always building castles and knocking them
+down again--always casting her nets and pulling them in. If her
+daughter were less of a beauty, her transparent ambition would be very
+ridiculous; but there is something in the girl, as one looks at her,
+that seems to make it very possible she is marked out for one of those
+wonderful romantic fortunes that history now and then relates. ‘Who,
+after all, was the Empress of the French?’ Mrs. Light is forever saying.
+‘And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!’”
+
+“And what does Christina say?”
+
+“She makes no scruple, as you know, of saying that her mother is a fool.
+What she thinks, heaven knows. I suspect that, practically, she does not
+commit herself. She is excessively proud, and thinks herself good enough
+to occupy the highest station in the world; but she knows that her
+mother talks nonsense, and that even a beautiful girl may look awkward
+in making unsuccessful advances. So she remains superbly indifferent,
+and lets her mother take the risks. If the prince is secured, so much
+the better; if he is not, she need never confess to herself that even a
+prince has slighted her.”
+
+“Your report is as solid,” Rowland said to Madame Grandoni, thanking
+her, “as if it had been prepared for the Academy of Sciences;” and he
+congratulated himself on having listened to it when, a couple of days
+later, Mrs. Light and her daughter, attended by the Cavaliere and the
+poodle, came to his rooms to look at Roderick’s statues. It was more
+comfortable to know just with whom he was dealing.
+
+Mrs. Light was prodigiously gracious, and showered down compliments not
+only on the statues, but on all his possessions. “Upon my word,” she
+said, “you men know how to make yourselves comfortable. If one of us
+poor women had half as many easy-chairs and knick-knacks, we should be
+famously abused. It ‘s really selfish to be living all alone in such a
+place as this. Cavaliere, how should you like this suite of rooms and a
+fortune to fill them with pictures and statues? Christina, love, look at
+that mosaic table. Mr. Mallet, I could almost beg it from you. Yes,
+that Eve is certainly very fine. We need n’t be ashamed of such a
+great-grandmother as that. If she was really such a beautiful woman,
+it accounts for the good looks of some of us. Where is Mr. What
+‘s-his-name, the young sculptor? Why is n’t he here to be complimented?”
+
+Christina had remained but for a moment in the chair which Rowland had
+placed for her, had given but a cursory glance at the statues, and
+then, leaving her place, had begun to wander round the room--looking at
+herself in the mirror, touching the ornaments and curiosities, glancing
+at the books and prints. Rowland’s sitting-room was encumbered with
+bric-a-brac, and she found plenty of occupation. Rowland presently
+joined her, and pointed out some of the objects he most valued.
+
+“It ‘s an odd jumble,” she said frankly. “Some things are very
+pretty--some are very ugly. But I like ugly things, when they have a
+certain look. Prettiness is terribly vulgar nowadays, and it is not
+every one that knows just the sort of ugliness that has chic. But chic
+is getting dreadfully common too. There ‘s a hint of it even in Madame
+Baldi’s bonnets. I like looking at people’s things,” she added in a
+moment, turning to Rowland and resting her eyes on him. “It helps you to
+find out their characters.”
+
+“Am I to suppose,” asked Rowland, smiling, “that you have arrived at any
+conclusions as to mine?”
+
+“I am rather muddled; you have too many things; one seems to contradict
+another. You are very artistic and yet you are very prosaic; you have
+what is called a ‘catholic’ taste and yet you are full of obstinate
+little prejudices and habits of thought, which, if I knew you, I should
+find very tiresome. I don’t think I like you.”
+
+“You make a great mistake,” laughed Rowland; “I assure you I am very
+amiable.”
+
+“Yes, I am probably wrong, and if I knew you, I should find out I was
+wrong, and that would irritate me and make me dislike you more. So you
+see we are necessary enemies.”
+
+“No, I don’t dislike you.”
+
+“Worse and worse; for you certainly will not like me.”
+
+“You are very discouraging.”
+
+“I am fond of facing the truth, though some day you will deny that.
+Where is that queer friend of yours?”
+
+“You mean Mr. Hudson. He is represented by these beautiful works.”
+
+Miss Light looked for some moments at Roderick’s statues. “Yes,” she
+said, “they are not so silly as most of the things we have seen. They
+have no chic, and yet they are beautiful.”
+
+“You describe them perfectly,” said Rowland. “They are beautiful, and
+yet they have no chic. That ‘s it!”
+
+“If he will promise to put none into my bust, I have a mind to let him
+make it. A request made in those terms deserves to be granted.”
+
+“In what terms?”
+
+“Did n’t you hear him? ‘Mademoiselle, you almost satisfy my conception
+of the beautiful. I must model your bust.’ That almost should be
+rewarded. He is like me; he likes to face the truth. I think we should
+get on together.”
+
+The Cavaliere approached Rowland, to express the pleasure he had derived
+from his beautiful “collection.” His smile was exquisitely bland, his
+accent appealing, caressing, insinuating. But he gave Rowland an odd
+sense of looking at a little waxen image, adjusted to perform certain
+gestures and emit certain sounds. It had once contained a soul, but the
+soul had leaked out. Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there are more
+profitless things than mere sound and gesture, in a consummate Italian.
+And the Cavaliere, too, had soul enough left to desire to speak a few
+words on his own account, and call Rowland’s attention to the fact that
+he was not, after all, a hired cicerone, but an ancient Roman gentleman.
+Rowland felt sorry for him; he hardly knew why. He assured him in a
+friendly fashion that he must come again; that his house was always at
+his service. The Cavaliere bowed down to the ground. “You do me too much
+honor,” he murmured. “If you will allow me--it is not impossible!”
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had prepared to depart. “If you are not afraid to
+come and see two quiet little women, we shall be most happy!” she said.
+“We have no statues nor pictures--we have nothing but each other. Eh,
+darling?”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Christina.
+
+“Oh, and the Cavaliere,” added her mother.
+
+“The poodle, please!” cried the young girl.
+
+Rowland glanced at the Cavaliere; he was smiling more blandly than ever.
+
+A few days later Rowland presented himself, as civility demanded, at
+Mrs. Light’s door. He found her living in one of the stately houses of
+the Via dell’ Angelo Custode, and, rather to his surprise, was told she
+was at home. He passed through half a dozen rooms and was ushered
+into an immense saloon, at one end of which sat the mistress of the
+establishment, with a piece of embroidery. She received him very
+graciously, and then, pointing mysteriously to a large screen which was
+unfolded across the embrasure of one of the deep windows, “I am keeping
+guard!” she said. Rowland looked interrogative; whereupon she beckoned
+him forward and motioned him to look behind the screen. He obeyed, and
+for some moments stood gazing. Roderick, with his back turned, stood
+before an extemporized pedestal, ardently shaping a formless mass
+of clay. Before him sat Christina Light, in a white dress, with her
+shoulders bare, her magnificent hair twisted into a classic coil, and
+her head admirably poised. Meeting Rowland’s gaze, she smiled a little,
+only with her deep gray eyes, without moving. She looked divinely
+beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. Christina
+
+The brilliant Roman winter came round again, and Rowland enjoyed it,
+in a certain way, more deeply than before. He grew at last to feel that
+sense of equal possession, of intellectual nearness, which it belongs
+to the peculiar magic of the ancient city to infuse into minds of a
+cast that she never would have produced. He became passionately,
+unreasoningly fond of all Roman sights and sensations, and to breathe
+the Roman atmosphere began to seem a needful condition of being. He
+could not have defined and explained the nature of his great love, nor
+have made up the sum of it by the addition of his calculable pleasures.
+It was a large, vague, idle, half-profitless emotion, of which perhaps
+the most pertinent thing that may be said is that it enforced a sort of
+oppressive reconciliation to the present, the actual, the sensuous--to
+life on the terms that there offered themselves. It was perhaps for this
+very reason that, in spite of the charm which Rome flings over
+one’s mood, there ran through Rowland’s meditations an undertone of
+melancholy, natural enough in a mind which finds its horizon insidiously
+limited to the finite, even in very picturesque forms. Whether it is one
+that tacitly concedes to the Roman Church the monopoly of a guarantee
+of immortality, so that if one is indisposed to bargain with her for
+the precious gift, one must do without it altogether; or whether in an
+atmosphere so heavily weighted with echoes and memories one grows
+to believe that there is nothing in one’s consciousness that is not
+foredoomed to moulder and crumble and become dust for the feet, and
+possible malaria for the lungs, of future generations--the fact at least
+remains that one parts half-willingly with one’s hopes in Rome, and
+misses them only under some very exceptional stress of circumstance. For
+this reason one may perhaps say that there is no other place in which
+one’s daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and none, at the same
+time, in which acute attacks of depression are more intolerable. Rowland
+found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision that to live in Rome
+was an education to one’s senses and one’s imagination, but he sometimes
+wondered whether this was not a questionable gain in case of one’s not
+being prepared to live wholly by one’s imagination and one’s senses. The
+tranquil profundity of his daily satisfaction seemed sometimes to
+turn, by a mysterious inward impulse, and face itself with questioning,
+admonishing, threatening eyes. “But afterwards...?” it seemed to
+ask, with a long reverberation; and he could give no answer but a shy
+affirmation that there was no such thing as afterwards, and a hope,
+divided against itself, that his actual way of life would last forever.
+He often felt heavy-hearted; he was sombre without knowing why; there
+were no visible clouds in his heaven, but there were cloud-shadows on
+his mood. Shadows projected, they often were, without his knowing it, by
+an undue apprehension that things after all might not go so ideally
+well with Roderick. When he understood his anxiety it vexed him, and he
+rebuked himself for taking things unmanfully hard. If Roderick chose
+to follow a crooked path, it was no fault of his; he had given him, he
+would continue to give him, all that he had offered him--friendship,
+sympathy, advice. He had not undertaken to provide him with unflagging
+strength of purpose, nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.
+
+If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil,
+Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local
+influence. More than once he declared to his companion that he meant
+to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter’s, and that he cared
+little if he never again drew breath in American air. “For a man of my
+temperament, Rome is the only possible place,” he said; “it ‘s better to
+recognize the fact early than late. So I shall never go home unless I am
+absolutely forced.”
+
+“What is your idea of ‘force’?” asked Rowland, smiling. “It seems to me
+you have an excellent reason for going home some day or other.”
+
+“Ah, you mean my engagement?” Roderick answered with unaverted eyes.
+“Yes, I am distinctly engaged, in Northampton, and impatiently waited
+for!” And he gave a little sympathetic sigh. “To reconcile Northampton
+and Rome is rather a problem. Mary had better come out here. Even at the
+worst I have no intention of giving up Rome within six or eight years,
+and an engagement of that duration would be rather absurd.”
+
+“Miss Garland could hardly leave your mother,” Rowland observed.
+
+“Oh, of course my mother should come. I think I will suggest it in my
+next letter. It will take her a year or two to make up her mind to it,
+but if she consents it will brighten her up. It ‘s too small a life,
+over there, even for a timid old lady. It is hard to imagine,” he added,
+“any change in Mary being a change for the better; but I should like her
+to take a look at the world and have her notions stretched a little. One
+is never so good, I suppose, but that one can improve a little.”
+
+“If you wish your mother and Miss Garland to come,” Rowland suggested,
+“you had better go home and bring them.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t think of leaving Europe, for many a day,” Roderick
+answered. “At present it would quite break the charm. I am just
+beginning to profit, to get used to things and take them naturally. I am
+sure the sight of Northampton Main Street would permanently upset me.”
+
+It was reassuring to hear that Roderick, in his own view, was but
+“just beginning” to spread his wings, and Rowland, if he had had
+any forebodings, might have suffered them to be modified by this
+declaration. This was the first time since their meeting at Geneva that
+Roderick had mentioned Miss Garland’s name, but the ice being broken, he
+indulged for some time afterward in frequent allusions to his
+betrothed, which always had an accent of scrupulous, of almost studied,
+consideration. An uninitiated observer, hearing him, would have imagined
+her to be a person of a certain age--possibly an affectionate maiden
+aunt--who had once done him a kindness which he highly appreciated:
+perhaps presented him with a check for a thousand dollars. Rowland noted
+the difference between his present frankness and his reticence during
+the first six months of his engagement, and sometimes wondered whether
+it was not rather an anomaly that he should expatiate more largely as
+the happy event receded. He had wondered over the whole matter, first
+and last, in a great many different ways, and looked at it in all
+possible lights. There was something terribly hard to explain in the
+fact of his having fallen in love with his cousin. She was not, as
+Rowland conceived her, the sort of girl he would have been likely to
+fancy, and the operation of sentiment, in all cases so mysterious, was
+particularly so in this one. Just why it was that Roderick should not
+logically have fancied Miss Garland, his companion would have been at
+loss to say, but I think the conviction had its roots in an unformulated
+comparison between himself and the accepted suitor. Roderick and he were
+as different as two men could be, and yet Roderick had taken it into his
+head to fall in love with a woman for whom he himself had been keeping
+in reserve, for years, a profoundly characteristic passion. That if he
+chose to conceive a great notion of the merits of Roderick’s mistress,
+the irregularity here was hardly Roderick’s, was a view of the case
+to which poor Rowland did scanty justice. There were women, he said
+to himself, whom it was every one’s business to fall in love with a
+little--women beautiful, brilliant, artful, easily fascinating. Miss
+Light, for instance, was one of these; every man who spoke to her did
+so, if not in the language, at least with something of the agitation,
+the divine tremor, of a lover. There were other women--they might have
+great beauty, they might have small; perhaps they were generally to
+be classified as plain--whose triumphs in this line were rare, but
+immutably permanent. Such a one preeminently, was Mary Garland. Upon
+the doctrine of probabilities, it was unlikely that she had had an equal
+charm for each of them, and was it not possible, therefore, that the
+charm for Roderick had been simply the charm imagined, unquestioningly
+accepted: the general charm of youth, sympathy, kindness--of the present
+feminine, in short--enhanced indeed by several fine facial traits?
+The charm in this case for Rowland was--the charm!--the mysterious,
+individual, essential woman. There was an element in the charm, as his
+companion saw it, which Rowland was obliged to recognize, but which
+he forbore to ponder; the rather important attraction, namely, of
+reciprocity. As to Miss Garland being in love with Roderick and becoming
+charming thereby, this was a point with which his imagination ventured
+to take no liberties; partly because it would have been indelicate,
+and partly because it would have been vain. He contented himself with
+feeling that the young girl was still as vivid an image in his memory as
+she had been five days after he left her, and with drifting nearer and
+nearer to the impression that at just that crisis any other girl would
+have answered Roderick’s sentimental needs as well. Any other girl
+indeed would do so still! Roderick had confessed as much to him at
+Geneva, in saying that he had been taking at Baden the measure of his
+susceptibility to female beauty.
+
+His extraordinary success in modeling the bust of the beautiful Miss
+Light was pertinent evidence of this amiable quality. She sat to him,
+repeatedly, for a fortnight, and the work was rapidly finished. On one
+of the last days Roderick asked Rowland to come and give his opinion as
+to what was still wanting; for the sittings had continued to take place
+in Mrs. Light’s apartment, the studio being pronounced too damp for
+the fair model. When Rowland presented himself, Christina, still in
+her white dress, with her shoulders bare, was standing before a mirror,
+readjusting her hair, the arrangement of which, on this occasion, had
+apparently not met the young sculptor’s approval. He stood beside her,
+directing the operation with a peremptoriness of tone which seemed
+to Rowland to denote a considerable advance in intimacy. As Rowland
+entered, Christina was losing patience. “Do it yourself, then!” she
+cried, and with a rapid movement unloosed the great coil of her tresses
+and let them fall over her shoulders.
+
+They were magnificent, and with her perfect face dividing their rippling
+flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to
+martyrdom. Rowland’s eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her
+own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as
+the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was
+not a superficial one.
+
+“Hudson ‘s a sculptor,” said Rowland, with warmth. “But if I were only a
+painter!”
+
+“Thank Heaven you are not!” said Christina. “I am having quite enough of
+this minute inspection of my charms.”
+
+“My dear young man, hands off!” cried Mrs. Light, coming forward and
+seizing her daughter’s hair. “Christina, love, I am surprised.”
+
+“Is it indelicate?” Christina asked. “I beg Mr. Mallet’s pardon.” Mrs.
+Light gathered up the dusky locks and let them fall through her fingers,
+glancing at her visitor with a significant smile. Rowland had never
+been in the East, but if he had attempted to make a sketch of an old
+slave-merchant, calling attention to the “points” of a Circassian
+beauty, he would have depicted such a smile as Mrs. Light’s. “Mamma ‘s
+not really shocked,” added Christina in a moment, as if she had guessed
+her mother’s by-play. “She is only afraid that Mr. Hudson might have
+injured my hair, and that, per consequenza, I should sell for less.”
+
+“You unnatural child!” cried mamma. “You deserve that I should make a
+fright of you!” And with half a dozen skillful passes she twisted the
+tresses into a single picturesque braid, placed high on the head, as a
+kind of coronal.
+
+“What does your mother do when she wants to do you justice?” Rowland
+asked, observing the admirable line of the young girl’s neck.
+
+“I do her justice when I say she says very improper things. What is one
+to do with such a thorn in the flesh?” Mrs. Light demanded.
+
+“Think of it at your leisure, Mr. Mallet,” said Christina, “and when you
+‘ve discovered something, let us hear. But I must tell you that I shall
+not willingly believe in any remedy of yours, for you have something in
+your physiognomy that particularly provokes me to make the remarks that
+my mother so sincerely deplores. I noticed it the first time I saw you.
+I think it ‘s because your face is so broad. For some reason or other,
+broad faces exasperate me; they fill me with a kind of rabbia. Last
+summer, at Carlsbad, there was an Austrian count, with enormous estates
+and some great office at court. He was very attentive--seriously so; he
+was really very far gone. Cela ne tenait qu’ a moi! But I could n’t; he
+was impossible! He must have measured, from ear to ear, at least a yard
+and a half. And he was blond, too, which made it worse--as blond as
+Stenterello; pure fleece! So I said to him frankly, ‘Many thanks, Herr
+Graf; your uniform is magnificent, but your face is too fat.’”
+
+“I am afraid that mine also,” said Rowland, with a smile, “seems just
+now to have assumed an unpardonable latitude.”
+
+“Oh, I take it you know very well that we are looking for a husband,
+and that none but tremendous swells need apply. Surely, before these
+gentlemen, mamma, I may speak freely; they are disinterested. Mr. Mallet
+won’t do, because, though he ‘s rich, he ‘s not rich enough. Mamma made
+that discovery the day after we went to see you, moved to it by the
+promising look of your furniture. I hope she was right, eh? Unless you
+have millions, you know, you have no chance.”
+
+“I feel like a beggar,” said Rowland.
+
+“Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, after mature
+reflection, that on the whole you have enough. Mr. Hudson, of course, is
+nowhere; he has nothing but his genius and his beaux yeux.”
+
+Roderick had stood looking at Christina intently while she delivered
+herself, softly and slowly, of this surprising nonsense. When she had
+finished, she turned and looked at him; their eyes met, and he blushed
+a little. “Let me model you, and he who can may marry you!” he said,
+abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Light, while her daughter talked, had been adding a few touches to
+her coiffure. “She is not so silly as you might suppose,” she said to
+Rowland, with dignity. “If you will give me your arm, we will go and
+look at the bust.”
+
+“Does that represent a silly girl?” Christina demanded, when they stood
+before it.
+
+Rowland transferred his glance several times from the portrait to the
+original. “It represents a young lady,” he said, “whom I should not
+pretend to judge off-hand.”
+
+“She may be a fool, but you are not sure. Many thanks! You have seen me
+half a dozen times. You are either very slow or I am very deep.”
+
+“I am certainly slow,” said Rowland. “I don’t expect to make up my mind
+about you within six months.”
+
+“I give you six months if you will promise then a perfectly frank
+opinion. Mind, I shall not forget; I shall insist upon it.”
+
+“Well, though I am slow, I am tolerably brave,” said Rowland. “We shall
+see.”
+
+Christina looked at the bust with a sigh. “I am afraid, after all,” she
+said, “that there ‘s very little wisdom in it save what the artist has
+put there. Mr. Hudson looked particularly wise while he was working; he
+scowled and growled, but he never opened his mouth. It is very kind of
+him not to have represented me gaping.”
+
+“If I had talked a lot of stuff to you,” said Roderick, roundly, “the
+thing would not have been a tenth so good.”
+
+“Is it good, after all? Mr. Mallet is a famous connoisseur; has he not
+come here to pronounce?”
+
+The bust was in fact a very happy performance, and Roderick had risen to
+the level of his subject. It was thoroughly a portrait, and not a vague
+fantasy executed on a graceful theme, as the busts of pretty women, in
+modern sculpture, are apt to be. The resemblance was deep and vivid;
+there was extreme fidelity of detail and yet a noble simplicity.
+One could say of the head that, without idealization, it was a
+representation of ideal beauty. Rowland, however, as we know, was not
+fond of exploding into superlatives, and, after examining the piece,
+contented himself with suggesting two or three alterations of detail.
+
+“Nay, how can you be so cruel?” demanded Mrs. Light, with soft
+reproachfulness. “It is surely a wonderful thing!”
+
+“Rowland knows it ‘s a wonderful thing,” said Roderick, smiling. “I can
+tell that by his face. The other day I finished something he thought
+bad, and he looked very differently from this.”
+
+“How did Mr. Mallet look?” asked Christina.
+
+“My dear Rowland,” said Roderick, “I am speaking of my seated woman. You
+looked as if you had on a pair of tight boots.”
+
+“Ah, my child, you ‘ll not understand that!” cried Mrs. Light. “You
+never yet had a pair that were small enough.”
+
+“It ‘s a pity, Mr. Hudson,” said Christina, gravely, “that you could
+not have introduced my feet into the bust. But we can hang a pair of
+slippers round the neck!”
+
+“I nevertheless like your statues, Roderick,” Rowland rejoined, “better
+than your jokes. This is admirable. Miss Light, you may be proud!”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Mallet, for the permission,” rejoined the young girl.
+
+“I am dying to see it in the marble, with a red velvet screen behind
+it,” said Mrs. Light.
+
+“Placed there under the Sassoferrato!” Christina went on. “I hope you
+keep well in mind, Mr. Hudson, that you have not a grain of property in
+your work, and that if mamma chooses, she may have it photographed and
+the copies sold in the Piazza di Spagna, at five francs apiece, without
+your having a sou of the profits.”
+
+“Amen!” said Roderick. “It was so nominated in the bond. My profits are
+here!” and he tapped his forehead.
+
+“It would be prettier if you said here!” And Christina touched her
+heart.
+
+“My precious child, how you do run on!” murmured Mrs. Light.
+
+“It is Mr. Mallet,” the young girl answered. “I can’t talk a word of
+sense so long as he is in the room. I don’t say that to make you go,”
+ she added, “I say it simply to justify myself.”
+
+Rowland bowed in silence. Roderick declared that he must get at work and
+requested Christina to take her usual position, and Mrs. Light proposed
+to her visitor that they should adjourn to her boudoir. This was a
+small room, hardly more spacious than an alcove, opening out of the
+drawing-room and having no other issue. Here, as they entered, on a
+divan near the door, Rowland perceived the Cavaliere Giacosa, with his
+arms folded, his head dropped upon his breast, and his eyes closed.
+
+“Sleeping at his post!” said Rowland with a kindly laugh.
+
+“That ‘s a punishable offense,” rejoined Mrs. Light, sharply. She was on
+the point of calling him, in the same tone, when he suddenly opened his
+eyes, stared a moment, and then rose with a smile and a bow.
+
+“Excuse me, dear lady,” he said, “I was overcome by the--the great
+heat.”
+
+“Nonsense, Cavaliere!” cried the lady, “you know we are perishing here
+with the cold! You had better go and cool yourself in one of the other
+rooms.”
+
+“I obey, dear lady,” said the Cavaliere; and with another smile and bow
+to Rowland he departed, walking very discreetly on his toes. Rowland
+out-stayed him but a short time, for he was not fond of Mrs. Light,
+and he found nothing very inspiring in her frank intimation that if he
+chose, he might become a favorite. He was disgusted with himself for
+pleasing her; he confounded his fatal urbanity. In the court-yard of the
+palace he overtook the Cavaliere, who had stopped at the porter’s lodge
+to say a word to his little girl. She was a young lady of very tender
+years and she wore a very dirty pinafore. He had taken her up in his
+arms and was singing an infantine rhyme to her, and she was staring at
+him with big, soft Roman eyes. On seeing Rowland he put her down with
+a kiss, and stepped forward with a conscious grin, an unresentful
+admission that he was sensitive both to chubbiness and ridicule.
+Rowland began to pity him again; he had taken his dismissal from the
+drawing-room so meekly.
+
+“You don’t keep your promise,” said Rowland, “to come and see me. Don’t
+forget it. I want you to tell me about Rome thirty years ago.”
+
+“Thirty years ago? Ah, dear sir, Rome is Rome still; a place where
+strange things happen! But happy things too, since I have your renewed
+permission to call. You do me too much honor. Is it in the morning or in
+the evening that I should least intrude?”
+
+“Take your own time, Cavaliere; only come, sometime. I depend upon you,”
+ said Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere thanked him with an humble obeisance. To the Cavaliere,
+too, he felt that he was, in Roman phrase, sympathetic, but the idea of
+pleasing this extremely reduced gentleman was not disagreeable to him.
+
+Miss Light’s bust stood for a while on exhibition in Roderick’s studio,
+and half the foreign colony came to see it. With the completion of his
+work, however, Roderick’s visits at the Palazzo F---- by no means came
+to an end. He spent half his time in Mrs. Light’s drawing-room, and
+began to be talked about as “attentive” to Christina. The success of the
+bust restored his equanimity, and in the garrulity of his good-humor he
+suffered Rowland to see that she was just now the object uppermost in
+his thoughts. Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener
+than speaker; partly because Roderick’s own tone was so resonant and
+exultant, and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for
+having called her unsafe, he was too perplexed to defend himself.
+The impression remained that she was unsafe; that she was a complex,
+willful, passionate creature, who might easily engulf a too confiding
+spirit in the eddies of her capricious temper. And yet he strongly felt
+her charm; the eddies had a strange fascination! Roderick, in the glow
+of that renewed admiration provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal,
+was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her
+beauty.
+
+“I had no idea of it,” he said, “till I began to look at her with an eye
+to reproducing line for line and curve for curve. Her face is the most
+exquisite piece of modeling that ever came from creative hands. Not
+a line without meaning, not a hair’s breadth that is not admirably
+finished. And then her mouth! It ‘s as if a pair of lips had been shaped
+to utter pure truth without doing it dishonor!” Later, after he had been
+working for a week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain,
+she would still be the most fascinating of women. “I ‘ve quite forgotten
+her beauty,” he said, “or rather I have ceased to perceive it as
+something distinct and defined, something independent of the rest of
+her. She is all one, and all consummately interesting!”
+
+“What does she do--what does she say, that is so remarkable?” Rowland
+had asked.
+
+“Say? Sometimes nothing--sometimes everything. She is never the same.
+Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word, without a
+smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore. She hardly looks
+at me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work. On other
+days she laughs and chatters and asks endless questions, and pours out
+the most irresistible nonsense. She is a creature of moods; you can’t
+count upon her; she keeps observation on the stretch. And then, bless
+you, she has seen such a lot! Her talk is full of the oddest allusions!”
+
+“It is altogether a very singular type of young lady,” said Rowland,
+after the visit which I have related at length. “It may be a charm, but
+it is certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the
+charm of shrinking innocence and soft docility. Our American girls
+are accused of being more knowing than any others, and Miss Light is
+nominally an American. But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make
+her what she is. The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a
+product of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong.”
+
+“Ah, she has an atmosphere,” said Roderick, in the tone of high
+appreciation.
+
+“Young unmarried women,” Rowland answered, “should be careful not to
+have too much!”
+
+“Ah, you don’t forgive her,” cried his companion, “for hitting you so
+hard! A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
+notice of him.”
+
+“A man is never flattered at a woman’s not liking him.”
+
+“Are you sure she does n’t like you? That ‘s to the credit of your
+humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade
+himself that he was in favor.”
+
+“He would have also,” said Rowland, laughing, “to be a fellow of
+remarkable ingenuity!” He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick
+reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he
+was not engaged to than of the girl he was. But it amounted almost to
+arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland to pretend to know how often
+Roderick thought of Miss Garland. He wondered gloomily, at any rate,
+whether for men of his companion’s large, easy power, there was not
+a larger moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who,
+yielding Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was),
+had no reason to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their
+accounts. Was it not a part of the eternal fitness of things that
+Roderick, while rhapsodizing about Miss Light, should have it at his
+command to look at you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded
+blue, and to shake off your musty imputations by a toss of his
+picturesque brown locks? Or had he, in fact, no conscience to speak of?
+Happy fellow, either way!
+
+Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick on
+his model and what he had made of her. “Devilish pretty, through and
+through!” he said as he looked at the bust. “Capital handling of the
+neck and throat; lovely work on the nose. You ‘re a detestably lucky
+fellow, my boy! But you ought not to have squandered such material on a
+simple bust; you should have made a great imaginative figure. If I could
+only have got hold of her, I would have put her into a statue in spite
+of herself. What a pity she is not a ragged Trasteverine, whom we might
+have for a franc an hour! I have been carrying about in my head for
+years a delicious design for a fantastic figure, but it has always
+stayed there for want of a tolerable model. I have seen intimations of
+the type, but Miss Light is the perfection of it. As soon as I saw her I
+said to myself, ‘By Jove, there ‘s my statue in the flesh!’”
+
+“What is your subject?” asked Roderick.
+
+“Don’t take it ill,” said Gloriani. “You know I ‘m the very deuce for
+observation. She would make a magnificent Herodias!”
+
+If Roderick had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know he thought
+Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom), he might have been
+soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton, who came and sat for an
+hour in a sort of mental prostration before both bust and artist.
+But Roderick’s attitude before his patient little devotee was one
+of undisguised though friendly amusement; and, indeed, judged from a
+strictly plastic point of view, the poor fellow’s diminutive stature,
+his enormous mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently
+ridiculous. “Nay, don’t envy our friend,” Rowland said to Singleton
+afterwards, on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of
+his own paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick’s
+talent. “You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be
+contented with what you are and paint me another picture.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t envy Hudson anything he possesses,” Singleton said,
+“because to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness.
+‘Complete,’ that ‘s what he is; while we little clevernesses are like
+half-ripened plums, only good eating on the side that has had a glimpse
+of the sun. Nature has made him so, and fortune confesses to it! He is
+the handsomest fellow in Rome, he has the most genius, and, as a matter
+of course, the most beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to be
+his model. If that is not completeness, where shall we find it?”
+
+One morning, going into Roderick’s studio, Rowland found the young
+sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard--if this is not too flattering a
+description of his gracefully passive tolerance of her presence. He had
+never liked her and never climbed into her sky-studio to observe her
+wonderful manipulation of petals. He had once quoted Tennyson against
+her:--
+
+“And is there any moral shut
+Within the bosom of the rose?”
+
+“In all Miss Blanchard’s roses you may be sure there is a moral,” he had
+said. “You can see it sticking out its head, and, if you go to smell the
+flower, it scratches your nose.” But on this occasion she had come
+with a propitiatory gift--introducing her friend Mr. Leavenworth. Mr.
+Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully
+brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored face, which seemed,
+somehow, to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of
+superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth, white forehead) it bore
+a certain resemblance to a large parlor with a very florid carpet, but
+no pictures on the walls. He held his head high, talked sonorously, and
+told Roderick, within five minutes, that he was a widower, traveling
+to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the
+proprietorship of large mines of borax in Pennsylvania. Roderick
+supposed at first that, in his character of depressed widower, he had
+come to order a tombstone; but observing then the extreme blandness
+of his address to Miss Blanchard, he credited him with a judicious
+prevision that by the time the tombstone was completed, a monument
+of his inconsolability might have become an anachronism. But Mr.
+Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
+
+“You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,” he said. “I
+am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make
+a rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me
+into mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded
+by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.
+I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you
+think you could do something for my library? It is to be filled
+with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this
+style,”--pointing to one of Roderick’s statues,--“standing out against
+the morocco and gilt, would have a noble effect. The subject I have
+already fixed upon. I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.
+Do you think, now,” asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, “you could
+rise to the conception?”
+
+“A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,” remarked Miss
+Blanchard.
+
+Roderick looked at her a moment, and then--“The simplest thing I
+could do,” he said, “would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss
+Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for
+the allegory.”
+
+Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there
+was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of
+Roderick’s genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to
+Miss Blanchard’s beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental,
+more impersonal. “If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of
+Miss Blanchard,” he added, “I should prefer to have it in no factitious
+disguise!”
+
+Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were
+discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. “Who is
+your friend?” he asked.
+
+“A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune--which is
+magnificent. One of nature’s gentlemen!”
+
+This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss
+Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had
+an opinion on the young girl’s beauty, and, in her own fashion, she
+expressed it epigrammatically. “She looks half like a Madonna and half
+like a ballerina,” she said.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young
+sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron’s
+conception. “His conception be hanged!” Roderick exclaimed, after he had
+departed. “His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear
+and a photographic album in her hand. I shall have to conceive, myself.
+For the money, I ought to be able to!”
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society.
+“Heaven knows how!” Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned
+to her several evidences of the lady’s prosperity. “In such a case
+there is nothing like audacity. A month ago she knew no one but her
+washerwoman, and now I am told that the cards of Roman princesses are to
+be seen on her table. She is evidently determined to play a great
+part, and she has the wit to perceive that, to make remunerative
+acquaintances, you must seem yourself to be worth knowing. You must
+have striking rooms and a confusing variety of dresses, and give good
+dinners, and so forth. She is spending a lot of money, and you ‘ll see
+that in two or three weeks she will take upon herself to open the season
+by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it is Christina’s beauty that
+floats her. People go to see her because they are curious.”
+
+“And they go again because they are charmed,” said Rowland. “Miss
+Christina is a very remarkable young lady.”
+
+“Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day.
+She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply
+interesting. I think she ‘s an actress, but she believes in her part
+while she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to
+believe that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are
+sitting, and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my
+eyes. She cried, herself, profusely, and as naturally as possible. She
+said she was weary of life and that she knew no one but me she could
+speak frankly to. She must speak, or she would go mad. She sobbed as if
+her heart would break. I assure you it ‘s well for you susceptible young
+men that you don’t see her when she sobs. She said, in so many words,
+that her mother was an immoral woman. Heaven knows what she meant. She
+meant, I suppose, that she makes debts that she knows she can’t pay. She
+said the life they led was horrible; that it was monstrous a poor girl
+should be dragged about the world to be sold to the highest bidder. She
+was meant for better things; she could be perfectly happy in poverty. It
+was not money she wanted. I might not believe her, but she really cared
+for serious things. Sometimes she thought of taking poison!”
+
+“What did you say to that?”
+
+“I recommended her,” said Madame Grandoni, “to come and see me
+instead. I would help her about as much, and I was, on the whole, less
+unpleasant. Of course I could help her only by letting her talk herself
+out and kissing her and patting her beautiful hands and telling her to
+be patient and she would be happy yet. About once in two months I expect
+her to reappear, on the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my
+existence. I believe I melted down to the point of telling her that
+I would find some good, quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she
+declared, almost with fury, that she was sick unto death of husbands,
+and begged I would never again mention the word. And, in fact, it was a
+rash offer; for I am sure that there is not a man of the kind that might
+really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle.
+Looked at in that way she is certainly very much to be pitied, and
+indeed, altogether, though I don’t think she either means all she says
+or, by a great deal, says all that she means. I feel very sorry for
+her.”
+
+Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments,
+and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendrissement. He
+imagined more than once that there had been a passionate scene between
+them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found
+effective. But Christina’s face told no tales, and she moved about,
+beautiful and silent, looking absently over people’s heads, barely
+heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the
+soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body
+of a goddess. “Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is
+twenty,” observers asked, “to have left all her illusions behind?” And
+the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she
+was intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was
+not conceded were free to reflect that she was “not at all liked.”
+
+It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this
+conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and, in especial,
+with the spectacle of Roderick’s inveterate devotion. All Rome might
+behold that he, at least, “liked” Christina Light. Wherever she
+appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was
+perpetually at her side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of
+a disconnected talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face,
+profoundly immaterial to the young lady. People in general smiled at the
+radiant good faith of the handsome young sculptor, and asked each other
+whether he really supposed that beauties of that quality were meant to
+wed with poor artists. But although Christina’s deportment, as I have
+said, was one of superb inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from
+Roderick no suspicion that he suffered from snubbing, and he was
+therefore surprised at an incident which befell one evening at a large
+musical party. Roderick, as usual, was in the field, and, on the ladies
+taking the chairs which had been arranged for them, he immediately
+placed himself beside Christina. As most of the gentlemen were standing,
+his position made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at Ophelia’s feet, at the
+play. Rowland was leaning, somewhat apart, against the chimney-piece.
+There was a long, solemn pause before the music began, and in the midst
+of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole length of the
+immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped before him. She
+was neither pale nor flushed; she had a soft smile.
+
+“Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
+
+“A thousand!”
+
+“Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson
+that he is not in a New England village--that it is not the custom in
+Rome to address one’s conversation exclusively, night after night, to
+the same poor girl, and that”....
+
+The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice. She made a
+gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm and led her back
+to her seat.
+
+The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, who burst into joyous
+laughter. “She ‘s a delightfully strange girl!” he cried. “She must do
+everything that comes into her head!”
+
+“Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?”
+
+“On the contrary, she has often said to me, ‘Mind you now, I forbid you
+to leave me. Here comes that tiresome So-and-so.’ She cares as little
+about the custom as I do. What could be a better proof than her walking
+up to you, with five hundred people looking at her? Is that the custom
+for young girls in Rome?”
+
+“Why, then, should she take such a step?”
+
+“Because, as she sat there, it came into her head. That ‘s reason enough
+for her. I have imagined she wishes me well, as they say here--though
+she has never distinguished me in such a way as that!”
+
+Madame Grandoni had foretold the truth; Mrs. Light, a couple of weeks
+later, convoked all Roman society to a brilliant ball. Rowland went
+late, and found the staircase so encumbered with flower-pots and
+servants that he was a long time making his way into the presence of the
+hostess. At last he approached her, as she stood making courtesies at
+the door, with her daughter by her side. Some of Mrs. Light’s courtesies
+were very low, for she had the happiness of receiving a number of the
+social potentates of the Roman world. She was rosy with triumph, to say
+nothing of a less metaphysical cause, and was evidently vastly contented
+with herself, with her company, and with the general promise of destiny.
+Her daughter was less overtly jubilant, and distributed her greetings
+with impartial frigidity. She had never been so beautiful. Dressed
+simply in vaporous white, relieved with half a dozen white roses, the
+perfection of her features and of her person and the mysterious depth of
+her expression seemed to glow with the white light of a splendid pearl.
+She recognized no one individually, and made her courtesy slowly,
+gravely, with her eyes on the ground. Rowland fancied that, as he stood
+before her, her obeisance was slightly exaggerated, as with an intention
+of irony; but he smiled philosophically to himself, and reflected, as
+he passed into the room, that, if she disliked him, he had nothing
+to reproach himself with. He walked about, had a few words with Miss
+Blanchard, who, with a fillet of cameos in her hair, was leaning on the
+arm of Mr. Leavenworth, and at last came upon the Cavaliere Giacosa,
+modestly stationed in a corner. The little gentleman’s coat-lappet was
+decorated with an enormous bouquet and his neck encased in a voluminous
+white handkerchief of the fashion of thirty years ago. His arms were
+folded, and he was surveying the scene with contracted eyelids, through
+which you saw the glitter of his intensely dark, vivacious pupil.
+He immediately embarked on an elaborate apology for not having yet
+manifested, as he felt it, his sense of the honor Rowland had done him.
+
+“I am always on service with these ladies, you see,” he explained, “and
+that is a duty to which one would not willingly be faithless for an
+instant.”
+
+“Evidently,” said Rowland, “you are a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light,
+in her situation, is very happy in having you.”
+
+“We are old friends,” said the Cavaliere, gravely. “Old friends. I knew
+the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest woman in Rome--or
+rather in Ancona, which is even better. The beautiful Christina, now, is
+perhaps the most beautiful young girl in Europe!”
+
+“Very likely,” said Rowland.
+
+“Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to
+touch the piano keys.” And at these faded memories, the Cavaliere’s eyes
+glittered more brightly. Rowland half expected him to proceed, with a
+little flash of long-repressed passion, “And now--and now, sir, they
+treat me as you observed the other day!” But the Cavaliere only looked
+out at him keenly from among his wrinkles, and seemed to say, with all
+the vividness of the Italian glance, “Oh, I say nothing more. I am not
+so shallow as to complain!”
+
+Evidently the Cavaliere was not shallow, and Rowland repeated
+respectfully, “You are a devoted friend.”
+
+“That ‘s very true. I am a devoted friend. A man may do himself justice,
+after twenty years!”
+
+Rowland, after a pause, made some remark about the beauty of the ball.
+It was very brilliant.
+
+“Stupendous!” said the Cavaliere, solemnly. “It is a great day. We have
+four Roman princes, to say nothing of others.” And he counted them over
+on his fingers and held up his hand triumphantly. “And there she stands,
+the girl to whom I--I, Giuseppe Giacosa--taught her alphabet and her
+piano-scales; there she stands in her incomparable beauty, and Roman
+princes come and bow to her. Here, in his corner, her old master permits
+himself to be proud.”
+
+“It is very friendly of him,” said Rowland, smiling.
+
+The Cavaliere contracted his lids a little more and gave another keen
+glance. “It is very natural, signore. The Christina is a good girl; she
+remembers my little services. But here comes,” he added in a moment,
+“the young Prince of the Fine Arts. I am sure he has bowed lowest of
+all.”
+
+Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room and
+casting about him his usual luminous, unshrinking looks. He presently
+joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere, and immediately
+demanded of Rowland, “Have you seen her?”
+
+“I have seen Miss Light,” said Rowland. “She ‘s magnificent.”
+
+“I ‘m half crazy!” cried Roderick; so loud that several persons turned
+round.
+
+Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid his hand on his arm. Roderick
+was trembling. “If you will go away,” Rowland said instantly, “I will go
+with you.”
+
+“Go away?” cried Roderick, almost angrily. “I intend to dance with her!”
+
+The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently laid his hand
+on his other arm. “Softly, softly, dear young man,” he said. “Let me
+speak to you as a friend.”
+
+“Oh, speak even as an enemy and I shall not mind it,” Roderick answered,
+frowning.
+
+“Be very reasonable, then, and go away.”
+
+“Why the deuce should I go away?”
+
+“Because you are in love,” said the Cavaliere.
+
+“I might as well be in love here as in the streets.”
+
+“Carry your love as far as possible from Christina. She will not listen
+to you--she can’t.”
+
+“She ‘can’t’?” demanded Roderick. “She is not a person of whom you may
+say that. She can if she will; she does as she chooses.”
+
+“Up to a certain point. It would take too long to explain; I only beg
+you to believe that if you continue to love Miss Light you will be
+very unhappy. Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune?
+Otherwise you can never have her.”
+
+And the Cavaliere folded his arms again, like a man who has done his
+duty. Roderick wiped his forehead and looked askance at Rowland; he
+seemed to be guessing his thoughts and they made him blush a little. But
+he smiled blandly, and addressing the Cavaliere, “I ‘m much obliged to
+you for the information,” he said. “Now that I have obtained it, let
+me tell you that I am no more in love with Miss Light than you are. Mr.
+Mallet knows that. I admire her--yes, profoundly. But that ‘s no one’s
+business but my own, and though I have, as you say, neither a princely
+title nor a princely fortune, I mean to suffer neither those advantages
+nor those who possess them to diminish my right.”
+
+“If you are not in love, my dear young man,” said the Cavaliere, with
+his hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, “so much the better. But
+let me entreat you, as an affectionate friend, to keep a watch on your
+emotions. You are young, you are handsome, you have a brilliant genius
+and a generous heart, but--I may say it almost with authority--Christina
+is not for you!”
+
+Whether Roderick was in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently
+seemed to him an obtrusive negation of an inspiring possibility. “You
+speak as if she had made her choice!” he cried. “Without pretending to
+confidential information on the subject, I am sure she has not.”
+
+“No, but she must make it soon,” said the Cavaliere. And raising his
+forefinger, he laid it against his under lip. “She must choose a name
+and a fortune--and she will!”
+
+“She will do exactly as her inclination prompts! She will marry the man
+who pleases her, if he has n’t a dollar! I know her better than you.”
+
+The Cavaliere turned a little paler than usual, and smiled more
+urbanely. “No, no, my dear young man, you do not know her better than
+I. You have not watched her, day by day, for twenty years. I too have
+admired her. She is a good girl; she has never said an unkind word
+to me; the blessed Virgin be thanked! But she must have a brilliant
+destiny; it has been marked out for her, and she will submit. You had
+better believe me; it may save you much suffering.”
+
+“We shall see!” said Roderick, with an excited laugh.
+
+“Certainly we shall see. But I retire from the discussion,” the
+Cavaliere added. “I have no wish to provoke you to attempt to prove to
+me that I am wrong. You are already excited.”
+
+“No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance the
+cotillon with Miss Light.”
+
+“The cotillon? has she promised?”
+
+Roderick patted the air with a grand confidence. “You ‘ll see!” His
+gesture might almost have been taken to mean that the state of his
+relations with Miss Light was such that they quite dispensed with vain
+formalities.
+
+The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug. “You make a great many
+mourners!”
+
+“He has made one already!” Rowland murmured to himself. This was
+evidently not the first time that reference had been made between
+Roderick and the Cavaliere to the young man’s possible passion, and
+Roderick had failed to consider it the simplest and most natural course
+to say in three words to the vigilant little gentleman that there was
+no cause for alarm--his affections were preoccupied. Rowland hoped,
+silently, with some dryness, that his motives were of a finer kind
+than they seemed to be. He turned away; it was irritating to look at
+Roderick’s radiant, unscrupulous eagerness. The tide was setting toward
+the supper-room and he drifted with it to the door. The crowd at this
+point was dense, and he was obliged to wait for some minutes before he
+could advance. At last he felt his neighbors dividing behind him, and
+turning he saw Christina pressing her way forward alone. She was looking
+at no one, and, save for the fact of her being alone, you would not have
+supposed she was in her mother’s house. As she recognized Rowland she
+beckoned to him, took his arm, and motioned him to lead her into the
+supper-room. She said nothing until he had forced a passage and they
+stood somewhat isolated.
+
+“Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find,” she then
+said, “and then go and get me a piece of bread.”
+
+“Nothing more? There seems to be everything conceivable.”
+
+“A simple roll. Nothing more, on your peril. Only bring something for
+yourself.”
+
+It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window (embrasures in Roman
+palaces are deep) was a retreat sufficiently obscure for Miss Light to
+execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity.
+A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he
+presented it, he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at loss to
+understand why she should have selected for the honor of a tete-a-tete
+an individual for whom she had so little taste.
+
+“Ah yes, I dislike you,” said Christina. “To tell the truth, I had
+forgotten it. There are so many people here whom I dislike more, that
+when I espied you just now, you seemed like an intimate friend. But I
+have not come into this corner to talk nonsense,” she went on. “You must
+not think I always do, eh?”
+
+“I have never heard you do anything else,” said Rowland, deliberately,
+having decided that he owed her no compliments.
+
+“Very good. I like your frankness. It ‘s quite true. You see, I am a
+strange girl. To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical. Don’t flatter
+yourself you have said anything very clever if you ever take it into
+your head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is, I
+can’t help it. I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess
+to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly
+more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. If a person
+wished to do me a favor I would say to him, ‘I beg you, with tears in my
+eyes, to interest me. Be strong, be positive, be imperious, if you
+will; only be something,--something that, in looking at, I can forget my
+detestable self!’ Perhaps that is nonsense too. If it is, I can’t help
+it. I can only apologize for the nonsense I know to be such and that I
+talk--oh, for more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I
+were to try, you would understand me.”
+
+“I am afraid I should never understand,” said Rowland, “why a person
+should willingly talk nonsense.”
+
+“That proves how little you know about women. But I like your frankness.
+When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea
+you were more formal,--how do you say it?--more guinde. I am very
+capricious. To-night I like you better.”
+
+“Oh, I am not guinde,” said Rowland, gravely.
+
+“I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so. Now I have an idea that you
+would make a useful friend--an intimate friend--a friend to whom one
+could tell everything. For such a friend, what would n’t I give!”
+
+Rowland looked at her in some perplexity. Was this touching sincerity,
+or unfathomable coquetry? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but
+then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle. “I hesitate
+to recommend myself out and out for the office,” he said, “but I believe
+that if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do, I
+should not be found wanting.”
+
+“Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge
+one not by isolated acts, but by one’s whole conduct. I care for your
+opinion--I don’t know why.”
+
+“Nor do I, I confess,” said Rowland with a laugh.
+
+“What do you think of this affair?” she continued, without heeding his
+laugh.
+
+“Of your ball? Why, it ‘s a very grand affair.”
+
+“It ‘s horrible--that ‘s what it is! It ‘s a mere rabble! There are
+people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma
+went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one
+they knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she is satisfied! It
+is not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying. I have
+twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma go
+through with it as she can. By the way,” she added in a moment, without
+a visible reason for the transition, “can you tell me something to
+read?”
+
+Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.
+
+“Can you recommend me some books?” she repeated. “I know you are a great
+reader. I have no one else to ask. We can buy no books. We can make
+debts for jewelry and bonnets and five-button gloves, but we can’t spend
+a sou for ideas. And yet, though you may not believe it, I like ideas
+quite as well.”
+
+“I shall be most happy to lend you some books,” Rowland said. “I will
+pick some out to-morrow and send them to you.”
+
+“No novels, please! I am tired of novels. I can imagine better stories
+for myself than any I read. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing
+nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts.”
+
+“You shall be served. Your taste agrees with my own.”
+
+She was silent a moment, looking at him. Then suddenly--“Tell me
+something about Mr. Hudson,” she demanded. “You are great friends!”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Rowland; “we are great friends.”
+
+“Tell me about him. Come, begin!”
+
+“Where shall I begin? You know him for yourself.”
+
+“No, I don’t know him; I don’t find him so easy to know. Since he has
+finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly, he has become a
+great talker. He says very fine things; but does he mean all he says?”
+
+“Few of us do that.”
+
+“You do, I imagine. You ought to know, for he tells me you discovered
+him.” Rowland was silent, and Christina continued, “Do you consider him
+very clever?”
+
+“Unquestionably.”
+
+“His talent is really something out of the common way?”
+
+“So it seems to me.”
+
+“In short, he ‘s a man of genius?”
+
+“Yes, call it genius.”
+
+“And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him by the
+hand and set him on his feet in Rome?”
+
+“Is that the popular legend?” asked Rowland.
+
+“Oh, you need n’t be modest. There was no great merit in it; there
+would have been none at least on my part in the same circumstances.
+Real geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in the
+wilderness, I would have brought him out into the market-place to see
+how he would behave. It would be excessively amusing. You must find it
+so to watch Mr. Hudson, eh? Tell me this: do you think he is going to be
+a great man--become famous, have his life written, and all that?”
+
+“I don’t prophesy, but I have good hopes.”
+
+Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a
+moment absently, turning it so as to see--or almost to see--the dimple
+in her elbow. This was apparently a frequent gesture with her; Rowland
+had already observed it. It was as coolly and naturally done as if she
+had been in her room alone. “So he ‘s a man of genius,” she suddenly
+resumed. “Don’t you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have a
+man of genius perpetually hanging about? He is the first I ever saw,
+but I should have known he was not a common mortal. There is something
+strange about him. To begin with, he has no manners. You may say that it
+‘s not for me to blame him, for I have none myself. That ‘s very true,
+but the difference is that I can have them when I wish to (and very
+charming ones too; I ‘ll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will
+never have them. And yet, somehow, one sees he ‘s a gentleman. He seems
+to have something urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and
+defiant. You see it in his eyes. They are the finest, by the way, I ever
+saw. When a person has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad
+manners. I suppose that is what they call the sacred fire.”
+
+Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would have
+another roll. She merely shook her head and went on:--
+
+“Tell me how you found him. Where was he--how was he?”
+
+“He was in a place called Northampton. Did you ever hear of it? He was
+studying law--but not learning it.”
+
+“It appears it was something horrible, eh?”
+
+“Something horrible?”
+
+“This little village. No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no life.”
+
+“You have received a false impression. Northampton is not as gay as
+Rome, but Roderick had some charming friends.”
+
+“Tell me about them. Who were they?”
+
+“Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance: a
+delightful woman.”
+
+“Young--pretty?”
+
+“Yes, a good deal of both. And very clever.”
+
+“Did he make love to her?”
+
+“Not in the least.”
+
+“Well, who else?”
+
+“He lived with his mother. She is the best of women.”
+
+“Ah yes, I know all that one’s mother is. But she does not count as
+society. And who else?”
+
+Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina’s insistence was
+the result of a general interest in Roderick’s antecedents or of a
+particular suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little
+askance, waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his
+engagement to the Cavaliere, it was probable that with this beautiful
+girl he had not been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it
+was public; that other girl was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland felt
+a kind of dumb anger rising in his heart. He deliberated a moment
+intently.
+
+“What are you frowning at?” Christina asked.
+
+“There was another person,” he answered, “the most important of all: the
+young girl to whom he is engaged.”
+
+Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows. “Ah, Mr. Hudson is
+engaged?” she said, very simply. “Is she pretty?”
+
+“She is not called a beauty,” said Rowland. He meant to practice great
+brevity, but in a moment he added, “I have seen beauties, however, who
+pleased me less.”
+
+“Ah, she pleases you, too? Why don’t they marry?”
+
+“Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry.”
+
+Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her
+elbow. “Ah, he ‘s engaged?” she repeated in the same tone. “He never
+told me.”
+
+Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them were
+beginning to return to the dancing-room, and immediately afterwards
+he saw Roderick making his way toward themselves. Roderick presented
+himself before Miss Light.
+
+“I don’t claim that you have promised me the cotillon,” he said, “but I
+consider that you have given me hopes which warrant the confidence that
+you will dance with me.”
+
+Christina looked at him a moment. “Certainly I have made no promises,”
+ she said. “It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should
+keep myself free and let it depend on circumstances.”
+
+“I beseech you to dance with me!” said Roderick, with vehemence.
+
+Christina rose and began to laugh. “You say that very well, but the
+Italians do it better.”
+
+This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof. Mrs. Light hastily
+approached, leading, rather than led by, a tall, slim young man, of an
+unmistakably Southern physiognomy. “My precious love,” she cried, “what
+a place to hide in! We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I
+have chosen a cavalier for you, and chosen well!”
+
+The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, joined his two
+hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile, “May I venture to hope, dear
+signorina, for the honor of your hand?”
+
+“Of course you may!” said Mrs. Light. “The honor is for us.”
+
+Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a
+courtesy as profound as his own bow. “You are very kind, but you are too
+late. I have just accepted!”
+
+“Ah, my own darling!” murmured--almost moaned--Mrs. Light.
+
+Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance--a glance brilliant on
+both sides. She passed her hand into his arm; he tossed his clustering
+locks and led her away.
+
+A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she had
+rejected leaning against a doorway. He was ugly, but what is called
+distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye, a sallow complexion, a
+long, thin neck; his hair was cropped en brosse. He looked very young,
+yet extremely bored. He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an
+imperceptible moustache. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by,
+and, having joined him, asked him the young man’s name.
+
+“Oh,” said the Cavaliere, “he ‘s a pezzo grosso! A Neapolitan. Prince
+Casamassima.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. Frascati
+
+One day, on entering Roderick’s lodging (not the modest rooms on the
+Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous apartment
+on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table addressed to himself.
+It was from Roderick, and consisted of but three lines: “I am gone to
+Frascati--for meditation. If I am not at home on Friday, you had
+better join me.” On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to
+Frascati. Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending his
+days, according to his own account, lying under the trees of the Villa
+Mondragone, reading Ariosto. He was in a sombre mood; “meditation”
+ seemed not to have been fruitful. Nothing especially pertinent to our
+narrative had passed between the two young men since Mrs. Light’s ball,
+save a few words bearing on an incident of that entertainment. Rowland
+informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his
+engagement. “I don’t know whether you ‘ll thank me,” he had said, “but
+it ‘s my duty to let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done
+so.”
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly
+rising. “Why should n’t I thank you?” he asked. “I am not ashamed of my
+engagement.”
+
+“As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason
+for not having it known.”
+
+“A man does n’t gossip about such a matter with strangers,” Roderick
+rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice.
+
+“With strangers--no!” said Rowland, smiling.
+
+Roderick continued his work; but after a moment, turning round with a
+frown: “If you supposed I had a reason for being silent, pray why should
+you have spoken?”
+
+“I did not speak idly, my dear Roderick. I weighed the matter before I
+spoke, and promised myself to let you know immediately afterwards. It
+seemed to me that Miss Light had better know that your affections are
+pledged.”
+
+“The Cavaliere has put it into your head, then, that I am making love to
+her?”
+
+“No; in that case I would not have spoken to her first.”
+
+“Do you mean, then, that she is making love to me?”
+
+“This is what I mean,” said Rowland, after a pause. “That girl finds you
+interesting, and is pleased, even though she may play indifference,
+at your finding her so. I said to myself that it might save her some
+sentimental disappointment to know without delay that you are not at
+liberty to become indefinitely interested in other women.”
+
+“You seem to have taken the measure of my liberty with extraordinary
+minuteness!” cried Roderick.
+
+“You must do me justice. I am the cause of your separation from Miss
+Garland, the cause of your being exposed to temptations which she hardly
+even suspects. How could I ever face her,” Rowland demanded, with much
+warmth of tone, “if at the end of it all she should be unhappy?”
+
+“I had no idea that Miss Garland had made such an impression on you.
+You are too zealous; I take it she did n’t charge you to look after her
+interests.”
+
+“If anything happens to you, I am accountable. You must understand
+that.”
+
+“That ‘s a view of the situation I can’t accept; in your own interest,
+no less than in mine. It can only make us both very uncomfortable. I
+know all I owe you; I feel it; you know that! But I am not a small boy
+nor an outer barbarian any longer, and, whatever I do, I do with my eyes
+open. When I do well, the merit ‘s mine; if I do ill, the fault ‘s mine!
+The idea that I make you nervous is detestable. Dedicate your nerves
+to some better cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a
+quarrel, we shall settle it between ourselves.”
+
+Rowland had found himself wondering, shortly before, whether possibly
+his brilliant young friend was without a conscience; now it dimly
+occurred to him that he was without a heart. Rowland, as we have already
+intimated, was a man with a moral passion, and no small part of it had
+gone forth into his relations with Roderick. There had been, from the
+first, no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had
+implicitly offered everything that belongs to friendship, and Roderick
+had, apparently, as deliberately accepted it. Rowland, indeed, had taken
+an exquisite satisfaction in his companion’s deep, inexpressive assent
+to his interest in him. “Here is an uncommonly fine thing,” he said to
+himself: “a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship does
+the thing that love alone generally has the credit of--knocks the bottom
+out of pride!” His reflective judgment of Roderick, as time went on, had
+indulged in a great many irrepressible vagaries; but his affection,
+his sense of something in his companion’s whole personality that
+overmastered his heart and beguiled his imagination, had never for an
+instant faltered. He listened to Roderick’s last words, and then he
+smiled as he rarely smiled--with bitterness.
+
+“I don’t at all like your telling me I am too zealous,” he said. “If I
+had not been zealous, I should never have cared a fig for you.”
+
+Roderick flushed deeply, and thrust his modeling tool up to the handle
+into the clay. “Say it outright! You have been a great fool to believe
+in me.”
+
+“I desire to say nothing of the kind, and you don’t honestly believe I
+do!” said Rowland. “It seems to me I am really very good-natured even to
+reply to such nonsense.”
+
+Roderick sat down, crossed his arms, and fixed his eyes on the floor.
+Rowland looked at him for some moments; it seemed to him that he
+had never so clearly read his companion’s strangely commingled
+character--his strength and his weakness, his picturesque personal
+attractiveness and his urgent egoism, his exalted ardor and his puerile
+petulance. It would have made him almost sick, however, to think that,
+on the whole, Roderick was not a generous fellow, and he was so far from
+having ceased to believe in him that he felt just now, more than ever,
+that all this was but the painful complexity of genius. Rowland, who
+had not a grain of genius either to make one say he was an interested
+reasoner, or to enable one to feel that he could afford a dangerous
+theory or two, adhered to his conviction of the essential salubrity of
+genius. Suddenly he felt an irresistible compassion for his companion;
+it seemed to him that his beautiful faculty of production was a
+double-edged instrument, susceptible of being dealt in back-handed blows
+at its possessor. Genius was priceless, inspired, divine; but it was
+also, at its hours, capricious, sinister, cruel; and men of genius,
+accordingly, were alternately very enviable and very helpless. It was
+not the first time he had had a sense of Roderick’s standing helpless in
+the grasp of his temperament. It had shaken him, as yet, but with a half
+good-humored wantonness; but, henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle
+him more roughly. These were not times, therefore, for a friend to have
+a short patience.
+
+“When you err, you say, the fault ‘s your own,” he said at last. “It is
+because your faults are your own that I care about them.”
+
+Rowland’s voice, when he spoke with feeling, had an extraordinary
+amenity. Roderick sat staring a moment longer at the floor, then he
+sprang up and laid his hand affectionately on his friend’s shoulder.
+“You are the best man in the world,” he said, “and I am a vile brute.
+Only,” he added in a moment, “you don’t understand me!” And he looked
+at him with eyes of such radiant lucidity that one might have said (and
+Rowland did almost say so, himself) that it was the fault of one’s own
+grossness if one failed to read to the bottom of that beautiful soul.
+
+Rowland smiled sadly. “What is it now? Explain.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t explain!” cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his
+work. “I have only one way of expressing my deepest feelings--it ‘s
+this!” And he swung his tool. He stood looking at the half-wrought clay
+for a moment, and then flung the instrument down. “And even this half
+the time plays me false!”
+
+Rowland felt that his irritation had not subsided, and he himself had no
+taste for saying disagreeable things. Nevertheless he saw no sufficient
+reason to forbear uttering the words he had had on his conscience from
+the beginning. “We must do what we can and be thankful,” he said. “And
+let me assure you of this--that it won’t help you to become entangled
+with Miss Light.”
+
+Roderick pressed his hand to his forehead with vehemence and then shook
+it in the air, despairingly; a gesture that had become frequent with him
+since he had been in Italy. “No, no, it ‘s no use; you don’t understand
+me! But I don’t blame you. You can’t!”
+
+“You think it will help you, then?” said Rowland, wondering.
+
+“I think that when you expect a man to produce beautiful and wonderful
+works of art, you ought to allow him a certain freedom of action, you
+ought to give him a long rope, you ought to let him follow his fancy and
+look for his material wherever he thinks he may find it! A mother can’t
+nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist can’t bring
+his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You
+demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the
+imagination. In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in
+life we must be mere machines. It won’t do. When you have got an artist
+to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don’t
+say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with; I
+don’t say they satisfy themselves any better than other people. I only
+say that if you want them to produce, you must let them conceive. If
+you want a bird to sing, you must not cover up its cage. Shoot them, the
+poor devils, drown them, exterminate them, if you will, in the interest
+of public morality; it may be morality would gain--I dare say it would!
+But if you suffer them to live, let them live on their own terms and
+according to their own inexorable needs!”
+
+Rowland burst out laughing. “I have no wish whatever either to shoot you
+or to drown you!” he said. “Why launch such a tirade against a warning
+offered you altogether in the interest of your freest development?
+Do you really mean that you have an inexorable need of embarking on a
+flirtation with Miss Light?--a flirtation as to the felicity of which
+there may be differences of opinion, but which cannot at best, under the
+circumstances, be called innocent. Your last summer’s adventures were
+more so! As for the terms on which you are to live, I had an idea you
+had arranged them otherwise!”
+
+“I have arranged nothing--thank God! I don’t pretend to arrange. I
+am young and ardent and inquisitive, and I admire Miss Light. That ‘s
+enough. I shall go as far as admiration leads me. I am not afraid. Your
+genuine artist may be sometimes half a madman, but he ‘s not a coward!”
+
+“Suppose that in your speculation you should come to grief, not only
+sentimentally but artistically?”
+
+“Come what come will! If I ‘m to fizzle out, the sooner I know it the
+better. Sometimes I half suspect it. But let me at least go out and
+reconnoitre for the enemy, and not sit here waiting for him, cudgeling
+my brains for ideas that won’t come!”
+
+Do what he would, Rowland could not think of Roderick’s theory of
+unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case under
+discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion. But he saw it was
+vain to combat longer, for inclination was powerfully on Roderick’s
+side. He laid his hand on Roderick’s shoulder, looked at him a moment
+with troubled eyes, then shook his head mournfully and turned away.
+
+“I can’t work any more,” said Roderick. “You have upset me! I ‘ll go
+and stroll on the Pincian.” And he tossed aside his working-jacket and
+prepared himself for the street. As he was arranging his cravat before
+the glass, something occurred to him which made him thoughtful. He
+stopped a few moments afterward, as they were going out, with his hand
+on the door-knob. “You did, from your own point of view, an indiscreet
+thing,” he said, “to tell Miss Light of my engagement.”
+
+Rowland looked at him with a glance which was partly an interrogation,
+but partly, also, an admission.
+
+“If she ‘s the coquette you say,” Roderick added, “you have given her a
+reason the more.”
+
+“And that ‘s the girl you propose to devote yourself to?” cried Rowland.
+
+“Oh, I don’t say it, mind! I only say that she ‘s the most interesting
+creature in the world! The next time you mean to render me a service,
+pray give me notice beforehand!”
+
+It was perfectly characteristic of Roderick that, a fortnight later, he
+should have let his friend know that he depended upon him for society
+at Frascati, as freely as if no irritating topic had ever been discussed
+between them. Rowland thought him generous, and he had at any rate a
+liberal faculty of forgetting that he had given you any reason to be
+displeased with him. It was equally characteristic of Rowland that he
+complied with his friend’s summons without a moment’s hesitation. His
+cousin Cecilia had once told him that he was the dupe of his intense
+benevolence. She put the case with too little favor, or too much, as the
+reader chooses; it is certain, at least, that he had a constitutional
+tendency towards magnanimous interpretations. Nothing happened, however,
+to suggest to him that he was deluded in thinking that Roderick’s
+secondary impulses were wiser than his primary ones, and that the
+rounded total of his nature had a harmony perfectly attuned to the most
+amiable of its brilliant parts. Roderick’s humor, for the time, was
+pitched in a minor key; he was lazy, listless, and melancholy, but he
+had never been more friendly and kindly and appealingly submissive.
+Winter had begun, by the calendar, but the weather was divinely mild,
+and the two young men took long slow strolls on the hills and lounged
+away the mornings in the villas. The villas at Frascati are delicious
+places, and replete with romantic suggestiveness. Roderick, as he
+had said, was meditating, and if a masterpiece was to come of his
+meditations, Rowland was perfectly willing to bear him company and coax
+along the process. But Roderick let him know from the first that he was
+in a miserably sterile mood, and, cudgel his brains as he would, could
+think of nothing that would serve for the statue he was to make for Mr.
+Leavenworth.
+
+“It is worse out here than in Rome,” he said, “for here I am face to
+face with the dead blank of my mind! There I could n’t think of anything
+either, but there I found things to make me forget that I needed to.”
+ This was as frank an allusion to Christina Light as could have been
+expected under the circumstances; it seemed, indeed, to Rowland
+surprisingly frank, and a pregnant example of his companion’s often
+strangely irresponsible way of looking at harmful facts. Roderick
+was silent sometimes for hours, with a puzzled look on his face and
+a constant fold between his even eyebrows; at other times he talked
+unceasingly, with a slow, idle, half-nonsensical drawl. Rowland was half
+a dozen times on the point of asking him what was the matter with him;
+he was afraid he was going to be ill. Roderick had taken a great fancy
+to the Villa Mondragone, and used to declaim fantastic compliments to it
+as they strolled in the winter sunshine on the great terrace which looks
+toward Tivoli and the iridescent Sabine mountains. He carried his volume
+of Ariosto in his pocket, and took it out every now and then and spouted
+half a dozen stanzas to his companion. He was, as a general thing, very
+little of a reader; but at intervals he would take a fancy to one of the
+classics and peruse it for a month in disjointed scraps. He had picked
+up Italian without study, and had a wonderfully sympathetic accent,
+though in reading aloud he ruined the sense of half the lines he
+rolled off so sonorously. Rowland, who pronounced badly but understood
+everything, once said to him that Ariosto was not the poet for a man of
+his craft; a sculptor should make a companion of Dante. So he lent him
+the Inferno, which he had brought with him, and advised him to look into
+it. Roderick took it with some eagerness; perhaps it would brighten
+his wits. He returned it the next day with disgust; he had found it
+intolerably depressing.
+
+“A sculptor should model as Dante writes--you ‘re right there,” he said.
+“But when his genius is in eclipse, Dante is a dreadfully smoky lamp.
+By what perversity of fate,” he went on, “has it come about that I am a
+sculptor at all? A sculptor is such a confoundedly special genius; there
+are so few subjects he can treat, so few things in life that bear upon
+his work, so few moods in which he himself is inclined to it.” (It
+may be noted that Rowland had heard him a dozen times affirm the flat
+reverse of all this.) “If I had only been a painter--a little quiet,
+docile, matter-of-fact painter, like our friend Singleton--I should
+only have to open my Ariosto here to find a subject, to find color and
+attitudes, stuffs and composition; I should only have to look up from
+the page at that mouldy old fountain against the blue sky, at that
+cypress alley wandering away like a procession of priests in couples,
+at the crags and hollows of the Sabine hills, to find myself grasping
+my brush. Best of all would be to be Ariosto himself, or one of his
+brotherhood. Then everything in nature would give you a hint, and every
+form of beauty be part of your stock. You would n’t have to look at
+things only to say,--with tears of rage half the time,--‘Oh, yes, it
+‘s wonderfully pretty, but what the deuce can I do with it?’ But a
+sculptor, now! That ‘s a pretty trade for a fellow who has got his
+living to make and yet is so damnably constituted that he can’t work to
+order, and considers that, aesthetically, clock ornaments don’t pay! You
+can’t model the serge-coated cypresses, nor those mouldering old Tritons
+and all the sunny sadness of that dried-up fountain; you can’t put the
+light into marble--the lovely, caressing, consenting Italian light that
+you get so much of for nothing. Say that a dozen times in his life a man
+has a complete sculpturesque vision--a vision in which the imagination
+recognizes a subject and the subject kindles the imagination. It is a
+remunerative rate of work, and the intervals are comfortable!”
+
+One morning, as the two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed
+grass at the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa Mondragone,
+Roderick delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious speculations as to
+the possible mischances of one’s genius. “What if the watch should run
+down,” he asked, “and you should lose the key? What if you should wake
+up some morning and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped?
+Such things have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have
+had to grin and bear it. The whole matter of genius is a mystery. It
+bloweth where it listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism. If it
+gets out of order we can’t mend it; if it breaks down altogether we
+can’t set it going again. We must let it choose its own pace, and hold
+our breath lest it should lose its balance. It ‘s dealt out in different
+doses, in big cups and little, and when you have consumed your portion
+it ‘s as naif to ask for more as it was for Oliver Twist to ask for more
+porridge. Lucky for you if you ‘ve got one of the big cups; we drink
+them down in the dark, and we can’t tell their size until we tip them
+up and hear the last gurgle. Those of some men last for life; those of
+others for a couple of years. Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably?”
+ he went on. “Nothing is more common than for an artist who has set out
+on his journey on a high-stepping horse to find himself all of a sudden
+dismounted and invited to go his way on foot. You can number them by the
+thousand--the people of two or three successes; the poor fellows whose
+candle burnt out in a night. Some of them groped their way along without
+it, some of them gave themselves up for blind and sat down by the
+wayside to beg. Who shall say that I ‘m not one of these? Who shall
+assure me that my credit is for an unlimited sum? Nothing proves it,
+and I never claimed it; or if I did, I did so in the mere boyish joy of
+shaking off the dust of Northampton. If you believed so, my dear fellow,
+you did so at your own risk! What am I, what are the best of us, but
+an experiment? Do I succeed--do I fail? It does n’t depend on me. I ‘m
+prepared for failure. It won’t be a disappointment, simply because I
+shan’t survive it. The end of my work shall be the end of my life. When
+I have played my last card, I shall cease to care for the game. I ‘m not
+making vulgar threats of suicide; for destiny, I trust, won’t add
+insult to injury by putting me to that abominable trouble. But I have a
+conviction that if the hour strikes here,” and he tapped his forehead,
+“I shall disappear, dissolve, be carried off in a cloud! For the past
+ten days I have had the vision of some such fate perpetually swimming
+before my eyes. My mind is like a dead calm in the tropics, and my
+imagination as motionless as the phantom ship in the Ancient Mariner!”
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak, as he often had occasion to listen to
+Roderick’s heated monologues, with a number of mental restrictions. Both
+in gravity and in gayety he said more than he meant, and you did him
+simple justice if you privately concluded that neither the glow of
+purpose nor the chill of despair was of so intense a character as his
+florid diction implied. The moods of an artist, his exaltations
+and depressions, Rowland had often said to himself, were like the
+pen-flourishes a writing-master makes in the air when he begins to set
+his copy. He may bespatter you with ink, he may hit you in the eye, but
+he writes a magnificent hand. It was nevertheless true that at present
+poor Roderick gave unprecedented tokens of moral stagnation, and as for
+genius being held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was
+at a loss to see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him.
+He sighed to himself, and wished that his companion had a trifle more
+of little Sam Singleton’s evenness of impulse. But then, was Singleton
+a man of genius? He answered that such reflections seemed to him
+unprofitable, not to say morbid; that the proof of the pudding was
+in the eating; that he did n’t know about bringing a genius that had
+palpably spent its last breath back to life again, but that he was
+satisfied that vigorous effort was a cure for a great many ills that
+seemed far gone. “Don’t heed your mood,” he said, “and don’t believe
+there is any calm so dead that your own lungs can’t ruffle it with a
+breeze. If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work
+and you will feel like it.”
+
+“Set to work and produce abortions!” cried Roderick with ire. “Preach
+that to others. Production with me must be either pleasure or nothing.
+As I said just now, I must either stay in the saddle or not go at all.
+I won’t do second-rate work; I can’t if I would. I have no cleverness,
+apart from inspiration. I am not a Gloriani! You are right,” he added
+after a while; “this is unprofitable talk, and it makes my head ache. I
+shall take a nap and see if I can dream of a bright idea or two.”
+
+He turned his face upward to the parasol of the great pine, closed his
+eyes, and in a short time forgot his sombre fancies. January though it
+was, the mild stillness seemed to vibrate with faint midsummer sounds.
+Rowland sat listening to them and wishing that, for the sake of his own
+felicity, Roderick’s temper were graced with a certain absent ductility.
+He was brilliant, but was he, like many brilliant things, brittle?
+Suddenly, to his musing sense, the soft atmospheric hum was overscored
+with distincter sounds. He heard voices beyond a mass of shrubbery, at
+the turn of a neighboring path. In a moment one of them began to seem
+familiar, and an instant later a large white poodle emerged into view.
+He was slowly followed by his mistress. Miss Light paused a moment on
+seeing Rowland and his companion; but, though the former perceived that
+he was recognized, she made no bow. Presently she walked directly toward
+him. He rose and was on the point of waking Roderick, but she laid
+her finger on her lips and motioned him to forbear. She stood a moment
+looking at Roderick’s handsome slumber.
+
+“What delicious oblivion!” she said. “Happy man! Stenterello”--and she
+pointed to his face--“wake him up!”
+
+The poodle extended a long pink tongue and began to lick Roderick’s
+cheek.
+
+“Why,” asked Rowland, “if he is happy?”
+
+“Oh, I want companions in misery! Besides, I want to show off my dog.”
+ Roderick roused himself, sat up, and stared. By this time Mrs. Light had
+approached, walking with a gentleman on each side of her. One of these
+was the Cavaliere Giacosa; the other was Prince Casamassima. “I should
+have liked to lie down on the grass and go to sleep,” Christina added.
+“But it would have been unheard of.”
+
+“Oh, not quite,” said the Prince, in English, with a tone of great
+precision. “There was already a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!”
+
+“Charming!” cried Mrs. Light. “Do you hear that, my dear?”
+
+“When the prince says a brilliant thing, it would be a pity to lose it,”
+ said the young girl. “Your servant, sir!” And she smiled at him with a
+grace that might have reassured him, if he had thought her compliment
+ambiguous.
+
+Roderick meanwhile had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to
+exclaim on the oddity of their meeting and to explain that the day was
+so lovely that she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the
+country. And who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr.
+Hudson sleeping under a tree!
+
+“Oh, I beg your pardon; I was not sleeping,” said Rowland.
+
+“Don’t you know that Mr. Mallet is Mr. Hudson’s sheep-dog?” asked
+Christina. “He was mounting guard to keep away the wolves.”
+
+“To indifferent purpose, madame!” said Rowland, indicating the young
+girl.
+
+“Is that the way you spend your time?” Christina demanded of Roderick.
+“I never yet happened to learn what men were doing when they supposed
+women were not watching them but it was something vastly below their
+reputation.”
+
+“When, pray,” said Roderick, smoothing his ruffled locks, “are women not
+watching them?”
+
+“We shall give you something better to do, at any rate. How long have
+you been here? It ‘s an age since I have seen you. We consider you
+domiciled here, and expect you to play host and entertain us.”
+
+Roderick said that he could offer them nothing but to show them the
+great terrace, with its view; and ten minutes later the group was
+assembled there. Mrs. Light was extravagant in her satisfaction;
+Christina looked away at the Sabine mountains, in silence. The prince
+stood by, frowning at the rapture of the elder lady.
+
+“This is nothing,” he said at last. “My word of honor. Have you seen the
+terrace at San Gaetano?”
+
+“Ah, that terrace,” murmured Mrs. Light, amorously. “I suppose it is
+magnificent!”
+
+“It is four hundred feet long, and paved with marble. And the view is
+a thousand times more beautiful than this. You see, far away, the blue,
+blue sea and the little smoke of Vesuvio!”
+
+“Christina, love,” cried Mrs. Light forthwith, “the prince has a terrace
+four hundred feet long, all paved with marble!”
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little cough and began to wipe his eye-glass.
+
+“Stupendous!” said Christina. “To go from one end to the other, the
+prince must have out his golden carriage.” This was apparently an
+allusion to one of the other items of the young man’s grandeur.
+
+“You always laugh at me,” said the prince. “I know no more what to say!”
+
+She looked at him with a sad smile and shook her head. “No, no, dear
+prince, I don’t laugh at you. Heaven forbid! You are much too serious an
+affair. I assure you I feel your importance. What did you inform us was
+the value of the hereditary diamonds of the Princess Casamassima?”
+
+“Ah, you are laughing at me yet!” said the poor young man, standing
+rigid and pale.
+
+“It does n’t matter,” Christina went on. “We have a note of it; mamma
+writes all those things down in a little book!”
+
+“If you are laughed at, dear prince, at least it ‘s in company,” said
+Mrs. Light, caressingly; and she took his arm, as if to resist his
+possible displacement under the shock of her daughter’s sarcasm. But the
+prince looked heavy-eyed toward Rowland and Roderick, to whom the
+young girl was turning, as if he had much rather his lot were cast with
+theirs.
+
+“Is the villa inhabited?” Christina asked, pointing to the vast
+melancholy structure which rises above the terrace.
+
+“Not privately,” said Roderick. “It is occupied by a Jesuits’ college,
+for little boys.”
+
+“Can women go in?”
+
+“I am afraid not.” And Roderick began to laugh. “Fancy the poor little
+devils looking up from their Latin declensions and seeing Miss Light
+standing there!”
+
+“I should like to see the poor little devils, with their rosy cheeks and
+their long black gowns, and when they were pretty, I should n’t scruple
+to kiss them. But if I can’t have that amusement I must have some other.
+We must not stand planted on this enchanting terrace as if we were
+stakes driven into the earth. We must dance, we must feast, we must do
+something picturesque. Mamma has arranged, I believe, that we are to go
+back to Frascati to lunch at the inn. I decree that we lunch here and
+send the Cavaliere to the inn to get the provisions! He can take the
+carriage, which is waiting below.”
+
+Miss Light carried out this undertaking with unfaltering ardor. The
+Cavaliere was summoned, and he stook to receive her commands hat in
+hand, with his eyes cast down, as if she had been a princess addressing
+her major-domo. She, however, laid her hand with friendly grace upon his
+button-hole, and called him a dear, good old Cavaliere, for being always
+so willing. Her spirits had risen with the occasion, and she talked
+irresistible nonsense. “Bring the best they have,” she said, “no matter
+if it ruins us! And if the best is very bad, it will be all the
+more amusing. I shall enjoy seeing Mr. Mallet try to swallow it for
+propriety’s sake! Mr. Hudson will say out like a man that it ‘s horrible
+stuff, and that he ‘ll be choked first! Be sure you bring a dish of
+maccaroni; the prince must have the diet of the Neapolitan nobility. But
+I leave all that to you, my poor, dear Cavaliere; you know what ‘s good!
+Only be sure, above all, you bring a guitar. Mr. Mallet will play us
+a tune, I ‘ll dance with Mr. Hudson, and mamma will pair off with the
+prince, of whom she is so fond!”
+
+And as she concluded her recommendations, she patted her bland old
+servitor caressingly on the shoulder. He looked askance at Rowland; his
+little black eye glittered; it seemed to say, “Did n’t I tell you she
+was a good girl!”
+
+The Cavaliere returned with zealous speed, accompanied by one of the
+servants of the inn, laden with a basket containing the materials of a
+rustic luncheon. The porter of the villa was easily induced to furnish
+a table and half a dozen chairs, and the repast, when set forth, was
+pronounced a perfect success; not so good as to fail of the proper
+picturesqueness, nor yet so bad as to defeat the proper function of
+repasts. Christina continued to display the most charming animation,
+and compelled Rowland to reflect privately that, think what one might
+of her, the harmonious gayety of a beautiful girl was the most beautiful
+sight in nature. Her good-humor was contagious. Roderick, who an hour
+before had been descanting on madness and suicide, commingled his
+laughter with hers in ardent devotion; Prince Casamassima stroked
+his young moustache and found a fine, cool smile for everything; his
+neighbor, Mrs. Light, who had Rowland on the other side, made the
+friendliest confidences to each of the young men, and the Cavaliere
+contributed to the general hilarity by the solemnity of his attention
+to his plate. As for Rowland, the spirit of kindly mirth prompted him to
+propose the health of this useful old gentleman, as the effective author
+of their pleasure. A moment later he wished he had held his tongue, for
+although the toast was drunk with demonstrative good-will, the Cavaliere
+received it with various small signs of eager self-effacement which
+suggested to Rowland that his diminished gentility but half relished
+honors which had a flavor of patronage. To perform punctiliously his
+mysterious duties toward the two ladies, and to elude or to baffle
+observation on his own merits--this seemed the Cavaliere’s modest
+programme. Rowland perceived that Mrs. Light, who was not always
+remarkable for tact, seemed to have divined his humor on this point.
+She touched her glass to her lips, but offered him no compliment and
+immediately gave another direction to the conversation. He had brought
+no guitar, so that when the feast was over there was nothing to hold the
+little group together. Christina wandered away with Roderick to another
+part of the terrace; the prince, whose smile had vanished, sat gnawing
+the head of his cane, near Mrs. Light, and Rowland strolled apart
+with the Cavaliere, to whom he wished to address a friendly word in
+compensation for the discomfort he had inflicted on his modesty. The
+Cavaliere was a mine of information upon all Roman places and people;
+he told Rowland a number of curious anecdotes about the old Villa
+Mondragone. “If history could always be taught in this fashion!” thought
+Rowland. “It ‘s the ideal--strolling up and down on the very spot
+commemorated, hearing sympathetic anecdotes from deeply indigenous
+lips.” At last, as they passed, Rowland observed the mournful
+physiognomy of Prince Casamassima, and, glancing toward the other end of
+the terrace, saw that Roderick and Christina had disappeared from view.
+The young man was sitting upright, in an attitude, apparently habitual,
+of ceremonious rigidity; but his lower jaw had fallen and was propped
+up with his cane, and his dull dark eye was fixed upon the angle of the
+villa which had just eclipsed Miss Light and her companion. His features
+were grotesque and his expression vacuous; but there was a lurking
+delicacy in his face which seemed to tell you that nature had been
+making Casamassimas for a great many centuries, and, though she adapted
+her mould to circumstances, had learned to mix her material to an
+extraordinary fineness and to perform the whole operation with extreme
+smoothness. The prince was stupid, Rowland suspected, but he imagined
+he was amiable, and he saw that at any rate he had the great quality
+of regarding himself in a thoroughly serious light. Rowland touched his
+companion’s arm and pointed to the melancholy nobleman.
+
+“Why in the world does he not go after her and insist on being noticed!”
+ he asked.
+
+“Oh, he ‘s very proud!” said the Cavaliere.
+
+“That ‘s all very well, but a gentleman who cultivates a passion for
+that young lady must be prepared to make sacrifices.”
+
+“He thinks he has already made a great many. He comes of a very great
+family--a race of princes who for six hundred years have married none
+but the daughters of princes. But he is seriously in love, and he would
+marry her to-morrow.”
+
+“And she will not have him?”
+
+“Ah, she is very proud, too!” The Cavaliere was silent a moment, as if
+he were measuring the propriety of frankness. He seemed to have formed
+a high opinion of Rowland’s discretion, for he presently continued:
+“It would be a great match, for she brings him neither a name nor a
+fortune--nothing but her beauty. But the signorina will receive no
+favors; I know her well! She would rather have her beauty blasted than
+seem to care about the marriage, and if she ever accepts the prince it
+will be only after he has implored her on his knees!”
+
+“But she does care about it,” said Rowland, “and to bring him to his
+knees she is working upon his jealousy by pretending to be interested in
+my friend Hudson. If you said more, you would say that, eh?”
+
+The Cavaliere’s shrewdness exchanged a glance with Rowland’s. “By no
+means. Miss Light is a singular girl; she has many romantic ideas.
+She would be quite capable of interesting herself seriously in an
+interesting young man, like your friend, and doing her utmost to
+discourage a splendid suitor, like the prince. She would act sincerely
+and she would go very far. But it would be unfortunate for the young
+man,” he added, after a pause, “for at the last she would retreat!”
+
+“A singular girl, indeed!”
+
+“She would accept the more brilliant parti. I can answer for it.”
+
+“And what would be her motive?”
+
+“She would be forced. There would be circumstances.... I can’t tell you
+more.”
+
+“But this implies that the rejected suitor would also come back. He
+might grow tired of waiting.”
+
+“Oh, this one is good! Look at him now.” Rowland looked, and saw that
+the prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was marching restlessly
+to and fro between the villa and the parapet of the terrace. Every now
+and then he looked at his watch. “In this country, you know,” said the
+Cavaliere, “a young lady never goes walking alone with a handsome young
+man. It seems to him very strange.”
+
+“It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must be very
+much in love.”
+
+“Oh, he will overlook it. He is far gone.”
+
+“Who is this exemplary lover, then; what is he?”
+
+“A Neapolitan; one of the oldest houses in Italy. He is a prince in your
+English sense of the word, for he has a princely fortune. He is very
+young; he is only just of age; he saw the signorina last winter
+in Naples. He fell in love with her from the first, but his family
+interfered, and an old uncle, an ecclesiastic, Monsignor B----, hurried
+up to Naples, seized him, and locked him up. Meantime he has passed his
+majority, and he can dispose of himself. His relations are moving heaven
+and earth to prevent his marrying Miss Light, and they have sent us
+word that he forfeits his property if he takes his wife out of a certain
+line. I have investigated the question minutely, and I find this is but
+a fiction to frighten us. He is perfectly free; but the estates are
+such that it is no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands. For
+Italy, it is an extraordinary case of unincumbered property. The prince
+has been an orphan from his third year; he has therefore had a long
+minority and made no inroads upon his fortune. Besides, he is very
+prudent and orderly; I am only afraid that some day he will pull the
+purse-strings too tight. All these years his affairs have been in the
+hands of Monsignor B----, who has managed them to perfection--paid off
+mortagages, planted forests, opened up mines. It is now a magnificent
+fortune; such a fortune as, with his name, would justify the young man
+in pretending to any alliance whatsoever. And he lays it all at the feet
+of that young girl who is wandering in yonder boschetto with a penniless
+artist.”
+
+“He is certainly a phoenix of princes! The signora must be in a state of
+bliss.”
+
+The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave. “The signora has a high esteem
+for his character.”
+
+“His character, by the way,” rejoined Rowland, with a smile; “what sort
+of a character is it?”
+
+“Eh, Prince Casamassima is a veritable prince! He is a very good young
+man. He is not brilliant, nor witty, but he ‘ll not let himself be made
+a fool of. He ‘s very grave and very devout--though he does propose to
+marry a Protestant. He will handle that point after marriage. He ‘s as
+you see him there: a young man without many ideas, but with a very firm
+grasp of a single one--the conviction that Prince Casamassima is a very
+great person, that he greatly honors any young lady by asking for her
+hand, and that things are going very strangely when the young lady
+turns her back upon him. The poor young man, I am sure, is profoundly
+perplexed. But I whisper to him every day, ‘Pazienza, Signor Principe!’”
+
+“So you firmly believe,” said Rowland, in conclusion, “that Miss Light
+will accept him just in time not to lose him!”
+
+“I count upon it. She would make too perfect a princess to miss her
+destiny.”
+
+“And you hold that nevertheless, in the mean while, in listening to,
+say, my friend Hudson, she will have been acting in good faith?”
+
+The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable
+smile. “Eh, dear signore, the Christina is very romantic!”
+
+“So much so, you intimate, that she will eventually retract, in
+consequence not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward
+pressure?”
+
+“If everything else fails, there is that resource. But it is mysterious,
+as you say, and you need n’t try to guess it. You will never know.”
+
+“The poor signorina, then, will suffer!”
+
+“Not too much, I hope.”
+
+“And the poor young man! You maintain that there is nothing but
+disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses his heart to
+her!”
+
+The Cavaliere hesitated. “He had better,” he said in a moment, “go and
+pursue his studies in Florence. There are very fine antiques in the
+Uffizi!”
+
+Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, to whom her restless protege had
+not yet returned. “That ‘s right,” she said; “sit down here; I have
+something serious to say to you. I am going to talk to you as a friend.
+I want your assistance. In fact, I demand it; it ‘s your duty to render
+it. Look at that unhappy young man.”
+
+“Yes,” said Rowland, “he seems unhappy.”
+
+“He is just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy and
+owns one of the greatest properties, and he is pining away with love for
+my daughter.”
+
+“So the Cavaliere tells me.”
+
+“The Cavaliere should n’t gossip,” said Mrs. Light dryly. “Such
+information should come from me. The prince is pining, as I say; he ‘s
+consumed, he ‘s devoured. It ‘s a real Italian passion; I know what that
+means!” And the lady gave a speaking glance, which seemed to coquet
+for a moment with retrospect. “Meanwhile, if you please, my daughter is
+hiding in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson. I could cry with
+rage.”
+
+“If things are so bad as that,” said Rowland, “it seems to me that you
+ought to find nothing easier than to dispatch the Cavaliere to bring the
+guilty couple back.”
+
+“Never in the world! My hands are tied. Do you know what Christina
+would do? She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business--Heaven
+forgive her!--and send me word that, if she had a mind to, she would
+walk in the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and
+delivering such a message as that before the prince! Think of a girl
+wantonly making light of such a chance as hers! He would marry her
+to-morrow, at six o’clock in the morning!”
+
+“It is certainly very sad,” said Rowland.
+
+“That costs you little to say. If you had left your precious young
+meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a
+world of distress!”
+
+“Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger,” said Rowland. “You came and
+disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio.”
+
+“In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him.”
+
+“I have done my best.”
+
+“I wish, then, you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me
+a favor. Take him to travel. Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo. Then, when
+Christina is Princess Casamassima,” Mrs. Light added in a moment, “he
+may come back if he chooses.”
+
+“Does she really care for him?” Rowland asked, abruptly.
+
+“She thinks she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs
+follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of
+them don’t last long; but this one may last long enough to give the
+prince a chill. If that were to happen, I don’t know what I should do! I
+should be the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after
+all I ‘ve suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years
+blighted by a caprice. For I can assure you, sir,” Mrs. Light went on,
+“that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the
+credit is mine.”
+
+Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious. He saw that the lady’s
+irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and
+he assumed designedly the attitude of a zealous auditor. She began
+to retail her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her
+disappointments, in the cause of her daughter’s matrimonial fortunes. It
+was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince continued
+to pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking
+the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses. Mrs. Light
+evidently, at an early period, had gathered her maternal hopes into
+a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and
+treated like a sort of fetish. They had been her religion; she had none
+other, and she performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the
+light of day. The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated,
+so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so
+dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by
+this time much of its early freshness, and seemed a rather battered
+and disfeatured divinity. But it was still brought forth in moments of
+trouble to have its tinseled petticoat twisted about and be set up
+on its altar. Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had a genuine maternal
+conscience; she considered that she had been performing a sacred duty in
+bringing up Christina to set her cap for a prince, and when the future
+looked dark, she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never
+have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person. This conscience
+upside down presented to Rowland’s fancy a real physical image; he was
+on the point, half a dozen times, of bursting out laughing.
+
+“I don’t know whether you believe in presentiments,” said Mrs. Light,
+“and I don’t care! I have had one for the last fifteen years. People
+have laughed at it, but they have n’t laughed me out of it. It has been
+everything to me. I could n’t have lived without it. One must believe in
+something! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old.
+I remember the day and the place, as if it were yesterday. She was a
+very ugly baby; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at
+her, and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her. She had an
+Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow
+up pretty. I could n’t believe her; I used to contradict her, and we
+were forever squabbling. I was just a little silly in those days--surely
+I may say it now--and I was very fond of being amused. If my daughter
+was ugly, it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of
+amusement. People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl;
+if it was so, I ‘ve made up for it since. One day I went to drive on the
+Pincio in very low spirits. A trusted friend had greatly disappointed
+me. While I was there he passed me in a carriage, driving with a
+horrible woman who had made trouble between us. I got out of my carriage
+to walk about, and at last sat down on a bench. I can show you the spot
+at this hour. While I sat there a child came wandering along the path--a
+little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed in crimson and
+orange. She stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her
+queer little dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one
+of these contadine. At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself,
+‘Bless me, what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a
+magnificent head of hair! If my poor Christina were only like that!’ The
+child turned away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me.
+All of a sudden I gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms,
+and covered it with kisses. It was Christina, my own precious child, so
+disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in
+making for her, that her own mother had not recognized her. She knew me,
+but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked
+so angry. Of course my face was sad. I rushed with my child to the
+carriage, drove home post-haste, pulled off her rags, and, as I may say,
+wrapped her in cotton. I had been blind, I had been insane; she was
+a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a
+priceless treasure! Every day, after that, the certainty grew. From that
+time I lived only for my daughter. I watched her, I caressed her from
+morning till night, I worshipped her. I went to see doctors about her,
+I took every sort of advice. I was determined she should be perfection.
+The things that have been done for that girl, sir--you would n’t believe
+them; they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told
+that she must have a bath every morning of molten pearls, I would have
+found means to give it to her. She never raised a finger for herself,
+she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked upon velvet. She never
+was out of my sight, and from that day to this I have never said a sharp
+word to her. By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an
+angel, and so noticed wherever we went that I had to make her wear a
+veil, like a woman of twenty. Her hair reached down to her feet; her
+hands were the hands of a princess. Then I saw that she was as clever
+as she was beautiful, and that she had only to play her cards. She had
+masters, professors, every educational advantage. They told me she was
+a little prodigy. She speaks French, Italian, German, better than
+most natives. She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her
+fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise! I traveled
+all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel. The director of the
+opera in Paris saw her dance at a child’s party at Spa, and offered
+me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her
+educated for the ballet. I said, ‘No, I thank you, sir; she is meant
+to be something finer than a princesse de theatre.’ I had a passionate
+belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be
+a princess out and out. It has never left me till this hour, and I can
+assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments. Financial,
+some of them; I don’t mind confessing it! I have raised money on that
+girl’s face! I ‘ve taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil,
+and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe! She, of course,
+was too young to understand me. And yet, as a child, you would have said
+she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she had the
+manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess. She would have
+nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of
+her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
+At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent
+for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played
+at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I
+have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a
+sign--a symbol--a portent. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n’t
+such things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and
+does n’t history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish
+girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!... The
+Empress certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray? I
+‘ve dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month. I won’t tell you
+I have been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers;
+you ‘ll call me an old imbecile. Imbecile if you please! I have refused
+magnificent offers because I believed that somehow or other--if wars and
+revolutions were needed to bring it about--we should have nothing less
+than that. There might be another coup d’etat somewhere, and another
+brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife! At last, however,”
+ Mrs. Light proceeded with incomparable gravity, “since the overturning
+of the poor king of Naples and that charming queen, and the expulsion
+of all those dear little old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the
+dreadful radical talk that is going on all over the world, it has come
+to seem to me that with Christina in such a position I should be really
+very nervous. Even in such a position she would hold her head very high,
+and if anything should happen to her, she would make no concessions
+to the popular fury. The best thing, if one is prudent, seems to be a
+nobleman of the highest possible rank, short of belonging to a reigning
+stock. There you see one striding up and down, looking at his watch, and
+counting the minutes till my daughter reappears!”
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a huge compassion for the heroine of
+the tale. What an education, what a history, what a school of character
+and of morals! He looked at the prince and wondered whether he too had
+heard Mrs. Light’s story. If he had he was a brave man. “I certainly
+hope you ‘ll keep him,” he said to Mrs. Light. “You have played a
+dangerous game with your daughter; it would be a pity not to win. But
+there is hope for you yet; here she comes at last!”
+
+Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her
+companion with the same indifferent tread with which she had departed.
+Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek which
+she had not carried away with her, and there was certainly a light in
+Roderick’s eyes which he had not seen there for a week.
+
+“Bless my soul, how they are all looking at us!” she cried, as they
+advanced. “One would think we were prisoners of the Inquisition!” And
+she paused and glanced from the prince to her mother, and from
+Rowland to the Cavaliere, and then threw back her head and burst into
+far-ringing laughter. “What is it, pray? Have I been very improper? Am I
+ruined forever? Dear prince, you are looking at me as if I had committed
+the unpardonable sin!”
+
+“I myself,” said the prince, “would never have ventured to ask you to
+walk with me alone in the country for an hour!”
+
+“The more fool you, dear prince, as the vulgar say! Our walk has been
+charming. I hope you, on your side, have enjoyed each other’s society.”
+
+“My dear daughter,” said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined
+son-in-law, “I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach
+home. We will go back to the carriage.”
+
+“Something serious! Decidedly, it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson,
+stand firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring
+previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr.
+Mallet, I see also,” Christina added, “has something serious to say to
+me!”
+
+Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his lately-stirred
+pity in his eyes. “Possibly,” he said. “But it must be for some other
+time.”
+
+“I am at your service. I see our good-humor is gone. And I only wanted
+to be amiable! It is very discouraging. Cavaliere, you, only, look as if
+you had a little of the milk of human kindness left; from your venerable
+visage, at least; there is no telling what you think. Give me your arm
+and take me away!”
+
+The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in
+the grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends
+farewell. Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes;
+a manoeuvre for which Rowland imagined the prince was grateful, as it
+enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his attitude
+of distinguished disapproval. Rowland found himself aroused from sleep
+early the next morning, to see Roderick standing before him, dressed for
+departure, with his bag in his hand. “I am off,” he said. “I am back to
+work. I have an idea. I must strike while the iron ‘s hot! Farewell!”
+ And he departed by the first train. Rowland went alone by the next.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. Saint Cecilia’s
+
+Rowland went often to the Coliseum; he never wearied of it. One morning,
+about a month after his return from Frascati, as he was strolling across
+the vast arena, he observed a young woman seated on one of the fragments
+of stone which are ranged along the line of the ancient parapet. It
+seemed to him that he had seen her before, but he was unable to localize
+her face. Passing her again, he perceived that one of the little
+red-legged French soldiers at that time on guard there had approached
+her and was gallantly making himself agreeable. She smiled brilliantly,
+and Rowland recognized the smile (it had always pleased him) of a
+certain comely Assunta, who sometimes opened the door for Mrs. Light’s
+visitors. He wondered what she was doing alone in the Coliseum, and
+conjectured that Assunta had admirers as well as her young mistress, but
+that, being without the same domiciliary conveniencies, she was using
+this massive heritage of her Latin ancestors as a boudoir. In other
+words, she had an appointment with her lover, who had better, from
+present appearances, be punctual. It was a long time since Rowland had
+ascended to the ruinous upper tiers of the great circus, and, as the day
+was radiant and the distant views promised to be particularly clear,
+he determined to give himself the pleasure. The custodian unlocked the
+great wooden wicket, and he climbed through the winding shafts, where
+the eager Roman crowds had billowed and trampled, not pausing till he
+reached the highest accessible point of the ruin. The views were as fine
+as he had supposed; the lights on the Sabine Mountains had never been
+more lovely. He gazed to his satisfaction and retraced his steps. In
+a moment he paused again on an abutment somewhat lower, from which
+the glance dropped dizzily into the interior. There are chance
+anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions of the Coliseum which
+offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an Alpine cliff. In
+those days a multitude of delicate flowers and sprays of wild herbage
+had found a friendly soil in the hoary crevices, and they bloomed and
+nodded amid the antique masonry as freely as they would have done in the
+virgin rock. Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound of voices
+rising up from below. He had but to step slightly forward to find
+himself overlooking two persons who had seated themselves on a narrow
+ledge, in a sunny corner. They had apparently had an eye to extreme
+privacy, but they had not observed that their position was commanded by
+Rowland’s stand-point. One of these airy adventurers was a lady, thickly
+veiled, so that, even if he had not been standing directly above her,
+Rowland could not have seen her face. The other was a young man, whose
+face was also invisible, but who, as Rowland stood there, gave a toss
+of his clustering locks which was equivalent to the signature--Roderick
+Hudson. A moment’s reflection, hereupon, satisfied him of the identity
+of the lady. He had been unjust to poor Assunta, sitting patient in the
+gloomy arena; she had not come on her own errand. Rowland’s discoveries
+made him hesitate. Should he retire as noiselessly as possible, or
+should he call out a friendly good morning? While he was debating the
+question, he found himself distinctly hearing his friends’ words. They
+were of such a nature as to make him unwilling to retreat, and yet
+to make it awkward to be discovered in a position where it would be
+apparent that he had heard them.
+
+“If what you say is true,” said Christina, with her usual soft
+deliberateness--it made her words rise with peculiar distinctness to
+Rowland’s ear--“you are simply weak. I am sorry! I hoped--I really
+believed--you were not.”
+
+“No, I am not weak,” answered Roderick, with vehemence; “I maintain that
+I am not weak! I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can’t help that. Weakness
+is a man’s own fault!”
+
+“Incomplete, then!” said Christina, with a laugh. “It ‘s the same thing,
+so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement. Is it written, then,
+that I shall really never know what I have so often dreamed of?”
+
+“What have you dreamed of?”
+
+“A man whom I can perfectly respect!” cried the young girl, with a
+sudden flame. “A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire. I meet
+one, as I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe to be
+cast in a larger mould than most of the vile human breed, to be large
+in character, great in talent, strong in will! In such a man as that,
+I say, one’s weary imagination at last may rest; or it may wander if it
+will, yet never need to wander far from the deeps where one’s heart is
+anchored. When I first knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck
+me. I observed you, as women observe, and I fancied you had the sacred
+fire.”
+
+“Before heaven, I believe I have!” cried Roderick.
+
+“Ah, but so little! It flickers and trembles and sputters; it goes out,
+you tell me, for whole weeks together. From your own account, it ‘s ten
+to one that in the long run you ‘re a failure.”
+
+“I say those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them they
+make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to
+refute you!”
+
+“Ah, the man who is strong with what I call strength,” Christina
+replied, “would neither rise nor fall by anything I could say! I am a
+poor, weak woman; I have no strength myself, and I can give no strength.
+I am a miserable medley of vanity and folly. I am silly, I am ignorant,
+I am affected, I am false. I am the fruit of a horrible education, sown
+on a worthless soil. I am all that, and yet I believe I have one merit!
+I should know a great character when I saw it, and I should delight in
+it with a generosity which would do something toward the remission of
+my sins. For a man who should really give me a certain feeling--which
+I have never had, but which I should know when it came--I would send
+Prince Casamassima and his millions to perdition. I don’t know what you
+think of me for saying all this; I suppose we have not climbed up here
+under the skies to play propriety. Why have you been at such pains to
+assure me, after all, that you are a little man and not a great one, a
+weak one and not a strong? I innocently imagined that your eyes declared
+you were strong. But your voice condemns you; I always wondered at it;
+it ‘s not the voice of a conqueror!”
+
+“Give me something to conquer,” cried Roderick, “and when I say that I
+thank you from my soul, my voice, whatever you think of it, shall speak
+the truth!”
+
+Christina for a moment said nothing. Rowland was too interested to think
+of moving. “You pretend to such devotion,” she went on, “and yet I
+am sure you have never really chosen between me and that person in
+America.”
+
+“Do me the favor not to speak of her,” said Roderick, imploringly.
+
+“Why not? I say no ill of her, and I think all kinds of good. I am
+certain she is a far better girl than I, and far more likely to make you
+happy.”
+
+“This is happiness, this present, palpable moment,” said Roderick;
+“though you have such a genius for saying the things that torture me!”
+
+“It ‘s greater happiness than you deserve, then! You have never chosen,
+I say; you have been afraid to choose. You have never really faced the
+fact that you are false, that you have broken your faith. You have never
+looked at it and seen that it was hideous, and yet said, ‘No matter, I
+‘ll brave the penalty, I ‘ll bear the shame!’ You have closed your eyes;
+you have tried to stifle remembrance, to persuade yourself that you were
+not behaving as badly as you seemed to be, and there would be some
+way, after all, of compassing bliss and yet escaping trouble. You have
+faltered and drifted, you have gone on from accident to accident, and I
+am sure that at this present moment you can’t tell what it is you really
+desire!”
+
+Roderick was sitting with his knees drawn up and bent, and his hands
+clapsed around his legs. He bent his head and rested his forehead on his
+knees.
+
+Christina went on with a sort of infernal calmness: “I believe that,
+really, you don’t greatly care for your friend in America any more than
+you do for me. You are one of the men who care only for themselves and
+for what they can make of themselves. That ‘s very well when they
+can make something great, and I could interest myself in a man of
+extraordinary power who should wish to turn all his passions to account.
+But if the power should turn out to be, after all, rather ordinary?
+Fancy feeling one’s self ground in the mill of a third-rate talent! If
+you have doubts about yourself, I can’t reassure you; I have too many
+doubts myself, about everything in this weary world. You have gone up
+like a rocket, in your profession, they tell me; are you going to come
+down like the stick? I don’t pretend to know; I repeat frankly what I
+have said before--that all modern sculpture seems to me weak, and that
+the only things I care for are some of the most battered of the antiques
+of the Vatican. No, no, I can’t reassure you; and when you tell
+me--with a confidence in my discretion of which, certainly, I am duly
+sensible--that at times you feel terribly small, why, I can only answer,
+‘Ah, then, my poor friend, I am afraid you are small.’ The language I
+should like to hear, from a certain person, would be the language of
+absolute decision.”
+
+Roderick raised his head, but he said nothing; he seemed to be
+exchanging a long glance with his companion. The result of it was
+to make him fling himself back with an inarticulate murmur. Rowland,
+admonished by the silence, was on the point of turning away, but he was
+arrested by a gesture of the young girl. She pointed for a moment into
+the blue air. Roderick followed the direction of her gesture.
+
+“Is that little flower we see outlined against that dark niche,” she
+asked, “as intensely blue as it looks through my veil?” She spoke
+apparently with the amiable design of directing the conversation into a
+less painful channel.
+
+Rowland, from where he stood, could see the flower she meant--a delicate
+plant of radiant hue, which sprouted from the top of an immense fragment
+of wall some twenty feet from Christina’s place.
+
+Roderick turned his head and looked at it without answering. At last,
+glancing round, “Put up your veil!” he said. Christina complied. “Does
+it look as blue now?” he asked.
+
+“Ah, what a lovely color!” she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
+
+“Would you like to have it?”
+
+She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
+
+“Would you like to have it?” he repeated in a ringing voice.
+
+“Don’t look as if you would eat me up,” she answered. “It ‘s harmless if
+I say yes!”
+
+Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower. It
+was separated from the ledge on which he stood by a rugged surface of
+vertical wall, which dropped straight into the dusky vaults behind the
+arena. Suddenly he took off his hat and flung it behind him. Christina
+then sprang to her feet.
+
+“I will bring it you,” he said.
+
+She seized his arm. “Are you crazy? Do you mean to kill yourself?”
+
+“I shall not kill myself. Sit down!”
+
+“Excuse me. Not till you do!” And she grasped his arm with both hands.
+
+Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture to her former
+place. “Go there!” he cried fiercely.
+
+“You can never, never!” she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands.
+“I implore you!”
+
+Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland had
+never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which awakened
+the echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, “Sit down!” She hesitated
+a moment and then she dropped on the ground and buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more. He saw Roderick clasp in
+his left arm the jagged corner of the vertical partition along which he
+proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for
+a resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the
+possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil.
+The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains
+apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had
+long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets
+and grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances on a
+level with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed. The relics of
+the cornice were utterly worthless as a support. Rowland had observed
+this, and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated. If the thing were
+possible, he felt a sudden admiring glee at the thought of Roderick’s
+doing it. It would be finely done, it would be gallant, it would have
+a sort of masculine eloquence as an answer to Christina’s sinister
+persiflage. But it was not possible! Rowland left his place with a
+bound, and scrambled down some neighboring steps, and the next moment
+a stronger pair of hands than Christina’s were laid upon Roderick’s
+shoulder.
+
+He turned, staring, pale and angry. Christina rose, pale and staring,
+too, but beautiful in her wonder and alarm. “My dear Roderick,” said
+Rowland, “I am only preventing you from doing a very foolish thing. That
+‘s an exploit for spiders, not for young sculptors of promise.”
+
+Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then closed
+his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. “I won’t resist
+you,” he said. “But I have made you obey,” he added, turning to
+Christina. “Am I weak now?”
+
+She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him and
+addressed Rowland: “Be so good as to show me the way out of this
+horrible place!”
+
+He helped her back into the corridor; Roderick followed after a short
+interval. Of course, as they were descending the steps, came questions
+for Rowland to answer, and more or less surprise. Where had he come
+from? how happened he to have appeared at just that moment? Rowland
+answered that he had been rambling overhead, and that, looking out of an
+aperture, he had seen a gentleman preparing to undertake a preposterous
+gymnastic feat, and a lady swooning away in consequence. Interference
+seemed justifiable, and he had made it as prompt as possible. Roderick
+was far from hanging his head, like a man who has been caught in the
+perpetration of an extravagant folly; but if he held it more erect than
+usual Rowland believed that this was much less because he had made
+a show of personal daring than because he had triumphantly proved to
+Christina that, like a certain person she had dreamed of, he too could
+speak the language of decision. Christina descended to the arena in
+silence, apparently occupied with her own thoughts. She betrayed
+no sense of the privacy of her interview with Roderick needing an
+explanation. Rowland had seen stranger things in New York! The only
+evidence of her recent agitation was that, on being joined by her maid,
+she declared that she was unable to walk home; she must have a carriage.
+A fiacre was found resting in the shadow of the Arch of Constantine,
+and Rowland suspected that after she had got into it she disburdened
+herself, under her veil, of a few natural tears.
+
+Rowland had played eavesdropper to so good a purpose that he might
+justly have omitted the ceremony of denouncing himself to Roderick. He
+preferred, however, to let him know that he had overheard a portion of
+his talk with Christina.
+
+“Of course it seems to you,” Roderick said, “a proof that I am utterly
+infatuated.”
+
+“Miss Light seemed to me to know very well how far she could go,”
+ Rowland answered. “She was twisting you round her finger. I don’t think
+she exactly meant to defy you; but your crazy pursuit of that flower
+was a proof that she could go all lengths in the way of making a fool of
+you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Roderick, meditatively; “she is making a fool of me.”
+
+“And what do you expect to come of it?”
+
+“Nothing good!” And Roderick put his hands into his pockets and looked
+as if he had announced the most colorless fact in the world.
+
+“And in the light of your late interview, what do you make of your young
+lady?”
+
+“If I could tell you that, it would be plain sailing. But she ‘ll not
+tell me again I am weak!”
+
+“Are you very sure you are not weak?”
+
+“I may be, but she shall never know it.”
+
+Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked his
+companion whether he was going to his studio.
+
+Roderick started out of a reverie and passed his hands over his eyes.
+“Oh no, I can’t settle down to work after such a scene as that. I was
+not afraid of breaking my neck then, but I feel all in a tremor now. I
+will go--I will go and sit in the sun on the Pincio!”
+
+“Promise me this, first,” said Rowland, very solemnly: “that the next
+time you meet Miss Light, it shall be on the earth and not in the air.”
+
+Since his return from Frascati, Roderick had been working doggedly at
+the statue ordered by Mr. Leavenworth. To Rowland’s eye he had made a
+very fair beginning, but he had himself insisted, from the first, that
+he liked neither his subject nor his patron, and that it was impossible
+to feel any warmth of interest in a work which was to be incorporated
+into the ponderous personality of Mr. Leavenworth. It was all against
+the grain; he wrought without love. Nevertheless after a fashion he
+wrought, and the figure grew beneath his hands. Miss Blanchard’s friend
+was ordering works of art on every side, and his purveyors were in many
+cases persons whom Roderick declared it was infamy to be paired with.
+There had been grand tailors, he said, who declined to make you a coat
+unless you got the hat you were to wear with it from an artist of their
+own choosing. It seemed to him that he had an equal right to exact that
+his statue should not form part of the same system of ornament as the
+“Pearl of Perugia,” a picture by an American confrere who had, in Mr.
+Leavenworth’s opinion, a prodigious eye for color. As a customer, Mr.
+Leavenworth used to drop into Roderick’s studio, to see how things
+were getting on, and give a friendly hint or so. He would seat himself
+squarely, plant his gold-topped cane between his legs, which he held
+very much apart, rest his large white hands on the head, and enunciate
+the principles of spiritual art, as he hoisted them one by one, as you
+might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness. His benignant
+and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating
+beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the matter was that
+the good gentleman’s placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no
+sarcastic shaft could pierce. Roderick admitted that in thinking
+over the tribulations of struggling genius, the danger of dying of
+over-patronage had never occurred to him.
+
+The deterring effect of the episode of the Coliseum was apparently of
+long continuance; if Roderick’s nerves had been shaken his hand needed
+time to recover its steadiness. He cultivated composure upon principles
+of his own; by frequenting entertainments from which he returned at four
+o’clock in the morning, and lapsing into habits which might fairly be
+called irregular. He had hitherto made few friends among the artistic
+fraternity; chiefly because he had taken no trouble about it, and
+there was in his demeanor an elastic independence of the favor of his
+fellow-mortals which made social advances on his own part peculiarly
+necessary. Rowland had told him more than once that he ought to
+fraternize a trifle more with the other artists, and he had always
+answered that he had not the smallest objection to fraternizing:
+let them come! But they came on rare occasions, and Roderick was not
+punctilious about returning their visits. He declared there was not one
+of them whose works gave him the smallest desire to make acquaintance
+with the insides of their heads. For Gloriani he professed a superb
+contempt, and, having been once to look at his wares, never crossed
+his threshold again. The only one of the fraternity for whom by his own
+admission he cared a straw was little Singleton; but he expressed his
+regard only in a kind of sublime hilarity whenever he encountered this
+humble genius, and quite forgot his existence in the intervals. He had
+never been to see him, but Singleton edged his way, from time to time,
+timidly, into Roderick’s studio, and agreed with characteristic modesty
+that brilliant fellows like the sculptor might consent to receive
+homage, but could hardly be expected to render it. Roderick never
+exactly accepted homage, and apparently did not quite observe whether
+poor Singleton spoke in admiration or in blame. Roderick’s taste as to
+companions was singularly capricious. There were very good fellows, who
+were disposed to cultivate him, who bored him to death; and there were
+others, in whom even Rowland’s good-nature was unable to discover a
+pretext for tolerance, in whom he appeared to find the highest social
+qualities. He used to give the most fantastic reasons for his likes and
+dislikes. He would declare he could n’t speak a civil word to a man
+who brushed his hair in a certain fashion, and he would explain his
+unaccountable fancy for an individual of imperceptible merit by telling
+you that he had an ancestor who in the thirteenth century had walled up
+his wife alive. “I like to talk to a man whose ancestor has walled up
+his wife alive,” he would say. “You may not see the fun of it, and think
+poor P---- is a very dull fellow. It ‘s very possible; I don’t ask you
+to admire him. But, for reasons of my own, I like to have him about. The
+old fellow left her for three days with her face uncovered, and placed
+a long mirror opposite to her, so that she could see, as he said, if her
+gown was a fit!”
+
+His relish for an odd flavor in his friends had led him to make the
+acquaintance of a number of people outside of Rowland’s well-ordered
+circle, and he made no secret of their being very queer fish. He formed
+an intimacy, among others, with a crazy fellow who had come to Rome
+as an emissary of one of the Central American republics, to drive some
+ecclesiastical bargain with the papal government. The Pope had given him
+the cold shoulder, but since he had not prospered as a diplomatist, he
+had sought compensation as a man of the world, and his great flamboyant
+curricle and negro lackeys were for several weeks one of the striking
+ornaments of the Pincian. He spoke a queer jargon of Italian, Spanish,
+French, and English, humorously relieved with scraps of ecclesiastical
+Latin, and to those who inquired of Roderick what he found to interest
+him in such a fantastic jackanapes, the latter would reply, looking
+at his interlocutor with his lucid blue eyes, that it was worth any
+sacrifice to hear him talk nonsense! The two had gone together one night
+to a ball given by a lady of some renown in the Spanish colony, and very
+late, on his way home, Roderick came up to Rowland’s rooms, in whose
+windows he had seen a light. Rowland was going to bed, but Roderick
+flung himself into an armchair and chattered for an hour. The friends of
+the Costa Rican envoy were as amusing as himself, and in very much the
+same line. The mistress of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and
+gold heels to her slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had
+sent for a pair of castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced a
+fandango, while the gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor. “It was
+awfully low,” Roderick said; “all of a sudden I perceived it, and
+bolted. Nothing of that kind ever amuses me to the end: before it ‘s
+half over it bores me to death; it makes me sick. Hang it, why can’t a
+poor fellow enjoy things in peace? My illusions are all broken-winded;
+they won’t carry me twenty paces! I can’t laugh and forget; my
+laugh dies away before it begins. Your friend Stendhal writes on his
+book-covers (I never got farther) that he has seen too early in life la
+beaute parfaite. I don’t know how early he saw it; I saw it before I was
+born--in another state of being! I can’t describe it positively; I can
+only say I don’t find it anywhere now. Not at the bottom of champagne
+glasses; not, strange as it may seem, in that extra half-yard or so of
+shoulder that some women have their ball-dresses cut to expose. I
+don’t find it at merry supper-tables, where half a dozen ugly men with
+pomatumed heads are rapidly growing uglier still with heat and wine; not
+when I come away and walk through these squalid black streets, and go
+out into the Forum and see a few old battered stone posts standing there
+like gnawed bones stuck into the earth. Everything is mean and dusky
+and shabby, and the men and women who make up this so-called brilliant
+society are the meanest and shabbiest of all. They have no real
+spontaneity; they are all cowards and popinjays. They have no more
+dignity than so many grasshoppers. Nothing is good but one!” And he
+jumped up and stood looking at one of his statues, which shone vaguely
+across the room in the dim lamplight.
+
+“Yes, do tell us,” said Rowland, “what to hold on by!”
+
+“Those things of mine were tolerably good,” he answered. “But my idea
+was better--and that ‘s what I mean!”
+
+Rowland said nothing. He was willing to wait for Roderick to complete
+the circle of his metamorphoses, but he had no desire to officiate as
+chorus to the play. If Roderick chose to fish in troubled waters, he
+must land his prizes himself.
+
+“You think I ‘m an impudent humbug,” the latter said at last, “coming
+up to moralize at this hour of the night. You think I want to throw
+dust into your eyes, to put you off the scent. That ‘s your eminently
+rational view of the case.”
+
+“Excuse me from taking any view at all,” said Rowland.
+
+“You have given me up, then?”
+
+“No, I have merely suspended judgment. I am waiting.”
+
+“You have ceased then positively to believe in me?”
+
+Rowland made an angry gesture. “Oh, cruel boy! When you have hit your
+mark and made people care for you, you should n’t twist your weapon
+about at that rate in their vitals. Allow me to say I am sleepy. Good
+night!”
+
+Some days afterward it happened that Rowland, on a long afternoon
+ramble, took his way through one of the quiet corners of the Trastevere.
+He was particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could hardly
+have expressed the charm he found in it. As you pass away from the
+dusky, swarming purlieus of the Ghetto, you emerge into a region of
+empty, soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys, where the shabby houses
+seem mouldering away in disuse, and yet your footstep brings figures of
+startling Roman type to the doorways. There are few monuments here, but
+no part of Rome seemed more historic, in the sense of being weighted
+with a crushing past, blighted with the melancholy of things that had
+had their day. When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow,
+battered walls, and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of
+small closed churches, the place acquired a strange fascination. The
+church of Saint Cecilia has one of these sunny, waste-looking courts;
+the edifice seems abandoned to silence and the charity of chance
+devotion. Rowland never passed it without going in, and he was generally
+the only visitor. He entered it now, but found that two persons had
+preceded him. Both were women. One was at her prayers at one of the side
+altars; the other was seated against a column at the upper end of the
+nave. Rowland walked to the altar, and paid, in a momentary glance at
+the clever statue of the saint in death, in the niche beneath it, the
+usual tribute to the charm of polished ingenuity. As he turned away he
+looked at the person seated and recognized Christina Light. Seeing that
+she perceived him, he advanced to speak to her.
+
+She was sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands in her lap;
+she seemed to be tired. She was dressed simply, as if for walking and
+escaping observation. When he had greeted her he glanced back at her
+companion, and recognized the faithful Assunta.
+
+Christina smiled. “Are you looking for Mr. Hudson? He is not here, I am
+happy to say.”
+
+“But you?” he asked. “This is a strange place to find you.”
+
+“Not at all! People call me a strange girl, and I might as well have the
+comfort of it. I came to take a walk; that, by the way, is part of
+my strangeness. I can’t loll all the morning on a sofa, and all the
+afternoon in a carriage. I get horribly restless. I must move; I must
+do something and see something. Mamma suggests a cup of tea. Meanwhile I
+put on an old dress and half a dozen veils, I take Assunta under my arm,
+and we start on a pedestrian tour. It ‘s a bore that I can’t take the
+poodle, but he attracts attention. We trudge about everywhere; there
+is nothing I like so much. I hope you will congratulate me on the
+simplicity of my tastes.”
+
+“I congratulate you on your wisdom. To live in Rome and not to walk
+would, I think, be poor pleasure. But you are terribly far from home,
+and I am afraid you are tired.”
+
+“A little--enough to sit here a while.”
+
+“Might I offer you my company while you rest?”
+
+“If you will promise to amuse me. I am in dismal spirits.”
+
+Rowland said he would do what he could, and brought a chair and placed
+it near her. He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her; he
+mistrusted her; and yet he felt it a kind of privilege to watch her, and
+he found a peculiar excitement in talking to her. The background of her
+nature, as he would have called it, was large and mysterious, and it
+emitted strange, fantastic gleams and flashes. Watching for these rather
+quickened one’s pulses. Moreover, it was not a disadvantage to talk to
+a girl who made one keep guard on one’s composure; it diminished one’s
+chronic liability to utter something less than revised wisdom.
+
+Assunta had risen from her prayers, and, as he took his place, was
+coming back to her mistress. But Christina motioned her away. “No, no;
+while you are about it, say a few dozen more!” she said. “Pray for me,”
+ she added in English. “Pray, I say nothing silly. She has been at it
+half an hour; I envy her capacity!”
+
+“Have you never felt in any degree,” Rowland asked, “the fascination of
+Catholicism?”
+
+“Yes, I have been through that, too! There was a time when I wanted
+immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter. It was when I was
+about sixteen years old. I read the Imitation and the Life of Saint
+Catherine. I fully believed in the miracles of the saints, and I was
+dying to have one of my own. The least little accident that could have
+been twisted into a miracle would have carried me straight into the
+bosom of the church. I had the real religious passion. It has passed
+away, and, as I sat here just now, I was wondering what had become of
+it!”
+
+Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady’s tone
+which he would have called a want of veracity, and this epitome of her
+religious experience failed to strike him as an absolute statement of
+fact. But the trait was not disagreeable, for she herself was evidently
+the foremost dupe of her inventions. She had a fictitious history
+in which she believed much more fondly than in her real one, and an
+infinite capacity for extemporized reminiscence adapted to the mood
+of the hour. She liked to idealize herself, to take interesting and
+picturesque attitudes to her own imagination; and the vivacity and
+spontaneity of her character gave her, really, a starting-point in
+experience; so that the many-colored flowers of fiction which blossomed
+in her talk were not so much perversions, as sympathetic exaggerations,
+of fact. And Rowland felt that whatever she said of herself might have
+been, under the imagined circumstances; impulse was there, audacity, the
+restless, questioning temperament. “I am afraid I am sadly prosaic,”
+ he said, “for in these many months now that I have been in Rome, I
+have never ceased for a moment to look at Catholicism simply from the
+outside. I don’t see an opening as big as your finger-nail where I could
+creep into it!”
+
+“What do you believe?” asked Christina, looking at him. “Are you
+religious?”
+
+“I believe in God.”
+
+Christina let her beautiful eyes wander a while, and then gave a little
+sigh. “You are much to be envied!”
+
+“You, I imagine, in that line have nothing to envy me.”
+
+“Yes, I have. Rest!”
+
+“You are too young to say that.”
+
+“I am not young; I have never been young! My mother took care of that. I
+was a little wrinkled old woman at ten.”
+
+“I am afraid,” said Rowland, in a moment, “that you are fond of painting
+yourself in dark colors.”
+
+She looked at him a while in silence. “Do you wish,” she demanded at
+last, “to win my eternal gratitude? Prove to me that I am better than I
+suppose.”
+
+“I should have first to know what you really suppose.”
+
+She shook her head. “It would n’t do. You would be horrified to learn
+even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of
+evil displayed in my very mistakes.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Rowland, “I will ask no questions. But, at a venture,
+I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very
+good.”
+
+“Can it be, can it be,” she asked, “that you too are trying to flatter
+me? I thought you and I had fallen, from the first, into rather a
+truth-speaking vein.”
+
+“Oh, I have not abandoned it!” said Rowland; and he determined, since he
+had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage farther. The
+opportunity seemed excellent. But while he was hesitating as to just how
+to begin, the young girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in
+her lap, “Please tell me about your religion.”
+
+“Tell you about it? I can’t!” said Rowland, with a good deal of
+emphasis.
+
+She flushed a little. “Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot be put into
+words, nor communicated to my base ears?”
+
+“It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can’t detach
+myself from it sufficiently to talk about it.”
+
+“Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive. It should
+wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to sway all hearts!”
+
+“One’s religion takes the color of one’s general disposition. I am not
+aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent.”
+
+“Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair! I
+am sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it, can
+be terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before
+you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of
+anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you
+know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those
+castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge them in this
+life?”
+
+“I don’t know it, any more than any one knows the contrary. But one’s
+religion is extremely ingenious in doing without knowledge.”
+
+“In such a world as this it certainly needs to be!”
+
+Rowland smiled. “What is your particular quarrel with this world?”
+
+“It ‘s a general quarrel. Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent. We
+all seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque. It all comes
+over me here so dismally! The very atmosphere of this cold, deserted
+church seems to mock at one’s longing to believe in something. Who cares
+for it now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously? Poor stupid Assunta
+there gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does n’t understand, and
+you and I, proper, passionless tourists, come lounging in to rest from
+a walk. And yet the Catholic church was once the proudest institution
+in the world, and had quite its own way with men’s souls. When such a
+mighty structure as that turns out to have a flaw, what faith is one to
+put in one’s poor little views and philosophies? What is right and what
+is wrong? What is one really to care for? What is the proper rule of
+life? I am tired of trying to discover, and I suspect it ‘s not worth
+the trouble. Live as most amuses you!”
+
+“Your perplexities are so terribly comprehensive,” said Rowland,
+smiling, “that one hardly knows where to meet them first.”
+
+“I don’t care much for anything you can say, because it ‘s sure to be
+half-hearted. You are not in the least contented, yourself.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+“Oh, I am an observer!”
+
+“No one is absolutely contented, I suppose, but I assure you I complain
+of nothing.”
+
+“So much the worse for your honesty. To begin with, you are in love.”
+
+“You would not have me complain of that!”
+
+“And it does n’t go well. There are grievous obstacles. So much I know!
+You need n’t protest; I ask no questions. You will tell no one--me least
+of all. Why does one never see you?”
+
+“Why, if I came to see you,” said Rowland, deliberating, “it would n’t
+be, it could n’t be, for a trivial reason--because I had not been in a
+month, because I was passing, because I admire you. It would be because
+I should have something very particular to say. I have not come, because
+I have been slow in making up my mind to say it.”
+
+“You are simply cruel. Something particular, in this ocean of inanities?
+In common charity, speak!”
+
+“I doubt whether you will like it.”
+
+“Oh, I hope to heaven it ‘s not a compliment!”
+
+“It may be called a compliment to your reasonableness. You perhaps
+remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati.”
+
+“Has it been hanging fire all this time? Explode! I promise not to stop
+my ears.”
+
+“It relates to my friend Hudson.” And Rowland paused. She was looking at
+him expectantly; her face gave no sign. “I am rather disturbed in mind
+about him. He seems to me at times to be in an unpromising way.” He
+paused again, but Christina said nothing. “The case is simply this,”
+ he went on. “It was by my advice he renounced his career at home and
+embraced his present one. I made him burn his ships. I brought him to
+Rome, I launched him in the world, and I stand surety, in a measure,
+to--to his mother, for his prosperity. It is not such smooth sailing as
+it might be, and I am inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he
+is to succeed, he must work--quietly, devotedly. It is not news to you,
+I imagine, that Hudson is a great admirer of yours.”
+
+Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not
+of confusion, but of deep deliberation. Surprising frankness had, as a
+general thing, struck Rowland as the key-note of her character, but she
+had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power
+of calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly
+extravagant to call portentous. He had of course asked himself how far
+it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs
+of a cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had
+an uncomfortable analogy with the shrewdness that uses a cat’s paw and
+lets it risk being singed. But he decided that even rigid discretion
+is not bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation,
+and Christina presently reassured him as to the limits of her
+susceptibility. “Mr. Hudson is in love with me!” she said.
+
+Rowland flinched a trifle. Then--“Am I,” he asked, “from this point of
+view of mine, to be glad or sorry?”
+
+“I don’t understand you.”
+
+“Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?”
+
+She hesitated a moment. “You wish him to be great in his profession? And
+for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?”
+
+“Decidedly. I don’t say it ‘s a general rule, but I think it is a rule
+for him.”
+
+“So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?”
+
+“He would at least do himself justice.”
+
+“And by that you mean a great deal?”
+
+“A great deal.”
+
+Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked
+and polished slabs of the pavement. At last, looking up, “You have not
+forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged?”
+
+“By no means.”
+
+“He is still engaged, then?”
+
+“To the best of my belief.”
+
+“And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by
+something I can do for him?”
+
+“What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should
+be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him.
+Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless
+time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don’t know your own mind
+very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense
+of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I
+might not say the great word.”
+
+“You need n’t; I know it. I am a horrible coquette.”
+
+“No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity.
+I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend.”
+
+“There ‘s nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble.”
+
+Rowland’s brow contracted impatiently. “I cannot imagine it, then!” he
+affirmed.
+
+Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, “I am not so bad as you
+think,” she said.
+
+“It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether
+circumstances don’t make the thing an extreme improbability.”
+
+“Worse and worse. I can be bullied, then, or bribed!”
+
+“You are not so candid,” said Rowland, “as you pretend to be. My feeling
+is this. Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the
+stimulus of strong emotion, of passion. He’s better without it; he’s
+emotional and passionate enough when he ‘s left to himself. The sooner
+passion is at rest, therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work,
+and the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more,
+the better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him, I should
+have nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere. But I strongly
+suspect you don’t, and therefore I would suggest, most respectfully,
+that you should let him alone.”
+
+“And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him for ever
+more?”
+
+“Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier. He will
+be better able to concentrate himself.”
+
+“What is he doing now? Wherein does he dissatisfy you?”
+
+“I can hardly say. He ‘s like a watch that ‘s running down. He is moody,
+desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic.”
+
+“Heavens, what a list! And it ‘s all poor me?”
+
+“No, not all. But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you
+are a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others.”
+
+Christina raised her hand to her eyes, and bent her head thoughtfully.
+Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather
+surprised him by her gentleness. At last, without moving, “If I were to
+marry him,” she asked, “what would have become of his fiancee?”
+
+“I am bound to suppose that she would be extremely unhappy.”
+
+Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make her
+reflections, left his place and strolled away. Poor Assunta, sitting
+patiently on a stone bench, and unprovided, on this occasion, with
+military consolation, gave him a bright, frank smile, which might have
+been construed as an expression of regret for herself, and of sympathy
+for her mistress. Rowland presently seated himself again near Christina.
+
+“What do you think,” she asked, looking at him, “of your friend’s
+infidelity?”
+
+“I don’t like it.”
+
+“Was he very much in love with her?”
+
+“He asked her to marry him. You may judge.”
+
+“Is she rich?”
+
+“No, she is poor.”
+
+“Is she very much in love with him?”
+
+“I know her too little to say.”
+
+She paused again, and then resumed: “You have settled in your mind,
+then, that I will never seriously listen to him?”
+
+“I think it unlikely, until the contrary is proved.”
+
+“How shall it be proved? How do you know what passes between us?”
+
+“I can judge, of course, but from appearance; but, like you, I am an
+observer. Hudson has not at all the air of a prosperous suitor.”
+
+“If he is depressed, there is a reason. He has a bad conscience. One
+must hope so, at least. On the other hand, simply as a friend,” she
+continued gently, “you think I can do him no good?”
+
+The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty, as she made this
+remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland had an uncomfortable
+sense of being put at a disadvantage. “There are doubtless many good
+things you might do, if you had proper opportunity,” he said. “But you
+seem to be sailing with a current which leaves you little leisure for
+quiet benevolence. You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which
+a poor artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you.”
+
+“In plain English, I am hopelessly frivolous. You put it very
+generously.”
+
+“I won’t hesitate to say all my thought,” said Rowland. “For better or
+worse, you seem to me to belong, both by character and by circumstance,
+to what is called the world, the great world. You are made to ornament
+it magnificently. You are not made to be an artist’s wife.”
+
+“I see. But even from your point of view, that would depend upon the
+artist. Extraordinary talent might make him a member of the great
+world!”
+
+Rowland smiled. “That is very true.”
+
+“If, as it is,” Christina continued in a moment, “you take a low view of
+me--no, you need n’t protest--I wonder what you would think if you knew
+certain things.”
+
+“What things do you mean?”
+
+“Well, for example, how I was brought up. I have had a horrible
+education. There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it,
+since I have turned and judged my circumstances.”
+
+“My dear Miss Light!” Rowland murmured.
+
+She gave a little, quick laugh. “You don’t want to hear? you don’t want
+to have to think about that?”
+
+“Have I a right to? You need n’t justify yourself.”
+
+She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes,
+then fell to musing again. “Is there not some novel or some play,” she
+asked at last, “in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a
+young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?”
+
+“Very likely,” said Rowland. “I hope she consents.”
+
+“I forget. But tell me,” she continued, “shall you consider--admitting
+your proposition--that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that
+he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic,
+sublime--something with a fine name like that?”
+
+Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about
+to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he
+instantly suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides,
+it would not express his meaning.
+
+“You do something I shall greatly respect,” he contented himself with
+saying.
+
+She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid. “What have
+I to do to-day?” she asked.
+
+Assunta meditated. “Eh, it ‘s a very busy day! Fortunately I have a
+better memory than the signorina,” she said, turning to Rowland. She
+began to count on her fingers. “We have to go to the Pie di Marmo to see
+about those laces that were sent to be washed. You said also that you
+wished to say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress.
+You want some moss-rosebuds for to-night, and you won’t get them for
+nothing! You dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman is to
+powder your hair. You ‘re to come home in time to receive, for the
+signora gives a dance. And so away, away till morning!”
+
+“Ah, yes, the moss-roses!” Christina murmured, caressingly. “I must have
+a quantity--at least a hundred. Nothing but buds, eh? You must sew them
+in a kind of immense apron, down the front of my dress. Packed tight
+together, eh? It will be delightfully barbarous. And then twenty more or
+so for my hair. They go very well with powder; don’t you think so?” And
+she turned to Rowland. “I am going en Pompadour.”
+
+“Going where?”
+
+“To the Spanish Embassy, or whatever it is.”
+
+“All down the front, signorina? Dio buono! You must give me time!”
+ Assunta cried.
+
+“Yes, we’ll go!” And she left her place. She walked slowly to the door
+of the church, looking at the pavement, and Rowland could not guess
+whether she was thinking of her apron of moss-rosebuds or of her
+opportunity for moral sublimity. Before reaching the door she turned
+away and stood gazing at an old picture, indistinguishable with
+blackness, over an altar. At last they passed out into the court.
+Glancing at her in the open air, Rowland was startled; he imagined he
+saw the traces of hastily suppressed tears. They had lost time, she
+said, and they must hurry; she sent Assunta to look for a fiacre. She
+remained silent a while, scratching the ground with the point of her
+parasol, and then at last, looking up, she thanked Rowland for his
+confidence in her “reasonableness.” “It ‘s really very comfortable to be
+asked, to be expected, to do something good, after all the horrid things
+one has been used to doing--instructed, commanded, forced to do! I ‘ll
+think over what you have said to me.” In that deserted quarter fiacres
+are rare, and there was some delay in Assunta’s procuring one. Christina
+talked of the church, of the picturesque old court, of that strange,
+decaying corner of Rome. Rowland was perplexed; he was ill at ease.
+At last the fiacre arrived, but she waited a moment longer. “So,
+decidedly,” she suddenly asked, “I can only harm him?”
+
+“You make me feel very brutal,” said Rowland.
+
+“And he is such a fine fellow that it would be really a great pity, eh?”
+
+“I shall praise him no more,” Rowland said.
+
+She turned away quickly, but she lingered still. “Do you remember
+promising me, soon after we first met, that at the end of six months you
+would tell me definitely what you thought of me?”
+
+“It was a foolish promise.”
+
+“You gave it. Bear it in mind. I will think of what you have said to me.
+Farewell.” She stepped into the carriage, and it rolled away. Rowland
+stood for some minutes, looking after it, and then went his way with
+a sigh. If this expressed general mistrust, he ought, three days
+afterward, to have been reassured. He received by the post a note
+containing these words:--
+
+“I have done it. Begin and respect me!
+
+“--C. L.”
+
+To be perfectly satisfactory, indeed, the note required a commentary.
+He called that evening upon Roderick, and found one in the information
+offered him at the door, by the old serving-woman--the startling
+information that the signorino had gone to Naples.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. Provocation
+
+About a month later, Rowland addressed to his cousin Cecilia a letter of
+which the following is a portion:--
+
+... “So much for myself; yet I tell you but a tithe of my own story
+unless I let you know how matters stand with poor Hudson, for he gives
+me more to think about just now than anything else in the world. I need
+a good deal of courage to begin this chapter. You warned me, you know,
+and I made rather light of your warning. I have had all kinds of hopes
+and fears, but hitherto, in writing to you, I have resolutely put the
+hopes foremost. Now, however, my pride has forsaken me, and I should
+like hugely to give expression to a little comfortable despair. I should
+like to say, ‘My dear wise woman, you were right and I was wrong; you
+were a shrewd observer and I was a meddlesome donkey!’ When I think of
+a little talk we had about the ‘salubrity of genius,’ I feel my ears
+tingle. If this is salubrity, give me raging disease! I ‘m pestered to
+death; I go about with a chronic heartache; there are moments when I
+could shed salt tears. There ‘s a pretty portrait of the most placid
+of men! I wish I could make you understand; or rather, I wish you could
+make me! I don’t understand a jot; it ‘s a hideous, mocking mystery; I
+give it up! I don’t in the least give it up, you know; I ‘m incapable
+of giving it up. I sit holding my head by the hour, racking my brain,
+wondering what under heaven is to be done. You told me at Northampton
+that I took the thing too easily; you would tell me now, perhaps, that
+I take it too hard. I do, altogether; but it can’t be helped. Without
+flattering myself, I may say I ‘m sympathetic. Many another man before
+this would have cast his perplexities to the winds and declared that Mr.
+Hudson must lie on his bed as he had made it. Some men, perhaps, would
+even say that I am making a mighty ado about nothing; that I have only
+to give him rope, and he will tire himself out. But he tugs at his rope
+altogether too hard for me to hold it comfortably. I certainly never
+pretended the thing was anything else than an experiment; I promised
+nothing, I answered for nothing; I only said the case was hopeful, and
+that it would be a shame to neglect it. I have done my best, and if
+the machine is running down I have a right to stand aside and let it
+scuttle. Amen, amen! No, I can write that, but I can’t feel it. I can’t
+be just; I can only be generous. I love the poor fellow and I can’t give
+him up. As for understanding him, that ‘s another matter; nowadays I
+don’t believe even you would. One’s wits are sadly pestered over here,
+I assure you, and I ‘m in the way of seeing more than one puzzling
+specimen of human nature. Roderick and Miss Light, between them!...
+Have n’t I already told you about Miss Light? Last winter everything was
+perfection. Roderick struck out bravely, did really great things, and
+proved himself, as I supposed, thoroughly solid. He was strong, he was
+first-rate; I felt perfectly secure and sang private paeans of joy. We
+had passed at a bound into the open sea, and left danger behind. But
+in the summer I began to be puzzled, though I succeeded in not being
+alarmed. When we came back to Rome, however, I saw that the tide had
+turned and that we were close upon the rocks. It is, in fact, another
+case of Ulysses alongside of the Sirens; only Roderick refuses to be
+tied to the mast. He is the most extraordinary being, the strangest
+mixture of qualities. I don’t understand so much force going with so
+much weakness--such a brilliant gift being subject to such lapses. The
+poor fellow is incomplete, and it is really not his own fault; Nature
+has given him the faculty out of hand and bidden him be hanged with it.
+I never knew a man harder to advise or assist, if he is not in the mood
+for listening. I suppose there is some key or other to his character,
+but I try in vain to find it; and yet I can’t believe that Providence
+is so cruel as to have turned the lock and thrown the key away. He
+perplexes me, as I say, to death, and though he tires out my patience,
+he still fascinates me. Sometimes I think he has n’t a grain of
+conscience, and sometimes I think that, in a way, he has an excess. He
+takes things at once too easily and too hard; he is both too lax and too
+tense, too reckless and too ambitious, too cold and too passionate. He
+has developed faster even than you prophesied, and for good and evil
+alike he takes up a formidable space. There ‘s too much of him for me,
+at any rate. Yes, he is hard; there is no mistake about that. He ‘s
+inflexible, he ‘s brittle; and though he has plenty of spirit, plenty of
+soul, he has n’t what I call a heart. He has something that Miss Garland
+took for one, and I ‘m pretty sure she ‘s a judge. But she judged on
+scanty evidence. He has something that Christina Light, here, makes
+believe at times that she takes for one, but she is no judge at all! I
+think it is established that, in the long run, egotism makes a failure
+in conduct: is it also true that it makes a failure in the arts?...
+Roderick’s standard is immensely high; I must do him that justice. He
+will do nothing beneath it, and while he is waiting for inspiration, his
+imagination, his nerves, his senses must have something to amuse them.
+This is a highly philosophical way of saying that he has taken to
+dissipation, and that he has just been spending a month at Naples--a
+city where ‘pleasure’ is actively cultivated--in very bad company.
+Are they all like that, all the men of genius? There are a great many
+artists here who hammer away at their trade with exemplary industry; in
+fact I am surprised at their success in reducing the matter to a steady,
+daily grind: but I really don’t think that one of them has his exquisite
+quality of talent. It is in the matter of quantity that he has broken
+down. The bottle won’t pour; he turns it upside down; it ‘s no use!
+Sometimes he declares it ‘s empty--that he has done all he was made to
+do. This I consider great nonsense; but I would nevertheless take him on
+his own terms if it was only I that was concerned. But I keep thinking
+of those two praying, trusting neighbors of yours, and I feel wretchedly
+like a swindler. If his working mood came but once in five years I would
+willingly wait for it and maintain him in leisure, if need be, in the
+intervals; but that would be a sorry account to present to them. Five
+years of this sort of thing, moreover, would effectually settle the
+question. I wish he were less of a genius and more of a charlatan! He ‘s
+too confoundedly all of one piece; he won’t throw overboard a grain
+of the cargo to save the rest. Fancy him thus with all his brilliant
+personal charm, his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a
+nervous nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there
+is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably
+foolish last summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a
+while he was steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled
+over. Now, literally, he ‘s lying prone. He came into my room last
+night, miserably tipsy. I assure you, it did n’t amuse me..... About
+Miss Light it ‘s a long story. She is one of the great beauties of all
+time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to
+see. Her complexion, her glance, her step, her dusky tresses, may have
+been seen before in a goddess, but never in a woman. And you may take
+this for truth, because I ‘m not in love with her. On the contrary! Her
+education has been simply infernal. She is corrupt, perverse, as proud
+as the queen of Sheba, and an appalling coquette; but she is generous,
+and with patience and skill you may enlist her imagination in a good
+cause as well as in a bad one. The other day I tried to manipulate it a
+little. Chance offered me an interview to which it was possible to give
+a serious turn, and I boldly broke ground and begged her to suffer
+my poor friend to go in peace. After a good deal of finessing she
+consented, and the next day, with a single word, packed him off to
+Naples to drown his sorrow in debauchery. I have come to the conclusion
+that she is more dangerous in her virtuous moods than in her vicious
+ones, and that she probably has a way of turning her back which is the
+most provoking thing in the world. She ‘s an actress, she could n’t
+forego doing the thing dramatically, and it was the dramatic touch that
+made it fatal. I wished her, of course, to let him down easily; but
+she desired to have the curtain drop on an attitude, and her attitudes
+deprive inflammable young artists of their reason..... Roderick made an
+admirable bust of her at the beginning of the winter, and a dozen women
+came rushing to him to be done, mutatis mutandis, in the same style.
+They were all great ladies and ready to take him by the hand, but he
+told them all their faces did n’t interest him, and sent them away
+vowing his destruction.”
+
+At this point of his long effusion, Rowland had paused and put by his
+letter. He kept it three days and then read it over. He was disposed at
+first to destroy it, but he decided finally to keep it, in the hope that
+it might strike a spark of useful suggestion from the flint of Cecilia’s
+good sense. We know he had a talent for taking advice. And then it might
+be, he reflected, that his cousin’s answer would throw some light on
+Mary Garland’s present vision of things. In his altered mood he added
+these few lines:--
+
+“I unburdened myself the other day of this monstrous load of perplexity;
+I think it did me good, and I let it stand. I was in a melancholy
+muddle, and I was trying to work myself free. You know I like
+discussion, in a quiet way, and there is no one with whom I can have it
+as quietly as with you, most sagacious of cousins! There is an excellent
+old lady with whom I often chat, and who talks very much to the point.
+But Madame Grandoni has disliked Roderick from the first, and if I were
+to take her advice I would wash my hands of him. You will laugh at me
+for my long face, but you would do that in any circumstances. I am half
+ashamed of my letter, for I have a faith in my friend that is deeper
+than my doubts. He was here last evening, talking about the Naples
+Museum, the Aristides, the bronzes, the Pompeian frescoes, with such
+a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the ultimate future seemed
+blasphemy. I walked back to his lodging with him, and he was as mild
+as midsummer moonlight. He has the ineffable something that charms and
+convinces; my last word about him shall not be a harsh one.”
+
+Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into his friend’s
+studio, he found Roderick suffering from the grave infliction of a visit
+from Mr. Leavenworth. Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being
+bored, and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation. He had
+lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an
+image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life. The real lazzarone, he
+had admitted, was a vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone--and his own
+had been subtly idealized--was a precursor of the millennium.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying gaze to
+the figure.
+
+“Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?” he sympathetically
+observed.
+
+“Oh no,” said Roderick seriously, “he ‘s not dying, he ‘s only drunk!”
+
+“Ah, but intoxication, you know,” Mr. Leavenworth rejoined, “is not a
+proper subject for sculpture. Sculpture should not deal with transitory
+attitudes.”
+
+“Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude! Nothing is more
+permanent, more sculpturesque, more monumental!”
+
+“An entertaining paradox,” said Mr. Leavenworth, “if we had time to
+exercise our wits upon it. I remember at Florence an intoxicated figure
+by Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration of a
+great mind. I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever. I have traveled
+through Europe on cold water. The most varied and attractive lists of
+wines are offered me, but I brush them aside. No cork has ever been
+drawn at my command!”
+
+“The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set
+of muscles,” said Roderick. “I think I will make a figure in that
+position.”
+
+“A Bacchus, realistically treated! My dear young friend, never trifle
+with your lofty mission. Spotless marble should represent virtue, not
+vice!” And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise
+the spirit of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely
+benignity to another object--a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light.
+“An ideal head, I presume,” he went on; “a fanciful representation of
+one of the pagan goddesses--a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad? I often
+regret that our American artists should not boldly cast off that extinct
+nomenclature.”
+
+“She is neither a naiad nor a dryad,” said Roderick, “and her name is as
+good as yours or mine.”
+
+“You call her”--Mr. Leavenworth blandly inquired.
+
+“Miss Light,” Rowland interposed, in charity.
+
+“Ah, our great American beauty! Not a pagan goddess--an American,
+Christian lady! Yes, I have had the pleasure of conversing with Miss
+Light. Her conversational powers are not remarkable, but her beauty
+is of a high order. I observed her the other evening at a large party,
+where some of the proudest members of the European aristocracy were
+present--duchesses, princesses, countesses, and others distinguished by
+similar titles. But for beauty, grace, and elegance my fair countrywoman
+left them all nowhere. What women can compare with a truly refined
+American lady? The duchesses the other night had no attractions for my
+eyes; they looked coarse and sensual! It seemed to me that the tyranny
+of class distinctions must indeed be terrible when such countenances
+could inspire admiration. You see more beautiful girls in an hour on
+Broadway than in the whole tour of Europe. Miss Light, now, on Broadway,
+would excite no particular remark.”
+
+“She has never been there!” cried Roderick, triumphantly.
+
+“I ‘m afraid she never will be there. I suppose you have heard the news
+about her.”
+
+“What news?” Roderick had stood with his back turned, fiercely poking
+at his lazzarone; but at Mr. Leavenworth’s last words he faced quickly
+about.
+
+“It ‘s the news of the hour, I believe. Miss Light is admired by the
+highest people here. They tacitly recognize her superiority. She has had
+offers of marriage from various great lords. I was extremely happy
+to learn this circumstance, and to know that they all had been left
+sighing. She has not been dazzled by their titles and their gilded
+coronets. She has judged them simply as men, and found them wanting. One
+of them, however, a young Neapolitan prince, I believe, has after a long
+probation succeeded in making himself acceptable. Miss Light has at last
+said yes, and the engagement has just been announced. I am not generally
+a retailer of gossip of this description, but the fact was alluded to
+an hour ago by a lady with whom I was conversing, and here, in Europe,
+these conversational trifles usurp the lion’s share of one’s attention.
+I therefore retained the circumstance. Yes, I regret that Miss Light
+should marry one of these used-up foreigners. Americans should stand by
+each other. If she wanted a brilliant match we could have fixed it for
+her. If she wanted a fine fellow--a fine, sharp, enterprising modern
+man--I would have undertaken to find him for her without going out of
+the city of New York. And if she wanted a big fortune, I would have
+found her twenty that she would have had hard work to spend: money
+down--not tied up in fever-stricken lands and worm-eaten villas! What is
+the name of the young man? Prince Castaway, or some such thing!”
+
+It was well for Mr. Leavenworth that he was a voluminous and
+imperturbable talker; for the current of his eloquence floated him
+past the short, sharp, startled cry with which Roderick greeted his
+“conversational trifle.” The young man stood looking at him with parted
+lips and an excited eye.
+
+“The position of woman,” Mr. Leavenworth placidly resumed, “is certainly
+a very degraded one in these countries. I doubt whether a European
+princess can command the respect which in our country is exhibited
+toward the obscurest females. The civilization of a country should
+be measured by the deference shown to the weaker sex. Judged by that
+standard, where are they, over here?”
+
+Though Mr. Leavenworth had not observed Roderick’s emotion, it was not
+lost upon Rowland, who was making certain uncomfortable reflections upon
+it. He saw that it had instantly become one with the acute irritation
+produced by the poor gentleman’s oppressive personality, and that
+an explosion of some sort was imminent. Mr. Leavenworth, with calm
+unconsciousness, proceeded to fire the mine.
+
+“And now for our Culture!” he said in the same sonorous tones, demanding
+with a gesture the unveiling of the figure, which stood somewhat apart,
+muffled in a great sheet.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with concentrated rancor, and
+then strode to the statue and twitched off the cover. Mr. Leavenworth
+settled himself into his chair with an air of flattered proprietorship,
+and scanned the unfinished image. “I can conscientiously express myself
+as gratified with the general conception,” he said. “The figure has
+considerable majesty, and the countenance wears a fine, open expression.
+The forehead, however, strikes me as not sufficiently intellectual. In
+a statue of Culture, you know, that should be the great point. The eye
+should instinctively seek the forehead. Could n’t you heighten it up a
+little?”
+
+Roderick, for all answer, tossed the sheet back over the statue. “Oblige
+me, sir,” he said, “oblige me! Never mention that thing again.”
+
+“Never mention it? Why my dear sir”--
+
+“Never mention it. It ‘s an abomination!”
+
+“An abomination! My Culture!”
+
+“Yours indeed!” cried Roderick. “It ‘s none of mine. I disown it.”
+
+“Disown it, if you please,” said Mr. Leavenworth sternly, “but finish it
+first!”
+
+“I ‘d rather smash it!” cried Roderick.
+
+“This is folly, sir. You must keep your engagements.”
+
+“I made no engagement. A sculptor is n’t a tailor. Did you ever hear of
+inspiration? Mine is dead! And it ‘s no laughing matter. You yourself
+killed it.”
+
+“I--I--killed your inspiration?” cried Mr. Leavenworth, with the accent
+of righteous wrath. “You ‘re a very ungrateful boy! If ever I encouraged
+and cheered and sustained any one, I ‘m sure I have done so to you.”
+
+“I appreciate your good intentions, and I don’t wish to be uncivil. But
+your encouragement is--superfluous. I can’t work for you!”
+
+“I call this ill-humor, young man!” said Mr. Leavenworth, as if he had
+found the damning word.
+
+“Oh, I ‘m in an infernal humor!” Roderick answered.
+
+“Pray, sir, is it my infelicitous allusion to Miss Light’s marriage?”
+
+“It ‘s your infelicitous everything! I don’t say that to offend you;
+I beg your pardon if it does. I say it by way of making our rupture
+complete, irretrievable!”
+
+Rowland had stood by in silence, but he now interfered. “Listen to me,”
+ he said, laying his hand on Roderick’s arm. “You are standing on the
+edge of a gulf. If you suffer anything that has passed to interrupt
+your work on that figure, you take your plunge. It ‘s no matter that
+you don’t like it; you will do the wisest thing you ever did if you make
+that effort of will necessary for finishing it. Destroy the statue then,
+if you like, but make the effort. I speak the truth!”
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes that still inexorableness made almost
+tender. “You too!” he simply said.
+
+Rowland felt that he might as well attempt to squeeze water from a
+polished crystal as hope to move him. He turned away and walked into the
+adjoining room with a sense of sickening helplessness. In a few moments
+he came back and found that Mr. Leavenworth had departed--presumably in
+a manner somewhat portentous. Roderick was sitting with his elbows on
+his knees and his head in his hands.
+
+Rowland made one more attempt. “You decline to think of what I urge?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“There’s one more point--that you shouldn’t, for a month, go to Mrs.
+Light’s.”
+
+“I go there this evening.”
+
+“That too is an utter folly.”
+
+“There are such things as necessary follies.”
+
+“You are not reflecting; you are speaking in passion.”
+
+“Why then do you make me speak?”
+
+Rowland meditated a moment. “Is it also necessary that you should lose
+the best friend you have?”
+
+Roderick looked up. “That ‘s for you to settle!”
+
+His best friend clapped on his hat and strode away; in a moment the door
+closed behind him. Rowland walked hard for nearly a couple of hours.
+He passed up the Corso, out of the Porta del Popolo and into the Villa
+Borghese, of which he made a complete circuit. The keenness of his
+irritation subsided, but it left him with an intolerable weight upon his
+heart. When dusk had fallen, he found himself near the lodging of his
+friend Madame Grandoni. He frequently paid her a visit during the hour
+which preceded dinner, and he now ascended her unillumined staircase and
+rang at her relaxed bell-rope with an especial desire for diversion. He
+was told that, for the moment, she was occupied, but that if he would
+come in and wait, she would presently be with him. He had not sat
+musing in the firelight for ten minutes when he heard the jingle of the
+door-bell and then a rustling and murmuring in the hall. The door of the
+little saloon opened, but before the visitor appeared he had recognized
+her voice. Christina Light swept forward, preceded by her poodle, and
+almost filling the narrow parlor with the train of her dress. She was
+colored here and there by the flicking firelight.
+
+“They told me you were here,” she said simply, as she took a seat.
+
+“And yet you came in? It is very brave,” said Rowland.
+
+“You are the brave one, when one thinks of it! Where is the padrona?”
+
+“Occupied for the moment. But she is coming.”
+
+“How soon?”
+
+“I have already waited ten minutes; I expect her from moment to moment.”
+
+“Meanwhile we are alone?” And she glanced into the dusky corners of the
+room.
+
+“Unless Stenterello counts,” said Rowland.
+
+“Oh, he knows my secrets--unfortunate brute!” She sat silent awhile,
+looking into the firelight. Then at last, glancing at Rowland, “Come!
+say something pleasant!” she exclaimed.
+
+“I have been very happy to hear of your engagement.”
+
+“No, I don’t mean that. I have heard that so often, only since
+breakfast, that it has lost all sense. I mean some of those unexpected,
+charming things that you said to me a month ago at Saint Cecilia’s.”
+
+“I offended you, then,” said Rowland. “I was afraid I had.”
+
+“Ah, it occurred to you? Why have n’t I seen you since?”
+
+“Really, I don’t know.” And he began to hesitate for an explanation. “I
+have called, but you have never been at home.”
+
+“You were careful to choose the wrong times. You have a way with a
+poor girl! You sit down and inform her that she is a person with whom
+a respectable young man cannot associate without contamination; your
+friend is a very nice fellow, you are very careful of his morals, you
+wish him to know none but nice people, and you beg me therefore to
+desist. You request me to take these suggestions to heart and to act
+upon them as promptly as possible. They are not particularly flattering
+to my vanity. Vanity, however, is a sin, and I listen submissively,
+with an immense desire to be just. If I have many faults I know it, in
+a general way, and I try on the whole to do my best. ‘Voyons,’ I say
+to myself, ‘it is n’t particularly charming to hear one’s self made out
+such a low person, but it is worth thinking over; there ‘s probably a
+good deal of truth in it, and at any rate we must be as good a girl as
+we can. That ‘s the great point! And then here ‘s a magnificent chance
+for humility. If there ‘s doubt in the matter, let the doubt count
+against one’s self. That is what Saint Catherine did, and Saint Theresa,
+and all the others, and they are said to have had in consequence the
+most ineffable joys. Let us go in for a little ineffable joy!’ I tried
+it; I swallowed my rising sobs, I made you my courtesy, I determined I
+would not be spiteful, nor passionate, nor vengeful, nor anything that
+is supposed to be particularly feminine. I was a better girl than
+you made out--better at least than you thought; but I would let the
+difference go and do magnificently right, lest I should not do right
+enough. I thought of it a deal for six hours when I know I did n’t seem
+to be, and then at last I did it! Santo Dio!”
+
+“My dear Miss Light, my dear Miss Light!” said Rowland, pleadingly.
+
+“Since then,” the young girl went on, “I have been waiting for the
+ineffable joys. They have n’t yet turned up!”
+
+“Pray listen to me!” Rowland urged.
+
+“Nothing, nothing, nothing has come of it. I have passed the dreariest
+month of my life!”
+
+“My dear Miss Light, you are a very terrible young lady!” cried Rowland.
+
+“What do you mean by that?”
+
+“A good many things. We ‘ll talk them over. But first, forgive me if I
+have offended you!”
+
+She looked at him a moment, hesitating, and then thrust her hands into
+her muff. “That means nothing. Forgiveness is between equals, and you
+don’t regard me as your equal.”
+
+“Really, I don’t understand!”
+
+Christina rose and moved for a moment about the room. Then turning
+suddenly, “You don’t believe in me!” she cried; “not a grain! I don’t
+know what I would not give to force you to believe in me!”
+
+Rowland sprang up, protesting, but before he had time to go far one of
+the scanty portieres was raised, and Madame Grandoni came in, pulling
+her wig straight. “But you shall believe in me yet,” murmured Christina,
+as she passed toward her hostess.
+
+Madame Grandoni turned tenderly to Christina. “I must give you a very
+solemn kiss, my dear; you are the heroine of the hour. You have really
+accepted him, eh?”
+
+“So they say!”
+
+“But you ought to know best.”
+
+“I don’t know--I don’t care!” She stood with her hand in Madame
+Grandoni’s, but looking askance at Rowland.
+
+“That ‘s a pretty state of mind,” said the old lady, “for a young person
+who is going to become a princess.”
+
+Christina shrugged her shoulders. “Every one expects me to go into
+ecstacies over that! Could anything be more vulgar? They may chuckle by
+themselves! Will you let me stay to dinner?”
+
+“If you can dine on a risotto. But I imagine you are expected at home.”
+
+“You are right. Prince Casamassima dines there, en famille. But I ‘m not
+in his family, yet!”
+
+“Do you know you are very wicked? I have half a mind not to keep you.”
+
+Christina dropped her eyes, reflectively. “I beg you will let me stay,”
+ she said. “If you wish to cure me of my wickedness you must be very
+patient and kind with me. It will be worth the trouble. You must
+show confidence in me.” And she gave another glance at Rowland. Then
+suddenly, in a different tone, “I don’t know what I ‘m saying!” she
+cried. “I am weary, I am more lonely than ever, I wish I were dead!” The
+tears rose to her eyes, she struggled with them an instant, and buried
+her face in her muff; but at last she burst into uncontrollable sobs
+and flung her arms upon Madame Grandoni’s neck. This shrewd woman gave
+Rowland a significant nod, and a little shrug, over the young girl’s
+beautiful bowed head, and then led Christina tenderly away into the
+adjoining room. Rowland, left alone, stood there for an instant,
+intolerably puzzled, face to face with Miss Light’s poodle, who had set
+up a sharp, unearthly cry of sympathy with his mistress. Rowland
+vented his confusion in dealing a rap with his stick at the animal’s
+unmelodious muzzle, and then rapidly left the house. He saw Mrs. Light’s
+carriage waiting at the door, and heard afterwards that Christina went
+home to dinner.
+
+A couple of days later he went, for a fortnight, to Florence. He had
+twenty minds to leave Italy altogether; and at Florence he could at
+least more freely decide upon his future movements. He felt profoundly,
+incurably disgusted. Reflective benevolence stood prudently aside, and
+for the time touched the source of his irritation with no softening
+side-lights.
+
+It was the middle of March, and by the middle of March in Florence the
+spring is already warm and deep. He had an infinite relish for the place
+and the season, but as he strolled by the Arno and paused here and there
+in the great galleries, they failed to soothe his irritation. He was
+sore at heart, and as the days went by the soreness deepened rather than
+healed. He felt as if he had a complaint against fortune; good-natured
+as he was, his good-nature this time quite declined to let it pass. He
+had tried to be wise, he had tried to be kind, he had embarked upon an
+estimable enterprise; but his wisdom, his kindness, his energy, had been
+thrown back in his face. He was disappointed, and his disappointment
+had an angry spark in it. The sense of wasted time, of wasted hope and
+faith, kept him constant company. There were times when the beautiful
+things about him only exasperated his discontent. He went to the Pitti
+Palace, and Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair seemed, in its soft serenity,
+to mock him with the suggestion of unattainable repose. He lingered on
+the bridges at sunset, and knew that the light was enchanting and the
+mountains divine, but there seemed to be something horribly invidious
+and unwelcome in the fact. He felt, in a word, like a man who has been
+cruelly defrauded and who wishes to have his revenge. Life owed him, he
+thought, a compensation, and he would be restless and resentful until he
+found it. He knew--or he seemed to know--where he should find it; but he
+hardly told himself, and thought of the thing under mental protest, as a
+man in want of money may think of certain funds that he holds in trust.
+In his melancholy meditations the idea of something better than all
+this, something that might softly, richly interpose, something that
+might reconcile him to the future, something that might make one’s
+tenure of life deep and zealous instead of harsh and uneven--the idea of
+concrete compensation, in a word--shaped itself sooner or later into the
+image of Mary Garland.
+
+Very odd, you may say, that at this time of day Rowland should still
+be brooding over a plain girl of whom he had had but the lightest of
+glimpses two years before; very odd that so deep an impression should
+have been made by so lightly-pressed an instrument. We must admit the
+oddity and offer simply in explanation that his sentiment apparently
+belonged to that species of emotion of which, by the testimony of the
+poets, the very name and essence is oddity. One night he slept but
+half an hour; he found his thoughts taking a turn which excited him
+portentously. He walked up and down his room half the night. It looked
+out on the Arno; the noise of the river came in at the open window; he
+felt like dressing and going down into the streets. Toward morning
+he flung himself into a chair; though he was wide awake he was less
+excited. It seemed to him that he saw his idea from the outside, that he
+judged it and condemned it; yet it stood there before him, distinct,
+and in a certain way imperious. During the day he tried to banish it
+and forget it; but it fascinated, haunted, at moments frightened him. He
+tried to amuse himself, paid visits, resorted to several rather violent
+devices for diverting his thoughts. If on the morrow he had committed a
+crime, the persons whom he had seen that day would have testified
+that he had talked strangely and had not seemed like himself. He felt
+certainly very unlike himself; long afterwards, in retrospect, he used
+to reflect that during those days he had for a while been literally
+beside himself. His idea persisted; it clung to him like a sturdy
+beggar. The sense of the matter, roughly expressed, was this: If
+Roderick was really going, as he himself had phrased it, to “fizzle
+out,” one might help him on the way--one might smooth the descensus
+Averno. For forty-eight hours there swam before Rowland’s eyes a vision
+of Roderick, graceful and beautiful as he passed, plunging, like a
+diver, from an eminence into a misty gulf. The gulf was destruction,
+annihilation, death; but if death was decreed, why should not the agony
+be brief? Beyond this vision there faintly glimmered another, as in the
+children’s game of the “magic lantern” a picture is superposed on the
+white wall before the last one has quite faded. It represented Mary
+Garland standing there with eyes in which the horror seemed slowly,
+slowly to expire, and hanging, motionless hands which at last made no
+resistance when his own offered to take them. When, of old, a man was
+burnt at the stake it was cruel to have to be present; but if one was
+present it was kind to lend a hand to pile up the fuel and make the
+flames do their work quickly and the smoke muffle up the victim. With
+all deference to your kindness, this was perhaps an obligation you would
+especially feel if you had a reversionary interest in something the
+victim was to leave behind him.
+
+One morning, in the midst of all this, Rowland walked heedlessly out of
+one of the city gates and found himself on the road to Fiesole. It was a
+completely lovely day; the March sun felt like May, as the English poet
+of Florence says; the thick-blossomed shrubs and vines that hung over
+the walls of villa and podere flung their odorous promise into the warm,
+still air. Rowland followed the winding, climbing lanes; lingered, as he
+got higher, beneath the rusty cypresses, beside the low parapets, where
+you look down on the charming city and sweep the vale of the Arno;
+reached the little square before the cathedral, and rested awhile in the
+massive, dusky church; then climbed higher, to the Franciscan convent
+which is poised on the very apex of the mountain. He rang at the little
+gateway; a shabby, senile, red-faced brother admitted him with almost
+maudlin friendliness. There was a dreary chill in the chapel and the
+corridors, and he passed rapidly through them into the delightfully
+steep and tangled old garden which runs wild over the forehead of the
+great hill. He had been in it before, and he was very fond of it. The
+garden hangs in the air, and you ramble from terrace to terrace and
+wonder how it keeps from slipping down, in full consummation of its
+bereaved forlornness, into the nakedly romantic gorge beneath. It was
+just noon when Rowland went in, and after roaming about awhile he flung
+himself in the sun on a mossy stone bench and pulled his hat over his
+eyes. The short shadows of the brown-coated cypresses above him had
+grown very long, and yet he had not passed back through the convent. One
+of the monks, in his faded snuff-colored robe, came wandering out into
+the garden, reading his greasy little breviary. Suddenly he came toward
+the bench on which Rowland had stretched himself, and paused a moment,
+attentively. Rowland was lingering there still; he was sitting with his
+head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. He seemed not to have
+heard the sandaled tread of the good brother, but as the monk remained
+watching him, he at last looked up. It was not the ignoble old man who
+had admitted him, but a pale, gaunt personage, of a graver and more
+ascetic, and yet of a benignant, aspect. Rowland’s face bore the traces
+of extreme trouble. The frate kept his finger in his little book,
+and folded his arms picturesquely across his breast. It can hardly be
+determined whether his attitude, as he bent his sympathetic Italian
+eye upon Rowland, was a happy accident or the result of an exquisite
+spiritual discernment. To Rowland, at any rate, under the emotion of
+that moment, it seemed blessedly opportune. He rose and approached the
+monk, and laid his hand on his arm.
+
+“My brother,” he said, “did you ever see the Devil?”
+
+The frate gazed, gravely, and crossed himself. “Heaven forbid!”
+
+“He was here,” Rowland went on, “here in this lovely garden, as he was
+once in Paradise, half an hour ago. But have no fear; I drove him out.”
+ And Rowland stooped and picked up his hat, which had rolled away into a
+bed of cyclamen, in vague symbolism of an actual physical tussle.
+
+“You have been tempted, my brother?” asked the friar, tenderly.
+
+“Hideously!”
+
+“And you have resisted--and conquered!”
+
+“I believe I have conquered.”
+
+“The blessed Saint Francis be praised! It is well done. If you like, we
+will offer a mass for you.”
+
+“I am not a Catholic,” said Rowland.
+
+The frate smiled with dignity. “That is a reason the more.”
+
+“But it ‘s for you, then, to choose. Shake hands with me,” Rowland
+added; “that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out, to stop a
+moment in your chapel.”
+
+They shook hands and separated. The frate crossed himself, opened his
+book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky. Rowland
+passed back into the convent, and paused long enough in the chapel to
+look for the alms-box. He had had what is vulgarly termed a great scare;
+he believed, very poignantly for the time, in the Devil, and he felt an
+irresistible need to subscribe to any institution which engaged to keep
+him at a distance.
+
+The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards he went in
+search of Roderick. He found him on the Pincian with his back turned to
+the crowd, looking at the sunset. “I went to Florence,” Rowland said,
+“and I thought of going farther; but I came back on purpose to give you
+another piece of advice. Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?”
+
+“Never!” said Roderick.
+
+“The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of
+responsibility to--to those various sacred things you have forgotten, is
+in sending for your mother to join you here.”
+
+Roderick stared. “For my mother?”
+
+“For your mother--and for Miss Garland.”
+
+Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.
+“For Mary Garland--for my mother?” he repeated. “Send for them?”
+
+“Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to
+ask. You are still engaged to Miss Garland?”
+
+Roderick frowned darkly, but assented.
+
+“It would give you pleasure, then, to see her?”
+
+Roderick turned away and for some moments answered nothing. “Pleasure!”
+ he said at last, huskily. “Call it pain.”
+
+“I regard you as a sick man,” Rowland continued. “In such a case Miss
+Garland would say that her place was at your side.”
+
+Roderick looked at him some time askance, mistrustfully. “Is this a
+deep-laid snare?” he asked slowly.
+
+Rowland had come back with all his patience rekindled, but these words
+gave it an almost fatal chill. “Heaven forgive you!” he cried bitterly.
+“My idea has been simply this. Try, in decency, to understand it. I have
+tried to befriend you, to help you, to inspire you with confidence,
+and I have failed. I took you from the hands of your mother and your
+betrothed, and it seemed to me my duty to restore you to their hands.
+That ‘s all I have to say.”
+
+He was going, but Roderick forcibly detained him. It would have been
+but a rough way of expressing it to say that one could never know how
+Roderick would take a thing. It had happened more than once that when
+hit hard, deservedly, he had received the blow with touching gentleness.
+On the other hand, he had often resented the softest taps. The secondary
+effect of Rowland’s present admonition seemed reassuring. “I beg you to
+wait,” he said, “to forgive that shabby speech, and to let me reflect.”
+ And he walked up and down awhile, reflecting. At last he stopped, with
+a look in his face that Rowland had not seen all winter. It was a
+strikingly beautiful look.
+
+“How strange it is,” he said, “that the simplest devices are the last
+that occur to one!” And he broke into a light laugh. “To see Mary
+Garland is just what I want. And my mother--my mother can’t hurt me
+now.”
+
+“You will write, then?”
+
+“I will telegraph. They must come, at whatever cost. Striker can arrange
+it all for them.”
+
+In a couple of days he told Rowland that he had received a telegraphic
+answer to his message, informing him that the two ladies were to sail
+immediately for Leghorn, in one of the small steamers which ply between
+that port and New York. They would arrive, therefore, in less than a
+month. Rowland passed this month of expectation in no very serene frame
+of mind. His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his
+agitated conscience; but there was something intolerable in the thought
+of the suffering to which the event was probably subjecting those
+undefended women. They had scraped together their scanty funds and
+embarked, at twenty-four hours’ notice, upon the dreadful sea, to
+journey tremulously to shores darkened by the shadow of deeper alarms.
+He could only promise himself to be their devoted friend and servant.
+Preoccupied as he was, he was able to observe that expectation,
+with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his
+characteristic singularities. If redemption--Roderick seemed to
+reason--was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride, these
+last moments of error should be doubly erratic. He did nothing; but
+inaction, with him, took on an unwonted air of gentle gayety. He laughed
+and whistled and went often to Mrs. Light’s; though Rowland knew not
+in what fashion present circumstances had modified his relations with
+Christina. The month ebbed away and Rowland daily expected to hear from
+Roderick that he had gone to Leghorn to meet the ship. He heard nothing,
+and late one evening, not having seen his friend in three or four days,
+he stopped at Roderick’s lodging to assure himself that he had gone at
+last. A cab was standing in the street, but as it was a couple of doors
+off he hardly heeded it. The hall at the foot of the staircase was dark,
+like most Roman halls, and he paused in the street-doorway on hearing
+the advancing footstep of a person with whom he wished to avoid coming
+into collision. While he did so he heard another footstep behind him,
+and turning round found that Roderick in person had just overtaken him.
+At the same moment a woman’s figure advanced from within, into the light
+of the street-lamp, and a face, half-startled, glanced at him out of
+the darkness. He gave a cry--it was the face of Mary Garland. Her glance
+flew past him to Roderick, and in a second a startled exclamation broke
+from her own lips. It made Rowland turn again. Roderick stood there,
+pale, apparently trying to speak, but saying nothing. His lips were
+parted and he was wavering slightly with a strange movement--the
+movement of a man who has drunk too much. Then Rowland’s eyes met Miss
+Garland’s again, and her own, which had rested a moment on Roderick’s,
+were formidable!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. Mary Garland
+
+How it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn on his mother’s
+arrival never clearly transpired; for he undertook to give no elaborate
+explanation of his fault. He never indulged in professions (touching
+personal conduct) as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and
+as he would have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to
+embrace his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland’s
+presence, at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of
+him. It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season,
+the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that,
+according to common probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the
+morrow (as he declared that he had intended), he would have had a day or
+two of waiting at Leghorn. Rowland’s silent inference was that
+Christina Light had beguiled him into letting the time slip, and it was
+accompanied with a silent inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously
+or maliciously. He had told her, presumably, that his mother and his
+cousin were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember hereupon
+that she was a young lady of mysterious impulses. Rowland heard in due
+time the story of the adventures of the two ladies from Northampton.
+Miss Garland’s wish, at Leghorn, on finding they were left at the mercy
+of circumstances, had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an
+answer; for she knew that their arrival was a trifle premature. But Mrs.
+Hudson’s maternal heart had taken the alarm. Roderick’s sending for them
+was, to her imagination, a confession of illness, and his not being
+at Leghorn, a proof of it; an hour’s delay was therefore cruel both to
+herself and to him. She insisted on immediate departure; and, unskilled
+as they were in the mysteries of foreign (or even of domestic) travel,
+they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome. They had arrived late
+in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns, had got into a cab
+and proceeded to Roderick’s lodging. At the door, poor Mrs. Hudson’s
+frightened anxiety had overcome her, and she had sat quaking and crying
+in the vehicle, too weak to move. Miss Garland had bravely gone in,
+groped her way up the dusky staircase, reached Roderick’s door, and,
+with the assistance of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she
+had culled from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage,
+had learned from the old woman who had her cousin’s household economy in
+charge that he was in the best of health and spirits, and had gone forth
+a few hours before with his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.
+
+These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies the
+evening after their arrival. Mrs. Hudson spoke of them at great length
+and with an air of clinging confidence in Rowland which told him how
+faithfully time had served him, in her imagination. But her fright was
+over, though she was still catching her breath a little, like a person
+dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep. She was excessively
+bewildered and confused, and seemed more than ever to demand a tender
+handling from her friends. Before Miss Garland, Rowland was distinctly
+conscious that he trembled. He wondered extremely what was going on in
+her mind; what was her silent commentary on the incidents of the night
+before. He wondered all the more, because he immediately perceived that
+she was greatly changed since their parting, and that the change was by
+no means for the worse. She was older, easier, more free, more like
+a young woman who went sometimes into company. She had more beauty
+as well, inasmuch as her beauty before had been the depth of her
+expression, and the sources from which this beauty was fed had in
+these two years evidently not wasted themselves. Rowland felt almost
+instantly--he could hardly have said why: it was in her voice, in her
+tone, in the air--that a total change had passed over her attitude
+towards himself. She trusted him now, absolutely; whether or no she
+liked him, she believed he was solid. He felt that during the coming
+weeks he would need to be solid. Mrs. Hudson was at one of the smaller
+hotels, and her sitting-room was frugally lighted by a couple of
+candles. Rowland made the most of this dim illumination to try to detect
+the afterglow of that frightened flash from Miss Garland’s eyes
+the night before. It had been but a flash, for what provoked it had
+instantly vanished. Rowland had murmured a rapturous blessing on
+Roderick’s head, as he perceived him instantly apprehend the situation.
+If he had been drinking, its gravity sobered him on the spot; in a
+single moment he collected his wits. The next moment, with a ringing,
+jovial cry, he was folding the young girl in his arms, and the next
+he was beside his mother’s carriage, half smothered in her sobs and
+caresses. Rowland had recommended a hotel close at hand, and had then
+discreetly withdrawn. Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly,
+and Miss Garland’s brow was serene. It was serene now, twenty-four hours
+later; but nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment.
+What had become of it? It had dropped down deep into her memory, and
+it was lying there for the present in the shade. But with another
+week, Rowland said to himself, it would leap erect again; the lightest
+friction would strike a spark from it. Rowland thought he had schooled
+himself to face the issue of Mary Garland’s advent, casting it even in
+a tragical phase; but in her personal presence--in which he found a
+poignant mixture of the familiar and the strange--he seemed to face
+it and all that it might bring with it for the first time. In vulgar
+parlance, he stood uneasy in his shoes. He felt like walking on tiptoe,
+not to arouse the sleeping shadows. He felt, indeed, almost like saying
+that they might have their own way later, if they would only allow
+to these first few days the clear light of ardent contemplation. For
+Rowland at last was ardent, and all the bells within his soul were
+ringing bravely in jubilee. Roderick, he learned, had been the whole
+day with his mother, and had evidently responded to her purest trust.
+He appeared to her appealing eyes still unspotted by the world. That
+is what it is, thought Rowland, to be “gifted,” to escape not only the
+superficial, but the intrinsic penalties of misconduct. The two ladies
+had spent the day within doors, resting from the fatigues of travel.
+Miss Garland, Rowland suspected, was not so fatigued as she suffered
+it to be assumed. She had remained with Mrs. Hudson, to attend to her
+personal wants, which the latter seemed to think, now that she was in
+a foreign land, with a southern climate and a Catholic religion, would
+forthwith become very complex and formidable, though as yet they had
+simply resolved themselves into a desire for a great deal of tea and for
+a certain extremely familiar old black and white shawl across her feet,
+as she lay on the sofa. But the sense of novelty was evidently strong
+upon Miss Garland, and the light of expectation was in her eye. She was
+restless and excited; she moved about the room and went often to the
+window; she was observing keenly; she watched the Italian servants
+intently, as they came and went; she had already had a long colloquy
+with the French chambermaid, who had expounded her views on the Roman
+question; she noted the small differences in the furniture, in the food,
+in the sounds that came in from the street. Rowland felt, in all this,
+that her intelligence, here, would have a great unfolding. He wished
+immensely he might have a share in it; he wished he might show her Rome.
+That, of course, would be Roderick’s office. But he promised himself at
+least to take advantage of off-hours.
+
+“It behooves you to appreciate your good fortune,” he said to her. “To
+be young and elastic, and yet old enough and wise enough to discriminate
+and reflect, and to come to Italy for the first time--that is one of the
+greatest pleasures that life offers us. It is but right to remind you of
+it, so that you make the most of opportunity and do not accuse yourself,
+later, of having wasted the precious season.”
+
+Miss Garland looked at him, smiling intently, and went to the window
+again. “I expect to enjoy it,” she said. “Don’t be afraid; I am not
+wasteful.”
+
+“I am afraid we are not qualified, you know,” said Mrs. Hudson. “We are
+told that you must know so much, that you must have read so many books.
+Our taste has not been cultivated. When I was a young lady at school, I
+remember I had a medal, with a pink ribbon, for ‘proficiency in Ancient
+History’--the seven kings, or is it the seven hills? and Quintus Curtius
+and Julius Caesar and--and that period, you know. I believe I have my
+medal somewhere in a drawer, now, but I have forgotten all about the
+kings. But after Roderick came to Italy we tried to learn something
+about it. Last winter Mary used to read ‘Corinne’ to me in the evenings,
+and in the mornings she used to read another book, to herself. What was
+it, Mary, that book that was so long, you know,--in fifteen volumes?”
+
+“It was Sismondi’s Italian Republics,” said Mary, simply.
+
+Rowland could not help laughing; whereupon Mary blushed. “Did you finish
+it?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, and began another--a shorter one--Roscoe’s Leo the Tenth.”
+
+“Did you find them interesting?”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“Do you like history?”
+
+“Some of it.”
+
+“That ‘s a woman’s answer! And do you like art?”
+
+She paused a moment. “I have never seen it!”
+
+“You have great advantages, now, my dear, with Roderick and Mr. Mallet,”
+ said Mrs. Hudson. “I am sure no young lady ever had such advantages. You
+come straight to the highest authorities. Roderick, I suppose, will show
+you the practice of art, and Mr. Mallet, perhaps, if he will be so
+good, will show you the theory. As an artist’s wife, you ought to know
+something about it.”
+
+“One learns a good deal about it, here, by simply living,” said Rowland;
+“by going and coming about one’s daily avocations.”
+
+“Dear, dear, how wonderful that we should be here in the midst of it!”
+ murmured Mrs. Hudson. “To think of art being out there in the streets!
+We did n’t see much of it last evening, as we drove from the depot. But
+the streets were so dark and we were so frightened! But we are very easy
+now; are n’t we, Mary?”
+
+“I am very happy,” said Mary, gravely, and wandered back to the window
+again.
+
+Roderick came in at this moment and kissed his mother, and then
+went over and joined Miss Garland. Rowland sat with Mrs. Hudson, who
+evidently had a word which she deemed of some value for his private ear.
+She followed Roderick with intensely earnest eyes.
+
+“I wish to tell you, sir,” she said, “how very grateful--how very
+thankful--what a happy mother I am! I feel as if I owed it all to you,
+sir. To find my poor boy so handsome, so prosperous, so elegant, so
+famous--and ever to have doubted of you! What must you think of me? You
+‘re our guardian angel, sir. I often say so to Mary.”
+
+Rowland wore, in response to this speech, a rather haggard brow. He
+could only murmur that he was glad she found Roderick looking well.
+He had of course promptly asked himself whether the best discretion
+dictated that he should give her a word of warning--just turn the handle
+of the door through which, later, disappointment might enter. He had
+determined to say nothing, but simply to wait in silence for Roderick to
+find effective inspiration in those confidently expectant eyes. It was
+to be supposed that he was seeking for it now; he remained sometime at
+the window with his cousin. But at last he turned away and came over to
+the fireside with a contraction of the eyebrows which seemed to
+intimate that Miss Garland’s influence was for the moment, at least,
+not soothing. She presently followed him, and for an instant Rowland
+observed her watching him as if she thought him strange. “Strange
+enough,” thought Rowland, “he may seem to her, if he will!” Roderick
+directed his glance to his friend with a certain peremptory air,
+which--roughly interpreted--was equivalent to a request to share the
+intellectual expense of entertaining the ladies. “Good heavens!” Rowland
+cried within himself; “is he already tired of them?”
+
+“To-morrow, of course, we must begin to put you through the mill,”
+ Roderick said to his mother. “And be it hereby known to Mallet that we
+count upon him to turn the wheel.”
+
+“I will do as you please, my son,” said Mrs. Hudson. “So long as I have
+you with me I don’t care where I go. We must not take up too much of Mr.
+Mallet’s time.”
+
+“His time is inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Have
+you, Rowland? If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it!
+Where will you go first? You have your choice--from the Scala Santa to
+the Cloaca Maxima.”
+
+“Let us take things in order,” said Rowland. “We will go first to Saint
+Peter’s. Miss Garland, I hope you are impatient to see Saint Peter’s.”
+
+“I would like to go first to Roderick’s studio,” said Miss Garland.
+
+“It ‘s a very nasty place,” said Roderick. “At your pleasure!”
+
+“Yes, we must see your beautiful things before we can look contentedly
+at anything else,” said Mrs. Hudson.
+
+“I have no beautiful things,” said Roderick. “You may see what there is!
+What makes you look so odd?”
+
+This inquiry was abruptly addressed to his mother, who, in response,
+glanced appealingly at Mary and raised a startled hand to her smooth
+hair.
+
+“No, it ‘s your face,” said Roderick. “What has happened to it these two
+years? It has changed its expression.”
+
+“Your mother has prayed a great deal,” said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+“I did n’t suppose, of course, it was from doing anything bad! It makes
+you a very good face--very interesting, very solemn. It has very fine
+lines in it; something might be done with it.” And Rowland held one of
+the candles near the poor lady’s head.
+
+She was covered with confusion. “My son, my son,” she said with dignity,
+“I don’t understand you.”
+
+In a flash all his old alacrity had come to him. “I suppose a man may
+admire his own mother!” he cried. “If you please, madame, you ‘ll sit to
+me for that head. I see it, I see it! I will make something that a queen
+can’t get done for her.”
+
+Rowland respectfully urged her to assent; he saw Roderick was in the
+vein and would probably do something eminently original. She gave
+her promise, at last, after many soft, inarticulate protests and a
+frightened petition that she might be allowed to keep her knitting.
+
+Rowland returned the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part Roderick
+had assigned to him. It had been arranged that they should go to Saint
+Peter’s. Roderick was in high good-humor, and, in the carriage, was
+watching his mother with a fine mixture of filial and professional
+tenderness. Mrs. Hudson looked up mistrustfully at the tall, shabby
+houses, and grasped the side of the barouche in her hand, as if she
+were in a sail-boat, in dangerous waters. Rowland sat opposite to Miss
+Garland. She was totally oblivious of her companions; from the moment
+the carriage left the hotel, she sat gazing, wide-eyed and absorbed, at
+the objects about them. If Rowland had felt disposed he might have made
+a joke of her intense seriousness. From time to time he told her the
+name of a place or a building, and she nodded, without looking at him.
+When they emerged into the great square between Bernini’s colonnades,
+she laid her hand on Mrs. Hudson’s arm and sank back in the carriage,
+staring up at the vast yellow facade of the church. Inside the
+church, Roderick gave his arm to his mother, and Rowland constituted
+himself the especial guide of Miss Garland. He walked with her slowly
+everywhere, and made the entire circuit, telling her all he knew of
+the history of the building. This was a great deal, but she listened
+attentively, keeping her eyes fixed on the dome. To Rowland himself
+it had never seemed so radiantly sublime as at these moments; he felt
+almost as if he had contrived it himself and had a right to be proud of
+it. He left Miss Garland a while on the steps of the choir, where she
+had seated herself to rest, and went to join their companions. Mrs.
+Hudson was watching a great circle of tattered contadini, who were
+kneeling before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their tatters
+fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort of terrified pity,
+and could not be induced to look at anything else. Rowland went back to
+Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
+
+“Well, what do you think of Europe?” he asked, smiling.
+
+“I think it ‘s horrible!” she said abruptly.
+
+“Horrible?”
+
+“I feel so strangely--I could almost cry.”
+
+“How is it that you feel?”
+
+“So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart,
+in an hour!”
+
+“But, surely, you ‘re pleased--you ‘re interested.”
+
+“I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is
+as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me
+lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little
+narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful.”
+
+“But you did n’t come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow
+little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this.”
+
+“I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that
+golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of
+certain people and things at home. To enjoy, as you say, as these things
+demand of one to enjoy them, is to break with one’s past. And breaking
+is a pain!”
+
+“Don’t mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it
+is your duty. Yours especially!”
+
+“Why mine especially?”
+
+“Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the
+most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are
+extremely intelligent.”
+
+“You don’t know,” said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+“In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you.
+I don’t want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is
+susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it,
+let it go!”
+
+She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of
+the great church. “But what you say,” she said at last, “means change!”
+
+“Change for the better!” cried Rowland.
+
+“How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me
+very frightful to develop,” she added, with her complete smile.
+
+“One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it
+with a good grace as with a bad! Since one can’t escape life, it is
+better to take it by the hand.”
+
+“Is this what you call life?” she asked.
+
+“What do you mean by ‘this’?”
+
+“Saint Peter’s--all this splendor, all Rome--pictures, ruins, statues,
+beggars, monks.”
+
+“It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things
+are impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex
+civilization.”
+
+“An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don’t like that.”
+
+“Don’t conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested
+it. While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful
+things--things that you are made to understand. They won’t leave you as
+they found you; then you can judge. Don’t tell me I know nothing about
+your understanding. I have a right to assume it.”
+
+Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. “I am not sure I understand
+that,” she said.
+
+“I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,” said
+Rowland. “You need n’t be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some
+people is that it is so remarkably small.”
+
+“Oh, it’s large enough; it’s very wonderful. There are things in Rome,
+then,” she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, “that are
+very, very beautiful?”
+
+“Lots of them.”
+
+“Some of the most beautiful things in the world?”
+
+“Unquestionably.”
+
+“What are they? which things have most beauty?”
+
+“That is according to taste. I should say the statues.”
+
+“How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something
+about them?”
+
+“You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But
+to know them is a thing for one’s leisure. The more time you spend among
+them, the more you care for them.” After a moment’s hesitation he went
+on: “Why should you grudge time? It ‘s all in your way, since you are to
+be an artist’s wife.”
+
+“I have thought of that,” she said. “It may be that I shall always live
+here, among the most beautiful things in the world!”
+
+“Very possibly! I should like to see you ten years hence.”
+
+“I dare say I shall seem greatly altered. But I am sure of one thing.”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+“That for the most part I shall be quite the same. I ask nothing better
+than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even
+if they are true, it won’t matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am
+now--a young woman from the country! The fruit of a civilization not old
+and complex, but new and simple.”
+
+“I am delighted to hear it: that ‘s an excellent foundation.”
+
+“Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so
+kindly of it. Therefore I warn you.”
+
+“I am not frightened. I should like vastly to say something to you: Be
+what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you.”
+
+If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but
+she seemed at least slightly disturbed. She proposed that they should
+join their companions.
+
+Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want
+of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic
+temples. “Mary, dear,” she whispered, “suppose we had to kiss that
+dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at
+Northampton, as bright as that! I think it’s so heathenish; but Roderick
+says he thinks it ‘s sublime.”
+
+Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. “It ‘s sublimer than
+anything that your religion asks you to do!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties,” said
+Miss Garland.
+
+“The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and listening to a
+nasal Puritan! I admit that ‘s difficult. But it ‘s not sublime. I am
+speaking of ceremonies, of forms. It is in my line, you know, to make
+much of forms. I think this is a very beautiful one. Could n’t you do
+it?” he demanded, looking at his cousin.
+
+She looked back at him intently and then shook her head. “I think not!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I don’t know; I could n’t!”
+
+During this little discussion our four friends were standing near the
+venerable image of Saint Peter, and a squalid, savage-looking peasant,
+a tattered ruffian of the most orthodox Italian aspect, had been
+performing his devotions before it. He turned away, crossing himself,
+and Mrs. Hudson gave a little shudder of horror.
+
+“After that,” she murmured, “I suppose he thinks he is as good as any
+one! And here is another. Oh, what a beautiful person!”
+
+A young lady had approached the sacred effigy, after having wandered
+away from a group of companions. She kissed the brazen toe, touched it
+with her forehead, and turned round, facing our friends. Rowland then
+recognized Christina Light. He was stupefied: had she suddenly embraced
+the Catholic faith? It was but a few weeks before that she had treated
+him to a passionate profession of indifference. Had she entered the
+church to put herself en regle with what was expected of a Princess
+Casamassima? While Rowland was mentally asking these questions she was
+approaching him and his friends, on her way to the great altar. At first
+she did not perceive them.
+
+Mary Garland had been gazing at her. “You told me,” she said gently, to
+Rowland, “that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things in the
+world. This surely is one of them!”
+
+At this moment Christina’s eye met Rowland’s and before giving him
+any sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at his companions. She saw
+Roderick, but she gave him no bow; she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked
+at Mary Garland. At Mary Garland she looked fixedly, piercingly, from
+head to foot, as the slow pace at which she was advancing made possible.
+Then suddenly, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time,
+she gave him a charming nod, a radiant smile. In a moment he was at her
+side. She stopped, and he stood talking to her; she continued to look at
+Miss Garland.
+
+“Why, Roderick knows her!” cried Mrs. Hudson, in an awe-struck whisper.
+“I supposed she was some great princess.”
+
+“She is--almost!” said Rowland. “She is the most beautiful girl in
+Europe, and Roderick has made her bust.”
+
+“Her bust? Dear, dear!” murmured Mrs. Hudson, vaguely shocked. “What a
+strange bonnet!”
+
+“She has very strange eyes,” said Mary, and turned away.
+
+The two ladies, with Rowland, began to descend toward the door of the
+church. On their way they passed Mrs. Light, the Cavaliere, and the
+poodle, and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which
+these personages stood to Roderick’s young lady.
+
+“Think of it, Mary!” said Mrs. Hudson. “What splendid people he must
+know! No wonder he found Northampton dull!”
+
+“I like the poor little old gentleman,” said Mary.
+
+“Why do you call him poor?” Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
+
+“He seems so!” she answered simply.
+
+As they were reaching the door they were overtaken by Roderick, whose
+interview with Miss Light had perceptibly brightened his eye. “So you
+are acquainted with princesses!” said his mother softly, as they passed
+into the portico.
+
+“Miss Light is not a princess!” said Roderick, curtly.
+
+“But Mr. Mallet says so,” urged Mrs. Hudson, rather disappointed.
+
+“I meant that she was going to be!” said Rowland.
+
+“It ‘s by no means certain that she is even going to be!” Roderick
+answered.
+
+“Ah,” said Rowland, “I give it up!”
+
+Roderick almost immediately demanded that his mother should sit to him,
+at his studio, for her portrait, and Rowland ventured to add another
+word of urgency. If Roderick’s idea really held him, it was an immense
+pity that his inspiration should be wasted; inspiration, in these days,
+had become too precious a commodity. It was arranged therefore that, for
+the present, during the mornings, Mrs. Hudson should place herself at
+her son’s service. This involved but little sacrifice, for the good
+lady’s appetite for antiquities was diminutive and bird-like, the
+usual round of galleries and churches fatigued her, and she was glad
+to purchase immunity from sight-seeing by a regular afternoon drive. It
+became natural in this way that, Miss Garland having her mornings
+free, Rowland should propose to be the younger lady’s guide in whatever
+explorations she might be disposed to make. She said she knew nothing
+about it, but she had a great curiosity, and would be glad to see
+anything that he would show her. Rowland could not find it in his heart
+to accuse Roderick of neglect of the young girl; for it was natural that
+the inspirations of a capricious man of genius, when they came, should
+be imperious; but of course he wondered how Miss Garland felt, as the
+young man’s promised wife, on being thus expeditiously handed over to
+another man to be entertained. However she felt, he was certain he would
+know little about it. There had been, between them, none but indirect
+allusions to her engagement, and Rowland had no desire to discuss it
+more largely; for he had no quarrel with matters as they stood. They
+wore the same delightful aspect through the lovely month of May, and the
+ineffable charm of Rome at that period seemed but the radiant sympathy
+of nature with his happy opportunity. The weather was divine; each
+particular morning, as he walked from his lodging to Mrs. Hudson’s
+modest inn, seemed to have a blessing upon it. The elder lady had
+usually gone off to the studio, and he found Miss Garland sitting alone
+at the open window, turning the leaves of some book of artistic or
+antiquarian reference that he had given her. She always had a smile, she
+was always eager, alert, responsive. She might be grave by nature, she
+might be sad by circumstance, she might have secret doubts and pangs,
+but she was essentially young and strong and fresh and able to enjoy.
+Her enjoyment was not especially demonstrative, but it was curiously
+diligent. Rowland felt that it was not amusement and sensation that she
+coveted, but knowledge--facts that she might noiselessly lay away, piece
+by piece, in the perfumed darkness of her serious mind, so that, under
+this head at least, she should not be a perfectly portionless bride. She
+never merely pretended to understand; she let things go, in her modest
+fashion, at the moment, but she watched them on their way, over the
+crest of the hill, and when her fancy seemed not likely to be missed it
+went hurrying after them and ran breathless at their side, as it were,
+and begged them for the secret. Rowland took an immense satisfaction in
+observing that she never mistook the second-best for the best, and
+that when she was in the presence of a masterpiece, she recognized the
+occasion as a mighty one. She said many things which he thought very
+profound--that is, if they really had the fine intention he suspected.
+This point he usually tried to ascertain; but he was obliged to proceed
+cautiously, for in her mistrustful shyness it seemed to her that
+cross-examination must necessarily be ironical. She wished to know just
+where she was going--what she would gain or lose. This was partly on
+account of a native intellectual purity, a temper of mind that had
+not lived with its door ajar, as one might say, upon the high-road of
+thought, for passing ideas to drop in and out at their pleasure; but had
+made much of a few long visits from guests cherished and honored--guests
+whose presence was a solemnity. But it was even more because she was
+conscious of a sort of growing self-respect, a sense of devoting her
+life not to her own ends, but to those of another, whose life would be
+large and brilliant. She had been brought up to think a great deal of
+“nature” and nature’s innocent laws; but now Rowland had spoken to her
+ardently of culture; her strenuous fancy had responded, and she was
+pursuing culture into retreats where the need for some intellectual
+effort gave a noble severity to her purpose. She wished to be very sure,
+to take only the best, knowing it to be the best. There was something
+exquisite in this labor of pious self-adornment, and Rowland helped it,
+though its fruits were not for him. In spite of her lurking rigidity
+and angularity, it was very evident that a nervous, impulsive sense
+of beauty was constantly at play in her soul, and that her actual
+experience of beautiful things moved her in some very deep places. For
+all that she was not demonstrative, that her manner was simple, and her
+small-talk of no very ample flow; for all that, as she had said, she was
+a young woman from the country, and the country was West Nazareth, and
+West Nazareth was in its way a stubborn little fact, she was feeling
+the direct influence of the great amenities of the world, and they were
+shaping her with a divinely intelligent touch. “Oh exquisite virtue of
+circumstance!” cried Rowland to himself, “that takes us by the hand
+and leads us forth out of corners where, perforce, our attitudes are a
+trifle contracted, and beguiles us into testing mistrusted faculties!”
+ When he said to Mary Garland that he wished he might see her ten years
+hence, he was paying mentally an equal compliment to circumstance and
+to the girl herself. Capacity was there, it could be freely trusted;
+observation would have but to sow its generous seed. “A superior
+woman”--the idea had harsh associations, but he watched it imaging
+itself in the vagueness of the future with a kind of hopeless
+confidence.
+
+They went a great deal to Saint Peter’s, for which Rowland had an
+exceeding affection, a large measure of which he succeeded in infusing
+into his companion. She confessed very speedily that to climb the long,
+low, yellow steps, beneath the huge florid facade, and then to push
+the ponderous leathern apron of the door, to find one’s self confronted
+with that builded, luminous sublimity, was a sensation of which the
+keenness renewed itself with surprising generosity. In those days the
+hospitality of the Vatican had not been curtailed, and it was an easy
+and delightful matter to pass from the gorgeous church to the solemn
+company of the antique marbles. Here Rowland had with his companion a
+great deal of talk, and found himself expounding aesthetics a perte de
+vue. He discovered that she made notes of her likes and dislikes in a
+new-looking little memorandum book, and he wondered to what extent she
+reported his own discourse. These were charming hours. The galleries had
+been so cold all winter that Rowland had been an exile from them; but
+now that the sun was already scorching in the great square between the
+colonnades, where the twin fountains flashed almost fiercely, the marble
+coolness of the long, image-bordered vistas made them a delightful
+refuge. The great herd of tourists had almost departed, and our two
+friends often found themselves, for half an hour at a time, in sole and
+tranquil possession of the beautiful Braccio Nuovo. Here and there was
+an open window, where they lingered and leaned, looking out into the
+warm, dead air, over the towers of the city, at the soft-hued, historic
+hills, at the stately shabby gardens of the palace, or at some sunny,
+empty, grass-grown court, lost in the heart of the labyrinthine pile.
+They went sometimes into the chambers painted by Raphael, and of course
+paid their respects to the Sistine Chapel; but Mary’s evident preference
+was to linger among the statues. Once, when they were standing before
+that noblest of sculptured portraits, the so-called Demosthenes, in the
+Braccio Nuovo, she made the only spontaneous allusion to her projected
+marriage, direct or indirect, that had yet fallen from her lips. “I am
+so glad,” she said, “that Roderick is a sculptor and not a painter.”
+
+The allusion resided chiefly in the extreme earnestness with which the
+words were uttered. Rowland immediately asked her the reason of her
+gladness.
+
+“It ‘s not that painting is not fine,” she said, “but that sculpture is
+finer. It is more manly.”
+
+Rowland tried at times to make her talk about herself, but in this she
+had little skill. She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant
+to social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a
+desire to draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and
+thoughts. He told her his desire and what suggested it. “It appears,
+then,” she said, “that, after all, one can grow at home!”
+
+“Unquestionably, if one has a motive. Your growth, then, was
+unconscious? You did not watch yourself and water your roots?”
+
+She paid no heed to his question. “I am willing to grant,” she said,
+“that Europe is more delightful than I supposed; and I don’t think that,
+mentally, I had been stingy. But you must admit that America is better
+than you have supposed.”
+
+“I have not a fault to find with the country which produced you!”
+ Rowland thought he might risk this, smiling.
+
+“And yet you want me to change--to assimilate Europe, I suppose you
+would call it.”
+
+“I have felt that desire only on general principles. Shall I tell you
+what I feel now? America has made you thus far; let America finish you!
+I should like to ship you back without delay and see what becomes
+of you. That sounds unkind, and I admit there is a cold intellectual
+curiosity in it.”
+
+She shook her head. “The charm is broken; the thread is snapped! I
+prefer to remain here.”
+
+Invariably, when he was inclined to make of something they were talking
+of a direct application to herself, she wholly failed to assist him; she
+made no response. Whereupon, once, with a spark of ardent irritation, he
+told her she was very “secretive.” At this she colored a little, and
+he said that in default of any larger confidence it would at least be
+a satisfaction to make her confess to that charge. But even this
+satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making, two
+or three times afterward, a softly ironical allusion to her slyness. He
+told her that she was what is called in French a sournoise. “Very good,”
+ she answered, almost indifferently, “and now please tell me again--I
+have forgotten it--what you said an ‘architrave’ was.”
+
+It was on the occasion of her asking him a question of this kind that
+he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had
+been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless
+ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. “You are always
+snatching at information,” he said; “you will never consent to have any
+disinterested conversation.”
+
+She frowned a little, as she always did when he arrested their talk upon
+something personal. But this time she assented, and said that she knew
+she was eager for facts. “One must make hay while the sun shines,” she
+added. “I must lay up a store of learning against dark days. Somehow,
+my imagination refuses to compass the idea that I may be in Rome
+indefinitely.”
+
+He knew he had divined her real motives; but he felt that if he might
+have said to her--what it seemed impossible to say--that fortune
+possibly had in store for her a bitter disappointment, she would have
+been capable of answering, immediately after the first sense of pain,
+“Say then that I am laying up resources for solitude!”
+
+But all the accusations were not his. He had been watching, once, during
+some brief argument, to see whether she would take her forefinger out
+of her Murray, into which she had inserted it to keep a certain page.
+It would have been hard to say why this point interested him, for he had
+not the slightest real apprehension that she was dry or pedantic. The
+simple human truth was, the poor fellow was jealous of science.
+In preaching science to her, he had over-estimated his powers of
+self-effacement. Suddenly, sinking science for the moment, she looked at
+him very frankly and began to frown. At the same time she let the Murray
+slide down to the ground, and he was so charmed with this circumstance
+that he made no movement to pick it up.
+
+“You are singularly inconsistent, Mr. Mallet,” she said.
+
+“How?”
+
+“That first day that we were in Saint Peter’s you said things that
+inspired me. You bade me plunge into all this. I was all ready; I only
+wanted a little push; yours was a great one; here I am in mid-ocean! And
+now, as a reward for my bravery, you have repeatedly snubbed me.”
+
+“Distinctly, then,” said Rowland, “I strike you as inconsistent?”
+
+“That is the word.”
+
+“Then I have played my part very ill.”
+
+“Your part? What is your part supposed to have been?”
+
+He hesitated a moment. “That of usefulness, pure and simple.”
+
+“I don’t understand you!” she said; and picking up her Murray, she
+fairly buried herself in it.
+
+That evening he said something to her which necessarily increased her
+perplexity, though it was not uttered with such an intention. “Do you
+remember,” he asked, “my begging you, the other day, to do occasionally
+as I told you? It seemed to me you tacitly consented.”
+
+“Very tacitly.”
+
+“I have never yet really presumed on your consent. But now I would
+like you to do this: whenever you catch me in the act of what you call
+inconsistency, ask me the meaning of some architectural term. I will
+know what you mean; a word to the wise!”
+
+One morning they spent among the ruins of the Palatine, that sunny
+desolation of crumbling, over-tangled fragments, half excavated and half
+identified, known as the Palace of the Caesars. Nothing in Rome is more
+interesting, and no locality has such a confusion of picturesque charms.
+It is a vast, rambling garden, where you stumble at every step on the
+disinterred bones of the past; where damp, frescoed corridors, relics,
+possibly, of Nero’s Golden House, serve as gigantic bowers, and where,
+in the springtime, you may sit on a Latin inscription, in the shade of
+a flowering almond-tree, and admire the composition of the Campagna.
+The day left a deep impression on Rowland’s mind, partly owing to its
+intrinsic sweetness, and partly because his companion, on this occasion,
+let her Murray lie unopened for an hour, and asked several questions
+irrelevant to the Consuls and the Caesars. She had begun by saying
+that it was coming over her, after all, that Rome was a ponderously sad
+place. The sirocco was gently blowing, the air was heavy, she was tired,
+she looked a little pale.
+
+“Everything,” she said, “seems to say that all things are vanity. If one
+is doing something, I suppose one feels a certain strength within one to
+contradict it. But if one is idle, surely it is depressing to live, year
+after year, among the ashes of things that once were mighty. If I were
+to remain here I should either become permanently ‘low,’ as they say, or
+I would take refuge in some dogged daily work.”
+
+“What work?”
+
+“I would open a school for those beautiful little beggars; though I am
+sadly afraid I should never bring myself to scold them.”
+
+“I am idle,” said Rowland, “and yet I have kept up a certain spirit.”
+
+“I don’t call you idle,” she answered with emphasis.
+
+“It is very good of you. Do you remember our talking about that in
+Northampton?”
+
+“During that picnic? Perfectly. Has your coming abroad succeeded, for
+yourself, as well as you hoped?”
+
+“I think I may say that it has turned out as well as I expected.”
+
+“Are you happy?”
+
+“Don’t I look so?”
+
+“So it seems to me. But”--and she hesitated a moment--“I imagine you
+look happy whether you are so or not.”
+
+“I ‘m like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder
+excavated fresco: I am made to grin.”
+
+“Shall you come back here next winter?”
+
+“Very probably.”
+
+“Are you settled here forever?”
+
+“‘Forever’ is a long time. I live only from year to year.”
+
+“Shall you never marry?”
+
+Rowland gave a laugh. “‘Forever’--‘never!’ You handle large ideas. I
+have not taken a vow of celibacy.”
+
+“Would n’t you like to marry?”
+
+“I should like it immensely.”
+
+To this she made no rejoinder: but presently she asked, “Why don’t you
+write a book?”
+
+Rowland laughed, this time more freely. “A book! What book should I
+write?”
+
+“A history; something about art or antiquities.”
+
+“I have neither the learning nor the talent.”
+
+She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said she had supposed
+otherwise. “You ought, at any rate,” she continued in a moment, “to do
+something for yourself.”
+
+“For myself? I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed to live
+for himself”--
+
+“I don’t know how it seems,” she interrupted, “to careless observers.
+But we know--we know that you have lived--a great deal--for us.”
+
+Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words with a
+little jerk.
+
+“She has had that speech on her conscience,” thought Rowland; “she has
+been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her that now was her
+time to make it and have done with it.”
+
+She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with
+due solemnity. “You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel.
+Mrs. Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels. Of course
+Roderick has expressed himself. I have been wanting to thank you too; I
+do, from my heart.”
+
+Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic
+mask much more than the comic. But Miss Garland was not looking at him;
+she had taken up her Murray again.
+
+In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland
+frequently saw her again in the evening. He was apt to spend half an
+hour in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension on the slope of the
+Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly with his mother, was present
+on these occasions. Rowland saw him little at other times, and for
+three weeks no observations passed between them on the subject of Mrs.
+Hudson’s advent. To Rowland’s vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits
+to proceed from the presence of the two ladies remained shrouded in
+mystery. Roderick was peculiarly inscrutable. He was preoccupied with
+his work on his mother’s portrait, which was taking a very happy turn;
+and often, when he sat silent, with his hands in his pockets, his legs
+outstretched, his head thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to
+be supposed that his fancy was hovering about the half-shaped image in
+his studio, exquisite even in its immaturity. He said little, but his
+silence did not of necessity imply disaffection, for he evidently found
+it a deep personal luxury to lounge away the hours in an atmosphere so
+charged with feminine tenderness. He was not alert, he suggested nothing
+in the way of excursions (Rowland was the prime mover in such as were
+attempted), but he conformed passively at least to the tranquil temper
+of the two women, and made no harsh comments nor sombre allusions.
+Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his friend injustice in
+denying him the sentiment of duty. He refused invitations, to Rowland’s
+knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little table-d’hote; wherever
+his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh with religious
+constancy. Mrs. Hudson’s felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable
+tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown. Her
+tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers that
+the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch is an inanimate
+terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust, and that it is even a safe
+audacity to tickle its nose. As to whether the love-knot of which Mary
+Garland had the keeping still held firm, who should pronounce? The young
+girl, as we know, did not wear it on her sleeve. She always sat at
+the table, near the candles, with a piece of needle-work. This was the
+attitude in which Rowland had first seen her, and he thought, now that
+he had seen her in several others, it was not the least becoming.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. The Cavaliere
+
+There befell at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable
+to go to the hotel. Late in the evening of the second one Roderick came
+into his room. In a few moments he announced that he had finished the
+bust of his mother.
+
+“And it ‘s magnificent!” he declared. “It ‘s one of the best things I
+have done.”
+
+“I believe it,” said Rowland. “Never again talk to me about your
+inspiration being dead.”
+
+“Why not? This may be its last kick! I feel very tired. But it ‘s a
+masterpiece, though I do say it. They tell us we owe so much to our
+parents. Well, I ‘ve paid the filial debt handsomely!” He walked up and
+down the room a few moments, with the purpose of his visit evidently
+still undischarged. “There ‘s one thing more I want to say,” he
+presently resumed. “I feel as if I ought to tell you!” He stopped before
+Rowland with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded. “Your
+invention is a failure!”
+
+“My invention?” Rowland repeated.
+
+“Bringing out my mother and Mary.”
+
+“A failure?”
+
+“It ‘s no use! They don’t help me.”
+
+Rowland had fancied that Roderick had no more surprises for him; but he
+was now staring at him, wide-eyed.
+
+“They bore me!” Roderick went on.
+
+“Oh, oh!” cried Rowland.
+
+“Listen, listen!” said Roderick with perfect gentleness. “I am not
+complaining of them; I am simply stating a fact. I am very sorry for
+them; I am greatly disappointed.”
+
+“Have you given them a fair trial?”
+
+“Should n’t you say so? It seems to me I have behaved beautifully.”
+
+“You have done very well; I have been building great hopes on it.”
+
+“I have done too well, then. After the first forty-eight hours my own
+hopes collapsed. But I determined to fight it out; to stand within the
+temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend! Do you want to know the
+result? Another week of it, and I shall begin to hate them. I shall want
+to poison them.”
+
+“Miserable boy!” cried Rowland. “They are the loveliest of women!”
+
+“Very likely! But they mean no more to me than a Bible text to an
+atheist!”
+
+“I utterly fail,” said Rowland, in a moment, “to understand your
+relation to Miss Garland.”
+
+Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides.
+“She adores me! That ‘s my relation.” And he smiled strangely.
+
+“Have you broken your engagement?”
+
+“Broken it? You can’t break a ray of moonshine.”
+
+“Have you absolutely no affection for her?”
+
+Roderick placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment.
+“Dead--dead--dead!” he said at last.
+
+“I wonder,” Rowland asked presently, “if you begin to comprehend the
+beauty of Miss Garland’s character. She is a person of the highest
+merit.”
+
+“Evidently--or I would not have cared for her!”
+
+“Has that no charm for you now?”
+
+“Oh, don’t force a fellow to say rude things!”
+
+“Well, I can only say that you don’t know what you are giving up.”
+
+Roderick gave a quickened glance. “Do you know, so well?”
+
+“I admire her immeasurably.”
+
+Roderick smiled, we may almost say sympathetically. “You have not wasted
+time.”
+
+Rowland’s thoughts were crowding upon him fast. If Roderick was
+resolute, why oppose him? If Mary was to be sacrificed, why, in that
+way, try to save her? There was another way; it only needed a little
+presumption to make it possible. Rowland tried, mentally, to summon
+presumption to his aid; but whether it came or not, it found conscience
+there before it. Conscience had only three words, but they were cogent.
+“For her sake--for her sake,” it dumbly murmured, and Rowland resumed
+his argument. “I don’t know what I would n’t do,” he said, “rather than
+that Miss Garland should suffer.”
+
+“There is one thing to be said,” Roderick answered reflectively. “She is
+very strong.”
+
+“Well, then, if she ‘s strong, believe that with a longer chance, a
+better chance, she will still regain your affection.”
+
+“Do you know what you ask?” cried Roderick. “Make love to a girl I
+hate?”
+
+“You hate?”
+
+“As her lover, I should hate her!”
+
+“Listen to me!” said Rowland with vehemence.
+
+“No, listen you to me! Do you really urge my marrying a woman who would
+bore me to death? I would let her know it in very good season, and then
+where would she be?”
+
+Rowland walked the length of the room a couple of times and then stopped
+suddenly. “Go your way, then! Say all this to her, not to me!”
+
+“To her? I am afraid of her; I want you to help me.”
+
+“My dear Roderick,” said Rowland with an eloquent smile, “I can help you
+no more!”
+
+Roderick frowned, hesitated a moment, and then took his hat. “Oh, well,”
+ he said, “I am not so afraid of her as all that!” And he turned, as if
+to depart.
+
+“Stop!” cried Rowland, as he laid his hand on the door.
+
+Roderick paused and stood waiting, with his irritated brow.
+
+“Come back; sit down there and listen to me. Of anything you were to say
+in your present state of mind you would live most bitterly to repent.
+You don’t know what you really think; you don’t know what you really
+feel. You don’t know your own mind; you don’t do justice to Miss
+Garland. All this is impossible here, under these circumstances. You ‘re
+blind, you ‘re deaf, you ‘re under a spell. To break it, you must leave
+Rome.”
+
+“Leave Rome! Rome was never so dear to me.”
+
+“That ‘s not of the smallest consequence. Leave it instantly.”
+
+“And where shall I go?”
+
+“Go to some place where you may be alone with your mother and Miss
+Garland.”
+
+“Alone? You will not come?”
+
+“Oh, if you desire it, I will come.”
+
+Roderick inclining his head a little, looked at his friend askance. “I
+don’t understand you,” he said; “I wish you liked Miss Garland either a
+little less, or a little more.”
+
+Rowland felt himself coloring, but he paid no heed to Roderick’s speech.
+“You ask me to help you,” he went on. “On these present conditions I can
+do nothing. But if you will postpone all decision as to the continuance
+of your engagement a couple of months longer, and meanwhile leave Rome,
+leave Italy, I will do what I can to ‘help you,’ as you say, in the
+event of your still wishing to break it.”
+
+“I must do without your help then! Your conditions are impossible. I
+will leave Rome at the time I have always intended--at the end of June.
+My rooms and my mother’s are taken till then; all my arrangements are
+made accordingly. Then, I will depart; not before.”
+
+“You are not frank,” said Rowland. “Your real reason for staying has
+nothing to do with your rooms.”
+
+Roderick’s face betrayed neither embarrassment nor resentment. “If I ‘m
+not frank, it ‘s for the first time in my life. Since you know so much
+about my real reason, let me hear it! No, stop!” he suddenly added, “I
+won’t trouble you. You are right, I have a motive. On the twenty-fourth
+of June Miss Light is to be married. I take an immense interest in all
+that concerns her, and I wish to be present at her wedding.”
+
+“But you said the other day at Saint Peter’s that it was by no means
+certain her marriage would take place.”
+
+“Apparently I was wrong: the invitations, I am told, are going out.”
+
+Rowland felt that it would be utterly vain to remonstrate, and that the
+only thing for him was to make the best terms possible. “If I offer no
+further opposition to your waiting for Miss Light’s marriage,” he said,
+“will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period, to
+defer to my judgment--to say nothing that may be a cause of suffering to
+Miss Garland?”
+
+“For a certain period? What period?” Roderick demanded.
+
+“Ah, don’t drive so close a bargain! Don’t you understand that I have
+taken you away from her, that I suffer in every nerve in consequence,
+and that I must do what I can to restore you?”
+
+“Do what you can, then,” said Roderick gravely, putting out his hand.
+“Do what you can!” His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute a
+promise, and upon this they parted.
+
+Roderick’s bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what
+he called the filial debt, was at least a most admirable production.
+Rowland, at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening, and this
+unscrupulous genius immediately began to ask questions about it. “I am
+told our high-flying friend has come down,” he said. “He has been doing
+a queer little old woman.”
+
+“A queer little old woman!” Rowland exclaimed. “My dear sir, she is
+Hudson’s mother.”
+
+“All the more reason for her being queer! It is a bust for terra-cotta,
+eh?”
+
+“By no means; it is for marble.”
+
+“That ‘s a pity. It was described to me as a charming piece of
+quaintness: a little demure, thin-lipped old lady, with her head on
+one side, and the prettiest wrinkles in the world--a sort of fairy
+godmother.”
+
+“Go and see it, and judge for yourself,” said Rowland.
+
+“No, I see I shall be disappointed. It ‘s quite the other thing, the
+sort of thing they put into the campo-santos. I wish that boy would
+listen to me an hour!”
+
+But a day or two later Rowland met him again in the street, and, as
+they were near, proposed they should adjourn to Roderick’s studio.
+He consented, and on entering they found the young master. Roderick’s
+demeanor to Gloriani was never conciliatory, and on this occasion
+supreme indifference was apparently all he had to offer. But Gloriani,
+like a genuine connoisseur, cared nothing for his manners; he cared only
+for his skill. In the bust of Mrs. Hudson there was something almost
+touching; it was an exquisite example of a ruling sense of beauty. The
+poor lady’s small, neat, timorous face had certainly no great character,
+but Roderick had reproduced its sweetness, its mildness, its minuteness,
+its still maternal passion, with the most unerring art. It was perfectly
+unflattered, and yet admirably tender; it was the poetry of fidelity.
+Gloriani stood looking at it a long time most intently. Roderick
+wandered away into the neighboring room.
+
+“I give it up!” said the sculptor at last. “I don’t understand it.”
+
+“But you like it?” said Rowland.
+
+“Like it? It ‘s a pearl of pearls. Tell me this,” he added: “is he very
+fond of his mother; is he a very good son?” And he gave Rowland a sharp
+look.
+
+“Why, she adores him,” said Rowland, smiling.
+
+“That ‘s not an answer! But it ‘s none of my business. Only if I, in his
+place, being suspected of having--what shall I call it?--a cold heart,
+managed to do that piece of work, oh, oh! I should be called a pretty
+lot of names. Charlatan, poseur, arrangeur! But he can do as he chooses!
+My dear young man, I know you don’t like me,” he went on, as Roderick
+came back. “It ‘s a pity; you are strong enough not to care about me at
+all. You are very strong.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Roderick curtly. “I am very weak!”
+
+“I told you last year that you would n’t keep it up. I was a great ass.
+You will!”
+
+“I beg your pardon--I won’t!” retorted Roderick.
+
+“Though I ‘m a great ass, all the same, eh? Well, call me what you will,
+so long as you turn out this sort of thing! I don’t suppose it makes any
+particular difference, but I should like to say now I believe in you.”
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with a strange hardness in
+his face. It flushed slowly, and two glittering, angry tears filled his
+eyes. It was the first time Rowland had ever seen them there; he saw
+them but once again. Poor Gloriani, he was sure, had never in his life
+spoken with less of irony; but to Roderick there was evidently a sense
+of mockery in his profession of faith. He turned away with a muttered,
+passionate imprecation. Gloriani was accustomed to deal with complex
+problems, but this time he was hopelessly puzzled. “What ‘s the matter
+with him?” he asked, simply.
+
+Rowland gave a sad smile, and touched his forehead. “Genius, I suppose.”
+
+Gloriani sent another parting, lingering look at the bust of Mrs.
+Hudson. “Well, it ‘s deuced perfect, it ‘s deuced simple; I do believe
+in him!” he said. “But I ‘m glad I ‘m not a genius. It makes,” he added
+with a laugh, as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his
+back still turned, “it makes a more sociable studio.”
+
+Rowland had purchased, as he supposed, temporary tranquillity for Mary
+Garland; but his own humor in these days was not especially peaceful. He
+was attempting, in a certain sense, to lead the ideal life, and he found
+it, at the least, not easy. The days passed, but brought with them no
+official invitation to Miss Light’s wedding. He occasionally met her,
+and he occasionally met Prince Casamassima; but always separately,
+never together. They were apparently taking their happiness in the
+inexpressive manner proper to people of social eminence. Rowland
+continued to see Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt a confirmed
+affection. He had always talked to her with frankness, but now he made
+her a confidant of all his hidden dejection. Roderick and Roderick’s
+concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural
+course to talk of Mrs. Hudson’s arrival and Miss Garland’s fine smile.
+Madame Grandoni was an intelligent listener, and she lost no time in
+putting his case for him in a nutshell. “At one moment you tell me the
+girl is plain,” she said; “the next you tell me she ‘s pretty. I will
+invite them, and I shall see for myself. But one thing is very clear:
+you are in love with her.”
+
+Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her.
+
+“More than that,” she added, “you have been in love with her these two
+years. There was that certain something about you!... I knew you were a
+mild, sweet fellow, but you had a touch of it more than was natural.
+Why did n’t you tell me at once? You would have saved me a great deal of
+trouble. And poor Augusta Blanchard too!” And herewith Madame Grandoni
+communicated a pertinent fact: Augusta Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth
+were going to make a match. The young lady had been staying for a month
+at Albano, and Mr. Leavenworth had been dancing attendance. The event
+was a matter of course. Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself
+with a failure of attention to Miss Blanchard’s doings, made some such
+observation.
+
+“But you did not find it so!” cried his hostess. “It was a matter of
+course, perhaps, that Mr. Leavenworth, who seems to be going about
+Europe with the sole view of picking up furniture for his ‘home,’ as he
+calls it, should think Miss Blanchard a very handsome piece; but it was
+not a matter of course--or it need n’t have been--that she should be
+willing to become a sort of superior table-ornament. She would have
+accepted you if you had tried.”
+
+“You are supposing the insupposable,” said Rowland. “She never gave me a
+particle of encouragement.”
+
+“What would you have had her do? The poor girl did her best, and I am
+sure that when she accepted Mr. Leavenworth she thought of you.”
+
+“She thought of the pleasure her marriage would give me.”
+
+“Ay, pleasure indeed! She is a thoroughly good girl, but she has her
+little grain of feminine spite, like the rest. Well, he ‘s richer than
+you, and she will have what she wants; but before I forgive you I must
+wait and see this new arrival--what do you call her?--Miss Garland. If
+I like her, I will forgive you; if I don’t, I shall always bear you a
+grudge.”
+
+Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she might
+offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland was a
+figment of her fancy. Miss Garland was engaged to another man, and he
+himself had no claims.
+
+“Well, then,” said Madame Grandoni, “if I like her, we ‘ll have it that
+you ought to be in love with her. If you fail in this, it will be a
+double misdemeanor. The man she ‘s engaged to does n’t care a straw for
+her. Leave me alone and I ‘ll tell her what I think of you.”
+
+As to Christina Light’s marriage, Madame Grandoni could make no definite
+statement. The young girl, of late, had made her several flying
+visits, in the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial shopping and
+dress-fitting; she had spoken of the event with a toss of her head, as a
+matter which, with a wise old friend who viewed things in their
+essence, she need not pretend to treat as a solemnity. It was for Prince
+Casamassima to do that. “It is what they call a marriage of reason,” she
+once said. “That means, you know, a marriage of madness!”
+
+“What have you said in the way of advice?” Rowland asked.
+
+“Very little, but that little has favored the prince. I know nothing of
+the mysteries of the young lady’s heart. It may be a gold-mine, but at
+any rate it ‘s a mine, and it ‘s a long journey down into it. But the
+marriage in itself is an excellent marriage. It ‘s not only brilliant,
+but it ‘s safe. I think Christina is quite capable of making it a
+means of misery; but there is no position that would be sacred to her.
+Casamassima is an irreproachable young man; there is nothing against
+him but that he is a prince. It is not often, I fancy, that a prince has
+been put through his paces at this rate. No one knows the wedding-day;
+the cards of invitation have been printed half a dozen times over, with
+a different date; each time Christina has destroyed them. There are
+people in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away; they
+are in a dreadful fright about the fever, but they are dying to see the
+wedding, and if the day were fixed, they would make their arrangements
+to wait for it. I think it very possible that after having kept them a
+month and produced a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married
+at midnight by an old friar, with simply the legal witnesses.”
+
+“It is true, then, that she has become a Catholic?”
+
+“So she tells me. One day she got up in the depths of despair; at her
+wit’s end, I suppose, in other words, for a new sensation. Suddenly it
+occurred to her that the Catholic church might after all hold the key,
+might give her what she wanted! She sent for a priest; he happened to be
+a clever man, and he contrived to interest her. She put on a black dress
+and a black lace veil, and looking handsomer than ever she rustled into
+the Catholic church. The prince, who is very devout, and who had her
+heresy sorely on his conscience, was thrown into an ecstasy. May she
+never have a caprice that pleases him less!”
+
+Rowland had already asked Madame Grandoni what, to her perception, was
+the present state of matters between Christina and Roderick; and he now
+repeated his question with some earnestness of apprehension. “The girl
+is so deucedly dramatic,” he said, “that I don’t know what coup de
+theatre she may have in store for us. Such a stroke was her turning
+Catholic; such a stroke would be her some day making her courtesy to a
+disappointed world as Princess Casamassima, married at midnight, in her
+bonnet. She might do--she may do--something that would make even more
+starers! I ‘m prepared for anything.”
+
+“You mean that she might elope with your sculptor, eh?”
+
+“I ‘m prepared for anything!”
+
+“Do you mean that he ‘s ready?”
+
+“Do you think that she is?”
+
+“They ‘re a precious pair! I think this. You by no means exhaust the
+subject when you say that Christina is dramatic. It ‘s my belief that in
+the course of her life she will do a certain number of things from pure
+disinterested passion. She ‘s immeasurably proud, and if that is often
+a fault in a virtuous person, it may be a merit in a vicious one. She
+needs to think well of herself; she knows a fine character, easily,
+when she meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison, even though the
+comparison is made by herself alone; and when the estimate she may
+have made of herself grows vague, she needs to do something to give
+it definite, impressive form. What she will do in such a case will be
+better or worse, according to her opportunity; but I imagine it will
+generally be something that will drive her mother to despair; something
+of the sort usually termed ‘unworldly.’”
+
+Rowland, as he was taking his leave, after some further exchange of
+opinions, rendered Miss Light the tribute of a deeply meditative sigh.
+“She has bothered me half to death,” he said, “but somehow I can’t
+manage, as I ought, to hate her. I admire her, half the time, and a good
+part of the rest I pity her.”
+
+“I think I most pity her!” said Madame Grandoni.
+
+This enlightened woman came the next day to call upon the two ladies
+from Northampton. She carried their shy affections by storm, and made
+them promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow. Her
+visit was an era in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing but
+make sudden desultory allusions to her, for the next thirty-six hours.
+“To think of her being a foreigner!” she would exclaim, after much
+intent reflection, over her knitting; “she speaks so beautifully!”
+ Then in a little while, “She was n’t so much dressed as you might have
+expected. Did you notice how easy it was in the waist? I wonder if that
+‘s the fashion?” Or, “She ‘s very old to wear a hat; I should never dare
+to wear a hat!” Or, “Did you notice her hands?--very pretty hands for
+such a stout person. A great many rings, but nothing very handsome. I
+suppose they are hereditary.” Or, “She ‘s certainly not handsome, but
+she ‘s very sweet-looking. I wonder why she does n’t have something
+done to her teeth.” Rowland also received a summons to Madame Grandoni’s
+tea-drinking, and went betimes, as he had been requested. He was eagerly
+desirous to lend his mute applause to Mary Garland’s debut in the Roman
+social world. The two ladies had arrived, with Roderick, silent and
+careless, in attendance. Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by
+Mr. Leavenworth, and the party was completed by a dozen artists of both
+sexes and various nationalities. It was a friendly and easy assembly,
+like all Madame Grandoni’s parties, and in the course of the evening
+there was some excellent music. People played and sang for Madame
+Grandoni, on easy terms, who, elsewhere, were not to be heard for the
+asking. She was herself a superior musician, and singers found it a
+privilege to perform to her accompaniment. Rowland talked to various
+persons, but for the first time in his life his attention visibly
+wandered; he could not keep his eyes off Mary Garland. Madame Grandoni
+had said that he sometimes spoke of her as pretty and sometimes as
+plain; to-night, if he had had occasion to describe her appearance, he
+would have called her beautiful. She was dressed more than he had ever
+seen her; it was becoming, and gave her a deeper color and an ampler
+presence. Two or three persons were introduced to her who were
+apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them with her
+brilliant natural smile. Rowland, from an opposite corner, reflected
+that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard’s classic
+contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed him hardly more
+than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value. Roderick could not be
+accused of rancor, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied
+familiarity, and, lounging against the wall, with hands in pockets, was
+discoursing to him with candid serenity. Now that he had done him an
+impertinence, he evidently found him less intolerable. Mr. Leavenworth
+stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth,
+without looking at the young sculptor, like a large, drowsy dog snapping
+at flies. Rowland had found it disagreeable to be told Miss Blanchard
+would have married him for the asking, and he would have felt some
+embarrassment in going to speak to her if his modesty had not found
+incredulity so easy. The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had
+never been present to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all
+ways, to be compassed with a great effort. He had half an hour’s talk
+with her; a farewell talk, as it seemed to him--a farewell not to a real
+illusion, but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever
+be an acceptable pis-aller. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her
+engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness.
+But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs.
+Browning and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her
+responding on this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a “glorious heart.”
+ Rowland wished to manifest an extreme regard, but toward the end of the
+talk his zeal relaxed, and he fell a-thinking that a certain natural
+ease in a woman was the most delightful thing in the world. There was
+Christina Light, who had too much, and here was Miss Blanchard, who had
+too little, and there was Mary Garland (in whom the quality was wholly
+uncultivated), who had just the right amount.
+
+He went to Madame Grandoni in an adjoining room, where she was pouring
+out tea.
+
+“I will make you an excellent cup,” she said, “because I have forgiven
+you.”
+
+He looked at her, answering nothing; but he swallowed his tea with great
+gusto, and a slight deepening of his color; by all of which one would
+have known that he was gratified. In a moment he intimated that, in so
+far as he had sinned, he had forgiven himself.
+
+“She is a lovely girl,” said Madame Grandoni. “There is a great deal
+there. I have taken a great fancy to her, and she must let me make a
+friend of her.”
+
+“She is very plain,” said Rowland, slowly, “very simple, very ignorant.”
+
+“Which, being interpreted, means, ‘She is very handsome, very subtle,
+and has read hundreds of volumes on winter evenings in the country.’”
+
+“You are a veritable sorceress,” cried Rowland; “you frighten me away!”
+ As he was turning to leave her, there rose above the hum of voices in
+the drawing-room the sharp, grotesque note of a barking dog. Their eyes
+met in a glance of intelligence.
+
+“There is the sorceress!” said Madame Grandoni. “The sorceress and her
+necromantic poodle!” And she hastened back to the post of hospitality.
+
+Rowland followed her, and found Christina Light standing in the middle
+of the drawing-room, and looking about in perplexity. Her poodle,
+sitting on his haunches and gazing at the company, had apparently been
+expressing a sympathetic displeasure at the absence of a welcome. But
+in a moment Madame Grandoni had come to the young girl’s relief, and
+Christina had tenderly kissed her.
+
+“I had no idea,” said Christina, surveying the assembly, “that you had
+such a lot of grand people, or I would not have come in. The servant
+said nothing; he took me for an invitee. I came to spend a neighborly
+half-hour; you know I have n’t many left! It was too dismally dreary at
+home. I hoped I should find you alone, and I brought Stenterello to play
+with the cat. I don’t know that if I had known about all this I would
+have dared to come in; but since I ‘ve stumbled into the midst of it, I
+beg you ‘ll let me stay. I am not dressed, but am I very hideous? I will
+sit in a corner and no one will notice me. My dear, sweet lady, do let
+me stay. Pray, why did n’t you ask me? I never have been to a little
+party like this. They must be very charming. No dancing--tea and
+conversation? No tea, thank you; but if you could spare a biscuit for
+Stenterello; a sweet biscuit, please. Really, why did n’t you ask me?
+Do you have these things often? Madame Grandoni, it ‘s very unkind!” And
+the young girl, who had delivered herself of the foregoing succession of
+sentences in her usual low, cool, penetrating voice, uttered these last
+words with a certain tremor of feeling. “I see,” she went on, “I do very
+well for balls and great banquets, but when people wish to have a
+cosy, friendly, comfortable evening, they leave me out, with the big
+flower-pots and the gilt candlesticks.”
+
+“I ‘m sure you ‘re welcome to stay, my dear,” said Madame Grandoni, “and
+at the risk of displeasing you I must confess that if I did n’t invite
+you, it was because you ‘re too grand. Your dress will do very well,
+with its fifty flounces, and there is no need of your going into a
+corner. Indeed, since you ‘re here, I propose to have the glory of it.
+You must remain where my people can see you.”
+
+“They are evidently determined to do that by the way they stare. Do they
+think I intend to dance a tarantella? Who are they all; do I know them?”
+ And lingering in the middle of the room, with her arm passed into Madame
+Grandoni’s, she let her eyes wander slowly from group to group.
+They were of course observing her. Standing in the little circle
+of lamplight, with the hood of an Eastern burnous, shot with silver
+threads, falling back from her beautiful head, one hand gathering
+together its voluminous, shimmering folds, and the other playing with
+the silken top-knot on the uplifted head of her poodle, she was a figure
+of radiant picturesqueness. She seemed to be a sort of extemporized
+tableau vivant. Rowland’s position made it becoming for him to speak
+to her without delay. As she looked at him he saw that, judging by the
+light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a humor of which she had not yet
+treated him to a specimen. In a simpler person he would have called it
+exquisite kindness; but in this young lady’s deportment the flower was
+one thing and the perfume another. “Tell me about these people,” she
+said to him. “I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I had not
+seen. What are they all talking about? It ‘s all beyond me, I suppose.
+There is Miss Blanchard, sitting as usual in profile against a dark
+object. She is like a head on a postage-stamp. And there is that nice
+little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman for a
+mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancee, of course
+she ‘s here. Ah, I see!” She paused; she was looking intently at Miss
+Garland. Rowland measured the intentness of her glance, and suddenly
+acquired a firm conviction. “I should like so much to know her!” she
+said, turning to Madame Grandoni. “She has a charming face; I am sure
+she ‘s an angel. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second
+thoughts, I had rather you did n’t. I will speak to her bravely myself,
+as a friend of her cousin.” Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged
+glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous,
+crumpled it together, and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a
+corner, gave it in charge to her poodle. He stationed himself upon it,
+on his haunches, with upright vigilance. Christina crossed the room with
+the step and smile of a ministering angel, and introduced herself to
+Mary Garland. She had once told Rowland that she would show him, some
+day, how gracious her manners could be; she was now redeeming her
+promise. Rowland, watching her, saw Mary Garland rise slowly, in
+response to her greeting, and look at her with serious deep-gazing eyes.
+The almost dramatic opposition of these two keenly interesting girls
+touched Rowland with a nameless apprehension, and after a moment he
+preferred to turn away. In doing so he noticed Roderick. The young
+sculptor was standing planted on the train of a lady’s dress, gazing
+across at Christina’s movements with undisguised earnestness. There were
+several more pieces of music; Rowland sat in a corner and listened to
+them. When they were over, several people began to take their leave,
+Mrs. Hudson among the number. Rowland saw her come up to Madame
+Grandoni, clinging shyly to Mary Garland’s arm. Miss Garland had a
+brilliant eye and a deep color in her cheek. The two ladies looked
+about for Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned. He had approached
+Christina, who, with an absent air, was sitting alone, where she had
+taken her place near Miss Garland, looking at the guests pass out of the
+room. Christina’s eye, like Miss Garland’s, was bright, but her cheek
+was pale. Hearing Roderick’s voice, she looked up at him sharply; then
+silently, with a single quick gesture, motioned him away. He obeyed her,
+and came and joined his mother in bidding good night to Madame Grandoni.
+Christina, in a moment, met Rowland’s glance, and immediately beckoned
+him to come to her. He was familiar with her spontaneity of movement,
+and was scarcely surprised. She made a place for him on the sofa beside
+her; he wondered what was coming now. He was not sure it was not a mere
+fancy, but it seemed to him that he had never seen her look just as
+she was looking then. It was a humble, touching, appealing look, and it
+threw into wonderful relief the nobleness of her beauty. “How many more
+metamorphoses,” he asked himself, “am I to be treated to before we have
+done?”
+
+“I want to tell you,” said Christina. “I have taken an immense fancy to
+Miss Garland. Are n’t you glad?”
+
+“Delighted!” exclaimed poor Rowland.
+
+“Ah, you don’t believe it,” she said with soft dignity.
+
+“Is it so hard to believe?”
+
+“Not that people in general should admire her, but that I should. But I
+want to tell you; I want to tell some one, and I can’t tell Miss Garland
+herself. She thinks me already a horrid false creature, and if I were to
+express to her frankly what I think of her, I should simply disgust her.
+She would be quite right; she has repose, and from that point of view I
+and my doings must seem monstrous. Unfortunately, I have n’t repose. I
+am trembling now; if I could ask you to feel my arm, you would see!
+But I want to tell you that I admire Miss Garland more than any of the
+people who call themselves her friends--except of course you. Oh, I know
+that! To begin with, she is extremely handsome, and she does n’t know
+it.”
+
+“She is not generally thought handsome,” said Rowland.
+
+“Evidently! That ‘s the vulgarity of the human mind. Her head has great
+character, great natural style. If a woman is not to be a supreme beauty
+in the regular way, she will choose, if she ‘s wise, to look like that.
+She ‘ll not be thought pretty by people in general, and desecrated, as
+she passes, by the stare of every vile wretch who chooses to thrust his
+nose under her bonnet; but a certain number of superior people will find
+it one of the delightful things of life to look at her. That lot is as
+good as another! Then she has a beautiful character!”
+
+“You found that out soon!” said Rowland, smiling.
+
+“How long did it take you? I found it out before I ever spoke to her.
+I met her the other day in Saint Peter’s; I knew it then. I knew it--do
+you want to know how long I have known it?”
+
+“Really,” said Rowland, “I did n’t mean to cross-examine you.”
+
+“Do you remember mamma’s ball in December? We had some talk and you
+then mentioned her--not by name. You said but three words, but I saw
+you admired her, and I knew that if you admired her she must have a
+beautiful character. That ‘s what you require!”
+
+“Upon my word,” cried Rowland, “you make three words go very far!”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Hudson has also spoken of her.”
+
+“Ah, that ‘s better!” said Rowland.
+
+“I don’t know; he does n’t like her.”
+
+“Did he tell you so?” The question left Rowland’s lips before he could
+stay it, which he would have done on a moment’s reflection.
+
+Christina looked at him intently. “No!” she said at last. “That would
+have been dishonorable, would n’t it? But I know it from my knowledge of
+him. He does n’t like perfection; he is not bent upon being safe, in
+his likings; he ‘s willing to risk something! Poor fellow, he risks too
+much!”
+
+Rowland was silent; he did not care for the thrust; but he was
+profoundly mystified. Christina beckoned to her poodle, and the
+dog marched stiffly across to her. She gave a loving twist to his
+rose-colored top-knot, and bade him go and fetch her burnous. He obeyed,
+gathered it up in his teeth, and returned with great solemnity, dragging
+it along the floor.
+
+“I do her justice. I do her full justice,” she went on, with soft
+earnestness. “I like to say that, I like to be able to say it. She ‘s
+full of intelligence and courage and devotion. She does n’t do me a
+grain of justice; but that is no harm. There is something so fine in the
+aversions of a good woman!”
+
+“If you would give Miss Garland a chance,” said Rowland, “I am sure she
+would be glad to be your friend.”
+
+“What do you mean by a chance? She has only to take it. I told her
+I liked her immensely, and she frowned as if I had said something
+disgusting. She looks very handsome when she frowns.” Christina rose,
+with these words, and began to gather her mantle about her. “I don’t
+often like women,” she went on. “In fact I generally detest them. But
+I should like to know Miss Garland well. I should like to have a
+friendship with her; I have never had one; they must be very delightful.
+But I shan’t have one now, either--not if she can help it! Ask her what
+she thinks of me; see what she will say. I don’t want to know; keep it
+to yourself. It ‘s too sad. So we go through life. It ‘s fatality--that
+‘s what they call it, is n’t it? We please the people we don’t care for,
+we displease those we do! But I appreciate her, I do her justice; that
+‘s the more important thing. It ‘s because I have imagination. She has
+none. Never mind; it ‘s her only fault. I do her justice; I understand
+very well.” She kept softly murmuring and looking about for Madame
+Grandoni. She saw the good lady near the door, and put out her hand to
+Rowland for good night. She held his hand an instant, fixing him with
+her eyes, the living splendor of which, at this moment, was something
+transcendent. “Yes, I do her justice,” she repeated. “And you do her
+more; you would lay down your life for her.” With this she turned away,
+and before he could answer, she left him. She went to Madame Grandoni,
+grasped her two hands, and held out her forehead to be kissed. The next
+moment she was gone.
+
+“That was a happy accident!” said Madame Grandoni. “She never looked so
+beautiful, and she made my little party brilliant.”
+
+“Beautiful, verily!” Rowland answered. “But it was no accident.”
+
+“What was it, then?”
+
+“It was a plan. She wished to see Miss Garland. She knew she was to be
+here.”
+
+“How so?”
+
+“By Roderick, evidently.”
+
+“And why did she wish to see Miss Garland?”
+
+“Heaven knows! I give it up!”
+
+“Ah, the wicked girl!” murmured Madame Grandoni.
+
+“No,” said Rowland; “don’t say that now. She ‘s too beautiful.”
+
+“Oh, you men! The best of you!”
+
+“Well, then,” cried Rowland, “she ‘s too good!”
+
+The opportunity presenting itself the next day, he failed not, as you
+may imagine, to ask Mary Garland what she thought of Miss Light. It was
+a Saturday afternoon, the time at which the beautiful marbles of the
+Villa Borghese are thrown open to the public. Mary had told him that
+Roderick had promised to take her to see them, with his mother, and he
+joined the party in the splendid Casino. The warm weather had left so
+few strangers in Rome that they had the place almost to themselves. Mrs.
+Hudson had confessed to an invincible fear of treading, even with the
+help of her son’s arm, the polished marble floors, and was sitting
+patiently on a stool, with folded hands, looking shyly, here and there,
+at the undraped paganism around her. Roderick had sauntered off alone,
+with an irritated brow, which seemed to betray the conflict between
+the instinct of observation and the perplexities of circumstance.
+Miss Garland was wandering in another direction, and though she was
+consulting her catalogue, Rowland fancied it was from habit; she too
+was preoccupied. He joined her, and she presently sat down on a divan,
+rather wearily, and closed her Murray. Then he asked her abruptly how
+Christina had pleased her.
+
+She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she had been
+thinking of Christina.
+
+“I don’t like her!” she said with decision.
+
+“What do you think of her?”
+
+“I think she ‘s false.” This was said without petulance or bitterness,
+but with a very positive air.
+
+“But she wished to please you; she tried,” Rowland rejoined, in a
+moment.
+
+“I think not. She wished to please herself!”
+
+Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more. No allusion to Christina
+had passed between them since the day they met her at Saint Peter’s,
+but he knew that she knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who
+loves, that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her.
+To what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain; but last night’s
+interview, apparently, had not reassured her. It was, under these
+circumstances, equally unbecoming for Rowland either to depreciate or
+to defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having
+verified the girl’s own assurance that she had made a bad impression.
+He tried to talk of indifferent matters--about the statues and the
+frescoes; but to-day, plainly, aesthetic curiosity, with Miss Garland,
+had folded its wings. Curiosity of another sort had taken its place.
+Mary was longing, he was sure, to question him about Christina; but she
+found a dozen reasons for hesitating. Her questions would imply that
+Roderick had not treated her with confidence, for information on this
+point should properly have come from him. They would imply that she was
+jealous, and to betray her jealousy was intolerable to her pride. For
+some minutes, as she sat scratching the brilliant pavement with the
+point of her umbrella, it was to be supposed that her pride and her
+anxiety held an earnest debate. At last anxiety won.
+
+“A propos of Miss Light,” she asked, “do you know her well?”
+
+“I can hardly say that. But I have seen her repeatedly.”
+
+“Do you like her?”
+
+“Yes and no. I think I am sorry for her.”
+
+Mary had spoken with her eyes on the pavement. At this she looked up.
+“Sorry for her? Why?”
+
+“Well--she is unhappy.”
+
+“What are her misfortunes?”
+
+“Well--she has a horrible mother, and she has had a most injurious
+education.”
+
+For a moment Miss Garland was silent. Then, “Is n’t she very beautiful?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Don’t you think so?”
+
+“That ‘s measured by what men think! She is extremely clever, too.”
+
+“Oh, incontestably.”
+
+“She has beautiful dresses.”
+
+“Yes, any number of them.”
+
+“And beautiful manners.”
+
+“Yes--sometimes.”
+
+“And plenty of money.”
+
+“Money enough, apparently.”
+
+“And she receives great admiration.”
+
+“Very true.”
+
+“And she is to marry a prince.”
+
+“So they say.”
+
+Miss Garland rose and turned to rejoin her companions, commenting these
+admissions with a pregnant silence. “Poor Miss Light!” she said at
+last, simply. And in this it seemed to Rowland there was a touch of
+bitterness.
+
+Very late on the following evening his servant brought him the card of a
+visitor. He was surprised at a visit at such an hour, but it may be
+said that when he read the inscription--Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa--his
+surprise declined. He had had an unformulated conviction that there was
+to be a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni’s; the Cavaliere had
+come to usher it in.
+
+He had come, evidently, on a portentous errand. He was as pale as ashes
+and prodigiously serious; his little cold black eye had grown ardent,
+and he had left his caressing smile at home. He saluted Rowland,
+however, with his usual obsequious bow.
+
+“You have more than once done me the honor to invite me to call upon
+you,” he said. “I am ashamed of my long delay, and I can only say to
+you, frankly, that my time this winter has not been my own.” Rowland
+assented, ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative of the adage
+“Better late than never,” begged him to be seated, and offered him a
+cigar. The Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly the fragrant weed, and then
+declared that, if his kind host would allow him, he would reserve it for
+consumption at another time. He apparently desired to intimate that
+the solemnity of his errand left him no breath for idle smoke-puffings.
+Rowland stayed himself, just in time, from an enthusiastic offer of a
+dozen more cigars, and, as he watched the Cavaliere stow his treasure
+tenderly away in his pocket-book, reflected that only an Italian could
+go through such a performance with uncompromised dignity. “I must
+confess,” the little old man resumed, “that even now I come on business
+not of my own--or my own, at least, only in a secondary sense. I have
+been dispatched as an ambassador, an envoy extraordinary, I may say, by
+my dear friend Mrs. Light.”
+
+“If I can in any way be of service to Mrs. Light, I shall be happy,”
+ Rowland said.
+
+“Well then, dear sir, Casa Light is in commotion. The signora is in
+trouble--in terrible trouble.” For a moment Rowland expected to hear
+that the signora’s trouble was of a nature that a loan of five thousand
+francs would assuage. But the Cavaliere continued: “Miss Light has
+committed a great crime; she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her
+mother.”
+
+“A dagger!” cried Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere patted the air an instant with his finger-tips. “I speak
+figuratively. She has broken off her marriage.”
+
+“Broken it off?”
+
+“Short! She has turned the prince from the door.” And the Cavaliere,
+when he had made this announcement, folded his arms and bent upon
+Rowland his intense, inscrutable gaze. It seemed to Rowland that he
+detected in the polished depths of it a sort of fantastic gleam of
+irony or of triumph; but superficially, at least, Giacosa did nothing
+to discredit his character as a presumably sympathetic representative of
+Mrs. Light’s affliction.
+
+Rowland heard his news with a kind of fierce disgust; it seemed the
+sinister counterpart of Christina’s preternatural mildness at Madame
+Grandoni’s tea-party. She had been too plausible to be honest. Without
+being able to trace the connection, he yet instinctively associated her
+present rebellion with her meeting with Mary Garland. If she had not
+seen Mary, she would have let things stand. It was monstrous to suppose
+that she could have sacrificed so brilliant a fortune to a mere movement
+of jealousy, to a refined instinct of feminine deviltry, to a desire to
+frighten poor Mary from her security by again appearing in the field.
+Yet Rowland remembered his first impression of her; she was “dangerous,”
+ and she had measured in each direction the perturbing effect of her
+rupture. She was smiling her sweetest smile at it! For half an hour
+Rowland simply detested her, and longed to denounce her to her face. Of
+course all he could say to Giacosa was that he was extremely sorry. “But
+I am not surprised,” he added.
+
+“You are not surprised?”
+
+“With Miss Light everything is possible. Is n’t that true?”
+
+Another ripple seemed to play for an instant in the current of the old
+man’s irony, but he waived response. “It was a magnificent marriage,”
+ he said, solemnly. “I do not respect many people, but I respect Prince
+Casamassima.”
+
+“I should judge him indeed to be a very honorable young man,” said
+Rowland.
+
+“Eh, young as he is, he ‘s made of the old stuff. And now, perhaps he
+‘s blowing his brains out. He is the last of his house; it ‘s a great
+house. But Miss Light will have put an end to it!”
+
+“Is that the view she takes of it?” Rowland ventured to ask.
+
+This time, unmistakably, the Cavaliere smiled, but still in that very
+out-of-the-way place. “You have observed Miss Light with attention,” he
+said, “and this brings me to my errand. Mrs. Light has a high opinion
+of your wisdom, of your kindness, and she has reason to believe you have
+influence with her daughter.”
+
+“I--with her daughter? Not a grain!”
+
+“That is possibly your modesty. Mrs. Light believes that something may
+yet be done, and that Christina will listen to you. She begs you to come
+and see her before it is too late.”
+
+“But all this, my dear Cavaliere, is none of my business,” Rowland
+objected. “I can’t possibly, in such a matter, take the responsibility
+of advising Miss Light.”
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor, in brief but
+intense reflection. Then looking up, “Unfortunately,” he said, “she has
+no man near her whom she respects; she has no father!”
+
+“And a fatally foolish mother!” Rowland gave himself the satisfaction of
+exclaiming.
+
+The Cavaliere was so pale that he could not easily have turned paler;
+yet it seemed for a moment that his dead complexion blanched. “Eh,
+signore, such as she is, the mother appeals to you. A very handsome
+woman--disheveled, in tears, in despair, in dishabille!”
+
+Rowland reflected a moment, not on the attractions of Mrs. Light
+under the circumstances thus indicated by the Cavaliere, but on the
+satisfaction he would take in accusing Christina to her face of having
+struck a cruel blow.
+
+“I must add,” said the Cavaliere, “that Mrs. Light desires also to speak
+to you on the subject of Mr. Hudson.”
+
+“She considers Mr. Hudson, then, connected with this step of her
+daughter’s?”
+
+“Intimately. He must be got out of Rome.”
+
+“Mrs. Light, then, must get an order from the Pope to remove him. It ‘s
+not in my power.”
+
+The Cavaliere assented, deferentially. “Mrs. Light is equally helpless.
+She would leave Rome to-morrow, but Christina will not budge. An order
+from the Pope would do nothing. A bull in council would do nothing.”
+
+“She ‘s a remarkable young lady,” said Rowland, with bitterness.
+
+But the Cavaliere rose and responded coldly, “She has a great spirit.”
+ And it seemed to Rowland that her great spirit, for mysterious reasons,
+gave him more pleasure than the distressing use she made of it gave him
+pain. He was on the point of charging him with his inconsistency, when
+Giacosa resumed: “But if the marriage can be saved, it must be saved. It
+‘s a beautiful marriage. It will be saved.”
+
+“Notwithstanding Miss Light’s great spirit to the contrary?”
+
+“Miss Light, notwithstanding her great spirit, will call Prince
+Casamassima back.”
+
+“Heaven grant it!” said Rowland.
+
+“I don’t know,” said the Cavaliere, solemnly, “that heaven will have
+much to do with it.”
+
+Rowland gave him a questioning look, but he laid his finger on his lips.
+And with Rowland’s promise to present himself on the morrow at Casa
+Light, he shortly afterwards departed. He left Rowland revolving many
+things: Christina’s magnanimity, Christina’s perversity, Roderick’s
+contingent fortune, Mary Garland’s certain trouble, and the Cavaliere’s
+own fine ambiguities.
+
+Rowland’s promise to the Cavaliere obliged him to withdraw from an
+excursion which he had arranged with the two ladies from Northampton.
+Before going to Casa Light he repaired in person to Mrs. Hudson’s hotel,
+to make his excuses.
+
+He found Roderick’s mother sitting with tearful eyes, staring at an open
+note that lay in her lap. At the window sat Miss Garland, who turned her
+intense regard upon him as he came in. Mrs. Hudson quickly rose and came
+to him, holding out the note.
+
+“In pity’s name,” she cried, “what is the matter with my boy? If he is
+ill, I entreat you to take me to him!”
+
+“He is not ill, to my knowledge,” said Rowland. “What have you there?”
+
+“A note--a dreadful note. He tells us we are not to see him for a week.
+If I could only go to his room! But I am afraid, I am afraid!”
+
+“I imagine there is no need of going to his room. What is the occasion,
+may I ask, of his note?”
+
+“He was to have gone with us on this drive to--what is the place?--to
+Cervara. You know it was arranged yesterday morning. In the evening he
+was to have dined with us. But he never came, and this morning arrives
+this awful thing. Oh dear, I ‘m so excited! Would you mind reading it?”
+
+Rowland took the note and glanced at its half-dozen lines. “I cannot go
+to Cervara,” they ran; “I have something else to do. This will occupy me
+perhaps for a week, and you ‘ll not see me. Don’t miss me--learn not to
+miss me. R. H.”
+
+“Why, it means,” Rowland commented, “that he has taken up a piece
+of work, and that it is all-absorbing. That ‘s very good news.” This
+explanation was not sincere; but he had not the courage not to offer it
+as a stop-gap. But he found he needed all his courage to maintain it,
+for Miss Garland had left her place and approached him, formidably
+unsatisfied.
+
+“He does not work in the evening,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Can’t he come
+for five minutes? Why does he write such a cruel, cold note to his poor
+mother--to poor Mary? What have we done that he acts so strangely? It
+‘s this wicked, infectious, heathenish place!” And the poor lady’s
+suppressed mistrust of the Eternal City broke out passionately. “Oh,
+dear Mr. Mallet,” she went on, “I am sure he has the fever and he ‘s
+already delirious!”
+
+“I am very sure it ‘s not that,” said Miss Garland, with a certain
+dryness.
+
+She was still looking at Rowland; his eyes met hers, and his own glance
+fell. This made him angry, and to carry off his confusion he pretended
+to be looking at the floor, in meditation. After all, what had he to be
+ashamed of? For a moment he was on the point of making a clean breast of
+it, of crying out, “Dearest friends, I abdicate: I can’t help you!” But
+he checked himself; he felt so impatient to have his three words with
+Christina. He grasped his hat.
+
+“I will see what it is!” he cried. And then he was glad he had not
+abdicated, for as he turned away he glanced again at Mary and saw that,
+though her eyes were full of trouble, they were not hard and accusing,
+but charged with appealing friendship.
+
+He went straight to Roderick’s apartment, deeming this, at an early
+hour, the safest place to seek him. He found him in his sitting-room,
+which had been closely darkened to keep out the heat. The carpets and
+rugs had been removed, the floor of speckled concrete was bare and
+lightly sprinkled with water. Here and there, over it, certain strongly
+perfumed flowers had been scattered. Roderick was lying on his divan in
+a white dressing-gown, staring up at the frescoed ceiling. The room
+was deliciously cool, and filled with the moist, sweet odor of the
+circumjacent roses and violets. All this seemed highly fantastic, and
+yet Rowland hardly felt surprised.
+
+“Your mother was greatly alarmed at your note,” he said, “and I came
+to satisfy myself that, as I believed, you are not ill.” Roderick lay
+motionless, except that he slightly turned his head toward his friend.
+He was smelling a large white rose, and he continued to present it to
+his nose. In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but
+his handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy. He let them rest for
+some time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual
+swoon, whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal
+matters. “Oh, I ‘m not ill,” he said at last. “I have never been
+better.”
+
+“Your note, nevertheless, and your absence,” Rowland said, “have very
+naturally alarmed your mother. I advise you to go to her directly and
+reassure her.”
+
+“Go to her? Going to her would be worse than staying away. Staying away
+at present is a kindness.” And he inhaled deeply his huge rose, looking
+up over it at Rowland. “My presence, in fact, would be indecent.”
+
+“Indecent? Pray explain.”
+
+“Why, you see, as regards Mary Garland. I am divinely happy! Does n’t
+it strike you? You ought to agree with me. You wish me to spare her
+feelings; I spare them by staying away. Last night I heard something”--
+
+“I heard it, too,” said Rowland with brevity. “And it ‘s in honor of
+this piece of news that you have taken to your bed in this fashion?”
+
+“Extremes meet! I can’t get up for joy.”
+
+“May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?--from Miss Light
+herself?”
+
+“By no means. It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as
+well.”
+
+“Casamassima’s loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?”
+
+“I don’t talk about certainties. I don’t want to be arrogant, I don’t
+want to offend the immortal gods. I ‘m keeping very quiet, but I can’t
+help being happy. I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she threw
+overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!”
+
+“I feel bound to tell you,” was in the course of a moment Rowland’s
+response to this speech, “that I am now on my way to Mrs. Light’s.”
+
+“I congratulate you, I envy you!” Roderick murmured, imperturbably.
+
+“Mrs. Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter, with whom
+she has taken it into her head that I have influence. I don’t know to
+what extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you notice I shall not speak
+in your interest.”
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes. “Pray
+don’t!” he simply answered.
+
+“You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow.”
+
+“My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you. You ‘re
+incapable of doing anything disloyal.”
+
+“You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your
+visions, and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with
+anxiety?”
+
+“Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used
+to it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least
+forbear to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for
+the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I
+should n’t be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I
+lock myself up as a dangerous character.”
+
+“Well, I can only say, ‘May your pleasure never grow less, or your
+danger greater!’”
+
+Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose. “God’s will be
+done!”
+
+On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs. Light’s. This
+afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him. Since the Cavaliere’s report
+of her condition she had somewhat smoothed and trimmed the exuberance
+of her distress, but she was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she
+clutched Rowland by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes,
+he were her single floating spar. Rowland greatly pitied her, for there
+is something respectable in passionate grief, even in a very bad cause;
+and as pity is akin to love, he endured her rather better than he had
+done hitherto.
+
+“Speak to her, plead with her, command her!” she cried, pressing and
+shaking his hands. “She ‘ll not heed us, no more than if we were a pair
+of clocks a-ticking. Perhaps she will listen to you; she always liked
+you.”
+
+“She always disliked me,” said Rowland. “But that does n’t matter now.
+I have come here simply because you sent for me, not because I can help
+you. I cannot advise your daughter.”
+
+“Oh, cruel, deadly man! You must advise her; you shan’t leave this house
+till you have advised her!” the poor woman passionately retorted. “Look
+at me in my misery and refuse to help me! Oh, you need n’t be afraid, I
+know I ‘m a fright, I have n’t an idea what I have on. If this goes
+on, we may both as well turn scarecrows. If ever a woman was desperate,
+frantic, heart-broken, I am that woman. I can’t begin to tell you. To
+have nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! to have lavished one’s
+self upon a viper that turns and stings her own poor mother! To have
+toiled and prayed, to have pushed and struggled, to have eaten the bread
+of bitterness, and all the rest of it, sir--and at the end of all things
+to find myself at this pass. It can’t be, it ‘s too cruel, such things
+don’t happen, the Lord don’t allow it. I ‘m a religious woman, sir,
+and the Lord knows all about me. With his own hand he had given me his
+reward! I would have lain down in the dust and let her walk over me; I
+would have given her the eyes out of my head, if she had taken a fancy
+to them. No, she ‘s a cruel, wicked, heartless, unnatural girl! I speak
+to you, Mr. Mallet, in my dire distress, as to my only friend. There is
+n’t a creature here that I can look to--not one of them all that I have
+faith in. But I always admired you. I said to Christina the first time I
+saw you that there at last was a real gentleman. Come, don’t disappoint
+me now! I feel so terribly alone, you see; I feel what a nasty, hard,
+heartless world it is that has come and devoured my dinners and danced
+to my fiddles, and yet that has n’t a word to throw to me in my agony!
+Oh, the money, alone, that I have put into this thing, would melt the
+heart of a Turk!”
+
+During this frenzied outbreak Rowland had had time to look round the
+room, and to see the Cavaliere sitting in a corner, like a major-domo on
+the divan of an antechamber, pale, rigid, and inscrutable.
+
+“I have it at heart to tell you,” Rowland said, “that if you consider my
+friend Hudson”--
+
+Mrs. Light gave a toss of her head and hands. “Oh, it ‘s not that. She
+told me last night to bother her no longer with Hudson, Hudson! She did
+n’t care a button for Hudson. I almost wish she did; then perhaps one
+might understand it. But she does n’t care for anything in the wide
+world, except to do her own hard, wicked will, and to crush me and shame
+me with her cruelty.”
+
+“Ah, then,” said Rowland, “I am as much at sea as you, and my presence
+here is an impertinence. I should like to say three words to Miss Light
+on my own account. But I must absolutely and inexorably decline to urge
+the cause of Prince Casamassima. This is simply impossible.”
+
+Mrs. Light burst into angry tears. “Because the poor boy is a prince,
+eh? because he ‘s of a great family, and has an income of millions, eh?
+That ‘s why you grudge him and hate him. I knew there were vulgar people
+of that way of feeling, but I did n’t expect it of you. Make an effort,
+Mr. Mallet; rise to the occasion; forgive the poor fellow his splendor.
+Be just, be reasonable! It ‘s not his fault, and it ‘s not mine. He ‘s
+the best, the kindest young man in the world, and the most correct and
+moral and virtuous! If he were standing here in rags, I would say it all
+the same. The man first--the money afterwards: that was always my motto,
+and always will be. What do you take me for? Do you suppose I would
+give Christina to a vicious person? do you suppose I would sacrifice my
+precious child, little comfort as I have in her, to a man against whose
+character one word could be breathed? Casamassima is only too good, he
+‘s a saint of saints, he ‘s stupidly good! There is n’t such another
+in the length and breadth of Europe. What he has been through in this
+house, not a common peasant would endure. Christina has treated him as
+you would n’t treat a dog. He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted!
+He has been driven hither and thither till he did n’t know where he
+was. He has stood there where you stand--there, with his name and his
+millions and his devotion--as white as your handkerchief, with hot tears
+in his eyes, and me ready to go down on my knees to him and say, ‘My own
+sweet prince, I could kiss the ground you tread on, but it is n’t decent
+that I should allow you to enter my house and expose yourself to these
+horrors again.’ And he would come back, and he would come back, and go
+through it all again, and take all that was given him, and only want the
+girl the more! I was his confidant; I know everything. He used to beg
+my forgiveness for Christina. What do you say to that? I seized him once
+and kissed him, I did! To find that and to find all the rest with it,
+and to believe it was a gift straight from the pitying angels of heaven,
+and then to see it dashed away before your eyes and to stand here
+helpless--oh, it ‘s a fate I hope you may ever be spared!”
+
+“It would seem, then, that in the interest of Prince Casamassima himself
+I ought to refuse to interfere,” said Rowland.
+
+Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes. The intensity
+of her grief and anger gave her a kind of majesty, and Rowland, for
+the moment, felt ashamed of the ironical ring of his observation. “Very
+good, sir,” she said. “I ‘m sorry your heart is not so tender as your
+conscience. My compliments to your conscience! It must give you great
+happiness. Heaven help me! Since you fail us, we are indeed driven to
+the wall. But I have fought my own battles before, and I have never lost
+courage, and I don’t see why I should break down now. Cavaliere, come
+here!”
+
+Giacosa rose at her summons and advanced with his usual deferential
+alacrity. He shook hands with Rowland in silence.
+
+“Mr. Mallet refuses to say a word,” Mrs. Light went on. “Time presses,
+every moment is precious. Heaven knows what that poor boy may be doing.
+If at this moment a clever woman should get hold of him she might be as
+ugly as she pleased! It ‘s horrible to think of it.”
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes on Rowland, and his look, which the night
+before had been singular, was now most extraordinary. There was a
+nameless force of anguish in it which seemed to grapple with the young
+man’s reluctance, to plead, to entreat, and at the same time to be
+glazed over with a reflection of strange things.
+
+Suddenly, though most vaguely, Rowland felt the presence of a new
+element in the drama that was going on before him. He looked from the
+Cavaliere to Mrs. Light, whose eyes were now quite dry, and were fixed
+in stony hardness on the floor.
+
+“If you could bring yourself,” the Cavaliere said, in a low, soft,
+caressing voice, “to address a few words of solemn remonstrance to Miss
+Light, you would, perhaps, do more for us than you know. You would
+save several persons a great pain. The dear signora, first, and then
+Christina herself. Christina in particular. Me too, I might take the
+liberty to add!”
+
+There was, to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble
+petition. He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor
+little unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion
+of the mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched
+the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and
+it stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. Light. His idea
+embarrassed him, and to carry off his embarrassment, he repeated that
+it was folly to suppose that his words would have any weight with
+Christina.
+
+The Cavaliere stepped forward and laid two fingers on Rowland’s breast.
+“Do you wish to know the truth? You are the only man whose words she
+remembers.”
+
+Rowland was going from surprise to surprise. “I will say what I can!”
+ he said. By this time he had ventured to glance at Mrs. Light. She was
+looking at him askance, as if, upon this, she was suddenly mistrusting
+his motives.
+
+“If you fail,” she said sharply, “we have something else! But please to
+lose no time.”
+
+She had hardly spoken when the sound of a short, sharp growl caused the
+company to turn. Christina’s fleecy poodle stood in the middle of the
+vast saloon, with his muzzle lowered, in pompous defiance of the three
+conspirators against the comfort of his mistress. This young lady’s
+claims for him seemed justified; he was an animal of amazingly delicate
+instincts. He had preceded Christina as a sort of van-guard of defense,
+and she now slowly advanced from a neighboring room.
+
+“You will be so good as to listen to Mr. Mallet,” her mother said, in a
+terrible voice, “and to reflect carefully upon what he says. I suppose
+you will admit that he is disinterested. In half an hour you shall hear
+from me again!” And passing her hand through the Cavaliere’s arm, she
+swept rapidly out of the room.
+
+Christina looked hard at Rowland, but offered him no greeting. She was
+very pale, and, strangely enough, it at first seemed to Rowland that
+her beauty was in eclipse. But he very soon perceived that it had only
+changed its character, and that if it was a trifle less brilliant than
+usual, it was admirably touching and noble. The clouded light of her
+eyes, the magnificent gravity of her features, the conscious erectness
+of her head, might have belonged to a deposed sovereign or a condemned
+martyr. “Why have you come here at this time?” she asked.
+
+“Your mother sent for me in pressing terms, and I was very glad to have
+an opportunity to speak to you.”
+
+“Have you come to help me, or to persecute me?”
+
+“I have as little power to do one as I have desire to do the other.
+I came in great part to ask you a question. First, your decision is
+irrevocable?”
+
+Christina’s two hands had been hanging clasped in front of her; she
+separated them and flung them apart by an admirable gesture.
+
+“Would you have done this if you had not seen Miss Garland?”
+
+She looked at him with quickened attention; then suddenly, “This is
+interesting!” she cried. “Let us have it out.” And she flung herself
+into a chair and pointed to another.
+
+“You don’t answer my question,” Rowland said.
+
+“You have no right, that I know of, to ask it. But it ‘s a very clever
+one; so clever that it deserves an answer. Very likely I would not.”
+
+“Last night, when I said that to myself, I was extremely angry,” Rowland
+rejoined.
+
+“Oh, dear, and you are not angry now?”
+
+“I am less angry.”
+
+“How very stupid! But you can say something at least.”
+
+“If I were to say what is uppermost in my mind, I would say that, face
+to face with you, it is never possible to condemn you.”
+
+“Perche?”
+
+“You know, yourself! But I can at least say now what I felt last night.
+It seemed to me that you had consciously, cruelly dealt a blow at that
+poor girl. Do you understand?”
+
+“Wait a moment!” And with her eyes fixed on him, she inclined her head
+on one side, meditatively. Then a cold, brilliant smile covered
+her face, and she made a gesture of negation. “I see your train of
+reasoning, but it ‘s quite wrong. I meant no harm to Miss Garland; I
+should be extremely sorry to make her suffer. Tell me you believe that.”
+
+This was said with ineffable candor. Rowland heard himself answering, “I
+believe it!”
+
+“And yet, in a sense, your supposition was true,” Christina continued.
+“I conceived, as I told you, a great admiration for Miss Garland, and I
+frankly confess I was jealous of her. What I envied her was simply
+her character! I said to myself, ‘She, in my place, would n’t marry
+Casamassima.’ I could not help saying it, and I said it so often that I
+found a kind of inspiration in it. I hated the idea of being worse than
+she--of doing something that she would n’t do. I might be bad by nature,
+but I need n’t be by volition. The end of it all was that I found it
+impossible not to tell the prince that I was his very humble servant,
+but that I could not marry him.”
+
+“Are you sure it was only of Miss Garland’s character that you were
+jealous, not of--not of”--
+
+“Speak out, I beg you. We are talking philosophy!”
+
+“Not of her affection for her cousin?”
+
+“Sure is a good deal to ask. Still, I think I may say it! There are two
+reasons; one, at least, I can tell you: her affection has not a shadow’s
+weight with Mr. Hudson! Why then should one fear it?”
+
+“And what is the other reason?”
+
+“Excuse me; that is my own affair.”
+
+Rowland was puzzled, baffled, charmed, inspired, almost, all at once. “I
+have promised your mother,” he presently resumed, “to say something in
+favor of Prince Casamassima.”
+
+She shook her head sadly. “Prince Casamassima needs nothing that you can
+say for him. He is a magnificent parti. I know it perfectly.”
+
+“You know also of the extreme affliction of your mother?”
+
+“Her affliction is demonstrative. She has been abusing me for the last
+twenty-four hours as if I were the vilest of the vile.” To see Christina
+sit there in the purity of her beauty and say this, might have made one
+bow one’s head with a kind of awe. “I have failed of respect to her
+at other times, but I have not done so now. Since we are talking
+philosophy,” she pursued with a gentle smile, “I may say it ‘s a simple
+matter! I don’t love him. Or rather, perhaps, since we are talking
+philosophy, I may say it ‘s not a simple matter. I spoke just now of
+inspiration. The inspiration has been great, but--I frankly confess
+it--the choice has been hard. Shall I tell you?” she demanded, with
+sudden ardor; “will you understand me? It was on the one side the world,
+the splendid, beautiful, powerful, interesting world. I know what that
+is; I have tasted of the cup, I know its sweetness. Ah, if I chose, if I
+let myself go, if I flung everything to the winds, the world and I would
+be famous friends! I know its merits, and I think, without vanity, it
+would see mine. You would see some fine things! I should like to be a
+princess, and I think I should be a very good one; I would play my part
+well. I am fond of luxury, I am fond of a great society, I am fond of
+being looked at. I am corrupt, corruptible, corruption! Ah, what a pity
+that could n’t be, too! Mercy of Heaven!” There was a passionate tremor
+in her voice; she covered her face with her hands and sat motionless.
+Rowland saw that an intense agitation, hitherto successfully repressed,
+underlay her calmness, and he could easily believe that her battle had
+been fierce. She rose quickly and turned away, walked a few paces, and
+stopped. In a moment she was facing him again, with tears in her eyes
+and a flush in her cheeks. “But you need n’t think I ‘m afraid!” she
+said. “I have chosen, and I shall hold to it. I have something here,
+here, here!” and she patted her heart. “It ‘s my own. I shan’t part
+with it. Is it what you call an ideal? I don’t know; I don’t care! It is
+brighter than the Casamassima diamonds!”
+
+“You say that certain things are your own affair,” Rowland presently
+rejoined; “but I must nevertheless make an attempt to learn what all
+this means--what it promises for my friend Hudson. Is there any hope for
+him?”
+
+“This is a point I can’t discuss with you minutely. I like him very
+much.”
+
+“Would you marry him if he were to ask you?”
+
+“He has asked me.”
+
+“And if he asks again?”
+
+“I shall marry no one just now.”
+
+“Roderick,” said Rowland, “has great hopes.”
+
+“Does he know of my rupture with the prince?”
+
+“He is making a great holiday of it.”
+
+Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to smooth his silky
+fleece. “I like him very much,” she repeated; “much more than I used to.
+Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia’s, I have felt a
+great friendship for him. There ‘s something very fine about him; he ‘s
+not afraid of anything. He is not afraid of failure; he is not afraid of
+ruin or death.”
+
+“Poor fellow!” said Rowland, bitterly; “he is fatally picturesque.”
+
+“Picturesque, yes; that ‘s what he is. I am very sorry for him.”
+
+“Your mother told me just now that you had said that you did n’t care a
+straw for him.”
+
+“Very likely! I meant as a lover. One does n’t want a lover one pities,
+and one does n’t want--of all things in the world--a picturesque
+husband! I should like Mr. Hudson as something else. I wish he were my
+brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage. Then I could
+adore him. I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all
+disagreeable rubs and shocks. I am much stronger than he, and I would
+stand between him and the world. Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother,
+I should be willing to live and die an old maid!”
+
+“Have you ever told him all this?”
+
+“I suppose so; I ‘ve told him five hundred things! If it would please
+you, I will tell him again.”
+
+“Oh, Heaven forbid!” cried poor Rowland, with a groan.
+
+He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation,
+and feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway
+was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room. She stopped half-way,
+and gave the young persons a flushed and menacing look. It found
+apparently little to reassure her, and she moved away with a passionate
+toss of her drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister
+compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal
+flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing;
+but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down
+to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn. She
+would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed gross to
+make further demands upon it on Roderick’s behalf.
+
+Rowland took up his hat. “You asked a while ago if I had come to help
+you,” he said. “If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly
+glad.”
+
+She stood silent a moment, reflecting. Then at last, looking up, “You
+remember,” she said, “your promising me six months ago to tell me what
+you finally thought of me? I should like you to tell me now.”
+
+He could hardly help smiling. Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact
+that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one; and this little
+speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot. She had played her great
+scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole
+in the curtain and she was watching the house! But she blushed as she
+perceived his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault
+venial.
+
+“You are an excellent girl!” he said, in a particular tone, and gave her
+his hand in farewell.
+
+There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light’s apartment, the pride
+and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing
+visitor passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these
+Rowland found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted lady
+herself.
+
+“Well, well?” she cried, seizing his arm. “Has she listened to you--have
+you moved her?”
+
+“In Heaven’s name, dear madame,” Rowland begged, “leave the poor girl
+alone! She is behaving very well!”
+
+“Behaving very well? Is that all you have to tell me? I don’t believe
+you said a proper word to her. You are conspiring together to kill me!”
+
+Rowland tried to soothe her, to remonstrate, to persuade her that it was
+equally cruel and unwise to try to force matters. But she answered him
+only with harsh lamentations and imprecations, and ended by telling him
+that her daughter was her property, not his, and that his interference
+was most insolent and most scandalous. Her disappointment seemed really
+to have crazed her, and his only possible rejoinder was to take a
+summary departure.
+
+A moment later he came upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting with his
+elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried in thought that
+Rowland had to call him before he roused himself. Giacosa looked at him
+a moment keenly, and then gave a shake of the head, interrogatively.
+
+Rowland gave a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded by a
+long, melancholy sigh. “But her mother is determined to force matters,”
+ said Rowland.
+
+“It seems that it must be!”
+
+“Do you consider that it must be?”
+
+“I don’t differ with Mrs. Light!”
+
+“It will be a great cruelty!”
+
+The Cavaliere gave a tragic shrug. “Eh! it is n’t an easy world.”
+
+“You should do nothing to make it harder, then.”
+
+“What will you have? It ‘s a magnificent marriage.”
+
+“You disappoint me, Cavaliere,” said Rowland, solemnly. “I imagined you
+appreciated the great elevation of Miss Light’s attitude. She does n’t
+love the prince; she has let the matter stand or fall by that.”
+
+The old man grasped him by the hand and stood a moment with averted
+eyes. At last, looking at him, he held up two fingers.
+
+“I have two hearts,” he said, “one for myself, one for the world. This
+one opposes Miss Light, the other adores her! One suffers horribly at
+what the other does.”
+
+“I don’t understand double people, Cavaliere,” Rowland said, “and I
+don’t pretend to understand you. But I have guessed that you are going
+to play some secret card.”
+
+“The card is Mrs. Light’s, not mine,” said the Cavaliere.
+
+“It ‘s a menace, at any rate?”
+
+“The sword of Damocles! It hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten
+minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there
+is something written in strange characters. Don’t scratch your head; you
+will not make it out.”
+
+“I think I have guessed it,” Rowland said, after a pregnant silence. The
+Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added, “Though
+there are some signs, indeed, I don’t understand.”
+
+“Puzzle them out at your leisure,” said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand.
+“I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post. I wish you were a Catholic; I
+would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us
+the next half-hour.”
+
+“For ‘us’? For whom?”
+
+“For all of us. At any rate remember this: I worship the Christina!”
+
+Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light’s dress; he turned away, and the
+Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post. Rowland for the next couple of
+days pondered his riddle.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. Mrs. Hudson
+
+Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went to
+Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally good
+health and spirits. After this he called again on the two ladies from
+Northampton, but, as Roderick’s absence continued, he was able neither
+to furnish nor to obtain much comfort. Miss Garland’s apprehensive
+face seemed to him an image of his own state of mind. He was profoundly
+depressed; he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished
+it would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages. On the
+afternoon of the third day he went into Saint Peter’s, his frequent
+resort whenever the outer world was disagreeable. From a heart-ache to
+a Roman rain there were few importunate pains the great church did not
+help him to forget. He had wandered there for half an hour, when he came
+upon a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers. He
+saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a
+memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery of the basilica; and
+in a moment he perceived that the artist was little Sam Singleton.
+
+Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his
+modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity.
+Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days,
+was as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk.
+There was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips
+to some simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense of
+extreme moral refreshment. On this occasion he mentally blessed the
+ingenuous little artist, and heard presently with keen regret that he
+was to leave Rome on the morrow. Singleton had come to bid farewell
+to Saint Peter’s, and he was gathering a few supreme memories. He had
+earned a purse-full of money, and he was meaning to take a summer’s
+holiday; going to Switzerland, to Germany, to Paris. In the autumn he
+was to return home; his family--composed, as Rowland knew, of a father
+who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried sisters, one of whom gave
+lyceum-lectures on woman’s rights, the whole resident at Buffalo, New
+York--had been writing him peremptory letters and appealing to him as
+a son, brother, and fellow-citizen. He would have been grateful for
+another year in Rome, but what must be must be, and he had laid up
+treasure which, in Buffalo, would seem infinite. They talked some time;
+Rowland hoped they might meet in Switzerland, and take a walk or two
+together. Singleton seemed to feel that Buffalo had marked him for her
+own; he was afraid he should not see Rome again for many a year.
+
+“So you expect to live at Buffalo?” Rowland asked sympathetically.
+
+“Well, it will depend upon the views--upon the attitude--of my family,”
+ Singleton replied. “Oh, I think I shall get on; I think it can be done.
+If I find it can be done, I shall really be quite proud of it; as an
+artist of course I mean, you know. Do you know I have some nine hundred
+sketches? I shall live in my portfolio. And so long as one is not in
+Rome, pray what does it matter where one is? But how I shall envy all
+you Romans--you and Mr. Gloriani, and Mr. Hudson, especially!”
+
+“Don’t envy Hudson; he has nothing to envy.”
+
+Singleton grinned at what he considered a harmless jest. “Yes, he ‘s
+going to be the great man of our time! And I say, Mr. Mallet, is n’t it
+a mighty comfort that it ‘s we who have turned him out?”
+
+“Between ourselves,” said Rowland, “he has disappointed me.”
+
+Singleton stared, open-mouthed. “Dear me, what did you expect?”
+
+“Truly,” said Rowland to himself, “what did I expect?”
+
+“I confess,” cried Singleton, “I can’t judge him rationally. He
+fascinates me; he ‘s the sort of man one makes one’s hero of.”
+
+“Strictly speaking, he is not a hero,” said Rowland.
+
+Singleton looked intensely grave, and, with almost tearful eyes, “Is
+there anything amiss--anything out of the way, about him?” he timidly
+asked. Then, as Rowland hesitated to reply, he quickly added, “Please,
+if there is, don’t tell me! I want to know no evil of him, and I think
+I should hardly believe it. In my memories of this Roman artist-life,
+he will be the central figure. He will stand there in radiant relief, as
+beautiful and unspotted as one of his own statues!”
+
+“Amen!” said Rowland, gravely. He remembered afresh that the sea is
+inhabited by big fishes and little, and that the latter often find their
+way down the throats of the former. Singleton was going to spend the
+afternoon in taking last looks at certain other places, and Rowland
+offered to join him on his sentimental circuit. But as they were
+preparing to leave the church, he heard himself suddenly addressed from
+behind. Turning, he beheld a young woman whom he immediately recognized
+as Madame Grandoni’s maid. Her mistress was present, she said, and
+begged to confer with him before he departed.
+
+This summons obliged Rowland to separate from Singleton, to whom he bade
+farewell. He followed the messenger, and presently found Madame Grandoni
+occupying a liberal area on the steps of the tribune, behind the great
+altar, where, spreading a shawl on the polished red marble, she had
+comfortably seated herself. He expected that she had something especial
+to impart, and she lost no time in bringing forth her treasure.
+
+“Don’t shout very loud,” she said, “remember that we are in church;
+there ‘s a limit to the noise one may make even in Saint Peter’s.
+Christina Light was married this morning to Prince Casamassima.”
+
+Rowland did not shout at all; he gave a deep, short murmur:
+“Married--this morning?”
+
+“Married this morning, at seven o’clock, le plus tranquillement du
+monde, before three or four persons. The young couple left Rome an hour
+afterwards.”
+
+For some moments this seemed to him really terrible; the dark little
+drama of which he had caught a glimpse had played itself out. He had
+believed that Christina would resist; that she had succumbed was a proof
+that the pressure had been cruel. Rowland’s imagination followed her
+forth with an irresistible tremor into the world toward which she was
+rolling away, with her detested husband and her stifled ideal; but it
+must be confessed that if the first impulse of his compassion was
+for Christina, the second was for Prince Casamassima. Madame Grandoni
+acknowledged an extreme curiosity as to the secret springs of these
+strange doings: Casamassima’s sudden dismissal, his still more sudden
+recall, the hurried private marriage. “Listen,” said Rowland, hereupon,
+“and I will tell you something.” And he related, in detail, his last
+visit to Mrs. Light and his talk with this lady, with Christina, and
+with the Cavaliere.
+
+“Good,” she said; “it ‘s all very curious. But it ‘s a riddle, and I
+only half guess it.”
+
+“Well,” said Rowland, “I desire to harm no one; but certain suppositions
+have taken shape in my mind which serve as a solvent to several
+ambiguities.”
+
+“It is very true,” Madame Grandoni answered, “that the Cavaliere, as he
+stands, has always needed to be explained.”
+
+“He is explained by the hypothesis that, three-and-twenty years ago, at
+Ancona, Mrs. Light had a lover.”
+
+“I see. Ancona was dull, Mrs. Light was lively, and--three-and-twenty
+years ago--perhaps, the Cavaliere was fascinating. Doubtless it would be
+fairer to say that he was fascinated. Poor Giacosa!”
+
+“He has had his compensation,” Rowland said. “He has been passionately
+fond of Christina.”
+
+“Naturally. But has Christina never wondered why?”
+
+“If she had been near guessing, her mother’s shabby treatment of him
+would have put her off the scent. Mrs. Light’s conscience has apparently
+told her that she could expiate an hour’s too great kindness by twenty
+years’ contempt. So she kept her secret. But what is the profit of
+having a secret unless you can make some use of it? The day at last came
+when she could turn hers to account; she could let the skeleton out of
+the closet and create a panic.”
+
+“I don’t understand.”
+
+“Neither do I morally,” said Rowland. “I only conceive that there was a
+horrible, fabulous scene. The poor Cavaliere stood outside, at the
+door, white as a corpse and as dumb. The mother and daughter had it out
+together. Mrs. Light burnt her ships. When she came out she had three
+lines of writing in her daughter’s hand, which the Cavaliere was
+dispatched with to the prince. They overtook the young man in time, and,
+when he reappeared, he was delighted to dispense with further waiting. I
+don’t know what he thought of the look in his bride’s face; but that is
+how I roughly reconstruct history.”
+
+“Christina was forced to decide, then, that she could not afford not to
+be a princess?”
+
+“She was reduced by humiliation. She was assured that it was not for her
+to make conditions, but to thank her stars that there were none made for
+her. If she persisted, she might find it coming to pass that there would
+be conditions, and the formal rupture--the rupture that the world would
+hear of and pry into--would then proceed from the prince and not from
+her.”
+
+“That ‘s all nonsense!” said Madame Grandoni, energetically.
+
+“To us, yes; but not to the proudest girl in the world, deeply wounded
+in her pride, and not stopping to calculate probabilities, but muffling
+her shame, with an almost sensuous relief, in a splendor that stood
+within her grasp and asked no questions. Is it not possible that the
+late Mr. Light had made an outbreak before witnesses who are still
+living?”
+
+“Certainly her marriage now,” said Madame Grandoni, less analytically,
+“has the advantage that it takes her away from her--parents!”
+
+This lady’s farther comments upon the event are not immediately
+pertinent to our history; there were some other comments of which
+Rowland had a deeply oppressive foreboding. He called, on the evening
+of the morrow upon Mrs. Hudson, and found Roderick with the two
+ladies. Their companion had apparently but lately entered, and Rowland
+afterwards learned that it was his first appearance since the writing of
+the note which had so distressed his mother. He had flung himself upon
+a sofa, where he sat with his chin upon his breast, staring before him
+with a sinister spark in his eye. He fixed his gaze on Rowland, but gave
+him no greeting. He had evidently been saying something to startle the
+women; Mrs. Hudson had gone and seated herself, timidly and imploringly,
+on the edge of the sofa, trying to take his hand. Miss Garland was
+applying herself to some needlework with conscious intentness.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gave Rowland, on his entrance, a touching look of gratitude.
+“Oh, we have such blessed news!” she said. “Roderick is ready to leave
+Rome.”
+
+“It ‘s not blessed news; it ‘s most damnable news!” cried Roderick.
+
+“Oh, but we are very glad, my son, and I am sure you will be when you
+get away. You ‘re looking most dreadfully thin; is n’t he, Mr. Mallet?
+It ‘s plain enough you need a change. I ‘m sure we will go wherever you
+like. Where would you like to go?”
+
+Roderick turned his head slowly and looked at her. He had let her take
+his hand, which she pressed tenderly between her own. He gazed at
+her for some time in silence. “Poor mother!” he said at last, in a
+portentous tone.
+
+“My own dear son!” murmured Mrs. Hudson in all the innocence of her
+trust.
+
+“I don’t care a straw where you go! I don’t care a straw for anything!”
+
+“Oh, my dear boy, you must not say that before all of us here--before
+Mary, before Mr. Mallet!”
+
+“Mary--Mr. Mallet?” Roderick repeated, almost savagely. He released
+himself from the clasp of his mother’s hand and turned away, leaning
+his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. There was a
+silence; Rowland said nothing because he was watching Miss Garland. “Why
+should I stand on ceremony with Mary and Mr. Mallet?” Roderick presently
+added. “Mary pretends to believe I ‘m a fine fellow, and if she believes
+it as she ought to, nothing I can say will alter her opinion. Mallet
+knows I ‘m a hopeless humbug; so I need n’t mince my words with him.”
+
+“Ah, my dear, don’t use such dreadful language!” said Mrs. Hudson. “Are
+n’t we all devoted to you, and proud of you, and waiting only to hear
+what you want, so that we may do it?”
+
+Roderick got up, and began to walk about the room; he was evidently in a
+restless, reckless, profoundly demoralized condition. Rowland felt that
+it was literally true that he did not care a straw for anything, but
+he observed with anxiety that Mrs. Hudson, who did not know on what
+delicate ground she was treading, was disposed to chide him caressingly,
+as a mere expression of tenderness. He foresaw that she would bring down
+the hovering thunderbolt on her head.
+
+“In God’s name,” Roderick cried, “don’t remind me of my obligations! It
+‘s intolerable to me, and I don’t believe it ‘s pleasant to Mallet.
+I know they ‘re tremendous--I know I shall never repay them. I ‘m
+bankrupt! Do you know what that means?”
+
+The poor lady sat staring, dismayed, and Rowland angrily interfered.
+“Don’t talk such stuff to your mother!” he cried. “Don’t you see you ‘re
+frightening her?”
+
+“Frightening her? she may as well be frightened first as last. Do I
+frighten you, mother?” Roderick demanded.
+
+“Oh, Roderick, what do you mean?” whimpered the poor lady. “Mr. Mallet,
+what does he mean?”
+
+“I mean that I ‘m an angry, savage, disappointed, miserable man!”
+ Roderick went on. “I mean that I can’t do a stroke of work nor think
+a profitable thought! I mean that I ‘m in a state of helpless rage and
+grief and shame! Helpless, helpless--that ‘s what it is. You can’t help
+me, poor mother--not with kisses, nor tears, nor prayers! Mary can’t
+help me--not for all the honor she does me, nor all the big books on art
+that she pores over. Mallet can’t help me--not with all his money, nor
+all his good example, nor all his friendship, which I ‘m so profoundly
+well aware of: not with it all multiplied a thousand times and repeated
+to all eternity! I thought you would help me, you and Mary; that ‘s why
+I sent for you. But you can’t, don’t think it! The sooner you give up
+the idea the better for you. Give up being proud of me, too; there
+‘s nothing left of me to be proud of! A year ago I was a mighty fine
+fellow; but do you know what has become of me now? I have gone to the
+devil!”
+
+There was something in the ring of Roderick’s voice, as he uttered these
+words, which sent them home with convincing force. He was not talking
+for effect, or the mere sensuous pleasure of extravagant and paradoxical
+utterance, as had often enough been the case ere this; he was not
+even talking viciously or ill-humoredly. He was talking passionately,
+desperately, and from an irresistible need to throw off the oppressive
+burden of his mother’s confidence. His cruel eloquence brought the poor
+lady to her feet, and she stood there with clasped hands, petrified
+and voiceless. Mary Garland quickly left her place, came straight to
+Roderick, and laid her hand on his arm, looking at him with all her
+tormented heart in her eyes. He made no movement to disengage himself;
+he simply shook his head several times, in dogged negation of her
+healing powers. Rowland had been living for the past month in such
+intolerable expectancy of disaster that now that the ice was broken, and
+the fatal plunge taken, his foremost feeling was almost elation; but
+in a moment his orderly instincts and his natural love of superficial
+smoothness overtook it.
+
+“I really don’t see, Roderick,” he said, “the profit of your talking in
+just this way at just this time. Don’t you see how you are making your
+mother suffer?”
+
+“Do I enjoy it myself?” cried Roderick. “Is the suffering all on your
+side and theirs? Do I look as if I were happy, and were stirring you
+up with a stick for my amusement? Here we all are in the same boat; we
+might as well understand each other! These women must know that I ‘m not
+to be counted on. That sounds remarkably cool, no doubt, and I certainly
+don’t deny your right to be utterly disgusted with me.”
+
+“Will you keep what you have got to say till another time,” said Mary,
+“and let me hear it alone?”
+
+“Oh, I ‘ll let you hear it as often as you please; but what ‘s the use
+of keeping it? I ‘m in the humor; it won’t keep! It ‘s a very simple
+matter. I ‘m a failure, that ‘s all; I ‘m not a first-rate man. I ‘m
+second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please. After that, it ‘s all
+one!”
+
+Mary Garland turned away and buried her face in her hands; but Roderick,
+struck, apparently, in some unwonted fashion with her gesture, drew
+her towards him again, and went on in a somewhat different tone. “It ‘s
+hardly worth while we should have any private talk about this, Mary,” he
+said. “The thing would be comfortable for neither of us. It ‘s better,
+after all, that it be said once for all and dismissed. There are
+things I can’t talk to you about. Can I, at least? You are such a queer
+creature!”
+
+“I can imagine nothing you should n’t talk to me about,” said Mary.
+
+“You are not afraid?” he demanded, sharply, looking at her.
+
+She turned away abruptly, with lowered eyes, hesitating a moment.
+“Anything you think I should hear, I will hear,” she said. And then she
+returned to her place at the window and took up her work.
+
+“I have had a great blow,” said Roderick. “I was a great ass, but it
+does n’t make the blow any easier to bear.”
+
+“Mr. Mallet, tell me what Roderick means!” said Mrs. Hudson, who had
+found her voice, in a tone more peremptory than Rowland had ever heard
+her use.
+
+“He ought to have told you before,” said Roderick. “Really, Rowland,
+if you will allow me to say so, you ought! You could have given a much
+better account of all this than I myself; better, especially, in that
+it would have been more lenient to me. You ought to have let them down
+gently; it would have saved them a great deal of pain. But you always
+want to keep things so smooth! Allow me to say that it ‘s very weak of
+you.”
+
+“I hereby renounce such weakness!” said Rowland.
+
+“Oh, what is it, sir; what is it?” groaned Mrs. Hudson, insistently.
+
+“It ‘s what Roderick says: he ‘s a failure!”
+
+Mary Garland, on hearing this declaration, gave Rowland a single glance
+and then rose, laid down her work, and walked rapidly out of the room.
+Mrs. Hudson tossed her head and timidly bristled. “This from you, Mr.
+Mallet!” she said with an injured air which Rowland found harrowing.
+
+But Roderick, most characteristically, did not in the least resent his
+friend’s assertion; he sent him, on the contrary, one of those large,
+clear looks of his, which seemed to express a stoical pleasure in
+Rowland’s frankness, and which set his companion, then and there,
+wondering again, as he had so often done before, at the extraordinary
+contradictions of his temperament. “My dear mother,” Roderick said, “if
+you had had eyes that were not blinded by this sad maternal vanity, you
+would have seen all this for yourself; you would have seen that I ‘m
+anything but prosperous.”
+
+“Is it anything about money?” cried Mrs. Hudson. “Oh, do write to Mr.
+Striker!”
+
+“Money?” said Roderick. “I have n’t a cent of money; I ‘m bankrupt!”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Mallet, how could you let him?” asked Mrs. Hudson, terribly.
+
+“Everything I have is at his service,” said Rowland, feeling ill.
+
+“Of course Mr. Mallet will help you, my son!” cried the poor lady,
+eagerly.
+
+“Oh, leave Mr. Mallet alone!” said Roderick. “I have squeezed him dry;
+it ‘s not my fault, at least, if I have n’t!”
+
+“Roderick, what have you done with all your money?” his mother demanded.
+
+“Thrown it away! It was no such great amount. I have done nothing this
+winter.”
+
+“You have done nothing?”
+
+“I have done no work! Why in the world did n’t you guess it and spare me
+all this? Could n’t you see I was idle, distracted, dissipated?”
+
+“Dissipated, my dear son?” Mrs. Hudson repeated.
+
+“That ‘s over for the present! But could n’t you see--could n’t Mary
+see--that I was in a damnably bad way?”
+
+“I have no doubt Miss Garland saw,” said Rowland.
+
+“Mary has said nothing!” cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+“Oh, she ‘s a fine girl!” Rowland said.
+
+“Have you done anything that will hurt poor Mary?” Mrs. Hudson asked.
+
+“I have only been thinking night and day of another woman!”
+
+Mrs. Hudson dropped helplessly into her seat again. “Oh dear, dear, had
+n’t we better go home?”
+
+“Not to get out of her way!” Roderick said. “She has started on a career
+of her own, and she does n’t care a straw for me. My head was filled
+with her; I could think of nothing else; I would have sacrificed
+everything to her--you, Mary, Mallet, my work, my fortune, my future, my
+honor! I was in a fine state, eh? I don’t pretend to be giving you good
+news; but I ‘m telling the simple, literal truth, so that you may know
+why I have gone to the dogs. She pretended to care greatly for all this,
+and to be willing to make any sacrifice in return; she had a magnificent
+chance, for she was being forced into a mercenary marriage with a man
+she detested. She led me to believe that she would give this up, and
+break short off, and keep herself free and sacred and pure for me. This
+was a great honor, and you may believe that I valued it. It turned
+my head, and I lived only to see my happiness come to pass. She did
+everything to encourage me to hope it would; everything that her
+infernal coquetry and falsity could suggest.”
+
+“Oh, I say, this is too much!” Rowland broke out.
+
+“Do you defend her?” Roderick cried, with a renewal of his passion. “Do
+you pretend to say that she gave me no hopes?” He had been speaking
+with growing bitterness, quite losing sight of his mother’s pain and
+bewilderment in the passionate joy of publishing his wrongs. Since he
+was hurt, he must cry out; since he was in pain, he must scatter his
+pain abroad. Of his never thinking of others, save as they spoke and
+moved from his cue, as it were, this extraordinary insensibility to the
+injurious effects of his eloquence was a capital example; the more so
+as the motive of his eloquence was never an appeal for sympathy or
+compassion, things to which he seemed perfectly indifferent and of which
+he could make no use. The great and characteristic point with him was
+the perfect absoluteness of his own emotions and experience. He never
+saw himself as part of a whole; only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged,
+isolated individual, rejoicing or raging, as the case might be, but
+needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself. All this, to Rowland,
+was ancient history, but his perception of it stirred within him afresh,
+at the sight of Roderick’s sense of having been betrayed. That he,
+under the circumstances, should not in fairness be the first to lodge a
+complaint of betrayal was a point to which, at his leisure, Rowland was
+of course capable of rendering impartial justice; but Roderick’s
+present desperation was so peremptory that it imposed itself on one’s
+sympathies. “Do you pretend to say,” he went on, “that she did n’t lead
+me along to the very edge of fulfillment and stupefy me with all that
+she suffered me to believe, all that she sacredly promised? It amused
+her to do it, and she knew perfectly well what she really meant. She
+never meant to be sincere; she never dreamed she could be. She ‘s a
+ravenous flirt, and why a flirt is a flirt is more than I can tell you.
+I can’t understand playing with those matters; for me they ‘re serious,
+whether I take them up or lay them down. I don’t see what ‘s in your
+head, Rowland, to attempt to defend Miss Light; you were the first to
+cry out against her! You told me she was dangerous, and I pooh-poohed
+you. You were right; you ‘re always right. She ‘s as cold and false and
+heartless as she ‘s beautiful, and she has sold her heartless beauty to
+the highest bidder. I hope he knows what he gets!”
+
+“Oh, my son,” cried Mrs. Hudson, plaintively, “how could you ever care
+for such a dreadful creature?”
+
+“It would take long to tell you, dear mother!”
+
+Rowland’s lately-deepened sympathy and compassion for Christina was
+still throbbing in his mind, and he felt that, in loyalty to it, he
+must say a word for her. “You believed in her too much at first,” he
+declared, “and you believe in her too little now.”
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes almost lurid, beneath lowering brows.
+“She is an angel, then, after all?--that ‘s what you want to prove!”
+ he cried. “That ‘s consoling for me, who have lost her! You ‘re always
+right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy, be wrong for once!”
+
+“Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, be merciful!” said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which,
+for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow’s stare
+covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension--a
+presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be
+capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity. There was no
+space in Mrs. Hudson’s tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling,
+and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching
+on top of it. She was evidently not following Roderick at all in his
+dusky aberrations. Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was
+darkness and trouble, and as Roderick’s glory had now quite outstripped
+her powers of imagination and urged him beyond her jurisdiction, so that
+he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame, she found it
+infinitely comfortable to lay the burden of their common affliction upon
+Rowland’s broad shoulders. Had he not promised to make them all rich and
+happy? And this was the end of it! Rowland felt as if his trials were,
+in a sense, only beginning. “Had n’t you better forget all this, my
+dear?” Mrs. Hudson said. “Had n’t you better just quietly attend to your
+work?”
+
+“Work, madame?” cried Roderick. “My work ‘s over. I can’t work--I have
+n’t worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental
+collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and
+break the spell of my idleness. But there ‘s a perfect vacuum here!” And
+he tapped his forehead. “It ‘s bigger than ever; it grows bigger every
+hour!”
+
+“I ‘m sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little
+mother,” said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.
+
+“I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since! I quarreled
+with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my
+nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!”
+
+“Threw away--five thousand dollars!” Roderick had been wandering among
+formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate. But here
+was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment,
+looked it in the face. She repeated her son’s words a third time with a
+gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears. Roderick
+went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
+coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out. She leaned
+her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly. She said not a
+word, she made no attempt to scold; but the desolation of her tears was
+overwhelming. It lasted some time--too long for Rowland’s courage. He
+had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful; but the
+elation that was mentioned a while since had utterly ebbed, and he found
+his situation intolerable. He walked away--not, perhaps, on tiptoe, but
+with a total absence of bravado in his tread.
+
+The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought him the card of
+a visitor. He read with surprise the name of Mrs. Hudson, and hurried
+forward to meet her. He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the
+arm of her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her
+lips tightly compressed. Her advent puzzled him, and it was not for
+some time that he began to understand the motive of it. Roderick’s
+countenance threw no light upon it; but Roderick’s countenance, full of
+light as it was, in a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything.
+He had not been in Rowland’s rooms for several weeks, and he immediately
+began to look at those of his own works that adorned them. He lost
+himself in silent contemplation. Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself
+with dignity, and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive.
+Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland’s whole attention
+centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep. She told him that she
+had come to him for practical advice; she begged to remind him that she
+was a stranger in the land. Where were they to go, please? what were
+they to do? Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his back
+turned and was gazing at his Adam with the intensity with which he might
+have examined Michael Angelo’s Moses.
+
+“Roderick says he does n’t know, he does n’t care,” Mrs. Hudson said;
+“he leaves it entirely to you.”
+
+Many another man, in Rowland’s place, would have greeted this
+information with an irate and sarcastic laugh, and told his visitors
+that he thanked them infinitely for their confidence, but that, really,
+as things stood now, they must settle these matters between themselves;
+many another man might have so demeaned himself, even if, like Rowland,
+he had been in love with Mary Garland and pressingly conscious that
+her destiny was also part of the question. But Rowland swallowed all
+hilarity and all sarcasm, and let himself seriously consider Mrs.
+Hudson’s petition. His wits, however, were but indifferently at his
+command; they were dulled by his sense of the inexpressible change in
+Mrs. Hudson’s attitude. Her visit was evidently intended as a formal
+reminder of the responsiblities Rowland had worn so lightly. Mrs. Hudson
+was doubtless too sincerely humble a person to suppose that if he had
+been recreant to his vows of vigilance and tenderness, her still, small
+presence would operate as a chastisement. But by some diminutive logical
+process of her own she had convinced herself that she had been weakly
+trustful, and that she had suffered Rowland to think too meanly, not
+only of her understanding, but of her social consequence. A visit in
+her best gown would have an admonitory effect as regards both of these
+attributes; it would cancel some favors received, and show him that she
+was no such fool! These were the reflections of a very shy woman,
+who, determining for once in her life to hold up her head, was perhaps
+carrying it a trifle extravagantly.
+
+“You know we have very little money to spend,” she said, as Rowland
+remained silent. “Roderick tells me that he has debts and nothing at all
+to pay them with. He says I must write to Mr. Striker to sell my house
+for what it will bring, and send me out the money. When the money comes
+I must give it to him. I ‘m sure I don’t know; I never heard of anything
+so dreadful! My house is all I have. But that is all Roderick will say.
+We must be very economical.”
+
+Before this speech was finished Mrs. Hudson’s voice had begun to quaver
+softly, and her face, which had no capacity for the expression of
+superior wisdom, to look as humbly appealing as before. Rowland turned
+to Roderick and spoke like a school-master. “Come away from those
+statues, and sit down here and listen to me!”
+
+Roderick started, but obeyed with the most graceful docility.
+
+“What do you propose to your mother to do?” Rowland asked.
+
+“Propose?” said Roderick, absently. “Oh, I propose nothing.”
+
+The tone, the glance, the gesture with which this was said were horribly
+irritating (though obviously without the slightest intention of being
+so), and for an instant an imprecation rose to Rowland’s lips. But he
+checked it, and he was afterwards glad he had done so. “You must do
+something,” he said. “Choose, select, decide!”
+
+“My dear Rowland, how you talk!” Roderick cried. “The very point of the
+matter is that I can’t do anything. I will do as I ‘m told, but I don’t
+call that doing. We must leave Rome, I suppose, though I don’t see why.
+We have got no money, and you have to pay money on the railroads.”
+
+Mrs. Hudson surreptitiously wrung her hands. “Listen to him, please!”
+ she cried. “Not leave Rome, when we have staid here later than any
+Christians ever did before! It ‘s this dreadful place that has made us
+so unhappy.”
+
+“That ‘s very true,” said Roderick, serenely. “If I had not come to
+Rome, I would n’t have risen, and if I had not risen, I should n’t have
+fallen.”
+
+“Fallen--fallen!” murmured Mrs. Hudson. “Just hear him!”
+
+“I will do anything you say, Rowland,” Roderick added. “I will do
+anything you want. I have not been unkind to my mother--have I, mother?
+I was unkind yesterday, without meaning it; for after all, all that had
+to be said. Murder will out, and my low spirits can’t be hidden. But we
+talked it over and made it up, did n’t we? It seemed to me we did.
+Let Rowland decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right
+thing.” And Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the statues,
+got up again and went back to look at them.
+
+Mrs. Hudson fixed her eyes upon the floor in silence. There was not
+a trace in Roderick’s face, or in his voice, of the bitterness of his
+emotion of the day before, and not a hint of his having the lightest
+weight upon his conscience. He looked at Rowland with his frank,
+luminous eye as if there had never been a difference of opinion between
+them; as if each had ever been for both, unalterably, and both for each.
+
+Rowland had received a few days before a letter from a lady of his
+acquaintance, a worthy Scotswoman domiciled in a villa upon one of the
+olive-covered hills near Florence. She held her apartment in the villa
+upon a long lease, and she enjoyed for a sum not worth mentioning the
+possession of an extraordinary number of noble, stone-floored rooms,
+with ceilings vaulted and frescoed, and barred windows commanding the
+loveliest view in the world. She was a needy and thrifty spinster, who
+never hesitated to declare that the lovely view was all very well, but
+that for her own part she lived in the villa for cheapness, and that
+if she had a clear three hundred pounds a year she would go and really
+enjoy life near her sister, a baronet’s lady, at Glasgow. She was now
+proposing to make a visit to that exhilarating city, and she desired to
+turn an honest penny by sub-letting for a few weeks her historic Italian
+chambers. The terms on which she occupied them enabled her to ask a rent
+almost jocosely small, and she begged Rowland to do what she called a
+little genteel advertising for her. Would he say a good word for her
+rooms to his numerous friends, as they left Rome? He said a good word
+for them now to Mrs. Hudson, and told her in dollars and cents how cheap
+a summer’s lodging she might secure. He dwelt upon the fact that she
+would strike a truce with tables-d’hote and have a cook of her own,
+amenable possibly to instruction in the Northampton mysteries. He
+had touched a tender chord; Mrs. Hudson became almost cheerful. Her
+sentiments upon the table-d’hote system and upon foreign household
+habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had space for it, would
+repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul to the Puritanic
+canons of cookery quite lightened the burden of her depression. While
+Rowland set forth his case Roderick was slowly walking round the
+magnificent Adam, with his hands in his pockets. Rowland waited for him
+to manifest an interest in their discussion, but the statue seemed to
+fascinate him and he remained calmly heedless. Rowland was a practical
+man; he possessed conspicuously what is called the sense of detail. He
+entered into Mrs. Hudson’s position minutely, and told her exactly why
+it seemed good that she should remove immediately to the Florentine
+villa. She received his advice with great frigidity, looking hard at the
+floor and sighing, like a person well on her guard against an insidious
+optimism. But she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received
+her permission to write to his friend that he had let the rooms.
+
+Roderick assented to this decision without either sighs or smiles. “A
+Florentine villa is a good thing!” he said. “I am at your service.”
+
+“I ‘m sure I hope you ‘ll get better there,” moaned his mother,
+gathering her shawl together.
+
+Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed to
+Rowland’s statues. “Better or worse, remember this: I did those things!”
+ he said.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, “Remember it
+yourself!”
+
+“They are horribly good!” said Roderick.
+
+Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him that he
+had nothing more to say. But as the others were going, a last light
+pulsation of the sense of undischarged duty led him to address to
+Roderick a few words of parting advice. “You ‘ll find the Villa
+Pandolfini very delightful, very comfortable,” he said. “You ought to
+be very contented there. Whether you work or whether you loaf, it ‘s a
+place for an artist to be happy in. I hope you will work.”
+
+“I hope I may!” said Roderick with a magnificent smile.
+
+“When we meet again, have something to show me.”
+
+“When we meet again? Where the deuce are you going?” Roderick demanded.
+
+“Oh, I hardly know; over the Alps.”
+
+“Over the Alps! You ‘re going to leave me?” Roderick cried.
+
+Rowland had most distinctly meant to leave him, but his resolution
+immediately wavered. He glanced at Mrs. Hudson and saw that her eyebrows
+were lifted and her lips parted in soft irony. She seemed to accuse him
+of a craven shirking of trouble, to demand of him to repair his
+cruel havoc in her life by a solemn renewal of zeal. But Roderick’s
+expectations were the oddest! Such as they were, Rowland asked himself
+why he should n’t make a bargain with them. “You desire me to go with
+you?” he asked.
+
+“If you don’t go, I won’t--that ‘s all! How in the world shall I get
+through the summer without you?”
+
+“How will you get through it with me? That ‘s the question.”
+
+“I don’t pretend to say; the future is a dead blank. But without you it
+‘s not a blank--it ‘s certain damnation!”
+
+“Mercy, mercy!” murmured Mrs. Hudson.
+
+Rowland made an effort to stand firm, and for a moment succeeded. “If I
+go with you, will you try to work?”
+
+Roderick, up to this moment, had been looking as unperturbed as if the
+deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at
+these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all
+his passion returned. “Try to work!” he cried. “Try--try! work--work! In
+God’s name don’t talk that way, or you ‘ll drive me mad! Do you suppose
+I ‘m trying not to work? Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun
+of it? Don’t you suppose I would try to work for myself before I tried
+for you?”
+
+“Mr. Mallet,” cried Mrs. Hudson, piteously, “will you leave me alone
+with this?”
+
+Rowland turned to her and informed her, gently, that he would go with
+her to Florence. After he had so pledged himself he thought not at all
+of the pain of his position as mediator between the mother’s resentful
+grief and the son’s incurable weakness; he drank deep, only, of the
+satisfaction of not separating from Mary Garland. If the future was a
+blank to Roderick, it was hardly less so to himself. He had at moments
+a lively foreboding of impending calamity. He paid it no especial
+deference, but it made him feel indisposed to take the future into his
+account. When, on his going to take leave of Madame Grandoni, this lady
+asked at what time he would come back to Rome, he answered that he was
+coming back either never or forever. When she asked him what he meant,
+he said he really could n’t tell her, and parted from her with much
+genuine emotion; the more so, doubtless, that she blessed him in a quite
+loving, maternal fashion, and told him she honestly believed him to be
+the best fellow in the world.
+
+The Villa Pandolfini stood directly upon a small grass-grown piazza,
+on the top of a hill which sloped straight from one of the gates of
+Florence. It offered to the outer world a long, rather low facade,
+colored a dull, dark yellow, and pierced with windows of various sizes,
+no one of which, save those on the ground floor, was on the same level
+with any other. Within, it had a great, cool, gray cortile, with high,
+light arches around it, heavily-corniced doors, of majestic altitude,
+opening out of it, and a beautiful mediaeval well on one side of it.
+Mrs. Hudson’s rooms opened into a small garden supported on immense
+substructions, which were planted on the farther side of the hill, as
+it sloped steeply away. This garden was a charming place. Its south wall
+was curtained with a dense orange vine, a dozen fig-trees offered you
+their large-leaved shade, and over the low parapet the soft, grave
+Tuscan landscape kept you company. The rooms themselves were as high as
+chapels and as cool as royal sepulchres. Silence, peace, and security
+seemed to abide in the ancient house and make it an ideal refuge for
+aching hearts. Mrs. Hudson had a stunted, brown-faced Maddalena, who
+wore a crimson handkerchief passed over her coarse, black locks and tied
+under her sharp, pertinacious chin, and a smile which was as brilliant
+as a prolonged flash of lightning. She smiled at everything in life,
+especially the things she did n’t like and which kept her talent for
+mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient
+to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful she-wolf. This
+inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her dealings with
+her melancholy mistress, to whom she had been bequeathed by the late
+occupant of the apartment, and who, to Rowland’s satisfaction,
+promised to be diverted from her maternal sorrows by the still
+deeper perplexities of Maddalena’s theory of roasting, sweeping, and
+bed-making.
+
+Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence, whence in
+the summer mornings he had five minutes’ walk in the sharp, black,
+shadow-strip projected by winding, flower-topped walls, to join his
+friends. The life at the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined
+itself, was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from
+exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm. If a sensible shadow rested
+upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice; it was feigning a
+repose which it very scantily felt. Roderick had lost no time in giving
+the full measure of his uncompromising chagrin, and as he was the
+central figure of the little group, as he held its heart-strings all in
+his own hand, it reflected faithfully the eclipse of his own genius. No
+one had ventured upon the cheerful commonplace of saying that the change
+of air and of scene would restore his spirits; this would have had,
+under the circumstances, altogether too silly a sound. The change in
+question had done nothing of the sort, and his companions had, at least,
+the comfort of their perspicacity. An essential spring had dried up
+within him, and there was no visible spiritual law for making it flow
+again. He was rarely violent, he expressed little of the irritation and
+ennui that he must have constantly felt; it was as if he believed that
+a spiritual miracle for his redemption was just barely possible, and was
+therefore worth waiting for. The most that one could do, however, was
+to wait grimly and doggedly, suppressing an imprecation as, from time to
+time, one looked at one’s watch. An attitude of positive urbanity toward
+life was not to be expected; it was doing one’s duty to hold one’s
+tongue and keep one’s hands off one’s own windpipe, and other people’s.
+Roderick had long silences, fits of profound lethargy, almost of
+stupefaction. He used to sit in the garden by the hour, with his head
+thrown back, his legs outstretched, his hands in his pockets, and his
+eyes fastened upon the blinding summer sky. He would gather a dozen
+books about him, tumble them out on the ground, take one into his lap,
+and leave it with the pages unturned. These moods would alternate with
+hours of extreme restlessness, during which he mysteriously absented
+himself. He bore the heat of the Italian summer like a salamander, and
+used to start off at high noon for long walks over the hills. He often
+went down into Florence, rambled through her close, dim streets, and
+lounged away mornings in the churches and galleries. On many of these
+occasions Rowland bore him company, for they were the times when he
+was most like his former self. Before Michael Angelo’s statues and the
+pictures of the early Tuscans, he quite forgot his own infelicities, and
+picked up the thread of his old aesthetic loquacity. He had a particular
+fondness for Andrea del Sarto, and affirmed that if he had been a
+painter he would have taken the author of the Madonna del Sacco for his
+model. He found in Florence some of his Roman friends, and went down on
+certain evenings to meet them. More than once he asked Mary Garland to
+go with him into town, and showed her the things he most cared for. He
+had some modeling clay brought up to the villa and deposited in a room
+suitable for his work; but when this had been done he turned the key in
+the door and the clay never was touched. His eye was heavy and his hand
+cold, and his mother put up a secret prayer that he might be induced
+to see a doctor. But on a certain occasion, when her prayer became
+articulate, he had a great outburst of anger and begged her to know,
+once for all, that his health was better than it had ever been. On
+the whole, and most of the time, he was a sad spectacle; he looked so
+hopelessly idle. If he was not querulous and bitter, it was because he
+had taken an extraordinary vow not to be; a vow heroic, for him, a vow
+which those who knew him well had the tenderness to appreciate. Talking
+with him was like skating on thin ice, and his companions had a constant
+mental vision of spots designated “dangerous.”
+
+This was a difficult time for Rowland; he said to himself that he would
+endure it to the end, but that it must be his last adventure of the
+kind. Mrs. Hudson divided her time between looking askance at her son,
+with her hands tightly clasped about her pocket-handkerchief, as if she
+were wringing it dry of the last hour’s tears, and turning her eyes
+much more directly upon Rowland, in the mutest, the feeblest, the most
+intolerable reproachfulness. She never phrased her accusations, but he
+felt that in the unillumined void of the poor lady’s mind they loomed
+up like vaguely-outlined monsters. Her demeanor caused him the acutest
+suffering, and if, at the outset of his enterprise, he had seen, how
+dimly soever, one of those plaintive eye-beams in the opposite scale,
+the brilliancy of Roderick’s promises would have counted for little.
+They made their way to the softest spot in his conscience and kept it
+chronically aching. If Mrs. Hudson had been loquacious and vulgar, he
+would have borne even a less valid persecution with greater fortitude.
+But somehow, neat and noiseless and dismally lady-like, as she sat
+there, keeping her grievance green with her soft-dropping tears, her
+displeasure conveyed an overwhelming imputation of brutality. He felt
+like a reckless trustee who has speculated with the widow’s mite, and is
+haunted with the reflection of ruin that he sees in her tearful eyes. He
+did everything conceivable to be polite to Mrs. Hudson, and to treat her
+with distinguished deference. Perhaps his exasperated nerves made him
+overshoot the mark, and rendered his civilities a trifle peremptory. She
+seemed capable of believing that he was trying to make a fool of her;
+she would have thought him cruelly recreant if he had suddenly
+departed in desperation, and yet she gave him no visible credit for his
+constancy. Women are said by some authorities to be cruel; I don’t know
+how true this is, but it may at least be pertinent to remark that Mrs.
+Hudson was very much of a woman. It often seemed to Rowland that he
+had too decidedly forfeited his freedom, and that there was something
+positively grotesque in a man of his age and circumstances living in
+such a moral bondage.
+
+But Mary Garland had helped him before, and she helped him now--helped
+him not less than he had assured himself she would when he found himself
+drifting to Florence. Yet her help was rendered in the same unconscious,
+unacknowledged fashion as before; there was no explicit change in their
+relations. After that distressing scene in Rome which had immediately
+preceded their departure, it was of course impossible that there should
+not be on Miss Garland’s part some frankness of allusion to Roderick’s
+sad condition. She had been present, the reader will remember, during
+only half of his unsparing confession, and Rowland had not seen her
+confronted with any absolute proof of Roderick’s passion for Christina
+Light. But he knew that she knew far too much for her happiness;
+Roderick had told him, shortly after their settlement at the Villa
+Pandolfini, that he had had a “tremendous talk” with his cousin. Rowland
+asked no questions about it; he preferred not to know what had passed
+between them. If their interview had been purely painful, he wished
+to ignore it for Miss Garland’s sake; and if it had sown the seeds of
+reconciliation, he wished to close his eyes to it for his own--for the
+sake of that unshaped idea, forever dismissed and yet forever present,
+which hovered in the background of his consciousness, with a hanging
+head, as it were, and yet an unshamed glance, and whose lightest motions
+were an effectual bribe to patience. Was the engagement broken? Rowland
+wondered, yet without asking. But it hardly mattered, for if, as was
+more than probable, Miss Garland had peremptorily released her cousin,
+her own heart had by no means recovered its liberty. It was very certain
+to Rowland’s mind that if she had given him up she had by no means
+ceased to care for him passionately, and that, to exhaust her charity
+for his weaknesses, Roderick would have, as the phrase is, a long row to
+hoe. She spoke of Roderick as she might have done of a person suffering
+from a serious malady which demanded much tenderness; but if Rowland
+had found it possible to accuse her of dishonesty he would have said now
+that she believed appreciably less than she pretended to in her victim’s
+being an involuntary patient. There are women whose love is care-taking
+and patronizing, and who rather prefer a weak man because he gives them
+a comfortable sense of strength. It did not in the least please Rowland
+to believe that Mary Garland was one of these; for he held that such
+women were only males in petticoats, and he was convinced that Miss
+Garland’s heart was constructed after the most perfect feminine model.
+That she was a very different woman from Christina Light did not at all
+prove that she was less a woman, and if the Princess Casamassima had
+gone up into a high place to publish her disrelish of a man who lacked
+the virile will, it was very certain that Mary Garland was not a person
+to put up, at any point, with what might be called the princess’s
+leavings. It was Christina’s constant practice to remind you of the
+complexity of her character, of the subtlety of her mind, of her
+troublous faculty of seeing everything in a dozen different lights. Mary
+Garland had never pretended not to be simple; but Rowland had a theory
+that she had really a more multitudinous sense of human things, a more
+delicate imagination, and a finer instinct of character. She did you the
+honors of her mind with a grace far less regal, but was not that faculty
+of quite as remarkable an adjustment? If in poor Christina’s strangely
+commingled nature there was circle within circle, and depth beneath
+depth, it was to be believed that Mary Garland, though she did not amuse
+herself with dropping stones into her soul, and waiting to hear them
+fall, laid quite as many sources of spiritual life under contribution.
+She had believed Roderick was a fine fellow when she bade him farewell
+beneath the Northampton elms, and this belief, to her young, strenuous,
+concentrated imagination, had meant many things. If it was to grow cold,
+it would be because disenchantment had become total and won the battle
+at each successive point.
+
+Miss Garland had even in her face and carriage something of the
+preoccupied and wearied look of a person who is watching at a sick-bed;
+Roderick’s broken fortunes, his dead ambitions, were a cruel burden to
+the heart of a girl who had believed that he possessed “genius,” and
+supposed that genius was to one’s spiritual economy what full pockets
+were to one’s domestic. And yet, with her, Rowland never felt, as
+with Mrs. Hudson, that undercurrent of reproach and bitterness toward
+himself, that impertinent implication that he had defrauded her of
+happiness. Was this justice, in Miss Garland, or was it mercy? The
+answer would have been difficult, for she had almost let Rowland feel
+before leaving Rome that she liked him well enough to forgive him an
+injury. It was partly, Rowland fancied, that there were occasional
+lapses, deep and sweet, in her sense of injury. When, on arriving
+at Florence, she saw the place Rowland had brought them to in their
+trouble, she had given him a look and said a few words to him that
+had seemed not only a remission of guilt but a positive reward.
+This happened in the court of the villa--the large gray quadrangle,
+overstretched, from edge to edge of the red-tiled roof, by the soft
+Italian sky. Mary had felt on the spot the sovereign charm of the
+place; it was reflected in her deeply intelligent glance, and Rowland
+immediately accused himself of not having done the villa justice. Miss
+Garland took a mighty fancy to Florence, and used to look down wistfully
+at the towered city from the windows and garden. Roderick having now no
+pretext for not being her cicerone, Rowland was no longer at liberty, as
+he had been in Rome, to propose frequent excursions to her. Roderick’s
+own invitations, however, were not frequent, and Rowland more than once
+ventured to introduce her to a gallery or a church. These expeditions
+were not so blissful, to his sense, as the rambles they had taken
+together in Rome, for his companion only half surrendered herself to her
+enjoyment, and seemed to have but a divided attention at her command.
+Often, when she had begun with looking intently at a picture, her
+silence, after an interval, made him turn and glance at her. He usually
+found that if she was looking at the picture still, she was not seeing
+it. Her eyes were fixed, but her thoughts were wandering, and an image
+more vivid than any that Raphael or Titian had drawn had superposed
+itself upon the canvas. She asked fewer questions than before, and
+seemed to have lost heart for consulting guide-books and encyclopaedias.
+From time to time, however, she uttered a deep, full murmur of
+gratification. Florence in midsummer was perfectly void of travelers,
+and the dense little city gave forth its aesthetic aroma with a larger
+frankness, as the nightingale sings when the listeners have departed.
+The churches were deliciously cool, but the gray streets were stifling,
+and the great, dove-tailed polygons of pavement as hot to the tread as
+molten lava. Rowland, who suffered from intense heat, would have found
+all this uncomfortable in solitude; but Florence had never charmed him
+so completely as during these midsummer strolls with his preoccupied
+companion. One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow to the
+Academy. Miss Garland kept her appointment, but as soon as she appeared,
+Rowland saw that something painful had befallen her. She was doing her
+best to look at her ease, but her face bore the marks of tears. Rowland
+told her that he was afraid she was ill, and that if she preferred to
+give up the visit to Florence he would submit with what grace he might.
+She hesitated a moment, and then said she preferred to adhere to their
+plan. “I am not well,” she presently added, “but it ‘s a moral malady,
+and in such cases I consider your company beneficial.”
+
+“But if I am to be your doctor,” said Rowland, “you must tell me how
+your illness began.”
+
+“I can tell you very little. It began with Mrs. Hudson being unjust to
+me, for the first time in her life. And now I am already better!”
+
+I mention this incident because it confirmed an impression of Rowland’s
+from which he had derived a certain consolation. He knew that Mrs.
+Hudson considered her son’s ill-regulated passion for Christina Light a
+very regrettable affair, but he suspected that her manifest compassion
+had been all for Roderick, and not in the least for Mary Garland. She
+was fond of the young girl, but she had valued her primarily, during the
+last two years, as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick’s shrine.
+Roderick had honored her by asking her to become his wife, but that poor
+Mary had any rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was quite incapable
+of perceiving. Her sentiment on the subject was of course not very
+vigorously formulated, but she was unprepared to admit that Miss Garland
+had any ground for complaint. Roderick was very unhappy; that was
+enough, and Mary’s duty was to join her patience and her prayers to
+those of his doting mother. Roderick might fall in love with whom he
+pleased; no doubt that women trained in the mysterious Roman arts were
+only too proud and too happy to make it easy for him; and it was very
+presuming in poor, plain Mary to feel any personal resentment. Mrs.
+Hudson’s philosophy was of too narrow a scope to suggest that a mother
+may forgive where a mistress cannot, and she thought herself greatly
+aggrieved that Miss Garland was not so disinterested as herself. She was
+ready to drop dead in Roderick’s service, and she was quite capable
+of seeing her companion falter and grow faint, without a tremor of
+compassion. Mary, apparently, had given some intimation of her belief
+that if constancy is the flower of devotion, reciprocity is the
+guarantee of constancy, and Mrs. Hudson had rebuked her failing faith
+and called it cruelty. That Miss Garland had found it hard to reason
+with Mrs. Hudson, that she suffered deeply from the elder lady’s
+softly bitter imputations, and that, in short, he had companionship
+in misfortune--all this made Rowland find a certain luxury in his
+discomfort.
+
+The party at Villa Pandolfini used to sit in the garden in the evenings,
+which Rowland almost always spent with them. Their entertainment was in
+the heavily perfumed air, in the dim, far starlight, in the crenelated
+tower of a neighboring villa, which loomed vaguely above them in the
+warm darkness, and in such conversation as depressing reflections
+allowed. Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless
+ghost, silent for the most part, but making from time to time a brief
+observation, characterized by the most fantastic cynicism. Roderick’s
+contributions to the conversation were indeed always so fantastic that,
+though half the time they wearied him unspeakably, Rowland made an
+effort to treat them humorously. With Rowland alone Roderick talked a
+great deal more; often about things related to his own work, or about
+artistic and aesthetic matters in general. He talked as well as ever,
+or even better; but his talk always ended in a torrent of groans and
+curses. When this current set in, Rowland straightway turned his back
+or stopped his ears, and Roderick now witnessed these movements with
+perfect indifference. When the latter was absent from the star-lit
+circle in the garden, as often happened, Rowland knew nothing of his
+whereabouts; he supposed him to be in Florence, but he never learned
+what he did there. All this was not enlivening, but with an even,
+muffled tread the days followed each other, and brought the month
+of August to a close. One particular evening at this time was most
+enchanting; there was a perfect moon, looking so extraordinarily large
+that it made everything its light fell upon seem small; the heat was
+tempered by a soft west wind, and the wind was laden with the odors of
+the early harvest. The hills, the vale of the Arno, the shrunken river,
+the domes of Florence, were vaguely effaced by the dense moonshine; they
+looked as if they were melting out of sight like an exorcised vision.
+Rowland had found the two ladies alone at the villa, and he had sat with
+them for an hour. He felt absolutely hushed by the solemn splendor of
+the scene, but he had risked the remark that, whatever life might yet
+have in store for either of them, this was a night that they would never
+forget.
+
+“It ‘s a night to remember on one’s death-bed!” Miss Garland exclaimed.
+
+“Oh, Mary, how can you!” murmured Mrs. Hudson, to whom this savored
+of profanity, and to whose shrinking sense, indeed, the accumulated
+loveliness of the night seemed to have something shameless and defiant.
+
+They were silent after this, for some time, but at last Rowland
+addressed certain idle words to Miss Garland. She made no reply, and he
+turned to look at her. She was sitting motionless, with her head pressed
+to Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder, and the latter lady was gazing at him through
+the silvered dusk with a look which gave a sort of spectral solemnity to
+the sad, weak meaning of her eyes. She had the air, for the moment, of
+a little old malevolent fairy. Miss Garland, Rowland perceived in an
+instant, was not absolutely motionless; a tremor passed through her
+figure. She was weeping, or on the point of weeping, and she could not
+trust herself to speak. Rowland left his place and wandered to another
+part of the garden, wondering at the motive of her sudden tears. Of
+women’s sobs in general he had a sovereign dread, but these, somehow,
+gave him a certain pleasure. When he returned to his place Miss Garland
+had raised her head and banished her tears. She came away from Mrs.
+Hudson, and they stood for a short time leaning against the parapet.
+
+“It seems to you very strange, I suppose,” said Rowland, “that there
+should be any trouble in such a world as this.”
+
+“I used to think,” she answered, “that if any trouble came to me I would
+bear it like a stoic. But that was at home, where things don’t speak to
+us of enjoyment as they do here. Here it is such a mixture; one does n’t
+know what to choose, what to believe. Beauty stands there--beauty such
+as this night and this place, and all this sad, strange summer, have
+been so full of--and it penetrates to one’s soul and lodges there, and
+keeps saying that man was not made to suffer, but to enjoy. This place
+has undermined my stoicism, but--shall I tell you? I feel as if I were
+saying something sinful--I love it!”
+
+“If it is sinful, I absolve you,” said Rowland, “in so far as I have
+power. We are made, I suppose, both to suffer and to enjoy. As you say,
+it ‘s a mixture. Just now and here, it seems a peculiarly strange one.
+But we must take things in turn.”
+
+His words had a singular aptness, for he had hardly uttered them when
+Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood. He
+stood for a moment gazing hard at the view.
+
+“It ‘s a very beautiful night, my son,” said his mother, going to him
+timidly, and touching his arm.
+
+He passed his hand through his hair and let it stay there, clasping
+his thick locks. “Beautiful?” he cried; “of course it ‘s beautiful!
+Everything is beautiful; everything is insolent, defiant, atrocious with
+beauty. Nothing is ugly but me--me and my poor dead brain!”
+
+“Oh, my dearest son,” pleaded poor Mrs. Hudson, “don’t you feel any
+better?”
+
+Roderick made no immediate answer; but at last he spoke in a different
+voice. “I came expressly to tell you that you need n’t trouble
+yourselves any longer to wait for something to turn up. Nothing will
+turn up! It ‘s all over! I said when I came here I would give it a
+chance. I have given it a chance. Have n’t I, eh? Have n’t I, Rowland?
+It ‘s no use; the thing ‘s a failure! Do with me now what you please. I
+recommend you to set me up there at the end of the garden and shoot me.”
+
+“I feel strongly inclined,” said Rowland gravely, “to go and get my
+revolver.”
+
+“Oh, mercy on us, what language!” cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+“Why not?” Roderick went on. “This would be a lovely night for it, and I
+should be a lucky fellow to be buried in this garden. But bury me alive,
+if you prefer. Take me back to Northampton.”
+
+“Roderick, will you really come?” cried his mother.
+
+“Oh yes, I ‘ll go! I might as well be there as anywhere--reverting to
+idiocy and living upon alms. I can do nothing with all this; perhaps I
+should really like Northampton. If I ‘m to vegetate for the rest of my
+days, I can do it there better than here.”
+
+“Oh, come home, come home,” Mrs. Hudson said, “and we shall all be safe
+and quiet and happy. My dearest son, come home with your poor mother!”
+
+“Let us go, then, and go quickly!”
+
+Mrs. Hudson flung herself upon his neck for gratitude. “We ‘ll go
+to-morrow!” she cried. “The Lord is very good to me!”
+
+Mary Garland said nothing to this; but she looked at Rowland, and her
+eyes seemed to contain a kind of alarmed appeal. Rowland noted it with
+exultation, but even without it he would have broken into an eager
+protest.
+
+“Are you serious, Roderick?” he demanded.
+
+“Serious? of course not! How can a man with a crack in his brain be
+serious? how can a muddlehead reason? But I ‘m not jesting, either; I
+can no more make jokes than utter oracles!”
+
+“Are you willing to go home?”
+
+“Willing? God forbid! I am simply amenable to force; if my mother
+chooses to take me, I won’t resist. I can’t! I have come to that!”
+
+“Let me resist, then,” said Rowland. “Go home as you are now? I can’t
+stand by and see it.”
+
+It may have been true that Roderick had lost his sense of humor, but he
+scratched his head with a gesture that was almost comical in its effect.
+“You are a queer fellow! I should think I would disgust you horribly.”
+
+“Stay another year,” Rowland simply said.
+
+“Doing nothing?”
+
+“You shall do something. I am responsible for your doing something.”
+
+“To whom are you responsible?”
+
+Rowland, before replying, glanced at Miss Garland, and his glance made
+her speak quickly. “Not to me!”
+
+“I ‘m responsible to myself,” Rowland declared.
+
+“My poor, dear fellow!” said Roderick.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Mallet, are n’t you satisfied?” cried Mrs. Hudson, in the tone
+in which Niobe may have addressed the avenging archers, after she had
+seen her eldest-born fall. “It ‘s out of all nature keeping him here.
+When we ‘re in a poor way, surely our own dear native land is the place
+for us. Do leave us to ourselves, sir!”
+
+This just failed of being a dismissal in form, and Rowland bowed his
+head to it. Roderick was silent for some moments; then, suddenly, he
+covered his face with his two hands. “Take me at least out of this
+terrible Italy,” he cried, “where everything mocks and reproaches and
+torments and eludes me! Take me out of this land of impossible beauty
+and put me in the midst of ugliness. Set me down where nature is coarse
+and flat, and men and manners are vulgar. There must be something
+awfully ugly in Germany. Pack me off there!”
+
+Rowland answered that if he wished to leave Italy the thing might be
+arranged; he would think it over and submit a proposal on the morrow.
+He suggested to Mrs. Hudson, in consequence, that she should spend the
+autumn in Switzerland, where she would find a fine tonic climate, plenty
+of fresh milk, and several pensions at three francs and a half a day.
+Switzerland, of course, was not ugly, but one could not have everything.
+
+Mrs. Hudson neither thanked him nor assented; but she wept and packed
+her trunks. Rowland had a theory, after the scene which led to these
+preparations, that Mary Garland was weary of waiting for Roderick to
+come to his senses, that the faith which had bravely borne his manhood
+company hitherto, on the tortuous march he was leading it, had begun
+to believe it had gone far enough. This theory was not vitiated by
+something she said to him on the day before that on which Mrs. Hudson
+had arranged to leave Florence.
+
+“Cousin Sarah, the other evening,” she said, “asked you to please leave
+us. I think she hardly knew what she was saying, and I hope you have not
+taken offense.”
+
+“By no means; but I honestly believe that my leaving you would
+contribute greatly to Mrs. Hudson’s comfort. I can be your hidden
+providence, you know; I can watch you at a distance, and come upon the
+scene at critical moments.”
+
+Miss Garland looked for a moment at the ground; and then, with sudden
+earnestness, “I beg you to come with us!” she said.
+
+It need hardly be added that after this Rowland went with them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. The Princess Casamassima
+
+Rowland had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn, accessible
+with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once spent a blissful
+ten days. He had at that time been trudging, knapsack on back, over half
+Switzerland, and not being, on his legs, a particularly light weight,
+it was no shame to him to confess that he was mortally tired. The inn
+of which I speak presented striking analogies with a cow-stable; but
+in spite of this circumstance, it was crowded with hungry tourists.
+It stood in a high, shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine meadows
+sloping down to it from the base of certain rugged rocks whose outlines
+were grotesque against the evening sky. Rowland had seen grander places
+in Switzerland that pleased him less, and whenever afterwards he wished
+to think of Alpine opportunities at their best, he recalled this grassy
+concave among the mountain-tops, and the August days he spent there,
+resting deliciously, at his length, in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder,
+with the light cool air stirring about his temples, the wafted odors of
+the pines in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells in his ears,
+the vast progression of the mountain shadows before his eyes, and a
+volume of Wordsworth in his pocket. His face, on the Swiss hill-sides,
+had been scorched to within a shade of the color nowadays called
+magenta, and his bed was a pallet in a loft, which he shared with a
+German botanist of colossal stature--every inch of him quaking at an
+open window. These had been drawbacks to felicity, but Rowland hardly
+cared where or how he was lodged, for he spent the livelong day under
+the sky, on the crest of a slope that looked at the Jungfrau. He
+remembered all this on leaving Florence with his friends, and he
+reflected that, as the midseason was over, accommodations would be more
+ample, and charges more modest. He communicated with his old friend the
+landlord, and, while September was yet young, his companions established
+themselves under his guidance in the grassy valley.
+
+He had crossed the Saint Gothard Pass with them, in the same carriage.
+During the journey from Florence, and especially during this portion
+of it, the cloud that hung over the little party had been almost
+dissipated, and they had looked at each other, in the close contiguity
+of the train and the posting-carriage, without either accusing or
+consoling glances. It was impossible not to enjoy the magnificent
+scenery of the Apennines and the Italian Alps, and there was a tacit
+agreement among the travelers to abstain from sombre allusions. The
+effect of this delicate compact seemed excellent; it ensured them a
+week’s intellectual sunshine. Roderick sat and gazed out of the window
+with a fascinated stare, and with a perfect docility of attitude. He
+concerned himself not a particle about the itinerary, or about any
+of the wayside arrangements; he took no trouble, and he gave none. He
+assented to everything that was proposed, talked very little, and led
+for a week a perfectly contemplative life. His mother rarely removed
+her eyes from him; and if, a while before, this would have extremely
+irritated him, he now seemed perfectly unconscious of her observation
+and profoundly indifferent to anything that might befall him. They spent
+a couple of days on the Lake of Como, at a hotel with white porticoes
+smothered in oleander and myrtle, and the terrace-steps leading down
+to little boats with striped awnings. They agreed it was the earthly
+paradise, and they passed the mornings strolling through the perfumed
+alleys of classic villas, and the evenings floating in the moonlight in
+a circle of outlined mountains, to the music of silver-trickling
+oars. One day, in the afternoon, the two young men took a long stroll
+together. They followed the winding footway that led toward Como, close
+to the lake-side, past the gates of villas and the walls of vineyards,
+through little hamlets propped on a dozen arches, and bathing their feet
+and their pendant tatters in the gray-green ripple; past frescoed walls
+and crumbling campaniles and grassy village piazzas, and the mouth
+of soft ravines that wound upward, through belts of swinging vine and
+vaporous olive and splendid chestnut, to high ledges where white chapels
+gleamed amid the paler boskage, and bare cliff-surfaces, with their
+sun-cracked lips, drank in the azure light. It all was confoundingly
+picturesque; it was the Italy that we know from the steel engravings in
+old keepsakes and annuals, from the vignettes on music-sheets and
+the drop-curtains at theatres; an Italy that we can never confess to
+ourselves--in spite of our own changes and of Italy’s--that we have
+ceased to believe in. Rowland and Roderick turned aside from the little
+paved footway that clambered and dipped and wound and doubled beside
+the lake, and stretched themselves idly beneath a fig-tree, on a grassy
+promontory. Rowland had never known anything so divinely soothing as the
+dreamy softness of that early autumn afternoon. The iridescent mountains
+shut him in; the little waves, beneath him, fretted the white pebbles at
+the laziest intervals; the festooned vines above him swayed just visibly
+in the all but motionless air.
+
+Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his hands
+under his head. “This suits me,” he said; “I could be happy here and
+forget everything. Why not stay here forever?” He kept his position for
+a long time and seemed lost in his thoughts. Rowland spoke to him, but
+he made vague answers; at last he closed his eyes. It seemed to Rowland,
+also, a place to stay in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the
+disagreeable. Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it
+in his arms. There had been something passionate in his movement; but
+Rowland was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back
+into a sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes.
+Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the
+lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his
+heart was too full for utterance.
+
+“Pity me, sir; pity me!” he presently cried. “Look at this lovely world,
+and think what it must be to be dead to it!”
+
+“Dead?” said Rowland.
+
+“Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave, where you lie
+staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and
+hearing all nature live and grow above you! That ‘s the way I feel!”
+
+“I am glad to hear it,” said Rowland. “Death of that sort is very near
+to resurrection.”
+
+“It ‘s too horrible,” Roderick went on; “it has all come over me here
+tremendously! If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears. For
+one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!”
+
+“Never mind what you have been; be something better!”
+
+“I shall never be anything again: it ‘s no use talking! But I don’t know
+what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here. Something
+in my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and
+desire. I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible! Mind you,
+I know it, I feel it! Remember that hereafter. Don’t say that he
+was stupefied and senseless; that his perception was dulled and his
+aspiration dead. Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of
+the beauty and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested and
+shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open, and his heart
+beating to madness; that he clung to every blade of grass and every
+way-side thorn as he passed; that it was the most horrible spectacle you
+ever witnessed; that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!”
+
+“Good heavens, man, are you insane?” Rowland cried.
+
+“I never have been saner. I don’t want to be bad company, and in this
+beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break
+the charm. But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor, to
+life! I only want to assure you that I know what I lose. I know it in
+every pulse of my heart! Here, where these things are all loveliest, I
+take leave of them. Farewell, farewell!”
+
+During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented himself
+much of the time from the carriage, and rambled far in advance, along
+the huge zigzags of the road. He displayed an extraordinary activity;
+his light weight and slender figure made him an excellent pedestrian,
+and his friends frequently saw him skirting the edge of plunging chasms,
+loosening the stones on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against
+the sky, from the top of rocky pinnacles. Mary Garland walked a great
+deal, but she remained near the carriage to be with Mrs. Hudson. Rowland
+remained near it to be with Miss Garland. He trudged by her side up that
+magnificent ascent from Italy, and found himself regretting that the
+Alps were so low, and that their trudging was not to last a week. She
+was exhilarated; she liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until
+within the last few weeks, she had seen nothing greater than Mount
+Holyoke, and she found that the Alps amply justified their reputation.
+Rowland knew that she loved nature, but he was struck afresh with the
+vivacity of her observation of it, and with her knowledge of plants and
+stones. At that season the wild flowers had mostly departed, but a few
+of them lingered, and Miss Garland never failed to espy them in their
+outlying corners. They interested her greatly; she was charmed when
+they were old friends, and charmed even more when they were new. She
+displayed a very light foot in going in quest of them, and had soon
+covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle of strange
+vegetation. Rowland of course was alert in her service, and he gathered
+for her several botanical specimens which at first seemed inaccessible.
+One of these, indeed, had at first appeared easier of capture than his
+attempt attested, and he had paused a moment at the base of the little
+peak on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther pursuit. Suddenly,
+as he stood there, he remembered Roderick’s defiance of danger and of
+Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized with a strong desire to
+test the courage of his companion. She had just scrambled up a grassy
+slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach. As he
+prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing
+was impossible! Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved,
+enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes,
+what became of him. He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he
+was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.
+
+“I can get the flower,” he called to her. “Will you trust me?”
+
+“I don’t want it; I would rather not have it!” she cried.
+
+“Will you trust me?” he repeated, looking at her.
+
+She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would
+shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done. “I wish it were something
+better!” she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to
+clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise
+was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow
+foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize.
+He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to
+descend. There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded
+them all. It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and
+that was all he had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when
+he offered Miss Garland the flower, and she was visibly pale. She had
+watched him without moving. All this had passed without the knowledge
+of Mrs. Hudson, who was dozing beneath the hood of the carriage. Mary
+Garland’s eyes did not perhaps display that ardent admiration which
+was formerly conferred by the queen of beauty at a tournament; but they
+expressed something in which Rowland found his reward. “Why did you do
+that?” she asked, gravely.
+
+He hesitated. He felt that it was physically possible to say, “Because
+I love you!” but that it was not morally possible. He lowered his pitch
+and answered, simply, “Because I wanted to do something for you.”
+
+“Suppose you had fallen,” said Miss Garland.
+
+“I believed I would not fall. And you believed it, I think.”
+
+“I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me.”
+
+“Quod erat demonstrandum!” cried Rowland. “I think you know Latin.”
+
+When our four friends were established in what I have called their
+grassy valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both
+grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a
+great many long walks, and, thanks to the lucid mountain air, not a
+little exhilaration. Mrs. Hudson was obliged to intermit her suspicions
+of the deleterious atmosphere of the old world, and to acknowledge the
+edifying purity of the breezes of Engelthal. She was certainly more
+placid than she had been in Italy; having always lived in the country,
+she had missed in Rome and Florence that social solitude mitigated by
+bushes and rocks which is so dear to the true New England temperament.
+The little unpainted inn at Engelthal, with its plank partitions, its
+milk-pans standing in the sun, its “help,” in the form of angular young
+women of the country-side, reminded her of places of summer sojourn
+in her native land; and the beautiful historic chambers of the Villa
+Pandolfini passed from her memory without a regret, and without having
+in the least modified her ideal of domiciliary grace. Roderick had
+changed his sky, but he had not changed his mind; his humor was still
+that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse in that tragic explosion on
+the Lake of Como. He kept his despair to himself, and he went doggedly
+about the ordinary business of life; but it was easy to see that his
+spirit was mortally heavy, and that he lived and moved and talked simply
+from the force of habit. In that sad half-hour among the Italian olives
+there had been such a fierce sincerity in his tone, that Rowland
+began to abdicate the critical attitude. He began to feel that it was
+essentially vain to appeal to the poor fellow’s will; there was no will
+left; its place was an impotent void. This view of the case indeed was
+occasionally contravened by certain indications on Roderick’s part of
+the power of resistance to disagreeable obligations: one might still
+have said, if one had been disposed to be didactic at any hazard,
+that there was a method in his madness, that his moral energy had its
+sleeping and its waking hours, and that, in a cause that pleased it, it
+was capable of rising with the dawn. But on the other hand, pleasure, in
+this case, was quite at one with effort; evidently the greatest bliss in
+life, for Roderick, would have been to have a plastic idea. And then, it
+was impossible not to feel tenderly to a despair which had so ceased to
+be aggressive--not to forgive a great deal of apathy to a temper
+which had so unlearned its irritability. Roderick said frankly that
+Switzerland made him less miserable than Italy, and the Alps seemed less
+to mock at his enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in
+long rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy
+places, where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself
+on the never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging
+away the hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with
+him; though Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his
+society. Rowland now made it a rule to treat him like a perfectly sane
+man, to assume that all things were well with him, and never to allude
+to the prosperity he had forfeited or to the work he was not doing. He
+would have still said, had you questioned him, that Roderick’s condition
+was a mood--certainly a puzzling one. It might last yet for many a weary
+hour; but it was a long lane that had no turning. Roderick’s blues would
+not last forever. Rowland’s interest in Miss Garland’s relations with
+her cousin was still profoundly attentive, and perplexed as he was on
+all sides, he found nothing transparent here. After their arrival at
+Engelthal, Roderick appeared to seek the young girl’s society more than
+he had done hitherto, and this revival of ardor could not fail to set
+his friend a-wondering. They sat together and strolled together, and
+Miss Garland often read aloud to him. One day, on their coming to
+dinner, after he had been lying half the morning at her feet, in the
+shadow of a rock, Rowland asked him what she had been reading.
+
+“I don’t know,” Roderick said, “I don’t heed the sense.” Miss Garland
+heard this, and Rowland looked at her. She looked at Roderick sharply
+and with a little blush. “I listen to Mary,” Roderick continued,
+“for the sake of her voice. It ‘s distractingly sweet!” At this Miss
+Garland’s blush deepened, and she looked away.
+
+Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination to
+wander in the direction of certain conjectures which the reader may deem
+unflattering to Miss Garland’s constancy. He had asked himself whether
+her faith in Roderick had not faltered, and that demand of hers which
+had brought about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost
+equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe. Rowland
+was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk the supposition that
+Miss Garland had contrasted him with Roderick to his own advantage; but
+he had a certain consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed
+itself to fancy, at moments, that it might be not illogically rewarded
+by the bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm as had crumbled away
+from her estimate of his companion. If some day she had declared, in a
+sudden burst of passion, that she was outwearied and sickened, and that
+she gave up her recreant lover, Rowland’s expectation would have gone
+half-way to meet her. And certainly if her passion had taken this course
+no generous critic would utterly condemn her. She had been neglected,
+ignored, forsaken, treated with a contempt which no girl of a fine
+temper could endure. There were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that
+of Burd Helen in the ballad, lay in clinging to the man of their love
+through thick and thin, and in bowing their head to all hard usage. This
+attitude had often an exquisite beauty of its own, but Rowland deemed
+that he had solid reason to believe it never could be Mary Garland’s.
+She was not a passive creature; she was not soft and meek and grateful
+for chance bounties. With all her reserve of manner she was proud and
+eager; she asked much and she wanted what she asked; she believed in
+fine things and she never could long persuade herself that fine things
+missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved. Once Rowland passed an
+angry day. He had dreamed--it was the most insubstantial of dreams--that
+she had given him the right to believe that she looked to him to
+transmute her discontent. And yet here she was throwing herself back
+into Roderick’s arms at his lightest overture, and playing with his own
+half fearful, half shameful hopes! Rowland declared to himself that
+his position was essentially detestable, and that all the philosophy
+he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable nor
+comfortable. He would go away and make an end of it. He did not go away;
+he simply took a long walk, stayed away from the inn all day, and on his
+return found Miss Garland sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.
+
+Rowland, communing with himself during the restless ramble in question,
+had determined that he would at least cease to observe, to heed, or
+to care for what Miss Garland and Roderick might do or might not do
+together. Nevertheless, some three days afterward, the opportunity
+presenting itself, he deliberately broached the subject with Roderick.
+He knew this was inconsistent and faint-hearted; it was indulgence
+to the fingers that itched to handle forbidden fruit. But he said to
+himself that it was really more logical to be inconsistent than the
+reverse; for they had formerly discussed these mysteries very candidly.
+Was it not perfectly reasonable that he should wish to know the sequel
+of the situation which Roderick had then delineated? Roderick had made
+him promises, and it was to be expected that he should ascertain how
+the promises had been kept. Rowland could not say to himself that if
+the promises had been extorted for Mary Garland’s sake, his present
+attention to them was equally disinterested; and so he had to admit
+that he was indeed faint-hearted. He may perhaps be deemed too narrow
+a casuist, but we have repeated more than once that he was solidly
+burdened with a conscience.
+
+“I imagine,” he said to Roderick, “that you are not sorry, at present,
+to have allowed yourself to be dissuaded from making a final rupture
+with Miss Garland.”
+
+Roderick eyed him with the vague and absent look which had lately become
+habitual to his face, and repeated “Dissuaded?”
+
+“Don’t you remember that, in Rome, you wished to break your engagement,
+and that I urged you to respect it, though it seemed to hang by so
+slender a thread? I wished you to see what would come of it? If I am not
+mistaken, you are reconciled to it.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Roderick, “I remember what you said; you made it a
+kind of personal favor to yourself that I should remain faithful. I
+consented, but afterwards, when I thought of it, your attitude greatly
+amused me. Had it ever been seen before?--a man asking another man to
+gratify him by not suspending his attentions to a pretty girl!”
+
+“It was as selfish as anything else,” said Rowland. “One man puts his
+selfishness into one thing, and one into another. It would have utterly
+marred my comfort to see Miss Garland in low spirits.”
+
+“But you liked her--you admired her, eh? So you intimated.”
+
+“I admire her profoundly.”
+
+“It was your originality then--to do you justice you have a great deal,
+of a certain sort--to wish her happiness secured in just that fashion.
+Many a man would have liked better himself to make the woman he admired
+happy, and would have welcomed her low spirits as an opening for
+sympathy. You were awfully queer about it.”
+
+“So be it!” said Rowland. “The question is, Are you not glad I was
+queer? Are you not finding that your affection for Miss Garland has a
+permanent quality which you rather underestimated?”
+
+“I don’t pretend to say. When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n’t
+care for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug
+about it. If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be
+gained by having a little humbug, I was willing to try it! I don’t see
+that the situation is really changed. Mary Garland is all that she ever
+was--more than all. But I don’t care for her! I don’t care for anything,
+and I don’t find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor. The
+only difference is that I don’t care now, whether I care for her or not.
+Of course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question
+for any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume
+that she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials.”
+
+“Oh, you ‘re in love!” said Rowland, not very logically. It must be
+confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made for the sole
+purpose of hearing Roderick deny it.
+
+But it quite failed of its aim. Roderick gave a liberal shrug of his
+shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head. “Call it what you
+please! I am past caring for names.”
+
+Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly
+disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he
+had argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was
+again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue
+in Mary’s presence, indisposed though he was to admit it. He had said,
+shortly before, that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a
+promising beginning. If her voice was sweet it was probable that her
+glance was not amiss, that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her
+whole personal presence had learned the art of not being irritating.
+So Rowland reasoned, and invested Mary Garland with a still finer
+loveliness.
+
+It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions,
+and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy touches
+were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply a matter of the
+conscience. He watched for signs that she rejoiced in Roderick’s renewed
+acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him that she was on her
+guard against interpreting it too largely. It was now her turn--he
+fancied that he sometimes gathered from certain nameless indications of
+glance and tone and gesture--it was now her turn to be indifferent, to
+care for other things. Again and again Rowland asked himself what these
+things were that Miss Garland might be supposed to care for, to the
+injury of ideal constancy; and again, having designated them, he divided
+them into two portions. One was that larger experience, in general,
+which had come to her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne
+in upon her imagination, that there were more things one might do with
+one’s life than youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of; the
+revision of old pledges in the light of new emotions. The other was the
+experience, in especial, of Rowland’s--what? Here Rowland always paused,
+in perfect sincerity, to measure afresh his possible claim to the young
+girl’s regard. What might he call it? It had been more than civility and
+yet it had been less than devotion. It had spoken of a desire to serve,
+but it had said nothing of a hope of reward. Nevertheless, Rowland’s
+fancy hovered about the idea that it was recompensable, and his
+reflections ended in a reverie which perhaps did not define it, but
+at least, on each occasion, added a little to its volume. Since Miss
+Garland had asked him as a sort of favor to herself to come also to
+Switzerland, he thought it possible she might let him know whether he
+seemed to have effectively served her. The days passed without her doing
+so, and at last Rowland walked away to an isolated eminence some
+five miles from the inn and murmured to the silent rocks that she was
+ungrateful. Listening nature seemed not to contradict him, so that,
+on the morrow, he asked the young girl, with an infinitesimal touch of
+irony, whether it struck her that his deflection from his Florentine
+plan had been attended with brilliant results.
+
+“Why, we are delighted that you are with us!” she answered.
+
+He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply that she had
+forgotten that she had solemnly asked him to come. He reminded her
+of her request, and recalled the place and time. “That evening on the
+terrace, late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed, and Roderick being
+absent.”
+
+She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her. “I am
+afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you,” she said. “You
+wanted very much to do something else.”
+
+“I wanted above all things to oblige you, and I made no sacrifice. But
+if I had made an immense one, it would be more than made up to me by any
+assurance that I have helped Roderick into a better mood.”
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, “Why do you ask me?” she said. “You
+are able to judge quite as well as I.”
+
+Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious
+manner. “The truth is,” he said, “that I am afraid I care only in the
+second place for Roderick’s holding up his head. What I care for in the
+first place is your happiness.”
+
+“I don’t know why that should be,” she answered. “I have certainly
+done nothing to make you so much my friend. If you were to tell me you
+intended to leave us to-morrow, I am afraid that I should not venture
+to ask you to stay. But whether you go or stay, let us not talk of
+Roderick!”
+
+“But that,” said Rowland, “does n’t answer my question. Is he better?”
+
+“No!” she said, and turned away.
+
+He was careful not to tell her that he intended to leave them. One day,
+shortly after this, as the two young men sat at the inn-door watching
+the sunset, which on that evening was very striking and lurid, Rowland
+made an attempt to sound his companion’s present sentiment touching
+Christina Light. “I wonder where she is,” he said, “and what sort of a
+life she is leading her prince.”
+
+Roderick at first made no response. He was watching a figure on
+the summit of some distant rocks, opposite to them. The figure was
+apparently descending into the valley, and in relief against the crimson
+screen of the western sky, it looked gigantic. “Christina Light?”
+ Roderick at last repeated, as if arousing himself from a reverie. “Where
+she is? It ‘s extraordinary how little I care!”
+
+“Have you, then, completely got over it?”
+
+To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while. “She ‘s
+a humbug!” he presently exclaimed.
+
+“Possibly!” said Rowland. “But I have known worse ones.”
+
+“She disappointed me!” Roderick continued in the same tone.
+
+“Had she, then, really given you hopes?”
+
+“Oh, don’t recall it!” Roderick cried. “Why the devil should I think
+of it? It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years.”
+ His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his
+own accord. “I believed there was a future in it all! She pleased
+me--pleased me; and when an artist--such as I was--is pleased, you
+know!” And he paused again. “You never saw her as I did; you never heard
+her in her great moments. But there is no use talking about that! At
+first she would n’t regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light
+of me. But at last I forced her to admit I was a great man. Think of
+that, sir! Christina Light called me a great man. A great man was what
+she was looking for, and we agreed to find our happiness for life in
+each other. To please me she promised not to marry till I gave her
+leave. I was not in a marrying way myself, but it was damnation to think
+of another man possessing her. To spare my sensibilities, she promised
+to turn off her prince, and the idea of her doing so made me as happy as
+to see a perfect statue shaping itself in the block. You have seen how
+she kept her promise! When I learned it, it was as if the statue had
+suddenly cracked and turned hideous. She died for me, like that!” And
+he snapped his fingers. “Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire,
+betrayed confidence? I am sure I don’t know; you certainly have some
+name for it.”
+
+“The poor girl did the best she could,” said Rowland.
+
+“If that was her best, so much the worse for her! I have hardly thought
+of her these two months, but I have not forgiven her.”
+
+“Well, you may believe that you are avenged. I can’t think of her as
+happy.”
+
+“I don’t pity her!” said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and
+the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward
+along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. “Who is this mighty man,”
+ cried Roderick at last, “and what is he coming down upon us for? We are
+small people here, and we can’t undertake to keep company with giants.”
+
+“Wait till we meet him on our own level,” said Rowland, “and perhaps he
+will not overtop us.”
+
+“For ten minutes, at least,” Roderick rejoined, “he will have been a
+great man!” At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon line
+and became invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly Roderick said, “I
+would like to see her once more--simply to look at her.”
+
+“I would not advise it,” said Rowland.
+
+“It was her beauty that did it!” Roderick went on. “It was all her
+beauty; in comparison, the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to
+think of it as my property! And I had made it mine--no one else had
+studied it as I had, no one else understood it. What does that stick of
+a Casamassima know about it at this hour? I should like to see it just
+once more; it ‘s the only thing in the world of which I can say so.”
+
+“I would not advise it,” Rowland repeated.
+
+“That ‘s right, dear Rowland,” said Roderick; “don’t advise! That ‘s no
+use now.”
+
+The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived a figure
+approaching them across the open space in front of the house. Suddenly
+it stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows,
+and they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was
+the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was
+made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity--it was
+the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried
+a knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest
+welcome. He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way of
+luggage his knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a second shirt, he
+produced from it a dozen admirable sketches. He had been trudging over
+half Switzerland and making everywhere the most vivid pictorial notes.
+They were mostly in a box at Interlaken, and in gratitude for Rowland’s
+appreciation, he presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to
+the excellent Swiss method, was punctually delivered by post. The nights
+were cold, and our friends, with three or four other chance sojourners,
+sat in-doors over a fire of logs. Even with Roderick sitting moodily in
+the outer shadow they made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned
+over Singleton’s drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner,
+blushing and grinning, with his feet on the rounds of his chair. He had
+been pedestrianizing for six weeks, and he was glad to rest awhile at
+Engelthal. It was an economic repose, however, for he sallied forth
+every morning, with his sketching tools on his back, in search of
+material for new studies. Roderick’s hilarity, after the first evening,
+had subsided, and he watched the little painter’s serene activity with a
+gravity that was almost portentous. Singleton, who was not in the secret
+of his personal misfortunes, still treated him with timid frankness as
+the rising star of American art. Roderick had said to Rowland, at
+first, that Singleton reminded him of some curious little insect with a
+remarkable mechanical instinct in its antennae; but as the days went by
+it was apparent that the modest landscapist’s unflagging industry grew
+to have an oppressive meaning for him. It pointed a moral, and Roderick
+used to sit and con the moral as he saw it figured in Singleton’s bent
+back, on the hot hill-sides, protruding from beneath his white umbrella.
+One day he wandered up a long slope and overtook him as he sat at work;
+Singleton related the incident afterwards to Rowland, who, after giving
+him in Rome a hint of Roderick’s aberrations, had strictly kept his own
+counsel.
+
+“Are you always like this?” said Roderick, in almost sepulchral accents.
+
+“Like this?” repeated Singleton, blinking confusedly, with an alarmed
+conscience.
+
+“You remind me of a watch that never runs down. If one listens hard one
+hears you always--tic-tic, tic-tic.”
+
+“Oh, I see,” said Singleton, beaming ingenuously. “I am very equable.”
+
+“You are very equable, yes. And do you find it pleasant to be equable?”
+
+Singleton turned and grinned more brightly, while he sucked the water
+from his camel’s-hair brush. Then, with a quickened sense of his
+indebtedness to a Providence that had endowed him with intrinsic
+facilities, “Oh, delightful!” he exclaimed.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him a moment. “Damnation!” he said at last,
+solemnly, and turned his back.
+
+One morning, shortly after this, Rowland and Roderick took a long walk.
+They had walked before in a dozen different directions, but they had not
+yet crossed a charming little wooded pass, which shut in their valley
+on one side and descended into the vale of Engelberg. In coming from
+Lucerne they had approached their inn by this path, and, feeling that
+they knew it, had hitherto neglected it in favor of untrodden ways. But
+at last the list of these was exhausted, and Rowland proposed the walk
+to Engelberg as a novelty. The place is half bleak and half pastoral; a
+huge white monastery rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley
+and complicates its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss
+scenery. Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual
+appurtenances of a prosperous Swiss resort--lean brown guides in baggy
+homespun, lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks
+in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars. Our two
+friends sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a pint of wine,
+and then Roderick, who was indefatigable, announced his intention of
+climbing to a certain rocky pinnacle which overhung the valley, and,
+according to the testimony of one of the guides, commanded a view of the
+Lake of Lucerne. To go and come back was only a matter of an hour, but
+Rowland, with the prospect of his homeward trudge before him, confessed
+to a preference for lounging on his bench, or at most strolling a trifle
+farther and taking a look at the monastery. Roderick went off alone, and
+his companion after a while bent his steps to the monasterial church. It
+was remarkable, like most of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for
+a hideous style of devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and
+musty picturesqueness, and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness
+for Alpine piety. While he was near the high-altar some people came in
+at the west door; but he did not notice them, and was presently engaged
+in deciphering a curious old German epitaph on one of the mural tablets.
+At last he turned away, wondering whether its syntax or its theology was
+the more uncomfortable, and, to this infinite surprise, found himself
+confronted with the Prince and Princess Casamassima.
+
+The surprise on Christina’s part, for an instant, was equal, and at
+first she seemed disposed to turn away without letting it give place to
+a greeting. The prince, however, saluted gravely, and then Christina, in
+silence, put out her hand. Rowland immediately asked whether they were
+staying at Engelberg, but Christina only looked at him without speaking.
+The prince answered his questions, and related that they had been
+making a month’s tour in Switzerland, that at Lucerne his wife had been
+somewhat obstinately indisposed, and that the physician had recommended
+a week’s trial of the tonic air and goat’s milk of Engelberg. The
+scenery, said the prince, was stupendous, but the life was terribly
+sad--and they had three days more! It was a blessing, he urbanely added,
+to see a good Roman face.
+
+Christina’s attitude, her solemn silence and her penetrating gaze
+seemed to Rowland, at first, to savor of affectation; but he presently
+perceived that she was profoundly agitated, and that she was afraid of
+betraying herself. “Do let us leave this hideous edifice,” she said;
+“there are things here that set one’s teeth on edge.” They moved slowly
+to the door, and when they stood outside, in the sunny coolness of the
+valley, she turned to Rowland and said, “I am extremely glad to see
+you.” Then she glanced about her and observed, against the wall of the
+church, an old stone seat. She looked at Prince Casamassima a moment,
+and he smiled more intensely, Rowland thought, than the occasion
+demanded. “I wish to sit here,” she said, “and speak to Mr.
+Mallet--alone.”
+
+“At your pleasure, dear friend,” said the prince.
+
+The tone of each was measured, to Rowland’s ear; but that of Christina
+was dry, and that of her husband was splendidly urbane. Rowland
+remembered that the Cavaliere Giacosa had told him that Mrs. Light’s
+candidate was thoroughly a prince, and our friend wondered how he
+relished a peremptory accent. Casamassima was an Italian of the
+undemonstrative type, but Rowland nevertheless divined that, like other
+princes before him, he had made the acquaintance of the thing called
+compromise. “Shall I come back?” he asked with the same smile.
+
+“In half an hour,” said Christina.
+
+In the clear outer light, Rowland’s first impression of her was that she
+was more beautiful than ever. And yet in three months she could hardly
+have changed; the change was in Rowland’s own vision of her, which that
+last interview, on the eve of her marriage, had made unprecedentedly
+tender.
+
+“How came you here?” she asked. “Are you staying in this place?”
+
+“I am staying at Engelthal, some ten miles away; I walked over.”
+
+“Are you alone?”
+
+“I am with Mr. Hudson.”
+
+“Is he here with you?”
+
+“He went half an hour ago to climb a rock for a view.”
+
+“And his mother and that young girl, where are they?”
+
+“They also are at Engelthal.”
+
+“What do you do there?”
+
+“What do you do here?” said Rowland, smiling.
+
+“I count the minutes till my week is up. I hate mountains; they depress
+me to death. I am sure Miss Garland likes them.”
+
+“She is very fond of them, I believe.”
+
+“You believe--don’t you know? But I have given up trying to imitate Miss
+Garland,” said Christina.
+
+“You surely need imitate no one.”
+
+“Don’t say that,” she said gravely. “So you have walked ten miles this
+morning? And you are to walk back again?”
+
+“Back again to supper.”
+
+“And Mr. Hudson too?”
+
+“Mr. Hudson especially. He is a great walker.”
+
+“You men are happy!” Christina cried. “I believe I should enjoy the
+mountains if I could do such things. It is sitting still and having them
+scowl down at you! Prince Casamassina never rides. He only goes on a
+mule. He was carried up the Faulhorn on a litter.”
+
+“On a litter?” said Rowland.
+
+“In one of those machines--a chaise a porteurs--like a woman.”
+
+Rowland received this information in silence; it was equally unbecoming
+to either relish or deprecate its irony.
+
+“Is Mr. Hudson to join you again? Will he come here?” Christina asked.
+
+“I shall soon begin to expect him.”
+
+“What shall you do when you leave Switzerland?” Christina continued.
+“Shall you go back to Rome?”
+
+“I rather doubt it. My plans are very uncertain.”
+
+“They depend upon Mr. Hudson, eh?”
+
+“In a great measure.”
+
+“I want you to tell me about him. Is he still in that perverse state of
+mind that afflicted you so much?”
+
+Rowland looked at her mistrustfully, without answering. He was
+indisposed, instinctively, to tell her that Roderick was unhappy; it was
+possible she might offer to help him back to happiness. She immediately
+perceived his hesitation.
+
+“I see no reason why we should not be frank,” she said. “I should think
+we were excellently placed for that sort of thing. You remember that
+formerly I cared very little what I said, don’t you? Well, I care
+absolutely not at all now. I say what I please, I do what I please! How
+did Mr. Hudson receive the news of my marriage?”
+
+“Very badly,” said Rowland.
+
+“With rage and reproaches?” And as Rowland hesitated again--“With silent
+contempt?”
+
+“I can tell you but little. He spoke to me on the subject, but I stopped
+him. I told him it was none of his business, or of mine.”
+
+“That was an excellent answer!” said Christina, softly. “Yet it was a
+little your business, after those sublime protestations I treated you
+to. I was really very fine that morning, eh?”
+
+“You do yourself injustice,” said Rowland. “I should be at liberty now
+to believe you were insincere.”
+
+“What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not? I can’t
+conceive of anything mattering less. I was very fine--is n’t it true?”
+
+“You know what I think of you,” said Rowland. And for fear of being
+forced to betray his suspicion of the cause of her change, he took
+refuge in a commonplace. “Your mother, I hope, is well.”
+
+“My mother is in the enjoyment of superb health, and may be seen
+every evening at the Casino, at the Baths of Lucca, confiding to every
+new-comer that she has married her daughter to a pearl of a prince.”
+
+Rowland was anxious for news of Mrs. Light’s companion, and the natural
+course was frankly to inquire about him. “And the Cavaliere Giacosa is
+well?” he asked.
+
+Christina hesitated, but she betrayed no other embarrassment. “The
+Cavaliere has retired to his native city of Ancona, upon a pension, for
+the rest of his natural life. He is a very good old man!”
+
+“I have a great regard for him,” said Rowland, gravely, at the same time
+that he privately wondered whether the Cavaliere’s pension was paid
+by Prince Casamassima for services rendered in connection with his
+marriage. Had the Cavaliere received his commission? “And what do you
+do,” Rowland continued, “on leaving this place?”
+
+“We go to Italy--we go to Naples.” She rose and stood silent a moment,
+looking down the valley. The figure of Prince Casamassima appeared in
+the distance, balancing his white umbrella. As her eyes rested upon it,
+Rowland imagined that he saw something deeper in the strange expression
+which had lurked in her face while he talked to her. At first he had
+been dazzled by her blooming beauty, to which the lapse of weeks had
+only added splendor; then he had seen a heavier ray in the light of her
+eye--a sinister intimation of sadness and bitterness. It was the outward
+mark of her sacrificed ideal. Her eyes grew cold as she looked at her
+husband, and when, after a moment, she turned them upon Rowland, they
+struck him as intensely tragical. He felt a singular mixture of sympathy
+and dread; he wished to give her a proof of friendship, and yet it
+seemed to him that she had now turned her face in a direction where
+friendship was impotent to interpose. She half read his feelings,
+apparently, and she gave a beautiful, sad smile. “I hope we may never
+meet again!” she said. And as Rowland gave her a protesting look--“You
+have seen me at my best. I wish to tell you solemnly, I was sincere! I
+know appearances are against me,” she went on quickly. “There is a great
+deal I can’t tell you. Perhaps you have guessed it; I care very little.
+You know, at any rate, I did my best. It would n’t serve; I was beaten
+and broken; they were stronger than I. Now it ‘s another affair!”
+
+“It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet,” said
+Rowland, vaguely.
+
+“Happiness? I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for bliss
+ineffable! You remember I told you that I was, in part, the world’s and
+the devil’s. Now they have taken me all. It was their choice; may they
+never repent!”
+
+“I shall hear of you,” said Rowland.
+
+“You will hear of me. And whatever you do hear, remember this: I was
+sincere!”
+
+Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a
+good deal of simple compassion as a part of that “world” against which
+Christina had launched her mysterious menace. It was obvious that he
+was a good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be
+a positively bad husband; but his distinguished inoffensiveness only
+deepened the infelicity of Christina’s situation by depriving her
+defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice. So long as she had
+been free to choose, she had esteemed him: but from the moment she was
+forced to marry him she had detested him. Rowland read in the young
+man’s elastic Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and
+as he found there also a record of other curious things--of pride, of
+temper, of bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive
+traditions--he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two
+companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.
+
+“You are going to Naples?” Rowland said to the prince by way of
+conversation.
+
+“We are going to Paris,” Christina interposed, slowly and softly.
+“We are going to London. We are going to Vienna. We are going to St.
+Petersburg.”
+
+Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point
+of his umbrella. While he engaged Rowland’s attention Christina turned
+away. When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her
+face; she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes
+by the angle of the church-wall. In a moment Roderick stepped into
+sight.
+
+He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded, his
+garments dusty. He looked at Christina from head to foot, and then,
+slowly, his cheek flushed and his eye expanded. Christina returned his
+gaze, and for some moments there was a singular silence. “You don’t look
+well!” Christina said at last.
+
+Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been
+a statue. “You are no less beautiful!” he presently cried.
+
+She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley;
+Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima. Christina then put out her hand
+to Rowland. “Farewell,” she said. “If you are near me in future,
+don’t try to see me!” And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, “I was
+sincere!” She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some
+commonplace about his walk. But he said nothing; he only looked at
+her. Rowland at first had expected an outbreak of reproach, but it was
+evident that the danger was every moment diminishing. He was forgetting
+everything but her beauty, and as she stood there and let him feast upon
+it, Rowland was sure that she knew it. “I won’t say farewell to you,”
+ she said; “we shall meet again!” And she moved gravely away. Prince
+Casamassima took leave courteously of Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed
+a bow of exaggerated civility. Roderick appeared not to see it; he
+was still watching Christina, as she passed over the grass. His eyes
+followed her until she reached the door of her inn. Here she stopped and
+looked back at him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Switzerland
+
+On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved a silence which
+Rowland allowed to make him uneasy. Early on the morrow Roderick,
+saying nothing of his intentions, started off on a walk; Rowland saw
+him striding with light steps along the rugged path to Engelberg. He was
+absent all day and he gave no account of himself on his return. He said
+he was deadly tired, and he went to bed early. When he had left the room
+Miss Garland drew near to Rowland.
+
+“I wish to ask you a question,” she said. “What happened to Roderick
+yesterday at Engelberg?”
+
+“You have discovered that something happened?” Rowland answered.
+
+“I am sure of it. Was it something painful?”
+
+“I don’t know how, at the present moment, he judges it. He met the
+Princess Casamassima.”
+
+“Thank you!” said Miss Garland, simply, and turned away.
+
+The conversation had been brief, but, like many small things, it
+furnished Rowland with food for reflection. When one is looking for
+symptoms one easily finds them. This was the first time Mary Garland had
+asked Rowland a question which it was in Roderick’s power to answer,
+the first time she had frankly betrayed Roderick’s reticence. Rowland
+ventured to think it marked an era.
+
+The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those
+altitudes, was oppressively heavy. Rowland lounged on the grass a while,
+near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella, within view of
+the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky
+ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau. To-day, however, the
+white summits were invisible; their heads were muffled in sullen clouds
+and the valleys beneath them curtained in dun-colored mist. Rowland had
+a book in his pocket, and he took it out and opened it. But his page
+remained unturned; his own thoughts were more importunate. His interview
+with Christina Light had made a great impression upon him, and he was
+haunted with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness, and of all
+that was tragic and fatal in her latest transformation. These things
+were immensely appealing, and Rowland thought with infinite impatience
+of Roderick’s having again encountered them. It required little
+imagination to apprehend that the young sculptor’s condition had
+also appealed to Christina. His consummate indifference, his supreme
+defiance, would make him a magnificent trophy, and Christina had
+announced with sufficient distinctness that she had said good-by to
+scruples. It was her fancy at present to treat the world as a garden of
+pleasure, and if, hitherto, she had played with Roderick’s passion on
+its stem, there was little doubt that now she would pluck it with an
+unfaltering hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness. And why the
+deuce need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction? Rowland’s
+meditations, even when they began in rancor, often brought him peace;
+but on this occasion they ushered in a quite peculiar quality of unrest.
+He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his moral energy; a current
+that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength seemed at last
+to pause and evaporate. Rowland looked away at the stagnant vapors on
+the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol of the dreariness which
+his own generosity had bequeathed him. At last he had arrived at the
+uttermost limit of the deference a sane man might pay to other people’s
+folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it; he had been befooled on a
+gigantic scale. He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience,
+but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away. He pulled
+his hat over his eyes, and tried to wonder, dispassionately, whether
+atmospheric conditions had not something to do with his ill-humor. He
+remained for some time in this attitude, but was finally aroused from
+it by a singular sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had
+approached him. He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the
+turf. His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt
+like uttering an uncivil speech. Roderick stood looking at him with an
+expression of countenance which had of late become rare. There was an
+unfamiliar spark in his eye and a certain imperious alertness in his
+carriage. Confirmed habit, with Rowland, came speedily to the front.
+“What is it now?” he asked himself, and invited Roderick to sit down.
+Roderick had evidently something particular to say, and if he remained
+silent for a time it was not because he was ashamed of it.
+
+“I would like you to do me a favor,” he said at last. “Lend me some
+money.”
+
+“How much do you wish?” Rowland asked.
+
+“Say a thousand francs.”
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment. “I don’t wish to be indiscreet, but may I
+ask what you propose to do with a thousand francs?”
+
+“To go to Interlaken.”
+
+“And why are you going to Interlaken?”
+
+Roderick replied without a shadow of wavering, “Because that woman is to
+be there.”
+
+Rowland burst out laughing, but Roderick remained serenely grave. “You
+have forgiven her, then?” said Rowland.
+
+“Not a bit of it!”
+
+“I don’t understand.”
+
+“Neither do I. I only know that she is incomparably beautiful, and that
+she has waked me up amazingly. Besides, she asked me to come.”
+
+“She asked you?”
+
+“Yesterday, in so many words.”
+
+“Ah, the jade!”
+
+“Exactly. I am willing to take her for that.”
+
+“Why in the name of common sense did you go back to her?”
+
+“Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had just stepped
+out of her cloud? Why did I look at her? Before I knew where I was, the
+harm was done.”
+
+Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back on the grass and
+lay for some time staring up at the sky. At last, raising himself, “Are
+you perfectly serious?” he asked.
+
+“Deadly serious.”
+
+“Your idea is to remain at Interlaken some time?”
+
+“Indefinitely!” said Roderick; and it seemed to his companion that the
+tone in which he said this made it immensely well worth hearing.
+
+“And your mother and cousin, meanwhile, are to remain here? It will soon
+be getting very cold, you know.”
+
+“It does n’t seem much like it to-day.”
+
+“Very true; but to-day is a day by itself.”
+
+“There is nothing to prevent their going back to Lucerne. I depend upon
+your taking charge of them.”
+
+At this Rowland reclined upon the grass again; and again, after
+reflection, he faced his friend. “How would you express,” he asked, “the
+character of the profit that you expect to derive from your excursion?”
+
+“I see no need of expressing it. The proof of the pudding is in the
+eating! The case is simply this. I desire immensely to be near Christina
+Light, and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring
+something, that I propose to drift with the current. As I say, she has
+waked me up, and it is possible something may come of it. She makes me
+feel as if I were alive again. This,” and he glanced down at the inn, “I
+call death!”
+
+“That I am very grateful to hear. You really feel as if you might do
+something?”
+
+“Don’t ask too much. I only know that she makes my heart beat, makes me
+see visions.”
+
+“You feel encouraged?”
+
+“I feel excited.”
+
+“You are really looking better.”
+
+“I am glad to hear it. Now that I have answered your questions, please
+to give me the money.”
+
+Rowland shook his head. “For that purpose, I can’t!”
+
+“You can’t?”
+
+“It ‘s impossible. Your plan is rank folly. I can’t help you in it.”
+
+Roderick flushed a little, and his eye expanded. “I will borrow what
+money I can, then, from Mary!” This was not viciously said; it had
+simply the ring of passionate resolution.
+
+Instantly it brought Rowland to terms. He took a bunch of keys from
+his pocket and tossed it upon the grass. “The little brass one opens my
+dressing-case,” he said. “You will find money in it.”
+
+Roderick let the keys lie; something seemed to have struck him; he
+looked askance at his friend. “You are awfully gallant!”
+
+“You certainly are not. Your proposal is an outrage.”
+
+“Very likely. It ‘s a proof the more of my desire.”
+
+“If you have so much steam on, then, use it for something else. You say
+you are awake again. I am delighted; only be so in the best sense. Is
+n’t it very plain? If you have the energy to desire, you have also the
+energy to reason and to judge. If you can care to go, you can also care
+to stay, and staying being the more profitable course, the inspiration,
+on that side, for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again,
+should be greater.”
+
+Roderick, plainly, did not relish this simple logic, and his eye grew
+angry as he listened to its echo. “Oh, the devil!” he cried.
+
+Rowland went on. “Do you believe that hanging about Christina Light will
+do you any good? Do you believe it won’t? In either case you should keep
+away from her. If it won’t, it ‘s your duty; and if it will, you can get
+on without it.”
+
+“Do me good?” cried Roderick. “What do I want of ‘good’--what should I
+do with ‘good’? I want what she gives me, call it by what name you will.
+I want to ask no questions, but to take what comes and let it fill the
+impossible hours! But I did n’t come to discuss the matter.”
+
+“I have not the least desire to discuss it,” said Rowland. “I simply
+protest.”
+
+Roderick meditated a moment. “I have never yet thought twice of
+accepting a favor of you,” he said at last; “but this one sticks in my
+throat.”
+
+“It is not a favor; I lend you the money only under compulsion.”
+
+“Well, then, I will take it only under compulsion!” Roderick exclaimed.
+And he sprang up abruptly and marched away.
+
+His words were ambiguous; Rowland lay on the grass, wondering what they
+meant. Half an hour had not elapsed before Roderick reappeared, heated
+with rapid walking, and wiping his forehead. He flung himself down and
+looked at his friend with an eye which expressed something purer than
+bravado and yet baser than conviction.
+
+“I have done my best!” he said. “My mother is out of money; she is
+expecting next week some circular notes from London. She had only ten
+francs in her pocket. Mary Garland gave me every sou she possessed in
+the world. It makes exactly thirty-four francs. That ‘s not enough.”
+
+“You asked Miss Garland?” cried Rowland.
+
+“I asked her.”
+
+“And told her your purpose?”
+
+“I named no names. But she knew!”
+
+“What did she say?”
+
+“Not a syllable. She simply emptied her purse.”
+
+Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms. He felt a movement
+of irrepressible elation, and he barely stifled a cry of joy. Now,
+surely, Roderick had shattered the last link in the chain that bound
+Mary to him, and after this she would be free!... When he turned about
+again, Roderick was still sitting there, and he had not touched the keys
+which lay on the grass.
+
+“I don’t know what is the matter with me,” said Roderick, “but I have an
+insurmountable aversion to taking your money.”
+
+“The matter, I suppose, is that you have a grain of wisdom left.”
+
+“No, it ‘s not that. It ‘s a kind of brute instinct. I find it extremely
+provoking!” He sat there for some time with his head in his hands and
+his eyes on the ground. His lips were compressed, and he was evidently,
+in fact, in a state of profound irritation. “You have succeeded in
+making this thing excessively unpleasant!” he exclaimed.
+
+“I am sorry,” said Rowland, “but I can’t see it in any other way.”
+
+“That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending to
+be the limit of my action. You can’t feel for me nor judge for me, and
+there are certain things you know nothing about. I have suffered, sir!”
+ Roderick went on with increasing emphasis. “I have suffered damnable
+torments. Have I been such a placid, contented, comfortable man this
+last six months, that when I find a chance to forget my misery, I should
+take such pains not to profit by it? You ask too much, for a man who
+himself has no occasion to play the hero. I don’t say that invidiously;
+it ‘s your disposition, and you can’t help it. But decidedly, there are
+certain things you know nothing about.”
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if
+he had been less intent upon his own eloquence, would probably have
+perceived that he turned pale. “These things--what are they?” Rowland
+asked.
+
+“They are women, principally, and what relates to women. Women for
+you, by what I can make out, mean nothing. You have no imagination--no
+sensibility!”
+
+“That ‘s a serious charge,” said Rowland, gravely.
+
+“I don’t make it without proof!”
+
+“And what is your proof?”
+
+Roderick hesitated a moment. “The way you treated Christina Light. I
+call that grossly obtuse.”
+
+“Obtuse?” Rowland repeated, frowning.
+
+“Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune.”
+
+“My good fortune?”
+
+“There it is--it ‘s all news to you! You had pleased her. I don’t say
+she was dying of love for you, but she took a fancy to you.”
+
+“We will let this pass!” said Rowland, after a silence.
+
+“Oh, I don’t insist. I have only her own word for it.”
+
+“She told you this?”
+
+“You noticed, at least, I suppose, that she was not afraid to speak. I
+never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious
+to see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself.”
+
+“I frankly confess it would have lasted forever. And yet I don’t
+consider that my insensibility is proved.”
+
+“Oh, don’t say that,” cried Roderick, “or I shall begin to suspect--what
+I must do you the justice to say that I never have suspected--that you
+are a trifle conceited. Upon my word, when I think of all this, your
+protest, as you call it, against my following Christina Light seems
+to me thoroughly offensive. There is something monstrous in a man’s
+pretending to lay down the law to a sort of emotion with which he is
+quite unacquainted--in his asking a fellow to give up a lovely woman for
+conscience’ sake, when he has never had the impulse to strike a blow for
+one for passion’s!”
+
+“Oh, oh!” cried Rowland.
+
+“All that ‘s very easy to say,” Roderick went on; “but you must remember
+that there are such things as nerves, and senses, and imagination, and
+a restless demon within that may sleep sometimes for a day, or for six
+months, but that sooner or later wakes up and thumps at your ribs till
+you listen to him! If you can’t understand it, take it on trust, and let
+a poor imaginative devil live his life as he can!”
+
+Roderick’s words seemed at first to Rowland like something heard in a
+dream; it was impossible they had been actually spoken--so supreme an
+expression were they of the insolence of egotism. Reality was never so
+consistent as that! But Roderick sat there balancing his beautiful
+head, and the echoes of his strident accent still lingered along the
+half-muffled mountain-side. Rowland suddenly felt that the cup of his
+chagrin was full to overflowing, and his long-gathered bitterness surged
+into the simple, wholesome passion of anger for wasted kindness. But
+he spoke without violence, and Roderick was probably at first far from
+measuring the force that lay beneath his words.
+
+“You are incredibly ungrateful,” he said. “You are talking arrogant
+nonsense. What do you know about my sensibilities and my imagination?
+How do you know whether I have loved or suffered? If I have held my
+tongue and not troubled you with my complaints, you find it the most
+natural thing in the world to put an ignoble construction on my silence.
+I loved quite as well as you; indeed, I think I may say rather better. I
+have been constant. I have been willing to give more than I received. I
+have not forsaken one mistress because I thought another more beautiful,
+nor given up the other and believed all manner of evil about her because
+I had not my way with her. I have been a good friend to Christina Light,
+and it seems to me my friendship does her quite as much honor as your
+love!”
+
+“Your love--your suffering--your silence--your friendship!” cried
+Roderick. “I declare I don’t understand!”
+
+“I dare say not. You are not used to understanding such things--you are
+not used to hearing me talk of my feelings. You are altogether too
+much taken up with your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always
+respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose
+to leave you an open field, don’t, by way of thanking me, come and call
+me an idiot.”
+
+“Oh, you claim then that you have made sacrifices?”
+
+“Several! You have never suspected it?”
+
+“If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed it?” cried Roderick.
+
+“They were the sacrifices of friendship and they were easily made; only
+I don’t enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth.”
+
+This was, under the circumstances, a sufficiently generous speech; but
+Roderick was not in the humor to take it generously. “Come, be more
+definite,” he said. “Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched.”
+
+Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity, he should have
+full justice. “It ‘s a perpetual sacrifice,” he said, “to live with a
+perfect egotist.”
+
+“I am an egotist?” cried Roderick.
+
+“Did it never occur to you?”
+
+“An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?” He repeated
+the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly
+indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem) a sudden
+violent curiosity for news about himself.
+
+“You are selfish,” said Rowland; “you think only of yourself and believe
+only in yourself. You regard other people only as they play into your
+own hands. You have always been very frank about it, and the thing
+seemed so mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure
+of your mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good
+and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no
+worse. But if one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon
+it.”
+
+Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and
+crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes. In this attitude, for a
+moment, he sat looking coldly at his friend. “So I have made you very
+uncomfortable?” he went on.
+
+“Extremely so.”
+
+“I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent,
+cruel?”
+
+“I have accused you, mentally, of all these things, with the exception
+of vanity.”
+
+“You have often hated me?”
+
+“Never. I should have parted company with you before coming to that.”
+
+“But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be
+hanged!”
+
+“Repeatedly. Then I have had patience and forgiven you.”
+
+“Forgiven me, eh? Suffering all the while?”
+
+“Yes, you may call it suffering.”
+
+“Why did you never tell me all this before?”
+
+“Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because
+I preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had, myself, in a
+measure, launched you in the world and thrown you into temptations; and
+because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could
+have made me say these painful things.”
+
+Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it; Rowland
+was puzzled by his expression and manner. They seemed strangely cynical;
+there was something revolting in his deepening calmness. “I must have
+been hideous,” Roderick presently resumed.
+
+“I am not talking for your entertainment,” said Rowland.
+
+“Of course not. For my edification!” As Roderick said these words there
+was not a ray of warmth in his brilliant eye.
+
+“I have spoken for my own relief,” Rowland went on, “and so that you
+need never again go so utterly astray as you have done this morning.”
+
+“It has been a terrible mistake, then?” What his tone expressed was not
+willful mockery, but a kind of persistent irresponsibility which Rowland
+found equally exasperating. He answered nothing.
+
+“And all this time,” Roderick continued, “you have been in love? Tell me
+the woman.”
+
+Rowland felt an immense desire to give him a visible, palpable pang.
+“Her name is Mary Garland,” he said.
+
+Apparently he succeeded. The surprise was great; Roderick colored as he
+had never done. “Mary Garland? Heaven forgive us!”
+
+Rowland observed the “us;” Roderick threw himself back on the turf. The
+latter lay for some time staring at the sky. At last he sprang to his
+feet, and Rowland rose also, rejoicing keenly, it must be confessed, in
+his companion’s confusion.
+
+“For how long has this been?” Roderick demanded.
+
+“Since I first knew her.”
+
+“Two years! And you have never told her?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“You have told no one?”
+
+“You are the first person.”
+
+“Why have you been silent?”
+
+“Because of your engagement.”
+
+“But you have done your best to keep that up.”
+
+“That ‘s another matter!”
+
+“It ‘s very strange!” said Roderick, presently. “It ‘s like something in
+a novel.”
+
+“We need n’t expatiate on it,” said Rowland. “All I wished to do was to
+rebut your charge that I am an abnormal being.”
+
+But still Roderick pondered. “All these months, while I was going on! I
+wish you had mentioned it.”
+
+“I acted as was necessary, and that ‘s the end of it.”
+
+“You have a very high opinion of her?”
+
+“The highest.”
+
+“I remember now your occasionally expressing it and my being struck with
+it. But I never dreamed you were in love with her. It ‘s a pity she does
+n’t care for you!”
+
+Rowland had made his point and he had no wish to prolong the
+conversation; but he had a desire to hear more of this, and he remained
+silent.
+
+“You hope, I suppose, that some day she may?”
+
+“I should n’t have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do.”
+
+“I don’t believe it. She idolizes me, and if she never were to see me
+again she would idolize my memory.”
+
+This might be profound insight, and it might be profound fatuity.
+Rowland turned away; he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+“My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you horrible.
+Altogether, I must have appeared simply hideous.”
+
+“Do you really care,” Rowland asked, “what you appeared?”
+
+“Certainly. I have been damnably stupid. Is n’t an artist supposed to be
+a man of perceptions? I am hugely disgusted.”
+
+“Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh.”
+
+“And yet,” said Roderick, “though you have suffered, in a degree, I
+don’t believe you have suffered so much as some other men would have
+done.”
+
+“Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult.”
+
+Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground.
+“Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous,” he repeated--“hideous.” He
+turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.
+
+They were both silent for some time, and at last Roderick gave a heavy
+sigh and began to walk away. “Where are you going?” Rowland then asked.
+
+“Oh, I don’t care! To walk; you have given me something to think
+of.” This seemed a salutary impulse, and yet Rowland felt a nameless
+perplexity. “To have been so stupid damns me more than anything!”
+ Roderick went on. “Certainly, I can shut up shop now.”
+
+Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could
+almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism
+still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but
+never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let
+him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became
+conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse--a desire to stop
+him, to have another word with him--not to lose sight of him. He called
+him and Roderick turned. “I should like to go with you,” said Rowland.
+
+“I am fit only to be alone. I am damned!”
+
+“You had better not think of it at all,” Rowland cried, “than think in
+that way.”
+
+“There is only one way. I have been hideous!” And he broke off and
+marched away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick. Rowland
+watched him and at the end of a moment called to him. Roderick stopped
+and looked at him in silence, and then abruptly turned, and disappeared
+below the crest of a hill.
+
+Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably. He was half
+irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having been
+placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause. Roderick did not
+come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding away the
+hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit. Mrs. Hudson
+appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that Roderick’s
+demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress. Little
+Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner. Miss Garland,
+Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance to her
+kinsman’s pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort. The
+effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill
+that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon
+it. They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.
+
+“I have a headache,” she said. And then suddenly, looking about at the
+menacing sky and motionless air, “It ‘s this horrible day!”
+
+Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia,
+but his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon the
+paper but a single line. “I believe there is such a thing as being too
+reasonable. But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?” He
+had occasion to use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket; they
+were missing, and he remembered that he had left them lying on the
+hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick. He went forth in
+search of them and found them where he had thrown them. He flung
+himself down in the same place again; he felt indisposed to walk. He
+was conscious that his mood had vastly changed since the morning;
+his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights had been replaced by the
+familiar, chronic sense of his duties. Only, his duties now seemed
+impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his arms. He lay
+so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all was that
+Roderick had beaten him. At last he was startled by an extraordinary
+sound; it took him a moment to perceive that it was a portentous growl
+of thunder. He roused himself and saw that the whole face of the sky had
+altered. The clouds that had hung motionless all day were moving from
+their stations, and getting into position, as it were, for a battle. The
+wind was rising; the sallow vapors were turning dark and consolidating
+their masses. It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland judged best to
+observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent. He took his way
+down to the inn and found Singleton still at his post, profiting by the
+last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study, and yet at the
+same time taking rapid notes of the actual condition of the clouds.
+
+“We are going to have a most interesting storm,” the little painter
+gleefully cried. “I should like awfully to do it.”
+
+Rowland adjured him to pack up his tools and decamp, and repaired to
+the house. The air by this time had become portentously dark, and the
+thunder was incessant and tremendous; in the midst of it the lightning
+flashed and vanished, like the treble shrilling upon the bass. The
+innkeeper and his servants had crowded to the doorway, and were looking
+at the scene with faces which seemed a proof that it was unprecedented.
+As Rowland approached, the group divided, to let some one pass from
+within, and Mrs. Hudson came forth, as white as a corpse and trembling
+in every limb.
+
+“My boy, my boy, where is my boy?” she cried. “Mr. Mallet, why are you
+here without him? Bring him to me!”
+
+“Has no one seen Mr. Hudson?” Rowland asked of the others. “Has he not
+returned?”
+
+Each one shook his head and looked grave, and Rowland attempted to
+reassure Mrs. Hudson by saying that of course he had taken refuge in a
+chalet.
+
+“Go and find him, go and find him!” she cried, insanely. “Don’t stand
+there and talk, or I shall die!” It was now as dark as evening, and
+Rowland could just distinguish the figure of Singleton scampering
+homeward with his box and easel. “And where is Mary?” Mrs. Hudson went
+on; “what in mercy’s name has become of her? Mr. Mallet, why did you
+ever bring us here?”
+
+There came a prodigious flash of lightning, and the limitless tumult
+about them turned clearer than midsummer noonday. The brightness lasted
+long enough to enable Rowland to see a woman’s figure on the top of
+an eminence near the house. It was Mary Garland, questioning the lurid
+darkness for Roderick. Rowland sprang out to interrupt her vigil, but in
+a moment he encountered her, retreating. He seized her hand and hurried
+her to the house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered
+gallery, Mrs. Hudson fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
+
+“Did you see nothing,--nothing?” she cried. “Tell Mr. Mallet he must go
+and find him, with some men, some lights, some wrappings. Go, go, go,
+sir! In mercy, go!”
+
+Rowland was extremely perturbed by the poor lady’s vociferous folly, for
+he deemed her anxiety superfluous. He had offered his suggestion with
+sincerity; nothing was more probable than that Roderick had found
+shelter in a herdsman’s cabin. These were numerous on the neighboring
+mountains, and the storm had given fair warning of its approach. Miss
+Garland stood there very pale, saying nothing, but looking at him. He
+expected that she would check her cousin’s importunity. “Could you find
+him?” she suddenly asked. “Would it be of use?”
+
+The question seemed to him a flash intenser than the lightning that was
+raking the sky before them. It shattered his dream that he weighed in
+the scale! But before he could answer, the full fury of the storm was
+upon them; the rain descended in sounding torrents. Every one fell back
+into the house. There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little
+uncarpeted parlor, in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt Mary’s hand
+upon his arm. For a moment it had an eloquent pressure; it seemed to
+retract her senseless challenge, and to say that she believed, for
+Roderick, what he believed. But nevertheless, thought Rowland, the cry
+had come, her heart had spoken; her first impulse had been to sacrifice
+him. He had been uncertain before; here, at least, was the comfort of
+certainty!
+
+It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little
+to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening. There was a noisy
+crowd about him in the room--noisy even with the accompaniment of the
+continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling,
+and bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the
+tempest and by vociferating their alarm. In the disorder, it was some
+time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was
+swung from the ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson, who was being
+carried out of the room in a swoon by two stout maid-servants, with Mary
+Garland forcing a passage. He rendered what help he could, but when they
+had laid the poor woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away.
+
+“I think you make her worse,” she said.
+
+Rowland went to his own chamber. The partitions in Swiss mountain-inns
+are thin, and from time to time he heard Mrs. Hudson moaning, three
+rooms off. Considering its great fury, the storm took long to expend
+itself; it was upwards of three hours before the thunder ceased. But
+even then the rain continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had
+come on, was impenetrably black. This lasted till near midnight. Rowland
+thought of Mary Garland’s challenge in the porch, but he thought even
+more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may
+offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible
+music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick’s voice. At
+midnight, through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star, and he
+immediately went downstairs and out into the gallery. The rain had
+ceased, the cloud-masses were dissevered here and there, and several
+stars were visible. In a few minutes he heard a step behind him, and,
+turning, saw Miss Garland. He asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that
+she was sleeping, exhausted by her fruitless lamentations. Miss Garland
+kept scanning the darkness, but she said nothing to cast doubt on
+Roderick’s having found a refuge. Rowland noticed it. “This also have I
+guaranteed!” he said to himself. There was something that Mary wished to
+learn, and a question presently revealed it.
+
+“What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?” she asked. “I saw him
+at eleven o’clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep.”
+
+“On his way to Interlaken?” Rowland said.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, under cover of the darkness.
+
+“We had some talk,” said Rowland, “and he seemed, for the day, to have
+given up Interlaken.”
+
+“Did you dissuade him?”
+
+“Not exactly. We discussed another question, which, for the time,
+superseded his plan.”
+
+Miss Garland was silent. Then--“May I ask whether your discussion was
+violent?” she said.
+
+“I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us.”
+
+“And Roderick left you in--in irritation?”
+
+“I offered him my company on his walk. He declined it.”
+
+Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.
+“If he had gone to Engelberg,” she said, “he would have reached the
+hotel before the storm began.”
+
+Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity. “Oh, if you like,” he
+cried, “he can start for Interlaken as soon as he comes back!”
+
+But she did not even notice his wrath. “Will he come back early?” she
+went on.
+
+“We may suppose so.”
+
+“He will know how anxious we are, and he will start with the first
+light!”
+
+Rowland was on the point of declaring that Roderick’s readiness to throw
+himself into the feelings of others made this extremely probable; but he
+checked himself and said, simply, “I expect him at sunrise.”
+
+Miss Garland bent her eyes once more upon the irresponsive darkness, and
+then, in silence, went into the house. Rowland, it must be averred, in
+spite of his resolution not to be nervous, found no sleep that night.
+When the early dawn began to tremble in the east, he came forth again
+into the open air. The storm had completely purged the atmosphere, and
+the day gave promise of cloudless splendor. Rowland watched the early
+sun-shafts slowly reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick
+did not come back to breakfast, there were two things to be taken
+into account. One was the heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides,
+saturated with the rain; this would make him walk slowly: the other
+was the fact that, speaking without irony, he was not remarkable for
+throwing himself into the sentiments of others. Breakfast, at the inn,
+was early, and by breakfast-time Roderick had not appeared. Then Rowland
+admitted that he was nervous. Neither Mrs. Hudson nor Miss Garland had
+left their apartment; Rowland had a mental vision of them sitting there
+praying and listening; he had no desire to see them more directly. There
+were a couple of men who hung about the inn as guides for the ascent of
+the Titlis; Rowland sent each of them forth in a different direction,
+to ask the news of Roderick at every chalet door within a morning’s
+walk. Then he called Sam Singleton, whose peregrinations had made him an
+excellent mountaineer, and whose zeal and sympathy were now unbounded,
+and the two started together on a voyage of research. By the time
+they had lost sight of the inn, Rowland was obliged to confess that,
+decidedly, Roderick had had time to come back.
+
+He wandered about for several hours, but he found only the sunny
+stillness of the mountain-sides. Before long he parted company with
+Singleton, who, to his suggestion that separation would multiply their
+resources, assented with a silent, frightened look which reflected too
+vividly his own rapidly-dawning thought. The day was magnificent; the
+sun was everywhere; the storm had lashed the lower slopes into a deeper
+flush of autumnal color, and the snow-peaks reared themselves against
+the near horizon in glaring blocks and dazzling spires. Rowland made his
+way to several chalets, but most of them were empty. He thumped at their
+low, foul doors with a kind of nervous, savage anger; he challenged the
+stupid silence to tell him something about his friend. Some of these
+places had evidently not been open in months. The silence everywhere
+was horrible; it seemed to mock at his impatience and to be a conscious
+symbol of calamity. In the midst of it, at the door of one of the
+chalets, quite alone, sat a hideous cretin, who grinned at Rowland over
+his goitre when, hardly knowing what he did, he questioned him. The
+creature’s family was scattered on the mountain-sides; he could give
+Rowland no help to find them. Rowland climbed into many awkward
+places, and skirted, intently and peeringly, many an ugly chasm and
+steep-dropping ledge. But the sun, as I have said, was everywhere; it
+illumined the deep places over which, not knowing where to turn next,
+he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine
+void--nothing so human even as death. At noon he paused in his quest and
+sat down on a stone; the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst
+that was now possible was true. He suspended his search; he was afraid
+to go on. He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
+Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had
+happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten,
+became vividly present to his mind. He was aroused at last by the sound
+of a stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain. In a
+moment, on a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld a figure
+cautiously descending--a figure which was not Roderick. It was
+Singleton, who had seen him and began to beckon to him.
+
+“Come down--come down!” cried the painter, steadily making his own way
+down. Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold
+and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the
+cliff. This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from
+the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care
+sufficiently practicable.
+
+“What do you see?” cried Rowland.
+
+Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate; then,
+“Come down--come down!” he simply repeated.
+
+Rowland’s course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
+precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
+It was a ten minutes’ headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something
+that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below
+them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go,
+blindly, fiercely. Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine
+before him, and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland
+overtook him and his own legs collapsed. The thing that yesterday was
+his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it,
+and out of it Roderick’s face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.
+
+He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little
+disfigured. The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes
+and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon
+the strand. An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture,
+some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking
+at him was only a strangely serene expression of life. The eyes were
+dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole
+face seemed to awake. The rain had washed away all blood; it was as if
+Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame. Roderick’s
+face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.
+
+“He was a beautiful man!” said Singleton.
+
+They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had
+apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above
+him, with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were
+closed, and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish. At
+last they spoke of carrying him back to the inn. “There must be three or
+four men,” Rowland said, “and they must be brought here quickly. I have
+not the least idea where we are.”
+
+“We are at about three hours’ walk from home,” said Singleton. “I will
+go for help; I can find my way.”
+
+“Remember,” said Rowland, “whom you will have to face.”
+
+“I remember,” the excellent fellow answered. “There was nothing I could
+ever do for him in life; I will do what I can now.”
+
+He went off, and Rowland stayed there alone. He watched for seven long
+hours, and his vigil was forever memorable. The most rational of men was
+for an hour the most passionate. He reviled himself with transcendent
+bitterness, he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would
+have lain down there in Roderick’s place to unsay the words that had
+yesterday driven him forth on his lonely ramble. Roderick had been fond
+of saying that there are such things as necessary follies, and Rowland
+was now proving it. At last he grew almost used to the dumb exultation
+of the cliff above him. He saw that Roderick was a mass of hideous
+injury, and he tried to understand what had happened. Not that it helped
+him; before that confounding mortality one hypothesis after another
+faltered and swooned away. Roderick’s passionate walk had carried him
+farther and higher than he knew; he had outstayed, supposably, the first
+menace of the storm, and perhaps even found a defiant entertainment
+in watching it. Perhaps he had simply lost himself. The tempest had
+overtaken him, and when he tried to return, it was too late. He
+had attempted to descend the cliff in the darkness, he had made the
+inevitable slip, and whether he had fallen fifty feet or three hundred
+little mattered. The condition of his body indicated the shorter fall.
+Now that all was over, Rowland understood how exclusively, for two
+years, Roderick had filled his life. His occupation was gone.
+
+Singleton came back with four men--one of them the landlord of the inn.
+They had formed a sort of rude bier of the frame of a chaise a porteurs,
+and by taking a very round-about course homeward were able to follow a
+tolerably level path and carry their burden with a certain decency. To
+Rowland it seemed as if the little procession would never reach the inn;
+but as they drew near it he would have given his right hand for a longer
+delay. The people of the inn came forward to meet them, in a little
+silent, solemn convoy. In the doorway, clinging together, appeared the
+two bereaved women. Mrs. Hudson tottered forward with outstretched hands
+and the expression of a blind person; but before she reached her son,
+Mary Garland had rushed past her, and, in the face of the staring,
+pitying, awe-stricken crowd, had flung herself, with the magnificent
+movement of one whose rights were supreme, and with a loud, tremendous
+cry, upon the senseless vestige of her love.
+
+That cry still lives in Rowland’s ears. It interposes, persistently,
+against the reflection that when he sometimes--very rarely--sees her,
+she is unreservedly kind to him; against the memory that during the
+dreary journey back to America, made of course with his assistance,
+there was a great frankness in her gratitude, a great gratitude in her
+frankness. Miss Garland lives with Mrs. Hudson, at Northampton, where
+Rowland visits his cousin Cecilia more frequently than of old. When he
+calls upon Miss Garland he never sees Mrs. Hudson. Cecilia, who, having
+her shrewd impression that he comes to see Miss Garland as much as to
+see herself, does not feel obliged to seem unduly flattered, calls him,
+whenever he reappears, the most restless of mortals. But he always says
+to her in answer, “No, I assure you I am the most patient!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Roderick Hudson
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #176]
+Last Updated: September 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODERICK HUDSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      RODERICK HUDSON
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      by Henry James
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Rowland
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Roderick
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Rome
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Experience
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Christina
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Frascati
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Saint Cecilia&rsquo;s
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Provocation
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Mary Garland
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          The Cavaliere
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Mrs. Hudson
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          The Princess Casamassima
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          Switzerland
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. Rowland
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of
+      September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined
+      to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father.
+      He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell might help to
+      exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this
+      lady. It was not that the young man disliked her; on the contrary, he
+      regarded her with a tender admiration, and he had not forgotten how, when
+      his cousin had brought her home on her marriage, he had seemed to feel the
+      upward sweep of the empty bough from which the golden fruit had been
+      plucked, and had then and there accepted the prospect of bachelorhood. The
+      truth was, that, as it will be part of the entertainment of this narrative
+      to exhibit, Rowland Mallet had an uncomfortably sensitive conscience, and
+      that, in spite of the seeming paradox, his visits to Cecilia were rare
+      because she and her misfortunes were often uppermost in it. Her
+      misfortunes were three in number: first, she had lost her husband; second,
+      she had lost her money (or the greater part of it); and third, she lived
+      at Northampton, Massachusetts. Mallet&rsquo;s compassion was really wasted,
+      because Cecilia was a very clever woman, and a most skillful
+      counter-plotter to adversity. She had made herself a charming home, her
+      economies were not obtrusive, and there was always a cheerful flutter in
+      the folds of her crape. It was the consciousness of all this that puzzled
+      Mallet whenever he felt tempted to put in his oar. He had money and he had
+      time, but he never could decide just how to place these gifts gracefully
+      at Cecilia&rsquo;s service. He no longer felt like marrying her: in these eight
+      years that fancy had died a natural death. And yet her extreme cleverness
+      seemed somehow to make charity difficult and patronage impossible. He
+      would rather chop off his hand than offer her a check, a piece of useful
+      furniture, or a black silk dress; and yet there was some sadness in seeing
+      such a bright, proud woman living in such a small, dull way. Cecilia had,
+      moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty feature,
+      was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a lurking scratch in
+      it. Rowland remembered that, for him, she was all smiles, and suspected,
+      awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of the irony of
+      things. And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his opportunities,
+      what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of his uselessness.
+      Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was personally giving her
+      little girl the education of a princess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way of
+      activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe and to
+      be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the early dusk
+      at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination of floral
+      perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half hostess, doing
+      the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening, was a phenomenon
+      to which the young man&rsquo;s imagination was able to do ample justice. Cecilia
+      was always gracious, but this evening she was almost joyous. She was in a
+      happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was a private reason for it&mdash;a
+      reason quite distinct from her pleasure in receiving her honored kinsman.
+      The next day he flattered himself he was on the way to discover it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch, while
+      Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying her
+      situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia insisted
+      on talking more about her visitor than about herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you mean to do in Europe?&rdquo; she asked, lightly, giving a turn
+      to the frill of her sleeve&mdash;just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to
+      bring out all the latent difficulties of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, very much what I do here,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;No great harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true,&rdquo; Cecilia asked, &ldquo;that here you do no great harm? Is not a man
+      like you doing harm when he is not doing positive good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your compliment is ambiguous,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered the widow, &ldquo;you know what I think of you. You have a
+      particular aptitude for beneficence. You have it in the first place in
+      your character. You are a benevolent person. Ask Bessie if you don&rsquo;t hold
+      her more gently and comfortably than any of her other admirers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He holds me more comfortably than Mr. Hudson,&rdquo; Bessie declared, roundly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, not knowing Mr. Hudson, could but half appreciate the eulogy, and
+      Cecilia went on to develop her idea. &ldquo;Your circumstances, in the second
+      place, suggest the idea of social usefulness. You are intelligent, you are
+      well-informed, and your charity, if one may call it charity, would be
+      discriminating. You are rich and unoccupied, so that it might be abundant.
+      Therefore, I say, you are a person to do something on a large scale.
+      Bestir yourself, dear Rowland, or we may be taught to think that virtue
+      herself is setting a bad example.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid,&rdquo; cried Rowland, &ldquo;that I should set the examples of virtue!
+      I am quite willing to follow them, however, and if I don&rsquo;t do something on
+      the grand scale, it is that my genius is altogether imitative, and that I
+      have not recently encountered any very striking models of grandeur. Pray,
+      what shall I do? Found an orphan asylum, or build a dormitory for Harvard
+      College? I am not rich enough to do either in an ideally handsome way, and
+      I confess that, yet awhile, I feel too young to strike my grand coup. I am
+      holding myself ready for inspiration. I am waiting till something takes my
+      fancy irresistibly. If inspiration comes at forty, it will be a hundred
+      pities to have tied up my money-bag at thirty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I give you till forty,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s only a word to the
+      wise, a notification that you are expected not to run your course without
+      having done something handsome for your fellow-men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nine o&rsquo;clock sounded, and Bessie, with each stroke, courted a closer
+      embrace. But a single winged word from her mother overleaped her
+      successive intrenchments. She turned and kissed her cousin, and deposited
+      an irrepressible tear on his moustache. Then she went and said her prayers
+      to her mother: it was evident she was being admirably brought up. Rowland,
+      with the permission of his hostess, lighted a cigar and puffed it awhile
+      in silence. Cecilia&rsquo;s interest in his career seemed very agreeable. That
+      Mallet was without vanity I by no means intend to affirm; but there had
+      been times when, seeing him accept, hardly less deferentially, advice even
+      more peremptory than the widow&rsquo;s, you might have asked yourself what had
+      become of his vanity. Now, in the sweet-smelling starlight, he felt gently
+      wooed to egotism. There was a project connected with his going abroad
+      which it was on his tongue&rsquo;s end to communicate. It had no relation to
+      hospitals or dormitories, and yet it would have sounded very generous. But
+      it was not because it would have sounded generous that poor Mallet at last
+      puffed it away in the fumes of his cigar. Useful though it might be, it
+      expressed most imperfectly the young man&rsquo;s own personal conception of
+      usefulness. He was extremely fond of all the arts, and he had an almost
+      passionate enjoyment of pictures. He had seen many, and he judged them
+      sagaciously. It had occurred to him some time before that it would be the
+      work of a good citizen to go abroad and with all expedition and secrecy
+      purchase certain valuable specimens of the Dutch and Italian schools as to
+      which he had received private proposals, and then present his treasures
+      out of hand to an American city, not unknown to aesthetic fame, in which
+      at that time there prevailed a good deal of fruitless aspiration toward an
+      art-museum. He had seen himself in imagination, more than once, in some
+      mouldy old saloon of a Florentine palace, turning toward the deep
+      embrasure of the window some scarcely-faded Ghirlandaio or Botticelli,
+      while a host in reduced circumstances pointed out the lovely drawing of a
+      hand. But he imparted none of these visions to Cecilia, and he suddenly
+      swept them away with the declaration that he was of course an idle,
+      useless creature, and that he would probably be even more so in Europe
+      than at home. &ldquo;The only thing is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that there I shall seem to be
+      doing something. I shall be better entertained, and shall be therefore, I
+      suppose, in a better humor with life. You may say that that is just the
+      humor a useless man should keep out of. He should cultivate
+      discontentment. I did a good many things when I was in Europe before, but
+      I did not spend a winter in Rome. Every one assures me that this is a
+      peculiar refinement of bliss; most people talk about Rome in the same way.
+      It is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing: a passive life
+      in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality of one&rsquo;s impressions, takes
+      on a very respectable likeness to activity. It is still lotus-eating, only
+      you sit down at table, and the lotuses are served up on rococo china. It
+      &lsquo;s all very well, but I have a distinct prevision of this&mdash;that if
+      Roman life does n&rsquo;t do something substantial to make you happier, it
+      increases tenfold your liability to moral misery. It seems to me a rash
+      thing for a sensitive soul deliberately to cultivate its sensibilities by
+      rambling too often among the ruins of the Palatine, or riding too often in
+      the shadow of the aqueducts. In such recreations the chords of feeling
+      grow tense, and after-life, to spare your intellectual nerves, must play
+      upon them with a touch as dainty as the tread of Mignon when she danced
+      her egg-dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have said, my dear Rowland,&rdquo; said Cecilia, with a laugh, &ldquo;that
+      your nerves were tough, that your eggs were hard!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That being stupid, you mean, I might be happy? Upon my word I am not. I
+      am clever enough to want more than I &lsquo;ve got. I am tired of myself, my own
+      thoughts, my own affairs, my own eternal company. True happiness, we are
+      told, consists in getting out of one&rsquo;s self; but the point is not only to
+      get out&mdash;you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some
+      absorbing errand. Unfortunately, I &lsquo;ve got no errand, and nobody will
+      trust me with one. I want to care for something, or for some one. And I
+      want to care with a certain ardor; even, if you can believe it, with a
+      certain passion. I can&rsquo;t just now feel ardent and passionate about a
+      hospital or a dormitory. Do you know I sometimes think that I &lsquo;m a man of
+      genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of
+      expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend my
+      days groping for the latch of a closed door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an immense number of words,&rdquo; said Cecilia after a pause, &ldquo;to say you
+      want to fall in love! I &lsquo;ve no doubt you have as good a genius for that as
+      any one, if you would only trust it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I &lsquo;ve thought of that, and I assure you I hold myself ready.
+      But, evidently, I &lsquo;m not inflammable. Is there in Northampton some perfect
+      epitome of the graces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the graces?&rdquo; said Cecilia, raising her eyebrows and suppressing too
+      distinct a consciousness of being herself a rosy embodiment of several.
+      &ldquo;The household virtues are better represented. There are some excellent
+      girls, and there are two or three very pretty ones. I will have them here,
+      one by one, to tea, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should particularly like it; especially as I should give you a chance
+      to see, by the profundity of my attention, that if I am not happy, it &lsquo;s
+      not for want of taking pains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cecilia was silent a moment; and then, &ldquo;On the whole,&rdquo; she resumed, &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t think there are any worth asking. There are none so very pretty,
+      none so very pleasing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very sure?&rdquo; asked the young man, rising and throwing away his
+      cigar-end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; cried Cecilia, &ldquo;one would suppose I wished to keep you for
+      myself. Of course I am sure! But as the penalty of your insinuations, I
+      shall invite the plainest and prosiest damsel that can be found, and leave
+      you alone with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland smiled. &ldquo;Even against her,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I should be sorry to
+      conclude until I had given her my respectful attention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This little profession of ideal chivalry (which closed the conversation)
+      was not quite so fanciful on Mallet&rsquo;s lips as it would have been on those
+      of many another man; as a rapid glance at his antecedents may help to make
+      the reader perceive. His life had been a singular mixture of the rough and
+      the smooth. He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought
+      up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its
+      privileges and pleasures. His progenitors had submitted in the matter of
+      dogmatic theology to the relaxing influences of recent years; but if
+      Rowland&rsquo;s youthful consciousness was not chilled by the menace of long
+      punishment for brief transgression, he had at least been made to feel that
+      there ran through all things a strain of right and of wrong, as different,
+      after all, in their complexions, as the texture, to the spiritual sense,
+      of Sundays and week-days. His father was a chip of the primal Puritan
+      block, a man with an icy smile and a stony frown. He had always bestowed
+      on his son, on principle, more frowns than smiles, and if the lad had not
+      been turned to stone himself, it was because nature had blessed him,
+      inwardly, with a well of vivifying waters. Mrs. Mallet had been a Miss
+      Rowland, the daughter of a retired sea-captain, once famous on the ships
+      that sailed from Salem and Newburyport. He had brought to port many a
+      cargo which crowned the edifice of fortunes already almost colossal, but
+      he had also done a little sagacious trading on his own account, and he was
+      able to retire, prematurely for so sea-worthy a maritime organism, upon a
+      pension of his own providing. He was to be seen for a year on the Salem
+      wharves, smoking the best tobacco and eying the seaward horizon with an
+      inveteracy which superficial minds interpreted as a sign of repentance. At
+      last, one evening, he disappeared beneath it, as he had often done before;
+      this time, however, not as a commissioned navigator, but simply as an
+      amateur of an observing turn likely to prove oppressive to the officer in
+      command of the vessel. Five months later his place at home knew him again,
+      and made the acquaintance also of a handsome, blonde young woman, of
+      redundant contours, speaking a foreign tongue. The foreign tongue proved,
+      after much conflicting research, to be the idiom of Amsterdam, and the
+      young woman, which was stranger still, to be Captain Rowland&rsquo;s wife. Why
+      he had gone forth so suddenly across the seas to marry her, what had
+      happened between them before, and whether&mdash;though it was of
+      questionable propriety for a good citizen to espouse a young person of
+      mysterious origin, who did her hair in fantastically elaborate plaits, and
+      in whose appearance &ldquo;figure&rdquo; enjoyed such striking predominance&mdash;he
+      would not have had a heavy weight on his conscience if he had remained an
+      irresponsible bachelor; these questions and many others, bearing with
+      varying degrees of immediacy on the subject, were much propounded but
+      scantily answered, and this history need not be charged with resolving
+      them. Mrs. Rowland, for so handsome a woman, proved a tranquil neighbor
+      and an excellent housewife. Her extremely fresh complexion, however, was
+      always suffused with an air of apathetic homesickness, and she played her
+      part in American society chiefly by having the little squares of brick
+      pavement in front of her dwelling scoured and polished as nearly as
+      possible into the likeness of Dutch tiles. Rowland Mallet remembered
+      having seen her, as a child&mdash;an immensely stout, white-faced lady,
+      wearing a high cap of very stiff tulle, speaking English with a formidable
+      accent, and suffering from dropsy. Captain Rowland was a little bronzed
+      and wizened man, with eccentric opinions. He advocated the creation of a
+      public promenade along the sea, with arbors and little green tables for
+      the consumption of beer, and a platform, surrounded by Chinese lanterns,
+      for dancing. He especially desired the town library to be opened on
+      Sundays, though, as he never entered it on week-days, it was easy to turn
+      the proposition into ridicule. If, therefore, Mrs. Mallet was a woman of
+      an exquisite moral tone, it was not that she had inherited her temper from
+      an ancestry with a turn for casuistry. Jonas Mallet, at the time of his
+      marriage, was conducting with silent shrewdness a small, unpromising
+      business. Both his shrewdness and his silence increased with his years,
+      and at the close of his life he was an extremely well-dressed,
+      well-brushed gentleman, with a frigid gray eye, who said little to
+      anybody, but of whom everybody said that he had a very handsome fortune.
+      He was not a sentimental father, and the roughness I just now spoke of in
+      Rowland&rsquo;s life dated from his early boyhood. Mr. Mallet, whenever he
+      looked at his son, felt extreme compunction at having made a fortune. He
+      remembered that the fruit had not dropped ripe from the tree into his own
+      mouth, and determined it should be no fault of his if the boy was
+      corrupted by luxury. Rowland, therefore, except for a good deal of
+      expensive instruction in foreign tongues and abstruse sciences, received
+      the education of a poor man&rsquo;s son. His fare was plain, his temper familiar
+      with the discipline of patched trousers, and his habits marked by an
+      exaggerated simplicity which it really cost a good deal of money to
+      preserve unbroken. He was kept in the country for months together, in the
+      midst of servants who had strict injunctions to see that he suffered no
+      serious harm, but were as strictly forbidden to wait upon him. As no
+      school could be found conducted on principles sufficiently rigorous, he
+      was attended at home by a master who set a high price on the understanding
+      that he was to illustrate the beauty of abstinence not only by precept but
+      by example. Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly,
+      during his younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy who had
+      inherited nothing whatever that was to make life easy. He was passive,
+      pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of
+      trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of the
+      fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his measurement
+      around the waist, when he was about ten years old, quite alarmingly large.
+      This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he became afterwards a
+      fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was never accused of anything
+      worse than a tendency to corpulence. He emerged from childhood a simple,
+      wholesome, round-eyed lad, with no suspicion that a less roundabout course
+      might have been taken to make him happy, but with a vague sense that his
+      young experience was not a fair sample of human freedom, and that he was
+      to make a great many discoveries. When he was about fifteen, he achieved a
+      momentous one. He ascertained that his mother was a saint. She had always
+      been a very distinct presence in his life, but so ineffably gentle a one
+      that his sense was fully opened to it only by the danger of losing her.
+      She had an illness which for many months was liable at any moment to
+      terminate fatally, and during her long-arrested convalescence she removed
+      the mask which she had worn for years by her husband&rsquo;s order. Rowland
+      spent his days at her side and felt before long as if he had made a new
+      friend. All his impressions at this period were commented and interpreted
+      at leisure in the future, and it was only then that he understood that his
+      mother had been for fifteen years a perfectly unhappy woman. Her marriage
+      had been an immitigable error which she had spent her life in trying to
+      look straight in the face. She found nothing to oppose to her husband&rsquo;s
+      will of steel but the appearance of absolute compliance; her spirit sank,
+      and she lived for a while in a sort of helpless moral torpor. But at last,
+      as her child emerged from babyhood, she began to feel a certain charm in
+      patience, to discover the uses of ingenuity, and to learn that, somehow or
+      other, one can always arrange one&rsquo;s life. She cultivated from this time
+      forward a little private plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded
+      precinct that, before her death, she gave her son the key. Rowland&rsquo;s
+      allowance at college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and
+      as soon as he graduated, he was taken into his father&rsquo;s counting-house, to
+      do small drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his
+      living as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the
+      office. Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency
+      was known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his
+      son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local
+      charities. Rowland&rsquo;s third was an easy competence, and he never felt a
+      moment&rsquo;s jealousy of his fellow-pensioners; but when one of the
+      establishments which had figured most advantageously in his father&rsquo;s will
+      bethought itself to affirm the existence of a later instrument, in which
+      it had been still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a sudden
+      passionate need to repel the claim by process of law. There was a lively
+      tussle, but he gained his case; immediately after which he made, in
+      another quarter, a donation of the contested sum. He cared nothing for the
+      money, but he had felt an angry desire to protest against a destiny which
+      seemed determined to be exclusively salutary. It seemed to him that he
+      would bear a little spoiling. And yet he treated himself to a very modest
+      quantity, and submitted without reserve to the great national discipline
+      which began in 1861. When the Civil War broke out he immediately obtained
+      a commission, and did his duty for three long years as a citizen soldier.
+      His duty was obscure, but he never lost a certain private satisfaction in
+      remembering that on two or three occasions it had been performed with
+      something of an ideal precision. He had disentangled himself from
+      business, and after the war he felt a profound disinclination to tie the
+      knot again. He had no desire to make money, he had money enough; and
+      although he knew, and was frequently reminded, that a young man is the
+      better for a fixed occupation, he could discover no moral advantage in
+      driving a lucrative trade. Yet few young men of means and leisure ever
+      made less of a parade of idleness, and indeed idleness in any degree could
+      hardly be laid at the door of a young man who took life in the serious,
+      attentive, reasoning fashion of our friend. It often seemed to Mallet that
+      he wholly lacked the prime requisite of a graceful flaneur&mdash;the
+      simple, sensuous, confident relish of pleasure. He had frequent fits of
+      extreme melancholy, in which he declared that he was neither fish nor
+      flesh nor good red herring. He was neither an irresponsibly contemplative
+      nature nor a sturdily practical one, and he was forever looking in vain
+      for the uses of the things that please and the charm of the things that
+      sustain. He was an awkward mixture of strong moral impulse and restless
+      aesthetic curiosity, and yet he would have made a most ineffective
+      reformer and a very indifferent artist. It seemed to him that the glow of
+      happiness must be found either in action, of some immensely solid kind, on
+      behalf of an idea, or in producing a masterpiece in one of the arts.
+      Oftenest, perhaps, he wished he were a vigorous young man of genius,
+      without a penny. As it was, he could only buy pictures, and not paint
+      them; and in the way of action, he had to content himself with making a
+      rule to render scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples of it in
+      others. On the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty. With his blooming
+      complexion and his serene gray eye, he felt the friction of existence more
+      than was suspected; but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he
+      assumed that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no
+      excuse for taking an ill-natured view of life, and he undertook constantly
+      to believe that all women were fair, all men were brave, and the world was
+      a delightful place of sojourn, until the contrary had been distinctly
+      proved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cecilia&rsquo;s blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to repose
+      and a cigar, that she reproached him the next morning with indifference to
+      her little parlor, not less, in its way, a monument to her ingenious
+      taste. &ldquo;And by the way,&rdquo; she added as he followed her in, &ldquo;if I refused
+      last night to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show you a pretty
+      boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw open a window and pointed to a statuette which occupied the
+      place of honor among the ornaments of the room. Rowland looked at it a
+      moment and then turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. She gave
+      him a rapid glance, perceived that her statuette was of altogether
+      exceptional merit, and then smiled, knowingly, as if this had long been an
+      agreeable certainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who did it? where did you get it?&rdquo; Rowland demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Cecilia, adjusting the light, &ldquo;it &lsquo;s a little thing of Mr.
+      Hudson&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?&rdquo; asked Rowland. But he was absorbed; he
+      lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less than
+      two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The
+      attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet,
+      with his legs a little apart; his back was slightly hollowed, his head
+      thrown back, and both hands raised to support the rustic cup. There was a
+      loosened fillet of wild flowers about his head, and his eyes, under their
+      drooped lids, looked straight into the cup. On the base was scratched the
+      Greek word &#916;&#7985;&#968;&#945;, Thirst. The figure might have been
+      some beautiful youth of ancient fable,&mdash;Hylas or Narcissus, Paris or
+      Endymion. Its beauty was the beauty of natural movement; nothing had been
+      sought to be represented but the perfection of an attitude. This had been
+      most attentively studied, and it was exquisitely rendered. Rowland
+      demanded more light, dropped his head on this side and that, uttered vague
+      exclamations. He said to himself, as he had said more than once in the
+      Louvre and the Vatican, &ldquo;We ugly mortals, what beautiful creatures we
+      are!&rdquo; Nothing, in a long time, had given him so much pleasure. &ldquo;Hudson&mdash;Hudson,&rdquo;
+       he asked again; &ldquo;who is Hudson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man of this place,&rdquo; said Cecilia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man? How old?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he is three or four and twenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of this place, you say&mdash;of Northampton, Massachusetts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives here, but he comes from Virginia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he a sculptor by profession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He &lsquo;s a law-student.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland burst out laughing. &ldquo;He has found something in Blackstone that I
+      never did. He makes statues then simply for his pleasure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cecilia, with a smile, gave a little toss of her head. &ldquo;For mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I wonder whether he could be induced
+      to do anything for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This was a matter of friendship. I saw the figure when he had modeled it
+      in clay, and of course greatly admired it. He said nothing at the time,
+      but a week ago, on my birthday, he arrived in a buggy, with this. He had
+      had it cast at the foundry at Chicopee; I believe it &lsquo;s a beautiful piece
+      of bronze. He begged me to accept.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; said Mallet, &ldquo;he does things handsomely!&rdquo; And he fell to
+      admiring the statue again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So then,&rdquo; said Cecilia, &ldquo;it &lsquo;s very remarkable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, my dear cousin,&rdquo; Rowland answered, &ldquo;Mr. Hudson, of Virginia, is an
+      extraordinary&mdash;&rdquo; Then suddenly stopping: &ldquo;Is he a great friend of
+      yours?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great friend?&rdquo; and Cecilia hesitated. &ldquo;I regard him as a child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;he &lsquo;s a very clever child. Tell me something about
+      him: I should like to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cecilia was obliged to go to her daughter&rsquo;s music-lesson, but she assured
+      Rowland that she would arrange for him a meeting with the young sculptor.
+      He was a frequent visitor, and as he had not called for some days it was
+      likely he would come that evening. Rowland, left alone, examined the
+      statuette at his leisure, and returned more than once during the day to
+      take another look at it. He discovered its weak points, but it wore well.
+      It had the stamp of genius. Rowland envied the happy youth who, in a New
+      England village, without aid or encouragement, without models or
+      resources, had found it so easy to produce a lovely work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening, as he was smoking his cigar on the veranda, a light, quick
+      step pressed the gravel of the garden path, and in a moment a young man
+      made his bow to Cecilia. It was rather a nod than a bow, and indicated
+      either that he was an old friend, or that he was scantily versed in the
+      usual social forms. Cecilia, who was sitting near the steps, pointed to a
+      neighboring chair, but the young man seated himself abruptly on the floor
+      at her feet, began to fan himself vigorously with his hat, and broke out
+      into a lively objurgation upon the hot weather. &ldquo;I &lsquo;m dripping wet!&rdquo; he
+      said, without ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You walk too fast,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;You do everything too fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it, I know it!&rdquo; he cried, passing his hand through his abundant
+      dark hair and making it stand out in a picturesque shock. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be slow
+      if I try. There &lsquo;s something inside of me that drives me. A restless
+      fiend!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cecilia gave a light laugh, and Rowland leaned forward in his hammock. He
+      had placed himself in it at Bessie&rsquo;s request, and was playing that he was
+      her baby and that she was rocking him to sleep. She sat beside him,
+      swinging the hammock to and fro, and singing a lullaby. When he raised
+      himself she pushed him back and said that the baby must finish its nap.
+      &ldquo;But I want to see the gentleman with the fiend inside of him,&rdquo; said
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a fiend?&rdquo; Bessie demanded. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s only Mr. Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, I want to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind him!&rdquo; said Bessie, with the brevity of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak as if you did n&rsquo;t like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Bessie affirmed, and put Rowland to bed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hammock was swung at the end of the veranda, in the thickest shade of
+      the vines, and this fragment of dialogue had passed unnoticed. Rowland
+      submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself with
+      listening to Mr. Hudson&rsquo;s voice. It was a soft and not altogether
+      masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive
+      and pettish key. The young man&rsquo;s mood seemed fretful; he complained of the
+      heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand a
+      mile to the other side of the town and found the person he was in search
+      of had left Northampton an hour before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you have a cup of tea?&rdquo; Cecilia asked. &ldquo;Perhaps that will restore
+      your equanimity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, by keeping me awake all night!&rdquo; said Hudson. &ldquo;At the best, it &lsquo;s
+      hard enough to go down to the office. With my nerves set on edge by a
+      sleepless night, I should perforce stay at home and be brutal to my poor
+      mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother is well, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she &lsquo;s as usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Miss Garland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She &lsquo;s as usual, too. Every one, everything, is as usual. Nothing ever
+      happens, in this benighted town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon; things do happen, sometimes,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;Here is a
+      dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to congratulate you on your
+      statuette.&rdquo; And she called to Rowland to come and be introduced to Mr.
+      Hudson. The young man sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland, coming forward
+      to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected from the
+      parlor window. Something seemed to shine out of Hudson&rsquo;s face as a warning
+      against a &ldquo;compliment&rdquo; of the idle, unpondered sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your statuette seems to me very good,&rdquo; Rowland said gravely. &ldquo;It has
+      given me extreme pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my cousin knows what is good,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;He &lsquo;s a connoisseur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson smiled and stared. &ldquo;A connoisseur?&rdquo; he cried, laughing. &ldquo;He &lsquo;s the
+      first I &lsquo;ve ever seen! Let me see what they look like;&rdquo; and he drew
+      Rowland nearer to the light. &ldquo;Have they all such good heads as that? I
+      should like to model yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray do,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;It will keep him a while. He is running off to
+      Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, to Europe!&rdquo; Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence, as they sat
+      down. &ldquo;Happy man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random, for he
+      perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk. Hudson
+      was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and intelligent
+      face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity, but
+      in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome. The features were
+      admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as
+      gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of the young man&rsquo;s whole
+      structure was an excessive want of breadth. The forehead, though it was
+      high and rounded, was narrow; the jaw and the shoulders were narrow; and
+      the result was an air of insufficient physical substance. But Mallet
+      afterwards learned that this fair, slim youth could draw indefinitely upon
+      a mysterious fund of nervous force, which outlasted and outwearied the
+      endurance of many a sturdier temperament. And certainly there was life
+      enough in his eye to furnish an immortality! It was a generous dark gray
+      eye, in which there came and went a sort of kindling glow, which would
+      have made a ruder visage striking, and which gave at times to Hudson&rsquo;s
+      harmonious face an altogether extraordinary beauty. There was to Rowland&rsquo;s
+      sympathetic sense a slightly pitiful disparity between the young
+      sculptor&rsquo;s delicate countenance and the shabby gentility of his costume.
+      He was dressed for a visit&mdash;a visit to a pretty woman. He was clad
+      from head to foot in a white linen suit, which had never been remarkable
+      for the felicity of its cut, and had now quite lost that crispness which
+      garments of this complexion can as ill spare as the back-scene of a
+      theatre the radiance of the footlights. He wore a vivid blue cravat,
+      passed through a ring altogether too splendid to be valuable; he pulled
+      and twisted, as he sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves; he emphasized his
+      conversation with great dashes and flourishes of a light, silver-tipped
+      walking-stick, and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of
+      those slouched sombreros which are the traditional property of the
+      Virginian or Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very
+      picturesque, in spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he
+      sat nursing it and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he
+      could hardly be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for
+      brilliant accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This was
+      visible in his talk, which abounded in the florid and sonorous. He liked
+      words with color in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, who was but a moderate talker, sat by in silence, while Cecilia,
+      who had told him that she desired his opinion upon her friend, used a good
+      deal of characteristic finesse in leading the young man to expose himself.
+      She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for an hour with a
+      volubility in which boyish unconsciousness and manly shrewdness were
+      singularly combined. He gave his opinion on twenty topics, he opened up an
+      endless budget of local gossip, he described his repulsive routine at the
+      office of Messrs. Striker and Spooner, counselors at law, and he gave with
+      great felicity and gusto an account of the annual boat-race between
+      Harvard and Yale, which he had lately witnessed at Worcester. He had
+      looked at the straining oarsmen and the swaying crowd with the eye of the
+      sculptor. Rowland was a good deal amused and not a little interested.
+      Whenever Hudson uttered some peculiarly striking piece of youthful
+      grandiloquence, Cecilia broke into a long, light, familiar laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you laughing at?&rdquo; the young man then demanded. &ldquo;Have I said
+      anything so ridiculous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, go on,&rdquo; Cecilia replied. &ldquo;You are too delicious! Show Mr. Mallet
+      how Mr. Striker read the Declaration of Independence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson, like most men with a turn for the plastic arts, was an excellent
+      mimic, and he represented with a great deal of humor the accent and
+      attitude of a pompous country lawyer sustaining the burden of this
+      customary episode of our national festival. The sonorous twang, the
+      see-saw gestures, the odd pronunciation, were vividly depicted. But
+      Cecilia&rsquo;s manner, and the young man&rsquo;s quick response, ruffled a little
+      poor Rowland&rsquo;s paternal conscience. He wondered whether his cousin was not
+      sacrificing the faculty of reverence in her clever protege to her need for
+      amusement. Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland&rsquo;s compliment on his
+      statuette until he rose to go. Rowland wondered whether he had forgotten
+      it, and supposed that the oversight was a sign of the natural
+      self-sufficiency of genius. But Hudson stood a moment before he said good
+      night, twirled his sombrero, and hesitated for the first time. He gave
+      Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then, with a wonderfully frank,
+      appealing smile: &ldquo;You really meant,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;what you said a while ago
+      about that thing of mine? It is good&mdash;essentially good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really meant it,&rdquo; said Rowland, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder.
+      &ldquo;It is very good indeed. It is, as you say, essentially good. That is the
+      beauty of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson&rsquo;s eyes glowed and expanded; he looked at Rowland for some time in
+      silence. &ldquo;I have a notion you really know,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;But if you
+      don&rsquo;t, it does n&rsquo;t much matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin asked me to-day,&rdquo; said Cecilia, &ldquo;whether I supposed you knew
+      yourself how good it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson stared, blushing a little. &ldquo;Perhaps not!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Mallet. &ldquo;I read in a book the other day that great
+      talent in action&mdash;in fact the book said genius&mdash;is a kind of
+      somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not
+      wake him up, lest he should lose his balance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, when he &lsquo;s back in bed again!&rdquo; Hudson answered with a laugh. &ldquo;Yes,
+      call it a dream. It was a very happy one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me this,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Did you mean anything by your young
+      Water-drinker? Does he represent an idea? Is he a symbol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson raised his eyebrows and gently scratched his head. &ldquo;Why, he &lsquo;s
+      youth, you know; he &lsquo;s innocence, he &lsquo;s health, he &lsquo;s strength, he &lsquo;s
+      curiosity. Yes, he &lsquo;s a good many things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is the cup also a symbol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cup is knowledge, pleasure, experience. Anything of that kind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he &lsquo;s guzzling in earnest,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson gave a vigorous nod. &ldquo;Aye, poor fellow, he &lsquo;s thirsty!&rdquo; And on this
+      he cried good night, and bounded down the garden path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you make of him?&rdquo; asked Cecilia, returning a short time
+      afterwards from a visit of investigation as to the sufficiency of Bessie&rsquo;s
+      bedclothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess I like him,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;He &lsquo;s very immature,&mdash;but
+      there &lsquo;s stuff in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He &lsquo;s a strange being,&rdquo; said Cecilia, musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are his people? what has been his education?&rdquo; Rowland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has had no education, beyond what he has picked up, with little
+      trouble, for himself. His mother is a widow, of a Massachusetts country
+      family, a little timid, tremulous woman, who is always on pins and needles
+      about her son. She had some property herself, and married a Virginian
+      gentleman of good estates. He turned out, I believe, a very licentious
+      personage, and made great havoc in their fortune. Everything, or almost
+      everything, melted away, including Mr. Hudson himself. This is literally
+      true, for he drank himself to death. Ten years ago his wife was left a
+      widow, with scanty means and a couple of growing boys. She paid her
+      husband&rsquo;s debts as best she could, and came to establish herself here,
+      where by the death of a charitable relative she had inherited an
+      old-fashioned ruinous house. Roderick, our friend, was her pride and joy,
+      but Stephen, the elder, was her comfort and support. I remember him,
+      later; he was an ugly, sturdy, practical lad, very different from his
+      brother, and in his way, I imagine, a very fine fellow. When the war broke
+      out he found that the New England blood ran thicker in his veins than the
+      Virginian, and immediately obtained a commission. He fell in some Western
+      battle and left his mother inconsolable. Roderick, however, has given her
+      plenty to think about, and she has induced him, by some mysterious art, to
+      abide, nominally at least, in a profession that he abhors, and for which
+      he is about as fit, I should say, as I am to drive a locomotive. He grew
+      up a la grace de Dieu, and was horribly spoiled. Three or four years ago
+      he graduated at a small college in this neighborhood, where I am afraid he
+      had given a good deal more attention to novels and billiards than to
+      mathematics and Greek. Since then he has been reading law, at the rate of
+      a page a day. If he is ever admitted to practice I &lsquo;m afraid my friendship
+      won&rsquo;t avail to make me give him my business. Good, bad, or indifferent,
+      the boy is essentially an artist&mdash;an artist to his fingers&rsquo; ends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; asked Rowland, &ldquo;does n&rsquo;t he deliberately take up the chisel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For several reasons. In the first place, I don&rsquo;t think he more than half
+      suspects his talent. The flame is smouldering, but it is never fanned by
+      the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to help him to
+      self-knowledge. He &lsquo;s hopelessly discontented, but he does n&rsquo;t know where
+      to look for help. Then his mother, as she one day confessed to me, has a
+      holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively, as she supposes,
+      in making figures of people without their clothes on. Sculpture, to her
+      mind, is an insidious form of immorality, and for a young man of a
+      passionate disposition she considers the law a much safer investment. Her
+      father was a judge, she has two brothers at the bar, and her elder son had
+      made a very promising beginning in the same line. She wishes the tradition
+      to be perpetuated. I &lsquo;m pretty sure the law won&rsquo;t make Roderick&rsquo;s fortune,
+      and I &lsquo;m afraid it will, in the long run, spoil his temper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of a temper is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One to be trusted, on the whole. It is quick, but it is generous. I have
+      known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o&rsquo;clock in the evening, and
+      soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It &lsquo;s a very entertaining temper to
+      observe. I, fortunately, can do so dispassionately, for I &lsquo;m the only
+      person in the place he has not quarreled with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he then no society? Who is Miss Garland, whom you asked about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young girl staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin; a good
+      plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor&rsquo;s eye. Roderick has a
+      goodly share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic
+      temperament. He will have nothing to do with the small towns-people; he
+      says they &lsquo;re &lsquo;ignoble.&rsquo; He cannot endure his mother&rsquo;s friends&mdash;the
+      old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to
+      death. So he comes and lounges here and rails at everything and every
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later, and
+      confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland&rsquo;s part. He was
+      in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly, and asked
+      Rowland a number of rather naif questions about the condition of the fine
+      arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, when he had gone, said that this was
+      the wholesome effect of Rowland&rsquo;s praise of his statuette. Roderick was
+      acutely sensitive, and Rowland&rsquo;s tranquil commendation had stilled his
+      restless pulses. He was ruminating the full-flavored verdict of culture.
+      Rowland felt an irresistible kindness for him, a mingled sense of his
+      personal charm and his artistic capacity. He had an indefinable attraction&mdash;the
+      something divine of unspotted, exuberant, confident youth. The next day
+      was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they should take a long walk and
+      that Roderick should show him the country. The young man assented
+      gleefully, and in the morning, as Rowland at the garden gate was giving
+      his hostess Godspeed on her way to church, he came striding along the
+      grassy margin of the road and out-whistling the music of the church bells.
+      It was one of those lovely days of August when you feel the complete
+      exuberance of summer just warned and checked by autumn. &ldquo;Remember the day,
+      and take care you rob no orchards,&rdquo; said Cecilia, as they separated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young men walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale, through
+      woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy elevation
+      studded with mossy rocks and red cedars. Just beneath them, in a great
+      shining curve, flowed the goodly Connecticut. They flung themselves on the
+      grass and tossed stones into the river; they talked like old friends.
+      Rowland lit a cigar, and Roderick refused one with a grimace of
+      extravagant disgust. He thought them vile things; he did n&rsquo;t see how
+      decent people could tolerate them. Rowland was amused, and wondered what
+      it was that made this ill-mannered speech seem perfectly inoffensive on
+      Roderick&rsquo;s lips. He belonged to the race of mortals, to be pitied or
+      envied according as we view the matter, who are not held to a strict
+      account for their aggressions. Looking at him as he lay stretched in the
+      shade, Rowland vaguely likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless,
+      bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the
+      tremulous delicacy of its structure, and be graceful even when they were
+      most inconvenient. Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke, listened
+      to the gurgle of the river, and sniffed the balsam of the pines. A gentle
+      breeze had begun to tickle their summits, and brought the smell of the
+      mown grass across from the elm-dotted river meadows. He sat up beside his
+      companion and looked away at the far-spreading view. It seemed to him
+      beautiful, and suddenly a strange feeling of prospective regret took
+      possession of him. Something seemed to tell him that later, in a foreign
+      land, he would remember it lovingly and penitently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a wretched business,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this practical quarrel of ours with
+      our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it. Is one&rsquo;s
+      only safety then in flight? This is an American day, an American
+      landscape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and some
+      day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy, I shall accuse myself
+      of having slighted them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that America was
+      good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an
+      honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it along. He had
+      evidently thought nothing whatever about it, and was launching his
+      doctrine on the inspiration of the moment. The doctrine expanded with the
+      occasion, and he declared that he was above all an advocate for American
+      art. He did n&rsquo;t see why we should n&rsquo;t produce the greatest works in the
+      world. We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the biggest
+      conceptions. The biggest conceptions of course would bring forth in time
+      the biggest performances. We had only to be true to ourselves, to pitch in
+      and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our eyes upon our
+      National Individuality. &ldquo;I declare,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;there &lsquo;s a career for a
+      man, and I &lsquo;ve twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to embrace it&mdash;to
+      be the consummate, typical, original, national American artist! It &lsquo;s
+      inspiring!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice better
+      than his theory, and that a saner impulse than this had inspired his
+      little Water-drinker. Roderick took no offense, and three minutes
+      afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme, but half heeded by
+      his companion, who had returned to his cogitations. At last Rowland
+      delivered himself of the upshot of these. &ldquo;How would you like,&rdquo; he
+      suddenly demanded, &ldquo;to go to Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our
+      National Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it
+      reasonably well. &ldquo;And I should like, by the same token,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;to go
+      to Athens, to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of Benares,
+      where there is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Rowland soberly, &ldquo;if you were to go to Rome, you should settle
+      down and work. Athens might help you, but for the present I should n&rsquo;t
+      recommend Benares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be time to arrange details when I pack my trunk,&rdquo; said Hudson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean to turn sculptor, the sooner you pack your trunk the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I &lsquo;m a practical man! What is the smallest sum per annum, on
+      which one can keep alive the sacred fire in Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the largest sum at your disposal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then announced
+      with mock pomposity: &ldquo;Three hundred dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money question could be arranged,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;There are ways of
+      raising money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know a few! I never yet discovered one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One consists,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;in having a friend with a good deal more
+      than he wants, and not being too proud to accept a part of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed. &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;do you
+      mean?&rdquo;.... he stammered. He was greatly excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet. &ldquo;In
+      three words, if you are to be a sculptor, you ought to go to Rome and
+      study the antique. To go to Rome you need money. I &lsquo;m fond of fine
+      statues, but unfortunately I can&rsquo;t make them myself. I have to order them.
+      I order a dozen from you, to be executed at your convenience. To help you,
+      I pay you in advance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick pushed off his hat and wiped his forehead, still gazing at his
+      companion. &ldquo;You believe in me!&rdquo; he cried at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me to explain,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I believe in you, if you are
+      prepared to work and to wait, and to struggle, and to exercise a great
+      many virtues. And then, I &lsquo;m afraid to say it, lest I should disturb you
+      more than I should help you. You must decide for yourself. I simply offer
+      you an opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative. &ldquo;You have not seen my
+      other things,&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;Come and look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we &lsquo;ll walk home. We &lsquo;ll settle the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed his hand through Rowland&rsquo;s arm and they retraced their steps.
+      They reached the town and made their way along a broad country street,
+      dusky with the shade of magnificent elms. Rowland felt his companion&rsquo;s arm
+      trembling in his own. They stopped at a large white house, flanked with
+      melancholy hemlocks, and passed through a little front garden, paved with
+      moss-coated bricks and ornamented with parterres bordered with high box
+      hedges. The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but it had seen its
+      best days, and evidently sheltered a shrunken household. Mrs. Hudson,
+      Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden of a morning, in a white
+      apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal horticulture. Roderick&rsquo;s
+      studio was behind, in the basement; a large, empty room, with the paper
+      peeling off the walls. This represented, in the fashion of fifty years
+      ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes of a hideous pattern, and the
+      young sculptor had presumably torn it away in great scraps, in moments of
+      aesthetic exasperation. On a board in a corner was a heap of clay, and on
+      the floor, against the wall, stood some dozen medallions, busts, and
+      figures, in various stages of completion. To exhibit them Roderick had to
+      place them one by one on the end of a long packing-box, which served as a
+      pedestal. He did so silently, making no explanations, and looking at them
+      himself with a strange air of quickened curiosity. Most of the things were
+      portraits; and the three at which he looked longest were finished busts.
+      One was a colossal head of a negro, tossed back, defiant, with distended
+      nostrils; one was the portrait of a young man whom Rowland immediately
+      perceived, by the resemblance, to be his deceased brother; the last
+      represented a gentleman with a pointed nose, a long, shaved upper lip, and
+      a tuft on the end of his chin. This was a face peculiarly unadapted to
+      sculpture; but as a piece of modeling it was the best, and it was
+      admirable. It reminded Rowland in its homely veracity, its artless
+      artfulness, of the works of the early Italian Renaissance. On the pedestal
+      was cut the name&mdash;Barnaby Striker, Esq. Rowland remembered that this
+      was the appellation of the legal luminary from whom his companion had
+      undertaken to borrow a reflected ray, and although in the bust there was
+      naught flagrantly set down in malice, it betrayed, comically to one who
+      could relish the secret, that the features of the original had often been
+      scanned with an irritated eye. Besides these there were several rough
+      studies of the nude, and two or three figures of a fanciful kind. The most
+      noticeable (and it had singular beauty) was a small modeled design for a
+      sepulchral monument; that, evidently, of Stephen Hudson. The young soldier
+      lay sleeping eternally, with his hand on his sword, like an old crusader
+      in a Gothic cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgment.
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; cried Hudson at last, &ldquo;they seem to me very good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in truth, as Rowland looked, he saw they were good. They were
+      youthful, awkward, and ignorant; the effort, often, was more apparent than
+      the success. But the effort was signally powerful and intelligent; it
+      seemed to Rowland that it needed only to let itself go to compass great
+      things. Here and there, too, success, when grasped, had something
+      masterly. Rowland turned to his companion, who stood with his hands in his
+      pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance. The light
+      of admiration was in Rowland&rsquo;s eyes, and it speedily kindled a wonderful
+      illumination on Hudson&rsquo;s handsome brow. Rowland said at last, gravely,
+      &ldquo;You have only to work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what that means,&rdquo; Roderick answered. He turned away, threw
+      himself on a rickety chair, and sat for some moments with his elbows on
+      his knees and his head in his hands. &ldquo;Work&mdash;work?&rdquo; he said at last,
+      looking up, &ldquo;ah, if I could only begin!&rdquo; He glanced round the room a
+      moment and his eye encountered on the mantel-shelf the vivid physiognomy
+      of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished, and he stared at it with an
+      air of concentrated enmity. &ldquo;I want to begin,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and I can&rsquo;t make
+      a better beginning than this! Good-by, Mr. Striker!&rdquo; He strode across the
+      room, seized a mallet that lay at hand, and before Rowland could
+      interfere, in the interest of art if not of morals, dealt a merciless blow
+      upon Mr. Striker&rsquo;s skull. The bust cracked into a dozen pieces, which
+      toppled with a great crash upon the floor. Rowland relished neither the
+      destruction of the image nor his companion&rsquo;s look in working it, but as he
+      was about to express his displeasure the door opened and gave passage to a
+      young girl. She came in with a rapid step and startled face, as if she had
+      been summoned by the noise. Seeing the heap of shattered clay and the
+      mallet in Roderick&rsquo;s hand, she gave a cry of horror. Her voice died away
+      when she perceived that Rowland was a stranger, but she murmured
+      reproachfully, &ldquo;Why, Roderick, what have you done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments. &ldquo;I &lsquo;ve driven the
+      money-changers out of the temple!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The traces retained shape enough to be recognized, and she gave a little
+      moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young man&rsquo;s allegory, but
+      yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must be an evil
+      one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive that
+      Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with a
+      sharp, frank mistrust, and turned away through the open door. Rowland
+      looked after her with extraordinary interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. Roderick
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend. Roderick
+      was in a state of extreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by a certain
+      amount of righteous wrath. He had had a domestic struggle, but he had
+      remained master of the situation. He had shaken the dust of Mr. Striker&rsquo;s
+      office from his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had it out last night with my mother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I dreaded the scene,
+      for she takes things terribly hard. She does n&rsquo;t scold nor storm, and she
+      does n&rsquo;t argue nor insist. She sits with her eyes full of tears that never
+      fall, and looks at me, when I displease her, as if I were a perfect
+      monster of depravity. And the trouble is that I was born to displease her.
+      She does n&rsquo;t trust me; she never has and she never will. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      I have done to set her against me, but ever since I can remember I have
+      been looked at with tears. The trouble is,&rdquo; he went on, giving a twist to
+      his moustache, &ldquo;I &lsquo;ve been too absurdly docile. I &lsquo;ve been sprawling all
+      my days by the maternal fireside, and my dear mother has grown used to
+      bullying me. I &lsquo;ve made myself cheap! If I &lsquo;m not in my bed by eleven
+      o&rsquo;clock, the girl is sent out to explore with a lantern. When I think of
+      it, I fairly despise my amiability. It &lsquo;s rather a hard fate, to live like
+      a saint and to pass for a sinner! I should like for six months to lead
+      Mrs. Hudson the life some fellows lead their mothers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me to believe,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;that you would like nothing of the
+      sort. If you have been a good boy, don&rsquo;t spoil it by pretending you don&rsquo;t
+      like it. You have been very happy, I suspect, in spite of your virtues,
+      and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too well. I have
+      not had the pleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay you a wager
+      that that is the trouble. She is passionately fond of you, and her hopes,
+      like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears.&rdquo; Rowland, as he spoke,
+      had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful young fellow must be
+      loved by his female relatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, &ldquo;I do her justice,&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;May she never do me less!&rdquo; Then after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, &ldquo;I
+      &lsquo;ll tell you the perfect truth,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I have to fill a double
+      place. I have to be my brother as well as myself. It &lsquo;s a good deal to ask
+      of a man, especially when he has so little talent as I for being what he
+      is not. When we were both young together I was the curled darling. I had
+      the silver mug and the biggest piece of pudding, and I stayed in-doors to
+      be kissed by the ladies while he made mud-pies in the garden and was never
+      missed, of course. Really, he was worth fifty of me! When he was brought
+      home from Vicksburg with a piece of shell in his skull, my poor mother
+      began to think she had n&rsquo;t loved him enough. I remember, as she hung round
+      my neck sobbing, before his coffin, she told me that I must be to her
+      everything that he would have been. I swore in tears and in perfect good
+      faith that I would, but naturally I have not kept my promise. I have been
+      utterly different. I have been idle, restless, egotistical, discontented.
+      I have done no harm, I believe, but I have done no good. My brother, if he
+      had lived, would have made fifty thousand dollars and put gas and water
+      into the house. My mother, brooding night and day on her bereavement, has
+      come to fix her ideal in offices of that sort. Judged by that standard I
+      &lsquo;m nowhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was at loss how to receive this account of his friend&rsquo;s domestic
+      circumstances; it was plaintive, and yet the manner seemed to him
+      over-trenchant. &ldquo;You must lose no time in making a masterpiece,&rdquo; he
+      answered; &ldquo;then with the proceeds you can give her gas from golden
+      burners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or
+      in proceeds. She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her a
+      snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the law,
+      like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I &lsquo;m in sight. &lsquo;It &lsquo;s a more
+      regular occupation!&rsquo; that &lsquo;s all I can get out of her. A more regular
+      damnation! Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such wicked men? I
+      never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n&rsquo;t confute her with an
+      example. She had the advantage of me, because she formerly knew a
+      portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in black lace mittens
+      (you may see it on the parlor table), who used to drink raw brandy and
+      beat his wife. I promised her that, whatever I might do to my wife, I
+      would never beat my mother, and that as for brandy, raw or diluted, I
+      detested it. She sat silently crying for an hour, during which I expended
+      treasures of eloquence. It &lsquo;s a good thing to have to reckon up one&rsquo;s
+      intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my cause, I was most agreeably
+      impressed with the elevated character of my own. I kissed her solemnly at
+      last, and told her that I had said everything and that she must make the
+      best of it. This morning she has dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is
+      n&rsquo;t a cheerful house. I long to be out of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m extremely sorry,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;to have been the prime cause of so
+      much suffering. I owe your mother some amends; will it be possible for me
+      to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you &lsquo;ll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the
+      truth she &lsquo;ll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an
+      agent of the foul fiend. She does n&rsquo;t see why you should have come here
+      and set me by the ears: you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and desolate
+      doting mothers. I leave it to you, personally, to answer these charges.
+      You see, what she can&rsquo;t forgive&mdash;what she &lsquo;ll not really ever forgive&mdash;is
+      your taking me off to Rome. Rome is an evil word, in my mother&rsquo;s
+      vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, as you &lsquo;d say &lsquo;damnation.&rsquo; 
+      Northampton is in the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying
+      dusk, into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate. And there
+      was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository of every virtue,
+      Mr. Striker&rsquo;s office!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does Mr. Striker know of your decision?&rdquo; asked Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a certainty! Mr. Striker, you must know, is not simply a good-natured
+      attorney, who lets me dog&rsquo;s-ear his law-books. He&rsquo;s a particular friend
+      and general adviser. He looks after my mother&rsquo;s property and kindly
+      consents to regard me as part of it. Our opinions have always been
+      painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his zealous attempts to
+      unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part before. He never understood
+      me, and it was useless to try to make him. We speak a different language&mdash;we
+      &lsquo;re made of a different clay. I had a fit of rage yesterday when I smashed
+      his bust, at the thought of all the bad blood he had stirred up in me; it
+      did me good, and it &lsquo;s all over now. I don&rsquo;t hate him any more; I &lsquo;m
+      rather sorry for him. See how you &lsquo;ve improved me! I must have seemed to
+      him wilfully, wickedly stupid, and I &lsquo;m sure he only tolerated me on
+      account of his great regard for my mother. This morning I grasped the bull
+      by the horns. I took an armful of law-books that have been gathering the
+      dust in my room for the last year and a half, and presented myself at the
+      office. &lsquo;Allow me to put these back in their places,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I shall
+      never have need for them more&mdash;never more, never more, never more!&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;So you &lsquo;ve learned everything they contain?&rsquo; asked Striker, leering over
+      his spectacles. &lsquo;Better late than never.&rsquo; &lsquo;I &lsquo;ve learned nothing that you
+      can teach me,&rsquo; I cried. &lsquo;But I shall tax your patience no longer. I &lsquo;m
+      going to be a sculptor. I &lsquo;m going to Rome. I won&rsquo;t bid you good-by just
+      yet; I shall see you again. But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these
+      four detested walls&mdash;to this living tomb! I did n&rsquo;t know till now how
+      I hated it! My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have
+      not made of me!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again,&rdquo; Rowland answered,
+      correcting a primary inclination to smile. &ldquo;You certainly owe him a
+      respectful farewell, even if he has not understood you. I confess you
+      rather puzzle me. There is another person,&rdquo; he presently added, &ldquo;whose
+      opinion as to your new career I should like to know. What does Miss
+      Garland think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush. Then, with a conscious
+      smile, &ldquo;What makes you suppose she thinks anything?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as a
+      very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile on Roderick&rsquo;s mobile face passed rapidly into a frown. &ldquo;Oh, she
+      thinks what I think!&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as harmonious
+      a shape as possible to his companion&rsquo;s scheme. &ldquo;I have launched you, as I
+      may say,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I feel as if I ought to see you into port. I am
+      older than you and know the world better, and it seems well that we should
+      voyage a while together. It &lsquo;s on my conscience that I ought to take you
+      to Rome, walk you through the Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of
+      clay. I sail on the fifth of September; can you make your preparations to
+      start with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in his
+      friend&rsquo;s wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges. &ldquo;I have no
+      preparations to make,&rdquo; he said with a smile, raising his arms and letting
+      them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition. &ldquo;What I am to
+      take with me I carry here!&rdquo; and he tapped his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy man!&rdquo; murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light stowage,
+      in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and of the heavy
+      one in deposit at his banker&rsquo;s, of bags and boxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia. She was
+      sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low
+      chintz-covered chair. He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with
+      her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder. At
+      last he told her of Roderick&rsquo;s decision and of his own influence in it.
+      Cecilia, besides an extreme surprise, exhibited a certain fine displeasure
+      at his not having asked her advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have said, if I had?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would have said in the first place, &lsquo;Oh for pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t carry off
+      the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!&rsquo; I would have said in
+      the second place, &lsquo;Nonsense! the boy is doing very well. Let well alone!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That in the first five minutes. What would you have said later?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That for a man who is generally averse to meddling, you were suddenly
+      rather officious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s countenance fell. He frowned in silence. Cecilia looked at him
+      askance; gradually the spark of irritation faded from her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my sharpness,&rdquo; she resumed at last. &ldquo;But I am literally in despair
+      at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the past year,
+      have kept me alive. They have given a silver tip to leaden days. I don&rsquo;t
+      say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he is of a
+      different one. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly is not a
+      reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work and women must
+      weep!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Decidedly not!&rdquo; said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis. He had
+      suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia had treated herself
+      to a private social luxury; he had then discovered that she found it in
+      Hudson&rsquo;s lounging visits and boyish chatter, and he had felt himself
+      wondering at last whether, judiciously viewed, her gain in the matter was
+      not the young man&rsquo;s loss. It was evident that Cecilia was not judicious,
+      and that her good sense, habitually rigid under the demands of domestic
+      economy, indulged itself with a certain agreeable laxity on this
+      particular point. She liked her young friend just as he was; she humored
+      him, flattered him, laughed at him, caressed him&mdash;did everything but
+      advise him. It was a flirtation without the benefits of a flirtation. She
+      was too old to let him fall in love with her, which might have done him
+      good; and her inclination was to keep him young, so that the nonsense he
+      talked might never transgress a certain line. It was quite conceivable
+      that poor Cecilia should relish a pastime; but if one had
+      philanthropically embraced the idea that something considerable might be
+      made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her friendship was not
+      what might be called tonic. So Rowland reflected, in the glow of his
+      new-born sympathy. There was a later time when he would have been grateful
+      if Hudson&rsquo;s susceptibility to the relaxing influence of lovely women might
+      have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as he rendered the excellent
+      Cecilia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only desire to remind you,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;that you are likely to have
+      your hands full.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;ve thought of that, and I rather like the idea; liking, as I do, the
+      man. I told you the other day, you know, that I longed to have something
+      on my hands. When it first occurred to me that I might start our young
+      friend on the path of glory, I felt as if I had an unimpeachable
+      inspiration. Then I remembered there were dangers and difficulties, and
+      asked myself whether I had a right to step in between him and his
+      obscurity. My sense of his really having the divine flame answered the
+      question. He is made to do the things that humanity is the happier for! I
+      can&rsquo;t do such things myself, but when I see a young man of genius standing
+      helpless and hopeless for want of capital, I feel&mdash;and it &lsquo;s no
+      affectation of humility, I assure you&mdash;as if it would give at least a
+      reflected usefulness to my own life to offer him his opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of humanity, I suppose, I ought to thank you. But I want,
+      first of all, to be happy myself. You guarantee us at any rate, I hope,
+      the masterpieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A masterpiece a year,&rdquo; said Rowland smiling, &ldquo;for the next quarter of a
+      century.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me that we have a right to ask more: to demand that you
+      guarantee us not only the development of the artist, but the security of
+      the man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland became grave again. &ldquo;His security?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His moral, his sentimental security. Here, you see, it &lsquo;s perfect. We are
+      all under a tacit compact to preserve it. Perhaps you believe in the
+      necessary turbulence of genius, and you intend to enjoin upon your protege
+      the importance of cultivating his passions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I believe that a man of genius owes as much deference to
+      his passions as any other man, but not a particle more, and I confess I
+      have a strong conviction that the artist is better for leading a quiet
+      life. That is what I shall preach to my protege, as you call him, by
+      example as well as by precept. You evidently believe,&rdquo; he added in a
+      moment, &ldquo;that he will lead me a dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, I prophesy nothing. I only think that circumstances, with our young
+      man, have a great influence; as is proved by the fact that although he has
+      been fuming and fretting here for the last five years, he has nevertheless
+      managed to make the best of it, and found it easy, on the whole, to
+      vegetate. Transplanted to Rome, I fancy he &lsquo;ll put forth a denser leafage.
+      I should like vastly to see the change. You must write me about it, from
+      stage to stage. I hope with all my heart that the fruit will be
+      proportionate to the foliage. Don&rsquo;t think me a bird of ill omen; only
+      remember that you will be held to a strict account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man should make the most of himself, and be helped if he needs help,&rdquo;
+       Rowland answered, after a long pause. &ldquo;Of course when a body begins to
+      expand, there comes in the possibility of bursting; but I nevertheless
+      approve of a certain tension of one&rsquo;s being. It &lsquo;s what a man is meant
+      for. And then I believe in the essential salubrity of genius&mdash;true
+      genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Cecilia, with an air of resignation which made Rowland,
+      for the moment, seem to himself culpably eager. &ldquo;We &lsquo;ll drink then to-day
+      at dinner to the health of our friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having it much at heart to convince Mrs. Hudson of the purity of his
+      intentions, Rowland waited upon her that evening. He was ushered into a
+      large parlor, which, by the light of a couple of candles, he perceived to
+      be very meagrely furnished and very tenderly and sparingly used. The
+      windows were open to the air of the summer night, and a circle of three
+      persons was temporarily awed into silence by his appearance. One of these
+      was Mrs. Hudson, who was sitting at one of the windows, empty-handed save
+      for the pocket-handkerchief in her lap, which was held with an air of
+      familiarity with its sadder uses. Near her, on the sofa, half sitting,
+      half lounging, in the attitude of a visitor outstaying ceremony, with one
+      long leg flung over the other and a large foot in a clumsy boot swinging
+      to and fro continually, was a lean, sandy-haired gentleman whom Rowland
+      recognized as the original of the portrait of Mr. Barnaby Striker. At the
+      table, near the candles, busy with a substantial piece of needle-work, sat
+      the young girl of whom he had had a moment&rsquo;s quickened glimpse in
+      Roderick&rsquo;s studio, and whom he had learned to be Miss Garland, his
+      companion&rsquo;s kinswoman. This young lady&rsquo;s limpid, penetrating gaze was the
+      most effective greeting he received. Mrs. Hudson rose with a soft, vague
+      sound of distress, and stood looking at him shrinkingly and waveringly, as
+      if she were sorely tempted to retreat through the open window. Mr. Striker
+      swung his long leg a trifle defiantly. No one, evidently, was used to
+      offering hollow welcomes or telling polite fibs. Rowland introduced
+      himself; he had come, he might say, upon business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson tremulously; &ldquo;I know&mdash;my son has told me. I
+      suppose it is better I should see you. Perhaps you will take a seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this invitation Rowland prepared to comply, and, turning, grasped the
+      first chair that offered itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that one,&rdquo; said a full, grave voice; whereupon he perceived that a
+      quantity of sewing-silk had been suspended and entangled over the back,
+      preparatory to being wound on reels. He felt the least bit irritated at
+      the curtness of the warning, coming as it did from a young woman whose
+      countenance he had mentally pronounced interesting, and with regard to
+      whom he was conscious of the germ of the inevitable desire to produce a
+      responsive interest. And then he thought it would break the ice to say
+      something playfully urbane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you should let me take the chair,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;and have the
+      pleasure of holding the skeins myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For all reply to this sally he received a stare of undisguised amazement
+      from Miss Garland, who then looked across at Mrs. Hudson with a glance
+      which plainly said: &ldquo;You see he &lsquo;s quite the insidious personage we
+      feared.&rdquo; The elder lady, however, sat with her eyes fixed on the ground
+      and her two hands tightly clasped. But touching her Rowland felt much more
+      compassion than resentment; her attitude was not coldness, it was a kind
+      of dread, almost a terror. She was a small, eager woman, with a pale,
+      troubled face, which added to her apparent age. After looking at her for
+      some minutes Rowland saw that she was still young, and that she must have
+      been a very girlish bride. She had been a pretty one, too, though she
+      probably had looked terribly frightened at the altar. She was very
+      delicately made, and Roderick had come honestly by his physical slimness
+      and elegance. She wore no cap, and her flaxen hair, which was of
+      extraordinary fineness, was smoothed and confined with Puritanic
+      precision. She was excessively shy, and evidently very humble-minded; it
+      was singular to see a woman to whom the experience of life had conveyed so
+      little reassurance as to her own resources or the chances of things
+      turning out well. Rowland began immediately to like her, and to feel
+      impatient to persuade her that there was no harm in him, and that, twenty
+      to one, her son would make her a well-pleased woman yet. He foresaw that
+      she would be easy to persuade, and that a benevolent conversational tone
+      would probably make her pass, fluttering, from distrust into an oppressive
+      extreme of confidence. But he had an indefinable sense that the person who
+      was testing that strong young eyesight of hers in the dim candle-light was
+      less readily beguiled from her mysterious feminine preconceptions. Miss
+      Garland, according to Cecilia&rsquo;s judgment, as Rowland remembered, had not a
+      countenance to inspire a sculptor; but it seemed to Rowland that her
+      countenance might fairly inspire a man who was far from being a sculptor.
+      She was not pretty, as the eye of habit judges prettiness, but when you
+      made the observation you somehow failed to set it down against her, for
+      you had already passed from measuring contours to tracing meanings. In
+      Mary Garland&rsquo;s face there were many possible ones, and they gave you the
+      more to think about that it was not&mdash;like Roderick Hudson&rsquo;s, for
+      instance&mdash;a quick and mobile face, over which expression flickered
+      like a candle in a wind. They followed each other slowly, distinctly,
+      gravely, sincerely, and you might almost have fancied that, as they came
+      and went, they gave her a sort of pain. She was tall and slender, and had
+      an air of maidenly strength and decision. She had a broad forehead and
+      dark eyebrows, a trifle thicker than those of classic beauties; her gray
+      eye was clear but not brilliant, and her features were perfectly
+      irregular. Her mouth was large, fortunately for the principal grace of her
+      physiognomy was her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent
+      amplitude. Rowland, indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something
+      assured him that her rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart. She wore a
+      scanty white dress, and had a nameless rustic air which would have led one
+      to speak of her less as a young lady than as a young woman. She was
+      evidently a girl of a great personal force, but she lacked pliancy. She
+      was hemming a kitchen towel with the aid of a large steel thimble. She
+      bent her serious eyes at last on her work again, and let Rowland explain
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have become suddenly so very intimate with your son,&rdquo; he said at last,
+      addressing himself to Mrs. Hudson, &ldquo;that it seems just I should make your
+      acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very just,&rdquo; murmured the poor lady, and after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation was
+      on the point of adding something more; but Mr. Striker here interposed,
+      after a prefatory clearance of the throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to take the liberty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of addressing you a simple
+      question. For how long a period of time have you been acquainted with our
+      young friend?&rdquo; He continued to kick the air, but his head was thrown back
+      and his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, as if in aversion to the
+      spectacle of Rowland&rsquo;s inevitable confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very short time, I confess. Hardly three days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you call yourself intimate, eh? I have been seeing Mr. Roderick
+      daily these three years, and yet it was only this morning that I felt as
+      if I had at last the right to say that I knew him. We had a few moments&rsquo; 
+      conversation in my office which supplied the missing links in the
+      evidence. So that now I do venture to say I &lsquo;m acquainted with Mr.
+      Roderick! But wait three years, sir, like me!&rdquo; and Mr. Striker laughed,
+      with a closed mouth and a noiseless shake of all his long person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson smiled confusedly, at hazard; Miss Garland kept her eyes on
+      her stitches. But it seemed to Rowland that the latter colored a little.
+      &ldquo;Oh, in three years, of course,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we shall know each other
+      better. Before many years are over, madam,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;I expect the
+      world to know him. I expect him to be a great man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious device
+      for increasing her distress by the assistance of irony. Then reassured,
+      little by little, by Rowland&rsquo;s benevolent visage, she gave him an
+      appealing glance and a timorous &ldquo;Really?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before Rowland could respond, Mr. Striker again intervened. &ldquo;Do I
+      fully apprehend your expression?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Our young friend is to become
+      a great man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great artist, I hope,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a new and interesting view,&rdquo; said Mr. Striker, with an assumption
+      of judicial calmness. &ldquo;We have had hopes for Mr. Roderick, but I confess,
+      if I have rightly understood them, they stopped short of greatness. We
+      should n&rsquo;t have taken the responsibility of claiming it for him. What do
+      you say, ladies? We all feel about him here&mdash;his mother, Miss
+      Garland, and myself&mdash;as if his merits were rather in the line of the&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Mr. Striker waved his hand with a series of fantastic flourishes in the
+      air&mdash;&ldquo;of the light ornamental!&rdquo; Mr. Striker bore his recalcitrant
+      pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both to be fair and to respect
+      the susceptibilities of his companions. But he was unversed in the
+      mysterious processes of feminine emotion. Ten minutes before, there had
+      been a general harmony of sombre views; but on hearing Roderick&rsquo;s
+      limitations thus distinctly formulated to a stranger, the two ladies
+      mutely protested. Mrs. Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and Miss
+      Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with a
+      short, cold glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m afraid, Mrs. Hudson,&rdquo; Rowland pursued, evading the discussion of
+      Roderick&rsquo;s possible greatness, &ldquo;that you don&rsquo;t at all thank me for
+      stirring up your son&rsquo;s ambition on a line which leads him so far from
+      home. I suspect I have made you my enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully
+      perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being
+      impolite. &ldquo;My cousin is no one&rsquo;s enemy,&rdquo; Miss Garland hereupon declared,
+      gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made
+      Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she leave that to you?&rdquo; Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments,&rdquo; said Mr. Striker;
+      &ldquo;Miss Garland perhaps most of all. Miss Garland,&rdquo; and Mr. Striker waved
+      his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been regrettably
+      omitted, &ldquo;is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter of a minister,
+      the sister of a minister.&rdquo; Rowland bowed deferentially, and the young girl
+      went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently, either of embarrassment
+      or elation at the promulgation of these facts. Mr. Striker continued:
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated to converse with you freely.
+      She will allow me to address you a few questions. Would you kindly inform
+      her, as exactly as possible, just what you propose to do with her son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland&rsquo;s face and seemed to
+      say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would have
+      expressed it less defiantly. But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker&rsquo;s
+      many-wrinkled light blue eye, shrewd at once and good-natured, that he had
+      no intention of defiance, and that he was simply pompous and conceited and
+      sarcastically compassionate of any view of things in which Roderick Hudson
+      was regarded in a serious light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, my dear madam?&rdquo; demanded Rowland. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t propose to do anything. He
+      must do for himself. I simply offer him the chance. He &lsquo;s to study, to
+      work&mdash;hard, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too hard, please,&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson, pleadingly, wheeling about
+      from recent visions of dangerous leisure. &ldquo;He &lsquo;s not very strong, and I &lsquo;m
+      afraid the climate of Europe is very relaxing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, study?&rdquo; repeated Mr. Striker. &ldquo;To what line of study is he to direct
+      his attention?&rdquo; Then suddenly, with an impulse of disinterested curiosity
+      on his own account, &ldquo;How do you study sculpture, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By looking at models and imitating them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At models, eh? To what kind of models do you refer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the antique, in the first place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the antique,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Striker, with a jocose intonation. &ldquo;Do you
+      hear, madam? Roderick is going off to Europe to learn to imitate the
+      antique.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it &lsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson, twisting herself in a sort
+      of delicate anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An antique, as I understand it,&rdquo; the lawyer continued, &ldquo;is an image of a
+      pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no nose,
+      and no clothing. A precious model, certainly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a very good description of many,&rdquo; said Rowland, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy! Truly?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Hudson, borrowing courage from his urbanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a sculptor&rsquo;s studies, you intimate, are not confined to the antique,&rdquo;
+       Mr. Striker resumed. &ldquo;After he has been looking three or four years at the
+      objects I describe&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He studies the living model,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it take three or four years?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Hudson, imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends upon the artist&rsquo;s aptitude. After twenty years a real artist
+      is still studying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my poor boy!&rdquo; moaned Mrs. Hudson, finding the prospect, under every
+      light, still terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now this study of the living model,&rdquo; Mr. Striker pursued. &ldquo;Inform Mrs.
+      Hudson about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, no!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson, shrinkingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That too,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;is one of the reasons for studying in Rome. It
+      &lsquo;s a handsome race, you know, and you find very well-made people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they &lsquo;re no better made than a good tough Yankee,&rdquo; objected Mr.
+      Striker, transposing his interminable legs. &ldquo;The same God made us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Hudson, but with a questioning glance at her visitor
+      which showed that she had already begun to concede much weight to his
+      opinion. Rowland hastened to express his assent to Mr. Striker&rsquo;s
+      proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland looked up, and, after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation: &ldquo;Are the Roman
+      women very beautiful?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland too, in answering, hesitated; he was looking straight at the young
+      girl. &ldquo;On the whole, I prefer ours,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dropped her work in her lap; her hands were crossed upon it, her
+      head thrown a little back. She had evidently expected a more impersonal
+      answer, and she was dissatisfied. For an instant she seemed inclined to
+      make a rejoinder, but she slowly picked up her work in silence and drew
+      her stitches again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had for the second time the feeling that she judged him to be a
+      person of a disagreeably sophisticated tone. He noticed too that the
+      kitchen towel she was hemming was terribly coarse. And yet his answer had
+      a resonant inward echo, and he repeated to himself, &ldquo;Yes, on the whole, I
+      prefer ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, these models,&rdquo; began Mr. Striker. &ldquo;You put them into an attitude, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An attitude, exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then you sit down and look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not sit too long. You must go at your clay and try to build up
+      something that looks like them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there you are with your model in an attitude on one side, yourself,
+      in an attitude too, I suppose, on the other, and your pile of clay in the
+      middle, building up, as you say. So you pass the morning. After that I
+      hope you go out and take a walk, and rest from your exertions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unquestionably. But to a sculptor who loves his work there is no time
+      lost. Everything he looks at teaches or suggests something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a tempting doctrine to young men with a taste for sitting by the
+      hour with the page unturned, watching the flies buzz, or the frost melt on
+      the window-pane. Our young friend, in this way, must have laid up stores
+      of information which I never suspected!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Rowland, with an unresentful smile, &ldquo;he will prove
+      some day the completer artist for some of those lazy reveries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory was apparently very grateful to Mrs. Hudson, who had never had
+      the case put for her son with such ingenious hopefulness, and found
+      herself disrelishing the singular situation of seeming to side against her
+      own flesh and blood with a lawyer whose conversational tone betrayed the
+      habit of cross-questioning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son, then,&rdquo; she ventured to ask, &ldquo;my son has great&mdash;what you
+      would call great powers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my sense, very great powers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Hudson actually smiled, broadly, gleefully, and glanced at Miss
+      Garland, as if to invite her to do likewise. But the young girl&rsquo;s face
+      remained serious, like the eastern sky when the opposite sunset is too
+      feeble to make it glow. &ldquo;Do you really know?&rdquo; she asked, looking at
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One cannot know in such a matter save after proof, and proof takes time.
+      But one can believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But even then Miss Garland vouchsafed no smile. Her face became graver
+      than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson, &ldquo;we must hope that it is all for the
+      best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Striker eyed his old friend for a moment with a look of some
+      displeasure; he saw that this was but a cunning feminine imitation of
+      resignation, and that, through some untraceable process of transition, she
+      was now taking more comfort in the opinions of this insinuating stranger
+      than in his own tough dogmas. He rose to his feet, without pulling down
+      his waistcoat, but with a wrinkled grin at the inconsistency of women.
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, Mr. Roderick&rsquo;s powers are nothing to me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;nor no use
+      he makes of them. Good or bad, he &lsquo;s no son of mine. But, in a friendly
+      way, I &lsquo;m glad to hear so fine an account of him. I &lsquo;m glad, madam, you
+      &lsquo;re so satisfied with the prospect. Affection, sir, you see, must have its
+      guarantees!&rdquo; He paused a moment, stroking his beard, with his head
+      inclined and one eye half-closed, looking at Rowland. The look was
+      grotesque, but it was significant, and it puzzled Rowland more than it
+      amused him. &ldquo;I suppose you &lsquo;re a very brilliant young man,&rdquo; he went on,
+      &ldquo;very enlightened, very cultivated, quite up to the mark in the fine arts
+      and all that sort of thing. I &lsquo;m a plain, practical old boy, content to
+      follow an honorable profession in a free country. I did n&rsquo;t go off to the
+      Old World to learn my business; no one took me by the hand; I had to
+      grease my wheels myself, and, such as I am, I &lsquo;m a self-made man, every
+      inch of me! Well, if our young friend is booked for fame and fortune, I
+      don&rsquo;t suppose his going to Rome will stop him. But, mind you, it won&rsquo;t
+      help him such a long way, either. If you have undertaken to put him
+      through, there &lsquo;s a thing or two you &lsquo;d better remember. The crop we
+      gather depends upon the seed we sow. He may be the biggest genius of the
+      age: his potatoes won&rsquo;t come up without his hoeing them. If he takes
+      things so almighty easy as&mdash;well, as one or two young fellows of
+      genius I &lsquo;ve had under my eye&mdash;his produce will never gain the prize.
+      Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does
+      n&rsquo;t believe that we &lsquo;ll wake up to find our work done because we &lsquo;ve lain
+      all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!
+      If your young protajay finds things easy and has a good time and says he
+      likes the life, it &lsquo;s a sign that&mdash;as I may say&mdash;you had better
+      step round to the office and look at the books. That &lsquo;s all I desire to
+      remark. No offense intended. I hope you &lsquo;ll have a first-rate time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland could honestly reply that this seemed pregnant sense, and he
+      offered Mr. Striker a friendly hand-shake as the latter withdrew. But Mr.
+      Striker&rsquo;s rather grim view of matters cast a momentary shadow on his
+      companions, and Mrs. Hudson seemed to feel that it necessitated between
+      them some little friendly agreement not to be overawed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland sat for some time longer, partly because he wished to please the
+      two women and partly because he was strangely pleased himself. There was
+      something touching in their unworldly fears and diffident hopes, something
+      almost terrible in the way poor little Mrs. Hudson seemed to flutter and
+      quiver with intense maternal passion. She put forth one timid
+      conversational venture after another, and asked Rowland a number of
+      questions about himself, his age, his family, his occupations, his tastes,
+      his religious opinions. Rowland had an odd feeling at last that she had
+      begun to consider him very exemplary, and that she might make, later, some
+      perturbing discovery. He tried, therefore, to invent something that would
+      prepare her to find him fallible. But he could think of nothing. It only
+      seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly mistrusted him, and that he must
+      leave her to render him the service, after he had gone, of making him the
+      object of a little firm derogation. Mrs. Hudson talked with low-voiced
+      eagerness about her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He &lsquo;s very lovable, sir, I assure you. When you come to know him you &lsquo;ll
+      find him very lovable. He &lsquo;s a little spoiled, of course; he has always
+      done with me as he pleased; but he &lsquo;s a good boy, I &lsquo;m sure he &lsquo;s a good
+      boy. And every one thinks him very attractive: I &lsquo;m sure he &lsquo;d be noticed,
+      anywhere. Don&rsquo;t you think he &lsquo;s very handsome, sir? He features his poor
+      father. I had another&mdash;perhaps you &lsquo;ve been told. He was killed.&rdquo; And
+      the poor little lady bravely smiled, for fear of doing worse. &ldquo;He was a
+      very fine boy, but very different from Roderick. Roderick is a little
+      strange; he has never been an easy boy. Sometimes I feel like the goose&mdash;was
+      n&rsquo;t it a goose, dear?&rdquo; and startled by the audacity of her comparison she
+      appealed to Miss Garland&mdash;&ldquo;the goose, or the hen, who hatched a
+      swan&rsquo;s egg. I have never been able to give him what he needs. I have
+      always thought that in more&mdash;in more brilliant circumstances he might
+      find his place and be happy. But at the same time I was afraid of the
+      world for him; it was so large and dangerous and dreadful. No doubt I know
+      very little about it. I never suspected, I confess, that it contained
+      persons of such liberality as yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland replied that, evidently, she had done the world but scanty
+      justice. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; objected Miss Garland, after a pause, &ldquo;it is like something
+      in a fairy tale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your coming here all unknown, so rich and so polite, and carrying off my
+      cousin in a golden cloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If this was badinage Miss Garland had the best of it, for Rowland almost
+      fell a-musing silently over the question whether there was a possibility
+      of irony in that transparent gaze. Before he withdrew, Mrs. Hudson made
+      him tell her again that Roderick&rsquo;s powers were extraordinary. He had
+      inspired her with a clinging, caressing faith in his wisdom. &ldquo;He will
+      really do great things,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;the very greatest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see no reason in his talent itself why he should not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we &lsquo;ll think of that as we sit here alone,&rdquo; she rejoined. &ldquo;Mary and
+      I will sit here and talk about it. So I give him up,&rdquo; she went on, as he
+      was going. &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure you &lsquo;ll be the best of friends to him, but if you
+      should ever forget him, or grow tired of him, or lose your interest in
+      him, and he should come to any harm or any trouble, please, sir, remember&rdquo;&mdash;And
+      she paused, with a tremulous voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember, my dear madam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he is all I have&mdash;that he is everything&mdash;and that it would
+      be very terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In so far as I can help him, he shall succeed,&rdquo; was all Rowland could
+      say. He turned to Miss Garland, to bid her good night, and she rose and
+      put out her hand. She was very straightforward, but he could see that if
+      she was too modest to be bold, she was much too simple to be shy. &ldquo;Have
+      you no charge to lay upon me?&rdquo; he asked&mdash;to ask her something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him a moment and then, although she was not shy, she
+      blushed. &ldquo;Make him do his best,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland noted the soft intensity with which the words were uttered. &ldquo;Do
+      you take a great interest in him?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if he will not do his best for you, he will not do it for me.&rdquo; She
+      turned away with another blush, and Rowland took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked homeward, thinking of many things. The great Northampton elms
+      interarched far above in the darkness, but the moon had risen and through
+      scattered apertures was hanging the dusky vault with silver lamps. There
+      seemed to Rowland something intensely serious in the scene in which he had
+      just taken part. He had laughed and talked and braved it out in
+      self-defense; but when he reflected that he was really meddling with the
+      simple stillness of this little New England home, and that he had ventured
+      to disturb so much living security in the interest of a far-away,
+      fantastic hypothesis, he paused, amazed at his temerity. It was true, as
+      Cecilia had said, that for an unofficious man it was a singular position.
+      There stirred in his mind an odd feeling of annoyance with Roderick for
+      having thus peremptorily enlisted his sympathies. As he looked up and down
+      the long vista, and saw the clear white houses glancing here and there in
+      the broken moonshine, he could almost have believed that the happiest lot
+      for any man was to make the most of life in some such tranquil spot as
+      that. Here were kindness, comfort, safety, the warning voice of duty, the
+      perfect hush of temptation. And as Rowland looked along the arch of
+      silvered shadow and out into the lucid air of the American night, which
+      seemed so doubly vast, somehow, and strange and nocturnal, he felt like
+      declaring that here was beauty too&mdash;beauty sufficient for an artist
+      not to starve upon it. As he stood, lost in the darkness, he presently
+      heard a rapid tread on the other side of the road, accompanied by a loud,
+      jubilant whistle, and in a moment a figure emerged into an open gap of
+      moonshine. He had no difficulty in recognizing Hudson, who was presumably
+      returning from a visit to Cecilia. Roderick stopped suddenly and stared up
+      at the moon, with his face vividly illumined. He broke out into a snatch
+      of song:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a great, musical roll of his voice he went swinging off into the
+      darkness again, as if his thoughts had lent him wings. He was dreaming of
+      the inspiration of foreign lands,&mdash;of castled crags and historic
+      landscapes. What a pity, after all, thought Rowland, as he went his own
+      way, that he should n&rsquo;t have a taste of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been a very just remark of Cecilia&rsquo;s that Roderick would change
+      with a change in his circumstances. Rowland had telegraphed to New York
+      for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came
+      Hudson&rsquo;s spirits rose to incalculable heights. He was radiant with
+      good-humor, and his kindly jollity seemed the pledge of a brilliant
+      future. He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old grievances,
+      and seemed every way reconciled to a world in which he was going to count
+      as an active force. He was inexhaustibly loquacious and fantastic, and as
+      Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that it was only to be feared
+      he was going to start not for Europe but for heaven. He took long walks
+      with Rowland, who felt more and more the fascination of what he would have
+      called his giftedness. Rowland returned several times to Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s,
+      and found the two ladies doing their best to be happy in their companion&rsquo;s
+      happiness. Miss Garland, he thought, was succeeding better than her
+      demeanor on his first visit had promised. He tried to have some especial
+      talk with her, but her extreme reserve forced him to content himself with
+      such response to his rather urgent overtures as might be extracted from a
+      keenly attentive smile. It must be confessed, however, that if the
+      response was vague, the satisfaction was great, and that Rowland, after
+      his second visit, kept seeing a lurking reflection of this smile in the
+      most unexpected places. It seemed strange that she should please him so
+      well at so slender a cost, but please him she did, prodigiously, and his
+      pleasure had a quality altogether new to him. It made him restless, and a
+      trifle melancholy; he walked about absently, wondering and wishing. He
+      wondered, among other things, why fate should have condemned him to make
+      the acquaintance of a girl whom he would make a sacrifice to know better,
+      just as he was leaving the country for years. It seemed to him that he was
+      turning his back on a chance of happiness&mdash;happiness of a sort of
+      which the slenderest germ should be cultivated. He asked himself whether,
+      feeling as he did, if he had only himself to please, he would give up his
+      journey and&mdash;wait. He had Roderick to please now, for whom
+      disappointment would be cruel; but he said to himself that certainly, if
+      there were no Roderick in the case, the ship should sail without him. He
+      asked Hudson several questions about his cousin, but Roderick,
+      confidential on most points, seemed to have reasons of his own for being
+      reticent on this one. His measured answers quickened Rowland&rsquo;s curiosity,
+      for Miss Garland, with her own irritating half-suggestions, had only to be
+      a subject of guarded allusion in others to become intolerably interesting.
+      He learned from Roderick that she was the daughter of a country minister,
+      a far-away cousin of his mother, settled in another part of the State;
+      that she was one of a half-a-dozen daughters, that the family was very
+      poor, and that she had come a couple of months before to pay his mother a
+      long visit. &ldquo;It is to be a very long one now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for it is settled
+      that she is to remain while I am away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fermentation of contentment in Roderick&rsquo;s soul reached its climax a
+      few days before the young men were to make their farewells. He had been
+      sitting with his friends on Cecilia&rsquo;s veranda, but for half an hour past
+      he had said nothing. Lounging back against a vine-wreathed column and
+      gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling softly to himself with that
+      indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, and which in
+      him had a sort of pleading grace. At last, springing up: &ldquo;I want to strike
+      out, hard!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I want to do something violent, to let off
+      steam!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;ll tell you what to do, this lovely weather,&rdquo; said Cecilia. &ldquo;Give a
+      picnic. It can be as violent as you please, and it will have the merit of
+      leading off our emotion into a safe channel, as well as yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick laughed uproariously at Cecilia&rsquo;s very practical remedy for his
+      sentimental need, but a couple of days later, nevertheless, the picnic was
+      given. It was to be a family party, but Roderick, in his magnanimous
+      geniality, insisted on inviting Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland
+      mentally applauded. &ldquo;And we &lsquo;ll have Mrs. Striker, too,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if she
+      &lsquo;ll come, to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we &lsquo;ll have
+      Miss Striker&mdash;the divine Petronilla!&rdquo; The young lady thus denominated
+      formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland, and Cecilia, the feminine half of
+      the company. Mr. Striker presented himself, sacrificing a morning&rsquo;s work,
+      with a magnanimity greater even than Roderick&rsquo;s, and foreign support was
+      further secured in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the young Orthodox
+      minister. Roderick had chosen the feasting-place; he knew it well and had
+      passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his length on the grass and
+      gazing at the blue undulations of the horizon. It was a meadow on the edge
+      of a wood, with mossy rocks protruding through the grass and a little lake
+      on the other side. It was a cloudless August day; Rowland always
+      remembered it, and the scene, and everything that was said and done, with
+      extraordinary distinctness. Roderick surpassed himself in friendly
+      jollity, and at one moment, when exhilaration was at the highest, was seen
+      in Mr. Striker&rsquo;s high white hat, drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup
+      to Mr. Striker&rsquo;s health. Miss Striker had her father&rsquo;s pale blue eye; she
+      was dressed as if she were going to sit for her photograph, and remained
+      for a long time with Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake.
+      Mrs. Hudson sat all day with a little meek, apprehensive smile. She was
+      afraid of an &ldquo;accident,&rdquo; though unless Miss Striker (who indeed was a
+      little of a romp) should push Roderick into the lake, it was hard to see
+      what accident could occur. Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and
+      uncrumpled at the end of the festival as at the beginning. Mr. Whitefoot,
+      who but a twelvemonth later became a convert to episcopacy and was already
+      cultivating a certain conversational sonority, devoted himself to Cecilia.
+      He had a little book in his pocket, out of which he read to her at
+      intervals, lying stretched at her feet, and it was a lasting joke with
+      Cecilia, afterwards, that she would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot&rsquo;s little
+      book had been. Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland, while the
+      feasting went forward on the grass. She wore a so-called gypsy hat&mdash;a
+      little straw hat, tied down over her ears, so as to cast her eyes into
+      shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it. When the company dispersed,
+      after lunch, he proposed to her to take a stroll in the wood. She
+      hesitated a moment and looked toward Mrs. Hudson, as if for permission to
+      leave her. But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker, who sat gossiping
+      to her with relaxed magniloquence, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hat on
+      his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can give your cousin your society at any time,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;But
+      me, perhaps, you &lsquo;ll never see again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then should we wish to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?&rdquo; she
+      asked, with homely logic. But by this time she had consented, and they
+      were treading the fallen pine-needles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, one must take all one can get,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;If we can be friends
+      for half an hour, it &lsquo;s so much gained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Never&rsquo; is a good deal to say. But I go to Europe for a long stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you prefer it so much to your own country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not say that. But I have the misfortune to be a rather idle man,
+      and in Europe the burden of idleness is less heavy than here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent for a few minutes; then at last, &ldquo;In that, then, we are
+      better than Europe,&rdquo; she said. To a certain point Rowland agreed with her,
+      but he demurred, to make her say more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would n&rsquo;t it be better,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;to work to get reconciled to America,
+      than to go to Europe to get reconciled to idleness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless; but you know work is hard to find.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from a little place where every one has plenty,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Garland. &ldquo;We all work; every one I know works. And really,&rdquo; she added
+      presently, &ldquo;I look at you with curiosity; you are the first unoccupied man
+      I ever saw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look at me too hard,&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling. &ldquo;I shall sink into the
+      earth. What is the name of your little place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;West Nazareth,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, with her usual sobriety. &ldquo;It is not so
+      very little, though it &lsquo;s smaller than Northampton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth,&rdquo; Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not like it,&rdquo; Miss Garland declared reflectively. &ldquo;Though there
+      are far finer woods there than this. We have miles and miles of woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might chop down trees,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;That is, if you allow it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow it? Why, where should we get our firewood?&rdquo; Then, noticing that he
+      had spoken jestingly, she glanced at him askance, though with no visible
+      diminution of her gravity. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know how to do anything? Have you no
+      profession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland shook his head. &ldquo;Absolutely none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do all day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing worth relating. That &lsquo;s why I am going to Europe. There, at
+      least, if I do nothing, I shall see a great deal; and if I &lsquo;m not a
+      producer, I shall at any rate be an observer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t we observe everywhere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; and I really think that in that way I make the most of my
+      opportunities. Though I confess,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that I often remember
+      there are things to be seen here to which I probably have n&rsquo;t done
+      justice. I should like, for instance, to see West Nazareth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked round at him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she exactly
+      supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not
+      necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior
+      motive. In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives. The girl
+      beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that her charm was
+      essentially her own and not reflected from social circumstance, he wished
+      to give himself the satisfaction of contrasting her with the meagre
+      influences of her education. Miss Garland&rsquo;s second movement was to take
+      him at his word. &ldquo;Since you are free to do as you please, why don&rsquo;t you go
+      there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not free to do as I please now. I have offered your cousin to bear
+      him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm, and I cannot
+      retract.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland hesitated a moment. &ldquo;I think I may almost say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland walked along in silence. &ldquo;Do you mean to do a great deal for
+      him?&rdquo; she asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I can. But my power of helping him is very small beside his power of
+      helping himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she was silent again. &ldquo;You are very generous,&rdquo; she said,
+      almost solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am simply very shrewd. Roderick will repay me. It &lsquo;s an investment.
+      At first, I think,&rdquo; he added shortly afterwards, &ldquo;you would not have paid
+      me that compliment. You distrusted me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no attempt to deny it. &ldquo;I did n&rsquo;t see why you should wish to make
+      Roderick discontented. I thought you were rather frivolous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did me injustice. I don&rsquo;t think I &lsquo;m that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was because you are unlike other men&mdash;those, at least, whom I
+      have seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, as you describe yourself. You have no duties, no profession, no
+      home. You live for your pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s all very true. And yet I maintain I &lsquo;m not frivolous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, simply. They had reached a point where
+      the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks which lost
+      themselves in a verdurous tangle. Miss Garland seemed to think that the
+      difficulty of choice between them was a reason for giving them up and
+      turning back. Rowland thought otherwise, and detected agreeable grounds
+      for preference in the left-hand path. As a compromise, they sat down on a
+      fallen log. Looking about him, Rowland espied a curious wild shrub, with a
+      spotted crimson leaf; he went and plucked a spray of it and brought it to
+      Miss Garland. He had never observed it before, but she immediately called
+      it by its name. She expressed surprise at his not knowing it; it was
+      extremely common. He presently brought her a specimen of another delicate
+      plant, with a little blue-streaked flower. &ldquo;I suppose that &lsquo;s common,
+      too,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I have never seen it&mdash;or noticed it, at least.&rdquo;
+       She answered that this one was rare, and meditated a moment before she
+      could remember its name. At last she recalled it, and expressed surprise
+      at his having found the plant in the woods; she supposed it grew only in
+      open marshes. Rowland complimented her on her fund of useful information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s not especially useful,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but I like to know the names
+      of plants as I do those of my acquaintances. When we walk in the woods at
+      home&mdash;which we do so much&mdash;it seems as unnatural not to know
+      what to call the flowers as it would be to see some one in the town with
+      whom we were not on speaking terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apropos of frivolity,&rdquo; Rowland said, &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure you have very little of
+      it, unless at West Nazareth it is considered frivolous to walk in the
+      woods and nod to the nodding flowers. Do kindly tell me a little about
+      yourself.&rdquo; And to compel her to begin, &ldquo;I know you come of a race of
+      theologians,&rdquo; he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied, deliberating; &ldquo;they are not theologians, though they
+      are ministers. We don&rsquo;t take a very firm stand upon doctrine; we are
+      practical, rather. We write sermons and preach them, but we do a great
+      deal of hard work beside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of this hard work what has your share been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hardest part: doing nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you call nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I taught school a while: I must make the most of that. But I confess I
+      did n&rsquo;t like it. Otherwise, I have only done little things at home, as
+      they turned up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, every kind. If you had seen my home, you would understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland would have liked to make her specify; but he felt a more urgent
+      need to respect her simplicity than he had ever felt to defer to the
+      complex circumstance of certain other women. &ldquo;To be happy, I imagine,&rdquo; he
+      contented himself with saying, &ldquo;you need to be occupied. You need to have
+      something to expend yourself upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not so true as it once was; now that I am older, I am sure I am
+      less impatient of leisure. Certainly, these two months that I have been
+      with Mrs. Hudson, I have had a terrible amount of it. And yet I have liked
+      it! And now that I am probably to be with her all the while that her son
+      is away, I look forward to more with a resignation that I don&rsquo;t quite know
+      what to make of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is settled, then, that you are to remain with your cousin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends upon their writing from home that I may stay. But that is
+      probable. Only I must not forget,&rdquo; she said, rising, &ldquo;that the ground for
+      my doing so is that she be not left alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to know,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;that I shall probably often hear about
+      you. I assure you I shall often think about you!&rdquo; These words were half
+      impulsive, half deliberate. They were the simple truth, and he had asked
+      himself why he should not tell her the truth. And yet they were not all of
+      it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she received this. She
+      received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without a shadow of coquetry, of
+      any apparent thought of listening to it gracefully, but with a slight
+      movement of nervous deprecation, which seemed to betray itself in the
+      quickening of her step. Evidently, if Rowland was to take pleasure in
+      hearing about her, it would have to be a highly disinterested pleasure.
+      She answered nothing, and Rowland too, as he walked beside her, was
+      silent; but as he looked along the shadow-woven wood-path, what he was
+      really facing was a level three years of disinterestedness. He ushered
+      them in by talking composed civility until he had brought Miss Garland
+      back to her companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her but once again. He was obliged to be in New York a couple of
+      days before sailing, and it was arranged that Roderick should overtake him
+      at the last moment. The evening before he left Northampton he went to say
+      farewell to Mrs. Hudson. The ceremony was brief. Rowland soon perceived
+      that the poor little lady was in the melting mood, and, as he dreaded her
+      tears, he compressed a multitude of solemn promises into a silent
+      hand-shake and took his leave. Miss Garland, she had told him, was in the
+      back-garden with Roderick: he might go out to them. He did so, and as he
+      drew near he heard Roderick&rsquo;s high-pitched voice ringing behind the
+      shrubbery. In a moment, emerging, he found Miss Garland leaning against a
+      tree, with her cousin before her talking with great emphasis. He asked
+      pardon for interrupting them, and said he wished only to bid her good-by.
+      She gave him her hand and he made her his bow in silence. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget,&rdquo;
+       he said to Roderick, as he turned away. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t, in this company,
+      repent of your bargain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not let him,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, with something very like gayety.
+      &ldquo;I shall see that he is punctual. He must go! I owe you an apology for
+      having doubted that he ought to.&rdquo; And in spite of the dusk Rowland could
+      see that she had an even finer smile than he had supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick was punctual, eagerly punctual, and they went. Rowland for
+      several days was occupied with material cares, and lost sight of his
+      sentimental perplexities. But they only slumbered, and they were sharply
+      awakened. The weather was fine, and the two young men always sat together
+      upon deck late into the evening. One night, toward the last, they were at
+      the stern of the great ship, watching her grind the solid blackness of the
+      ocean into phosphorescent foam. They talked on these occasions of
+      everything conceivable, and had the air of having no secrets from each
+      other. But it was on Roderick&rsquo;s conscience that this air belied him, and
+      he was too frank by nature, moreover, for permanent reticence on any
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must tell you something,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I should like you to know
+      it, and you will be so glad to know it. Besides, it &lsquo;s only a question of
+      time; three months hence, probably, you would have guessed it. I am
+      engaged to Mary Garland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm, it seemed to him that the
+      ship gave a great dizzying lurch. But in a moment he contrived to answer
+      coherently: &ldquo;Engaged to Miss Garland! I never supposed&mdash;I never
+      imagined&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I was in love with her?&rdquo; Roderick interrupted. &ldquo;Neither did I, until
+      this last fortnight. But you came and put me into such ridiculous
+      good-humor that I felt an extraordinary desire to tell some woman that I
+      adored her. Miss Garland is a magnificent girl; you know her too little to
+      do her justice. I have been quietly learning to know her, these past three
+      months, and have been falling in love with her without being conscious of
+      it. It appeared, when I spoke to her, that she had a kindness for me. So
+      the thing was settled. I must of course make some money before we can
+      marry. It &lsquo;s rather droll, certainly, to engage one&rsquo;s self to a girl whom
+      one is going to leave the next day, for years. We shall be condemned, for
+      some time to come, to do a terrible deal of abstract thinking about each
+      other. But I wanted her blessing on my career and I could not help asking
+      for it. Unless a man is unnaturally selfish he needs to work for some one
+      else than himself, and I am sure I shall run a smoother and swifter course
+      for knowing that that fine creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news
+      of my greatness. If ever I am a dull companion and over-addicted to
+      moping, remember in justice to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart
+      is five thousand miles away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland listened to all this with a sort of feeling that fortune had
+      played him an elaborately-devised trick. It had lured him out into
+      mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a
+      singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him a
+      thumping blow in mid-chest. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, after an attempt at the usual
+      formal congratulation, &ldquo;you certainly ought to do better&mdash;with Miss
+      Garland waiting for you at Northampton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was eloquent and rung a hundred
+      changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man. Then at last,
+      suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that he must go to bed.
+      Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late, between sea and sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. Rome
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One warm, still day, late in the Roman autumn, our two young men were
+      sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed pines of the Villa Ludovisi. They
+      had been spending an hour in the mouldy little garden-house, where the
+      colossal mask of the famous Juno looks out with blank eyes from that dusky
+      corner which must seem to her the last possible stage of a lapse from
+      Olympus. Then they had wandered out into the gardens, and were lounging
+      away the morning under the spell of their magical picturesqueness.
+      Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that, after the Juno, it
+      was a profanation to look at anything but sky and trees. There was a
+      fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had seen it on his former
+      visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects. But Roderick, though he
+      had never seen it, declared that it could n&rsquo;t be worth a fig, and that he
+      did n&rsquo;t care to look at ugly things. He remained stretched on his
+      overcoat, which he had spread on the grass, while Rowland went off envying
+      the intellectual comfort of genius, which can arrive at serene conclusions
+      without disagreeable processes. When the latter came back, his friend was
+      sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Rowland,
+      in the geniality of a mood attuned to the mellow charm of a Roman villa,
+      found a good word to say for the Guercino; but he chiefly talked of the
+      view from the little belvedere on the roof of the casino, and how it
+      looked like the prospect from a castle turret in a fairy tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Roderick, throwing himself back with a yawn. &ldquo;But I
+      must let it pass. I have seen enough for the present; I have reached the
+      top of the hill. I have an indigestion of impressions; I must work them
+      off before I go in for any more. I don&rsquo;t want to look at any more of other
+      people&rsquo;s works, for a month&mdash;not even at Nature&rsquo;s own. I want to look
+      at Roderick Hudson&rsquo;s. The result of it all is that I &lsquo;m not afraid. I can
+      but try, as well as the rest of them! The fellow who did that gazing
+      goddess yonder only made an experiment. The other day, when I was looking
+      at Michael Angelo&rsquo;s Moses, I was seized with a kind of defiance&mdash;a
+      reaction against all this mere passive enjoyment of grandeur. It was a
+      rousing great success, certainly, that rose there before me, but somehow
+      it was not an inscrutable mystery, and it seemed to me, not perhaps that I
+      should some day do as well, but that at least I might!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you say, you can but try,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Success is only passionate
+      effort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely. It
+      came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since I
+      left Northampton. I can&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly seems more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems like ten years. What an exquisite ass I was!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you feel so wise now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Verily! Don&rsquo;t I look so? Surely I have n&rsquo;t the same face. Have n&rsquo;t I a
+      different eye, a different expression, a different voice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition. But it &lsquo;s very
+      likely. You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized. I dare
+      say,&rdquo; added Rowland, &ldquo;that Miss Garland would think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened
+      narrowly to his companion&rsquo;s voluntary observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very sure?&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, she &lsquo;s a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance that
+      I had become a cynical sybarite.&rdquo; Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian
+      watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third
+      finger of his left hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you think I take a liberty,&rdquo; asked Rowland, &ldquo;if I say you judge her
+      superficially?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; cried Roderick, laughing, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t tell me she &lsquo;s not a
+      moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her, and with rigid virtue
+      in her person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one. That &lsquo;s more than
+      a difference in degree; it &lsquo;s a difference in kind. I don&rsquo;t know whether I
+      ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely. There is nothing narrow
+      about her but her experience; everything else is large. My impression of
+      her is of a person of great capacity, as yet wholly unmeasured and
+      untested. Some day or other, I &lsquo;m sure, she will judge fairly and wisely
+      of everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay a bit!&rdquo; cried Roderick; &ldquo;you &lsquo;re a better Catholic than the Pope. I
+      shall be content if she judges fairly of me&mdash;of my merits, that is.
+      The rest she must not judge at all. She &lsquo;s a grimly devoted little
+      creature; may she always remain so! Changed as I am, I adore her none the
+      less. What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions,&rdquo; he went on,
+      after a long pause, &ldquo;all the material of thought that life pours into us
+      at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these? There are
+      twenty moments a week&mdash;a day, for that matter, some days&mdash;that
+      seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate, that appear to form
+      an intellectual era. But others come treading on their heels and sweeping
+      them along, and they all melt like water into water and settle the
+      question of precedence among themselves. The curious thing is that the
+      more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one&rsquo;s
+      ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners
+      of a room, and take boarders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy it is our peculiar good luck that we don&rsquo;t see the limits of our
+      minds,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;We are young, compared with what we may one day be.
+      That belongs to youth; it is perhaps the best part of it. They say that
+      old people do find themselves at last face to face with a solid blank
+      wall, and stand thumping against it in vain. It resounds, it seems to have
+      something beyond it, but it won&rsquo;t move! That &lsquo;s only a reason for living
+      with open doors as long as we can!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open doors?&rdquo; murmured Roderick. &ldquo;Yes, let us close no doors that open
+      upon Rome. For this, for the mind, is eternal summer! But though my doors
+      may stand open to-day,&rdquo; he presently added, &ldquo;I shall see no visitors. I
+      want to pause and breathe; I want to dream of a statue. I have been
+      working hard for three months; I have earned a right to a reverie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, on his side, was not without provision for reflection, and they
+      lingered on in broken, desultory talk. Rowland felt the need for
+      intellectual rest, for a truce to present care for churches, statues, and
+      pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as he had
+      really been living Roderick&rsquo;s intellectual life the past three months, as
+      well as his own. As he looked back on these full-flavored weeks, he drew a
+      long breath of satisfaction, almost of relief. Roderick, thus far, had
+      justified his confidence and flattered his perspicacity; he was rapidly
+      unfolding into an ideal brilliancy. He was changed even more than he
+      himself suspected; he had stepped, without faltering, into his birthright,
+      and was spending money, intellectually, as lavishly as a young heir who
+      has just won an obstructive lawsuit. Roderick&rsquo;s glance and voice were the
+      same, doubtless, as when they enlivened the summer dusk on Cecilia&rsquo;s
+      veranda, but in his person, generally, there was an indefinable expression
+      of experience rapidly and easily assimilated. Rowland had been struck at
+      the outset with the instinctive quickness of his observation and his free
+      appropriation of whatever might serve his purpose. He had not been, for
+      instance, half an hour on English soil before he perceived that he was
+      dressed like a rustic, and he had immediately reformed his toilet with the
+      most unerring tact. His appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for
+      everything characteristically foreign, as it presented itself, he had an
+      extravagant greeting; but in half an hour the novelty had faded, he had
+      guessed the secret, he had plucked out the heart of the mystery and was
+      clamoring for a keener sensation. At the end of a month, he presented,
+      mentally, a puzzling spectacle to his companion. He had caught,
+      instinctively, the key-note of the old world. He observed and enjoyed, he
+      criticised and rhapsodized, but though all things interested him and many
+      delighted him, none surprised him; he had divined their logic and measured
+      their proportions, and referred them infallibly to their categories.
+      Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution on the general
+      spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments felt vaguely uneasy for the
+      future; the boy was living too fast, he would have said, and giving
+      alarming pledges to ennui in his later years. But we must live as our
+      pulses are timed, and Roderick&rsquo;s struck the hour very often. He was, by
+      imagination, though he never became in manner, a natural man of the world;
+      he had intuitively, as an artist, what one may call the historic
+      consciousness. He had a relish for social subtleties and mysteries, and,
+      in perception, when occasion offered him an inch he never failed to take
+      an ell. A single glimpse of a social situation of the elder type enabled
+      him to construct the whole, with all its complex chiaroscuro, and Rowland
+      more than once assured him that he made him believe in the metempsychosis,
+      and that he must have lived in European society, in the last century, as a
+      gentleman in a cocked hat and brocaded waistcoat. Hudson asked Rowland
+      questions which poor Rowland was quite unable to answer, and of which he
+      was equally unable to conceive where he had picked up the data. Roderick
+      ended by answering them himself, tolerably to his satisfaction, and in a
+      short time he had almost turned the tables and become in their walks and
+      talks the accredited source of information. Rowland told him that when he
+      turned sculptor a capital novelist was spoiled, and that to match his eye
+      for social detail one would have to go to Honore de Balzac. In all this
+      Rowland took a generous pleasure; he felt an especial kindness for his
+      comrade&rsquo;s radiant youthfulness of temperament. He was so much younger than
+      he himself had ever been! And surely youth and genius, hand in hand, were
+      the most beautiful sight in the world. Roderick added to this the charm of
+      his more immediately personal qualities. The vivacity of his perceptions,
+      the audacity of his imagination, the picturesqueness of his phrase when he
+      was pleased,&mdash;and even more when he was displeased,&mdash;his
+      abounding good-humor, his candor, his unclouded frankness, his unfailing
+      impulse to share every emotion and impression with his friend; all this
+      made comradeship a pure felicity, and interfused with a deeper amenity
+      their long evening talks at cafe doors in Italian towns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had gone almost immediately to Paris, and had spent their days at the
+      Louvre and their evenings at the theatre. Roderick was divided in mind as
+      to whether Titian or Mademoiselle Delaporte was the greater artist. They
+      had come down through France to Genoa and Milan, had spent a fortnight in
+      Venice and another in Florence, and had now been a month in Rome. Roderick
+      had said that he meant to spend three months in simply looking, absorbing,
+      and reflecting, without putting pencil to paper. He looked indefatigably,
+      and certainly saw great things&mdash;things greater, doubtless, at times,
+      than the intentions of the artist. And yet he made few false steps and
+      wasted little time in theories of what he ought to like and to dislike. He
+      judged instinctively and passionately, but never vulgarly. At Venice, for
+      a couple of days, he had half a fit of melancholy over the pretended
+      discovery that he had missed his way, and that the only proper vestment of
+      plastic conceptions was the coloring of Titian and Paul Veronese. Then one
+      morning the two young men had themselves rowed out to Torcello, and
+      Roderick lay back for a couple of hours watching a brown-breasted
+      gondolier making superb muscular movements, in high relief, against the
+      sky of the Adriatic, and at the end jerked himself up with a violence that
+      nearly swamped the gondola, and declared that the only thing worth living
+      for was to make a colossal bronze and set it aloft in the light of a
+      public square. In Rome his first care was for the Vatican; he went there
+      again and again. But the old imperial and papal city altogether delighted
+      him; only there he really found what he had been looking for from the
+      first&mdash;the complete antipodes of Northampton. And indeed Rome is the
+      natural home of those spirits with which we just now claimed fellowship
+      for Roderick&mdash;the spirits with a deep relish for the artificial
+      element in life and the infinite superpositions of history. It is the
+      immemorial city of convention. The stagnant Roman air is charged with
+      convention; it colors the yellow light and deepens the chilly shadows. And
+      in that still recent day the most impressive convention in all history was
+      visible to men&rsquo;s eyes, in the Roman streets, erect in a gilded coach drawn
+      by four black horses. Roderick&rsquo;s first fortnight was a high aesthetic
+      revel. He declared that Rome made him feel and understand more things than
+      he could express: he was sure that life must have there, for all one&rsquo;s
+      senses, an incomparable fineness; that more interesting things must happen
+      to one than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that he meant
+      to live freely and largely, and be as interested as occasion demanded.
+      Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of dissipation, because,
+      in the first place, there was in all dissipation, refine it as one might,
+      a grossness which would disqualify it for Roderick&rsquo;s favor, and because,
+      in the second, the young sculptor was a man to regard all things in the
+      light of his art, to hand over his passions to his genius to be dealt
+      with, and to find that he could live largely enough without exceeding the
+      circle of wholesome curiosity. Rowland took immense satisfaction in his
+      companion&rsquo;s deep impatience to make something of all his impressions. Some
+      of these indeed found their way into a channel which did not lead to
+      statues, but it was none the less a safe one. He wrote frequent long
+      letters to Miss Garland; when Rowland went with him to post them he
+      thought wistfully of the fortune of the great loosely-written missives,
+      which cost Roderick unconscionable sums in postage. He received punctual
+      answers of a more frugal form, written in a clear, minute hand, on paper
+      vexatiously thin. If Rowland was present when they came, he turned away
+      and thought of other things&mdash;or tried to. These were the only moments
+      when his sympathy halted, and they were brief. For the rest he let the
+      days go by unprotestingly, and enjoyed Roderick&rsquo;s serene efflorescence as
+      he would have done a beautiful summer sunrise. Rome, for the past month,
+      had been delicious. The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and
+      sunny leisure seemed to brood over the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento of
+      the great Juno. Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel, and the young
+      men, looking up, saw three persons advancing. One was a woman of middle
+      age, with a rather grand air and a great many furbelows. She looked very
+      hard at our friends as she passed, and glanced back over her shoulder, as
+      if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed her. She had
+      such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she must have some
+      proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in a hospitable mood.
+      Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly buttoned in a shabby black
+      coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a pair of soiled light gloves.
+      He was a grotesque-looking personage, and might have passed for a
+      gentleman of the old school, reduced by adversity to playing cicerone to
+      foreigners of distinction. He had a little black eye which glittered like
+      a diamond and rolled about like a ball of quicksilver, and a white
+      moustache, cut short and stiff, like a worn-out brush. He was smiling with
+      extreme urbanity, and talking in a low, mellifluous voice to the lady, who
+      evidently was not listening to him. At a considerable distance behind this
+      couple strolled a young girl, apparently of about twenty. She was tall and
+      slender, and dressed with extreme elegance; she led by a cord a large
+      poodle of the most fantastic aspect. He was combed and decked like a ram
+      for sacrifice; his trunk and haunches were of the most transparent pink,
+      his fleecy head and shoulders as white as jeweler&rsquo;s cotton, and his tail
+      and ears ornamented with long blue ribbons. He stepped along stiffly and
+      solemnly beside his mistress, with an air of conscious elegance. There was
+      something at first slightly ridiculous in the sight of a young lady
+      gravely appended to an animal of these incongruous attributes, and
+      Roderick, with his customary frankness, greeted the spectacle with a
+      confident smile. The young girl perceived it and turned her face full upon
+      him, with a gaze intended apparently to enforce greater deference. It was
+      not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled, submissive
+      admiration; Roderick&rsquo;s smile fell dead, and he sat eagerly staring. A pair
+      of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass of dusky hair over a low forehead,
+      a blooming oval of perfect purity, a flexible lip, just touched with
+      disdain, the step and carriage of a tired princess&mdash;these were the
+      general features of his vision. The young lady was walking slowly and
+      letting her long dress rustle over the gravel; the young men had time to
+      see her distinctly before she averted her face and went her way. She left
+      a vague, sweet perfume behind her as she passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immortal powers!&rdquo; cried Roderick, &ldquo;what a vision! In the name of
+      transcendent perfection, who is she?&rdquo; He sprang up and stood looking after
+      her until she rounded a turn in the avenue. &ldquo;What a movement, what a
+      manner, what a poise of the head! I wonder if she would sit to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better go and ask her,&rdquo; said Rowland, laughing. &ldquo;She is certainly
+      most beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautiful? She &lsquo;s beauty itself&mdash;she &lsquo;s a revelation. I don&rsquo;t
+      believe she is living&mdash;she &lsquo;s a phantasm, a vapor, an illusion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poodle,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;is certainly alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, he too may be a grotesque phantom, like the black dog in Faust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope at least that the young lady has nothing in common with
+      Mephistopheles. She looked dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton,&rdquo; said Roderick,
+      &ldquo;she is the incarnation of evil. The mamma and the queer old gentleman,
+      moreover, are a pledge of her reality. Who are they all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince and Princess Ludovisi and the principessina,&rdquo; suggested
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no such people,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;Besides, the little old man is
+      not the papa.&rdquo; Rowland smiled, wondering how he had ascertained these
+      facts, and the young sculptor went on. &ldquo;The old man is a Roman, a
+      hanger-on of the mamma, a useful personage who now and then gets asked to
+      dinner. The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country; I won&rsquo;t say
+      which.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps from the State of Maine,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she &lsquo;s not an American, I &lsquo;ll lay a wager on that. She &lsquo;s a daughter
+      of this elder world. We shall see her again, I pray my stars; but if we
+      don&rsquo;t, I shall have done something I never expected to&mdash;I shall have
+      had a glimpse of ideal beauty.&rdquo; He sat down again and went on with his
+      sketch of the Juno, scrawled away for ten minutes, and then handed the
+      result in silence to Rowland. Rowland uttered an exclamation of surprise
+      and applause. The drawing represented the Juno as to the position of the
+      head, the brow, and the broad fillet across the hair; but the eyes, the
+      mouth, the physiognomy were a vivid portrait of the young girl with the
+      poodle. &ldquo;I have been wanting a subject,&rdquo; said Roderick: &ldquo;there &lsquo;s one made
+      to my hand! And now for work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They saw no more of the young girl, though Roderick looked hopefully, for
+      some days, into the carriages on the Pincian. She had evidently been but
+      passing through Rome; Naples or Florence now happily possessed her, and
+      she was guiding her fleecy companion through the Villa Reale or the Boboli
+      Gardens with the same superb defiance of irony. Roderick went to work and
+      spent a month shut up in his studio; he had an idea, and he was not to
+      rest till he had embodied it. He had established himself in the basement
+      of a huge, dusky, dilapidated old house, in that long, tortuous, and
+      preeminently Roman street which leads from the Corso to the Bridge of St.
+      Angelo. The black archway which admitted you might have served as the
+      portal of the Augean stables, but you emerged presently upon a mouldy
+      little court, of which the fourth side was formed by a narrow terrace,
+      overhanging the Tiber. Here, along the parapet, were stationed half a
+      dozen shapeless fragments of sculpture, with a couple of meagre
+      orange-trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an oleander that never flowered. The
+      unclean, historic river swept beneath; behind were dusky, reeking walls,
+      spotted here and there with hanging rags and flower-pots in windows;
+      opposite, at a distance, were the bare brown banks of the stream, the huge
+      rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with its seraphic statue, the dome of St.
+      Peter&rsquo;s, and the broad-topped pines of the Villa Doria. The place was
+      crumbling and shabby and melancholy, but the river was delightful, the
+      rent was a trifle, and everything was picturesque. Roderick was in the
+      best humor with his quarters from the first, and was certain that the
+      working mood there would be intenser in an hour than in twenty years of
+      Northampton. His studio was a huge, empty room with a vaulted ceiling,
+      covered with vague, dark traces of an old fresco, which Rowland, when he
+      spent an hour with his friend, used to stare at vainly for some surviving
+      coherence of floating draperies and clasping arms. Roderick had lodged
+      himself economically in the same quarter. He occupied a fifth floor on the
+      Ripetta, but he was only at home to sleep, for when he was not at work he
+      was either lounging in Rowland&rsquo;s more luxurious rooms or strolling through
+      streets and churches and gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had found a convenient corner in a stately old palace not far from
+      the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home to which books and pictures
+      and prints and odds and ends of curious furniture gave an air of leisurely
+      permanence. He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half his afternoons
+      ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers, and often made
+      his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart of impecunious Roman
+      households, which had been prevailed upon to listen&mdash;with closed
+      doors and an impenetrably wary smile&mdash;to proposals for an hereditary
+      &ldquo;antique.&rdquo; In the evening, often, under the lamp, amid dropped curtains
+      and the scattered gleam of firelight upon polished carvings and mellow
+      paintings, the two friends sat with their heads together, criticising
+      intaglios and etchings, water-color drawings and illuminated missals.
+      Roderick&rsquo;s quick appreciation of every form of artistic beauty reminded
+      his companion of the flexible temperament of those Italian artists of the
+      sixteenth century who were indifferently painters and sculptors,
+      sonneteers and engravers. At times when he saw how the young sculptor&rsquo;s
+      day passed in a single sustained pulsation, while his own was broken into
+      a dozen conscious devices for disposing of the hours, and intermingled
+      with sighs, half suppressed, some of them, for conscience&rsquo; sake, over what
+      he failed of in action and missed in possession&mdash;he felt a pang of
+      something akin to envy. But Rowland had two substantial aids for giving
+      patience the air of contentment: he was an inquisitive reader and a
+      passionate rider. He plunged into bulky German octavos on Italian history,
+      and he spent long afternoons in the saddle, ranging over the grassy
+      desolation of the Campagna. As the season went on and the social groups
+      began to constitute themselves, he found that he knew a great many people
+      and that he had easy opportunity for knowing others. He enjoyed a quiet
+      corner of a drawing-room beside an agreeable woman, and although the
+      machinery of what calls itself society seemed to him to have many
+      superfluous wheels, he accepted invitations and made visits punctiliously,
+      from the conviction that the only way not to be overcome by the ridiculous
+      side of most of such observances is to take them with exaggerated gravity.
+      He introduced Roderick right and left, and suffered him to make his way
+      himself&mdash;an enterprise for which Roderick very soon displayed an
+      all-sufficient capacity. Wherever he went he made, not exactly what is
+      called a favorable impression, but what, from a practical point of view,
+      is better&mdash;a puzzling one. He took to evening parties as a duck to
+      water, and before the winter was half over was the most freely and
+      frequently discussed young man in the heterogeneous foreign colony.
+      Rowland&rsquo;s theory of his own duty was to let him run his course and play
+      his cards, only holding himself ready to point out shoals and pitfalls,
+      and administer a friendly propulsion through tight places. Roderick&rsquo;s
+      manners on the precincts of the Pincian were quite the same as his manners
+      on Cecilia&rsquo;s veranda: that is, they were no manners at all. But it
+      remained as true as before that it would have been impossible, on the
+      whole, to violate ceremony with less of lasting offense. He interrupted,
+      he contradicted, he spoke to people he had never seen, and left his social
+      creditors without the smallest conversational interest on their loans; he
+      lounged and yawned, he talked loud when he should have talked low, and low
+      when he should have talked loud. Many people, in consequence, thought him
+      insufferably conceited, and declared that he ought to wait till he had
+      something to show for his powers, before he assumed the airs of a spoiled
+      celebrity. But to Rowland and to most friendly observers this judgment was
+      quite beside the mark, and the young man&rsquo;s undiluted naturalness was its
+      own justification. He was impulsive, spontaneous, sincere; there were so
+      many people at dinner-tables and in studios who were not, that it seemed
+      worth while to allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action. If
+      Roderick took the words out of your mouth when you were just prepared to
+      deliver them with the most effective accent, he did it with a perfect good
+      conscience and with no pretension of a better right to being heard, but
+      simply because he was full to overflowing of his own momentary thought and
+      it sprang from his lips without asking leave. There were persons who
+      waited on your periods much more deferentially, who were a hundred times
+      more capable than Roderick of a reflective impertinence. Roderick received
+      from various sources, chiefly feminine, enough finely-adjusted advice to
+      have established him in life as an embodiment of the proprieties, and he
+      received it, as he afterwards listened to criticisms on his statues, with
+      unfaltering candor and good-humor. Here and there, doubtless, as he went,
+      he took in a reef in his sail; but he was too adventurous a spirit to be
+      successfully tamed, and he remained at most points the florid, rather
+      strident young Virginian whose serene inflexibility had been the despair
+      of Mr. Striker. All this was what friendly commentators (still chiefly
+      feminine) alluded to when they spoke of his delightful freshness, and
+      critics of harsher sensibilities (of the other sex) when they denounced
+      his damned impertinence. His appearance enforced these impressions&mdash;his
+      handsome face, his radiant, unaverted eyes, his childish, unmodulated
+      voice. Afterwards, when those who loved him were in tears, there was
+      something in all this unspotted comeliness that seemed to lend a mockery
+      to the causes of their sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly, among the young men of genius who, for so many ages, have gone
+      up to Rome to test their powers, none ever made a fairer beginning than
+      Roderick. He rode his two horses at once with extraordinary good fortune;
+      he established the happiest modus vivendi betwixt work and play. He
+      wrestled all day with a mountain of clay in his studio, and chattered half
+      the night away in Roman drawing-rooms. It all seemed part of a kind of
+      divine facility. He was passionately interested, he was feeling his
+      powers; now that they had thoroughly kindled in the glowing aesthetic
+      atmosphere of Rome, the ardent young fellow should be pardoned for
+      believing that he never was to see the end of them. He enjoyed
+      immeasurably, after the chronic obstruction of home, the downright act of
+      production. He kept models in his studio till they dropped with fatigue;
+      he drew, on other days, at the Capitol and the Vatican, till his own head
+      swam with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the cold. He had
+      promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called an &ldquo;Adam,&rdquo; and was
+      pushing it rapidly toward completion. There were naturally a great many
+      wiseheads who smiled at his precipitancy, and cited him as one more
+      example of Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to the great army of those
+      who wish to dance before they can walk. They were right, but Roderick was
+      right too, for the success of his statue was not to have been foreseen; it
+      partook, really, of the miraculous. He never surpassed it afterwards, and
+      a good judge here and there has been known to pronounce it the finest
+      piece of sculpture of our modern era. To Rowland it seemed to justify
+      superbly his highest hopes of his friend, and he said to himself that if
+      he had invested his happiness in fostering a genius, he ought now to be in
+      possession of a boundless complacency. There was something especially
+      confident and masterly in the artist&rsquo;s negligence of all such small
+      picturesque accessories as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar
+      apprehension. If it represented the father of the human race and the
+      primal embodiment of human sensation, it did so in virtue of its look of
+      balanced physical perfection, and deeply, eagerly sentient vitality.
+      Rowland, in fraternal zeal, traveled up to Carrara and selected at the
+      quarries the most magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it
+      came down to Rome, the two young men had a &ldquo;celebration.&rdquo; They drove out
+      to Albano, breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the
+      inn, and lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo.
+      Roderick&rsquo;s head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with
+      infinite spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their
+      pedestals before him. He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in the
+      streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw just
+      missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his mind as a
+      kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until, in some form or
+      other, he had taken up the glove and set his lance in rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it. Of the
+      criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record; over
+      many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month, and certain
+      of the formulas of the connoisseurs, restrictive or indulgent, furnished
+      Roderick with a permanent supply of humorous catch-words. But people
+      enough spoke flattering good-sense to make Roderick feel as if he were
+      already half famous. The statue passed formally into Rowland&rsquo;s possession,
+      and was paid for as if an illustrious name had been chiseled on the
+      pedestal. Poor Roderick owed every franc of the money. It was not for
+      this, however, but because he was so gloriously in the mood, that, denying
+      himself all breathing-time, on the same day he had given the last touch to
+      the Adam, he began to shape the rough contour of an Eve. This went forward
+      with equal rapidity and success. Roderick lost his temper, time and again,
+      with his models, who offered but a gross, degenerate image of his splendid
+      ideal; but his ideal, as he assured Rowland, became gradually such a
+      fixed, vivid presence, that he had only to shut his eyes to behold a
+      creature far more to his purpose than the poor girl who stood posturing at
+      forty sous an hour. The Eve was finished in a month, and the feat was
+      extraordinary, as well as the statue, which represented an admirably
+      beautiful woman. When the spring began to muffle the rugged old city with
+      its clambering festoons, it seemed to him that he had done a handsome
+      winter&rsquo;s work and had fairly earned a holiday. He took a liberal one, and
+      lounged away the lovely Roman May, doing nothing. He looked very
+      contented; with himself, perhaps, at times, a trifle too obviously. But
+      who could have said without good reason? He was &ldquo;flushed with triumph;&rdquo;
+       this classic phrase portrayed him, to Rowland&rsquo;s sense. He would lose
+      himself in long reveries, and emerge from them with a quickened smile and
+      a heightened color. Rowland grudged him none of his smiles, and took an
+      extreme satisfaction in his two statues. He had the Adam and the Eve
+      transported to his own apartment, and one warm evening in May he gave a
+      little dinner in honor of the artist. It was small, but Rowland had meant
+      it should be very agreeably composed. He thought over his friends and
+      chose four. They were all persons with whom he lived in a certain
+      intimacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of them was an American sculptor of French extraction, or remotely,
+      perhaps, of Italian, for he rejoiced in the somewhat fervid name of
+      Gloriani. He was a man of forty, he had been living for years in Paris and
+      in Rome, and he now drove a very pretty trade in sculpture of the
+      ornamental and fantastic sort. In his youth he had had money; but he had
+      spent it recklessly, much of it scandalously, and at twenty-six had found
+      himself obliged to make capital of his talent. This was quite inimitable,
+      and fifteen years of indefatigable exercise had brought it to perfection.
+      Rowland admitted its power, though it gave him very little pleasure; what
+      he relished in the man was the extraordinary vivacity and frankness, not
+      to call it the impudence, of his ideas. He had a definite, practical
+      scheme of art, and he knew at least what he meant. In this sense he was
+      solid and complete. There were so many of the aesthetic fraternity who
+      were floundering in unknown seas, without a notion of which way their
+      noses were turned, that Gloriani, conscious and compact, unlimitedly
+      intelligent and consummately clever, dogmatic only as to his own duties,
+      and at once gracefully deferential and profoundly indifferent to those of
+      others, had for Rowland a certain intellectual refreshment quite
+      independent of the character of his works. These were considered by most
+      people to belong to a very corrupt, and by many to a positively indecent
+      school. Others thought them tremendously knowing, and paid enormous prices
+      for them; and indeed, to be able to point to one of Gloriani&rsquo;s figures in
+      a shady corner of your library was tolerable proof that you were not a
+      fool. Corrupt things they certainly were; in the line of sculpture they
+      were quite the latest fruit of time. It was the artist&rsquo;s opinion that
+      there is no essential difference between beauty and ugliness; that they
+      overlap and intermingle in a quite inextricable manner; that there is no
+      saying where one begins and the other ends; that hideousness grimaces at
+      you suddenly from out of the very bosom of loveliness, and beauty blooms
+      before your eyes in the lap of vileness; that it is a waste of wit to
+      nurse metaphysical distinctions, and a sadly meagre entertainment to
+      caress imaginary lines; that the thing to aim at is the expressive, and
+      the way to reach it is by ingenuity; that for this purpose everything may
+      serve, and that a consummate work is a sort of hotch-potch of the pure and
+      the impure, the graceful and the grotesque. Its prime duty is to amuse, to
+      puzzle, to fascinate, to savor of a complex imagination. Gloriani&rsquo;s
+      statues were florid and meretricious; they looked like magnified
+      goldsmith&rsquo;s work. They were extremely elegant, but they had no charm for
+      Rowland. He never bought one, but Gloriani was such an honest fellow, and
+      withal was so deluged with orders, that this made no difference in their
+      friendship. The artist might have passed for a Frenchman. He was a great
+      talker, and a very picturesque one; he was almost bald; he had a small,
+      bright eye, a broken nose, and a moustache with waxed ends. When sometimes
+      he received you at his lodging, he introduced you to a lady with a plain
+      face whom he called Madame Gloriani&mdash;which she was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s second guest was also an artist, but of a very different type.
+      His friends called him Sam Singleton; he was an American, and he had been
+      in Rome a couple of years. He painted small landscapes, chiefly in
+      water-colors: Rowland had seen one of them in a shop window, had liked it
+      extremely, and, ascertaining his address, had gone to see him and found
+      him established in a very humble studio near the Piazza Barberini, where,
+      apparently, fame and fortune had not yet found him out. Rowland took a
+      fancy to him and bought several of his pictures; Singleton made few
+      speeches, but was grateful. Rowland heard afterwards that when he first
+      came to Rome he painted worthless daubs and gave no promise of talent.
+      Improvement had come, however, hand in hand with patient industry, and his
+      talent, though of a slender and delicate order, was now incontestable. It
+      was as yet but scantily recognized, and he had hard work to live. Rowland
+      hung his little water-colors on the parlor wall, and found that, as he
+      lived with them, he grew very fond of them. Singleton was a diminutive,
+      dwarfish personage; he looked like a precocious child. He had a high,
+      protuberant forehead, a transparent brown eye, a perpetual smile, an
+      extraordinary expression of modesty and patience. He listened much more
+      willingly than he talked, with a little fixed, grateful grin; he blushed
+      when he spoke, and always offered his ideas in a sidelong fashion, as if
+      the presumption were against them. His modesty set them off, and they were
+      eminently to the point. He was so perfect an example of the little
+      noiseless, laborious artist whom chance, in the person of a moneyed
+      patron, has never taken by the hand, that Rowland would have liked to
+      befriend him by stealth. Singleton had expressed a fervent admiration for
+      Roderick&rsquo;s productions, but had not yet met the young master. Roderick was
+      lounging against the chimney-piece when he came in, and Rowland presently
+      introduced him. The little water-colorist stood with folded hands,
+      blushing, smiling, and looking up at him as if Roderick were himself a
+      statue on a pedestal. Singleton began to murmur something about his
+      pleasure, his admiration; the desire to make his compliment smoothly gave
+      him a kind of grotesque formalism. Roderick looked down at him surprised,
+      and suddenly burst into a laugh. Singleton paused a moment and then, with
+      an intenser smile, went on: &ldquo;Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all
+      the same!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s two other guests were ladies, and one of them, Miss Blanchard,
+      belonged also to the artistic fraternity. She was an American, she was
+      young, she was pretty, and she had made her way to Rome alone and unaided.
+      She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed old
+      serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly neighbor in the person of
+      a certain Madame Grandoni, who in various social emergencies lent her a
+      protecting wing, and had come with her to Rowland&rsquo;s dinner. Miss Blanchard
+      had a little money, but she was not above selling her pictures. These
+      represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses, with the dew-drops
+      very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and a peasant woman, with
+      her back turned, kneeling before it. She did backs very well, but she was
+      a little weak in faces. Flowers, however, were her speciality, and though
+      her touch was a little old-fashioned and finical, she painted them with
+      remarkable skill. Her pictures were chiefly bought by the English. Rowland
+      had made her acquaintance early in the winter, and as she kept a saddle
+      horse and rode a great deal, he had asked permission to be her cavalier.
+      In this way they had become almost intimate. Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s name was
+      Augusta; she was slender, pale, and elegant looking; she had a very pretty
+      head and brilliant auburn hair, which she braided with classical
+      simplicity. She talked in a sweet, soft voice, used language at times a
+      trifle superfine, and made literary allusions. These had often a patriotic
+      strain, and Rowland had more than once been irritated by her quotations
+      from Mrs. Sigourney in the cork-woods of Monte Mario, and from Mr. Willis
+      among the ruins of Veii. Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her,
+      and was half surprised, at times, to find himself treating it as a matter
+      of serious moment whether he liked her or not. He admired her, and indeed
+      there was something admirable in her combination of beauty and talent, of
+      isolation and tranquil self-support. He used sometimes to go into the
+      little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and find
+      her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement, profiled
+      against the deep blue Roman sky. She received him with a meek-eyed dignity
+      that made her seem like a painted saint on a church window, receiving the
+      daylight in all her being. The breath of reproach passed her by with
+      folded wings. And yet Rowland wondered why he did not like her better. If
+      he failed, the reason was not far to seek. There was another woman whom he
+      liked better, an image in his heart which refused to yield precedence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that evening to which allusion has been made, when Rowland was left
+      alone between the starlight and the waves with the sudden knowledge that
+      Mary Garland was to become another man&rsquo;s wife, he had made, after a while,
+      the simple resolution to forget her. And every day since, like a famous
+      philosopher who wished to abbreviate his mourning for a faithful servant,
+      he had said to himself in substance&mdash;&ldquo;Remember to forget Mary
+      Garland.&rdquo; Sometimes it seemed as if he were succeeding; then, suddenly,
+      when he was least expecting it, he would find her name, inaudibly, on his
+      lips, and seem to see her eyes meeting his eyes. All this made him
+      uncomfortable, and seemed to portend a possible discord. Discord was not
+      to his taste; he shrank from imperious passions, and the idea of finding
+      himself jealous of an unsuspecting friend was absolutely repulsive. More
+      than ever, then, the path of duty was to forget Mary Garland, and he
+      cultivated oblivion, as we may say, in the person of Miss Blanchard. Her
+      fine temper, he said to himself, was a trifle cold and conscious, her
+      purity prudish, perhaps, her culture pedantic. But since he was obliged to
+      give up hopes of Mary Garland, Providence owed him a compensation, and he
+      had fits of angry sadness in which it seemed to him that to attest his
+      right to sentimental satisfaction he would be capable of falling in love
+      with a woman he absolutely detested, if she were the best that came in his
+      way. And what was the use, after all, of bothering about a possible which
+      was only, perhaps, a dream? Even if Mary Garland had been free, what right
+      had he to assume that he would have pleased her? The actual was good
+      enough. Miss Blanchard had beautiful hair, and if she was a trifle
+      old-maidish, there is nothing like matrimony for curing old-maidishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland&rsquo;s rides an
+      alliance which might have been called defensive on the part of the former
+      and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard, was an excessively ugly old
+      lady, highly esteemed in Roman society for her homely benevolence and her
+      shrewd and humorous good sense. She had been the widow of a German
+      archaeologist, who had come to Rome in the early ages as an attache of the
+      Prussian legation on the Capitoline. Her good sense had been wanting on
+      but a single occasion, that of her second marriage. This occasion was
+      certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent, are not test
+      cases. A couple of years after her first husband&rsquo;s death, she had accepted
+      the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years younger than
+      herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The marriage was most
+      unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of using the fiddle-bow as
+      an instrument of conjugal correction. He had finally run off with a prima
+      donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped, had given him a taste of the
+      quality implied in her title. He was believed to be living still, but he
+      had shrunk to a small black spot in Madame Grandoni&rsquo;s life, and for ten
+      years she had not mentioned his name. She wore a light flaxen wig, which
+      was never very artfully adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no
+      secret of it. She used to say, &ldquo;I was not always so ugly as this; as a
+      young girl I had beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig.&rdquo;
+       She had worn from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white
+      crape shawl embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she
+      had an interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence,
+      were easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer
+      to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years&rsquo; observation of Roman society had
+      sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but
+      she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic
+      sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular
+      favor. Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing
+      him to get married. She never saw him without whispering to him that
+      Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss
+      Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind the
+      central bouquet at his circular dinner-table. The dinner was very
+      prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast. He
+      had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this occasion
+      he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory. He drank
+      freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with his hands in
+      his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence. Singleton sat
+      gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person were talking.
+      Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident disposition to draw
+      Roderick out. Rowland was rather regretful, for he knew that theory was
+      not his friend&rsquo;s strong point, and that it was never fair to take his
+      measure from his talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you have begun with Adam and Eve,&rdquo; said Gloriani, &ldquo;I suppose you are
+      going straight through the Bible.&rdquo; He was one of the persons who thought
+      Roderick delightfully fresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may make a David,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;but I shall not try any more of the
+      Old Testament people. I don&rsquo;t like the Jews; I don&rsquo;t like pendulous noses.
+      David, the boy David, is rather an exception; you can think of him and
+      treat him as a young Greek. Standing forth there on the plain of battle
+      between the contending armies, rushing forward to let fly his stone, he
+      looks like a beautiful runner at the Olympic games. After that I shall
+      skip to the New Testament. I mean to make a Christ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You &lsquo;ll put nothing of the Olympic games into him, I hope,&rdquo; said
+      Gloriani.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall make him very different from the Christ of tradition; more&mdash;more&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Roderick paused a moment to think. This was the first that Rowland had
+      heard of his Christ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More rationalistic, I suppose,&rdquo; suggested Miss Blanchard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More idealistic!&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;The perfection of form, you know, to
+      symbolize the perfection of spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a companion piece,&rdquo; said Miss Blanchard, &ldquo;you ought to make a Judas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! I mean never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made anything
+      ugly, and I &lsquo;m a Hellenist; I &lsquo;m not a Hebraist! I have been thinking
+      lately of making a Cain, but I should never dream of making him ugly. He
+      should be a very handsome fellow, and he should lift up the murderous club
+      with the beautiful movement of the fighters in the Greek friezes who are
+      chopping at their enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There &lsquo;s no use trying to be a Greek,&rdquo; said Gloriani. &ldquo;If Phidias were to
+      come back, he would recommend you to give it up. I am half Italian and
+      half French, and, as a whole, a Yankee. What sort of a Greek should I
+      make? I think the Judas is a capital idea for a statue. Much obliged to
+      you, madame, for the suggestion. What an insidious little scoundrel one
+      might make of him, sitting there nursing his money-bag and his treachery!
+      There can be a great deal of expression in a pendulous nose, my dear sir,
+      especially when it is cast in green bronze.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;But it is not the sort of expression I care
+      for. I care only for perfect beauty. There it is, if you want to know it!
+      That &lsquo;s as good a profession of faith as another. In future, so far as my
+      things are not positively beautiful, you may set them down as failures.
+      For me, it &lsquo;s either that or nothing. It &lsquo;s against the taste of the day,
+      I know; we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty in the large,
+      ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly
+      at the weights our forefathers easily lifted. But I don&rsquo;t hesitate to
+      proclaim it&mdash;I mean to lift them again! I mean to go in for big
+      things; that &lsquo;s my notion of my art. I mean to do things that will be
+      simple and vast and infinite. You &lsquo;ll see if they won&rsquo;t be infinite!
+      Excuse me if I brag a little; all those Italian fellows in the Renaissance
+      used to brag. There was a sensation once common, I am sure, in the human
+      breast&mdash;a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble image
+      newly created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity. When
+      Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses unveiled in the
+      temples of the AEgean, don&rsquo;t you suppose there was a passionate beating of
+      hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror? I mean to bring it back; I mean to
+      thrill the world again! I mean to produce a Juno that will make you
+      tremble, a Venus that will make you swoon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that when we come and see you,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, &ldquo;we must be sure
+      and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few soft sofas
+      conveniently placed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phidias and Praxiteles,&rdquo; Miss Blanchard remarked, &ldquo;had the advantage of
+      believing in their goddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that the
+      pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo and
+      Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome where we
+      sit talking nineteenth century English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!&rdquo; cried Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;Mr. Hudson
+      may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno&mdash;that &lsquo;s you and I&mdash;arrived
+      to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear fellow,&rdquo; objected Gloriani, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t mean to say you are
+      going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and
+      Hebes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t matter what you call them,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;They shall be simply
+      divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they shall be
+      Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That &lsquo;s all the Greek
+      divinities were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s rather abstract, you know,&rdquo; said Miss Blanchard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; cried Gloriani, &ldquo;you &lsquo;re delightfully young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you &lsquo;ll not grow any older,&rdquo; said Singleton, with a flush of
+      sympathy across his large white forehead. &ldquo;You can do it if you try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,&rdquo;
+       Roderick went on. &ldquo;I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I
+      mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I mean
+      to make a magnificent statue of America!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;America&mdash;the Mountains&mdash;the Moon!&rdquo; said Gloriani. &ldquo;You &lsquo;ll find
+      it rather hard, I &lsquo;m afraid, to compress such subjects into classic
+      forms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there &lsquo;s a way,&rdquo; cried Roderick, &ldquo;and I shall think it out. My
+      figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Grandoni. &ldquo;Perhaps you don&rsquo;t approve of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!&rdquo; said Roderick, with sublimity. There was
+      a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done some fine things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small portfolio of
+      prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick&rsquo;s little statue of the
+      youth drinking. It pleased him to see his friend sitting there in radiant
+      ardor, defending idealism against so knowing an apostle of corruption as
+      Gloriani, and he wished to help the elder artist to be confuted. He
+      silently handed him the photograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me!&rdquo; cried Gloriani, &ldquo;did he do this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ages ago,&rdquo; said Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s deucedly pretty,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;But, my dear young friend, you
+      can&rsquo;t keep this up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do better,&rdquo; said Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will do worse! You will become weak. You will have to take to
+      violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This sort of
+      thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his trousers.
+      He may stand on tiptoe, but he can&rsquo;t do more. Here you stand on tiptoe,
+      very gracefully, I admit; but you can&rsquo;t fly; there &lsquo;s no use trying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My &lsquo;America&rsquo; shall answer you!&rdquo; said Roderick, shaking toward him a tall
+      glass of champagne and drinking it down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little
+      murmur of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was this done in America?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts,&rdquo; Roderick
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old white wooden houses!&rdquo; said Miss Blanchard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could do as well as this there,&rdquo; said Singleton, blushing and
+      smiling, &ldquo;one might say that really you had only to lose by coming to
+      Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mallet is to blame for that,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;But I am willing to risk
+      the loss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The photograph had been passed to Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;It reminds me,&rdquo; she
+      said, &ldquo;of the things a young man used to do whom I knew years ago, when I
+      first came to Rome. He was a German, a pupil of Overbeck and a votary of
+      spiritual art. He used to wear a black velvet tunic and a very low shirt
+      collar; he had a neck like a sickly crane, and let his hair grow down to
+      his shoulders. His name was Herr Schafgans. He never painted anything so
+      profane as a man taking a drink, but his figures were all of the simple
+      and slender and angular pattern, and nothing if not innocent&mdash;like
+      this one of yours. He would not have agreed with Gloriani any more than
+      you. He used to come and see me very often, and in those days I thought
+      his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of genius. His talk was
+      all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions; he lived on weak wine and
+      biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody&rsquo;s hair in a little bag round
+      his neck. If he was not a Beato Angelico, it was not his own fault. I hope
+      with all my heart that Mr. Hudson will do the fine things he talks about,
+      but he must bear in mind the history of dear Mr. Schafgans as a warning
+      against high-flown pretensions. One fine day this poor young man fell in
+      love with a Roman model, though she had never sat to him, I believe, for
+      she was a buxom, bold-faced, high-colored creature, and he painted none
+      but pale, sickly women. He offered to marry her, and she looked at him
+      from head to foot, gave a shrug, and consented. But he was ashamed to set
+      up his menage in Rome. They went to Naples, and there, a couple of years
+      afterwards, I saw him. The poor fellow was ruined. His wife used to beat
+      him, and he had taken to drinking. He wore a ragged black coat, and he had
+      a blotchy, red face. Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go
+      and fetch the dirty linen. His talent had gone heaven knows where! He was
+      getting his living by painting views of Vesuvius in eruption on the little
+      boxes they sell at Sorrento.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moral: don&rsquo;t fall in love with a buxom Roman model,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;I &lsquo;m
+      much obliged to you for your story, but I don&rsquo;t mean to fall in love with
+      any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was looking at
+      it curiously. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a happy bit of youth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t keep
+      it up&mdash;you can&rsquo;t keep it up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner, in the
+      drawing-room. Rowland left them to have it out in a corner, where
+      Roderick&rsquo;s Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight, in vague white
+      beauty, like the guardian angel of the young idealist. Singleton was
+      listening to Madame Grandoni, and Rowland took his place on the sofa, near
+      Miss Blanchard. They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk. Every
+      now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them. Miss Blanchard at last
+      asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick: who he was, where he came
+      from, whether it was true, as she had heard, that Rowland had discovered
+      him and brought him out at his own expense. Rowland answered her
+      questions; to the last he gave a vague affirmative. Finally, after a
+      pause, looking at him, &ldquo;You &lsquo;re very generous,&rdquo; Miss Blanchard said. The
+      declaration was made with a certain richness of tone, but it brought to
+      Rowland&rsquo;s sense neither delight nor confusion. He had heard the words
+      before; he suddenly remembered the grave sincerity with which Miss Garland
+      had uttered them as he strolled with her in the woods the day of
+      Roderick&rsquo;s picnic. They had pleased him then; now he asked Miss Blanchard
+      whether she would have some tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the two ladies withdrew, he attended them to their carriage. Coming
+      back to the drawing-room, he paused outside the open door; he was struck
+      by the group formed by the three men. They were standing before Roderick&rsquo;s
+      statue of Eve, and the young sculptor had lifted up the lamp and was
+      showing different parts of it to his companions. He was talking ardently,
+      and the lamplight covered his head and face. Rowland stood looking on, for
+      the group struck him with its picturesque symbolism. Roderick, bearing the
+      lamp and glowing in its radiant circle, seemed the beautiful image of a
+      genius which combined sincerity with power. Gloriani, with his head on one
+      side, pulling his long moustache and looking keenly from half-closed eyes
+      at the lighted marble, represented art with a worldly motive, skill
+      unleavened by faith, the mere base maximum of cleverness. Poor little
+      Singleton, on the other side, with his hands behind him, his head thrown
+      back, and his eyes following devoutly the course of Roderick&rsquo;s
+      elucidation, might pass for an embodiment of aspiring candor, with feeble
+      wings to rise on. In all this, Roderick&rsquo;s was certainly the beau role.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani turned to Rowland as he came up, and pointed back with his thumb
+      to the statue, with a smile half sardonic, half good-natured. &ldquo;A pretty
+      thing&mdash;a devilish pretty thing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s as fresh as the foam
+      in the milk-pail. He can do it once, he can do it twice, he can do it at a
+      stretch half a dozen times. But&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was returning to his former refrain, but Rowland intercepted him. &ldquo;Oh,
+      he will keep it up,&rdquo; he said, smiling, &ldquo;I will answer for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani was not encouraging, but Roderick had listened smiling. He was
+      floating unperturbed on the tide of his deep self-confidence. Now,
+      suddenly, however, he turned with a flash of irritation in his eye, and
+      demanded in a ringing voice, &ldquo;In a word, then, you prophesy that I am to
+      fail?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani answered imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder. &ldquo;My
+      dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day
+      every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay,
+      with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain for
+      the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn to do
+      without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your studio,
+      don&rsquo;t waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on suicide. Come
+      round and see me, and I will show you how to console yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I break down,&rdquo; said Roderick, passionately, &ldquo;I shall stay down. If the
+      Muse deserts me, she shall at least have her infidelity on her
+      conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no business,&rdquo; Rowland said to Gloriani, &ldquo;to talk lightly of the
+      Muse in this company. Mr. Singleton, too, has received pledges from her
+      which place her constancy beyond suspicion.&rdquo; And he pointed out on the
+      wall, near by, two small landscapes by the modest water-colorist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sculptor examined them with deference, and Singleton himself began to
+      laugh nervously; he was trembling with hope that the great Gloriani would
+      be pleased. &ldquo;Yes, these are fresh too,&rdquo; Gloriani said; &ldquo;extraordinarily
+      fresh! How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-six, sir,&rdquo; said Singleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For twenty-six they are famously fresh. They must have taken you a long
+      time; you work slowly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, unfortunately, I work very slowly. One of them took me six weeks,
+      the other two months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word! The Muse pays you long visits.&rdquo; And Gloriani turned and
+      looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors.
+      Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard. &ldquo;Oh, you!&rdquo; said
+      the sculptor; &ldquo;you &lsquo;ll keep it up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week after his dinner-party, Rowland went into Roderick&rsquo;s studio and
+      found him sitting before an unfinished piece of work, with a hanging head
+      and a heavy eye. He could have fancied that the fatal hour foretold by
+      Gloriani had struck. Roderick rose with a sombre yawn and flung down his
+      tools. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s no use,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have struck a shallow! I have been sailing bravely, but for the last
+      day or two my keel has been crunching the bottom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A difficult place?&rdquo; Rowland asked, with a sympathetic inflection, looking
+      vaguely at the roughly modeled figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it &lsquo;s not the poor clay!&rdquo; Roderick answered. &ldquo;The difficult place is
+      here!&rdquo; And he struck a blow on his heart. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what &lsquo;s the matter
+      with me. Nothing comes; all of a sudden I hate things. My old things look
+      ugly; everything looks stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was perplexed. He was in the situation of a man who has been
+      riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop, and of a sudden feels him
+      stumble and balk. As yet, he reflected, he had seen nothing but the
+      sunshine of genius; he had forgotten that it has its storms. Of course it
+      had! And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which would
+      float them both safely through the worst weather. &ldquo;Why, you &lsquo;re tired!&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Of course you &lsquo;re tired. You have a right to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I have a right to be?&rdquo; Roderick asked, looking at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unquestionably, after all you have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, right or wrong, I am tired. I certainly have done a fair
+      winter&rsquo;s work. I want a change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland declared that it was certainly high time they should be leaving
+      Rome. They would go north and travel. They would go to Switzerland, to
+      Germany, to Holland, to England. Roderick assented, his eye brightened,
+      and Rowland talked of a dozen things they might do. Roderick walked up and
+      down; he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring out.
+      He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered, and at last asked him what
+      was on his mind. Roderick stopped before him, frowning a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have such unbounded faith in your good-will,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I believe
+      nothing I can say would offend you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try it,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone. I
+      need n&rsquo;t say I prefer your society to that of any man living. For the last
+      six months it has been everything to me. But I have a perpetual feeling
+      that you are expecting something of me, that you are measuring my doings
+      by a terrifically high standard. You are watching me; I don&rsquo;t want to be
+      watched. I want to go my own way; to work when I choose and to loaf when I
+      choose. It is not that I don&rsquo;t know what I owe you; it is not that we are
+      not friends. It is simply that I want a taste of absolutely unrestricted
+      freedom. Therefore, I say, let us separate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland shook him by the hand. &ldquo;Willingly. Do as you desire, I shall miss
+      you, and I venture to believe you &lsquo;ll pass some lonely hours. But I have
+      only one request to make: that if you get into trouble of any kind
+      whatever, you will immediately let me know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They began their journey, however, together, and crossed the Alps side by
+      side, muffled in one rug, on the top of the St. Gothard coach. Rowland was
+      going to England to pay some promised visits; his companion had no plan
+      save to ramble through Switzerland and Germany as fancy guided him. He had
+      money, now, that would outlast the summer; when it was spent he would come
+      back to Rome and make another statue. At a little mountain village by the
+      way, Roderick declared that he would stop; he would scramble about a
+      little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The
+      coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village
+      street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool
+      air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of
+      cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to
+      mount, felt an almost overmastering reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say the word,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;and I will stop too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick frowned. &ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t trust me; you don&rsquo;t think I &lsquo;m able to
+      take care of myself. That proves that I was right in feeling as if I were
+      watched!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watched, my dear fellow!&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I hope you may never have
+      anything worse to complain of than being watched in the spirit in which I
+      watch you. But I will spare you even that. Good-by!&rdquo; Standing in his
+      place, as the coach rolled away, he looked back at his friend lingering by
+      the roadside. A great snow-mountain, behind Roderick, was beginning to
+      turn pink in the sunset. The young man waved his hat, still looking grave.
+      Rowland settled himself in his place, reflecting after all that this was a
+      salubrious beginning of independence. He was among forests and glaciers,
+      leaning on the pure bosom of nature. And then&mdash;and then&mdash;was it
+      not in itself a guarantee against folly to be engaged to Mary Garland?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. Experience
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rowland passed the summer in England, staying with several old friends and
+      two or three new ones. On his arrival, he felt it on his conscience to
+      write to Mrs. Hudson and inform her that her son had relieved him of his
+      tutelage. He felt that she considered him an incorruptible Mentor,
+      following Roderick like a shadow, and he wished to let her know the truth.
+      But he made the truth very comfortable, and gave a succinct statement of
+      the young man&rsquo;s brilliant beginnings. He owed it to himself, he said, to
+      remind her that he had not judged lightly, and that Roderick&rsquo;s present
+      achievements were more profitable than his inglorious drudgery at Messrs.
+      Striker &amp; Spooner&rsquo;s. He was now taking a well-earned holiday and
+      proposing to see a little of the world. He would work none the worse for
+      this; every artist needed to knock about and look at things for himself.
+      They had parted company for a couple of months, for Roderick was now a
+      great man and beyond the need of going about with a keeper. But they were
+      to meet again in Rome in the autumn, and then he should be able to send
+      her more good news. Meanwhile, he was very happy in what Roderick had
+      already done&mdash;especially happy in the happiness it must have brought
+      to her. He ventured to ask to be kindly commended to Miss Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His letter was promptly answered&mdash;to his surprise in Miss Garland&rsquo;s
+      own hand. The same mail brought also an epistle from Cecilia. The latter
+      was voluminous, and we must content ourselves with giving an extract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your letter was filled with an echo of that brilliant Roman world, which
+      made me almost ill with envy. For a week after I got it I thought
+      Northampton really unpardonably tame. But I am drifting back again to my
+      old deeps of resignation, and I rush to the window, when any one passes,
+      with all my old gratitude for small favors. So Roderick Hudson is already
+      a great man, and you turn out to be a great prophet? My compliments to
+      both of you; I never heard of anything working so smoothly. And he takes
+      it all very quietly, and does n&rsquo;t lose his balance nor let it turn his
+      head? You judged him, then, in a day better than I had done in six months,
+      for I really did not expect that he would settle down into such a jog-trot
+      of prosperity. I believed he would do fine things, but I was sure he would
+      intersperse them with a good many follies, and that his beautiful statues
+      would spring up out of the midst of a straggling plantation of wild oats.
+      But from what you tell me, Mr. Striker may now go hang himself..... There
+      is one thing, however, to say as a friend, in the way of warning. That
+      candid soul can keep a secret, and he may have private designs on your
+      equanimity which you don&rsquo;t begin to suspect. What do you think of his
+      being engaged to Miss Garland? The two ladies had given no hint of it all
+      winter, but a fortnight ago, when those big photographs of his statues
+      arrived, they first pinned them up on the wall, and then trotted out into
+      the town, made a dozen calls, and announced the news. Mrs. Hudson did, at
+      least; Miss Garland, I suppose, sat at home writing letters. To me, I
+      confess, the thing was a perfect surprise. I had not a suspicion that all
+      the while he was coming so regularly to make himself agreeable on my
+      veranda, he was quietly preferring his cousin to any one else. Not,
+      indeed, that he was ever at particular pains to make himself agreeable! I
+      suppose he has picked up a few graces in Rome. But he must not acquire too
+      many: if he is too polite when he comes back, Miss Garland will count him
+      as one of the lost. She will be a very good wife for a man of genius, and
+      such a one as they are often shrewd enough to take. She &lsquo;ll darn his
+      stockings and keep his accounts, and sit at home and trim the lamp and
+      keep up the fire while he studies the Beautiful in pretty neighbors at
+      dinner-parties. The two ladies are evidently very happy, and, to do them
+      justice, very humbly grateful to you. Mrs. Hudson never speaks of you
+      without tears in her eyes, and I am sure she considers you a specially
+      patented agent of Providence. Verily, it &lsquo;s a good thing for a woman to be
+      in love: Miss Garland has grown almost pretty. I met her the other night
+      at a tea-party; she had a white rose in her hair, and sang a sentimental
+      ballad in a fine contralto voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland&rsquo;s letter was so much shorter that we may give it entire:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear Sir,&mdash;Mrs. Hudson, as I suppose you know, has been for some
+      time unable to use her eyes. She requests me, therefore, to answer your
+      favor of the 22d of June. She thanks you extremely for writing, and wishes
+      me to say that she considers herself in every way under great obligations
+      to you. Your account of her son&rsquo;s progress and the high estimation in
+      which he is held has made her very happy, and she earnestly prays that all
+      may continue well with him. He sent us, a short time ago, several large
+      photographs of his two statues, taken from different points of view. We
+      know little about such things, but they seem to us wonderfully beautiful.
+      We sent them to Boston to be handsomely framed, and the man, on returning
+      them, wrote us that he had exhibited them for a week in his store, and
+      that they had attracted great attention. The frames are magnificent, and
+      the pictures now hang in a row on the parlor wall. Our only quarrel with
+      them is that they make the old papering and the engravings look dreadfully
+      shabby. Mr. Striker stood and looked at them the other day full five
+      minutes, and said, at last, that if Roderick&rsquo;s head was running on such
+      things it was no wonder he could not learn to draw up a deed. We lead here
+      so quiet and monotonous a life that I am afraid I can tell you nothing
+      that will interest you. Mrs. Hudson requests me to say that the little
+      more or less that may happen to us is of small account, as we live in our
+      thoughts and our thoughts are fixed on her dear son. She thanks Heaven he
+      has so good a friend. Mrs. Hudson says that this is too short a letter,
+      but I can say nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours most respectfully,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a question whether the reader will know why, but this letter gave
+      Rowland extraordinary pleasure. He liked its very brevity and meagreness,
+      and there seemed to him an exquisite modesty in its saying nothing from
+      the young girl herself. He delighted in the formal address and conclusion;
+      they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular gesture in some
+      expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The letter renewed that
+      impression of strong feeling combined with an almost rigid simplicity,
+      which Roderick&rsquo;s betrothed had personally given him. And its homely
+      stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life concentrated, as the young
+      girl had borrowed warrant from her companion to say, in a single devoted
+      idea. The monotonous days of the two women seemed to Rowland&rsquo;s fancy to
+      follow each other like the tick-tick of a great time-piece, marking off
+      the hours which separated them from the supreme felicity of clasping the
+      far-away son and lover to lips sealed with the excess of joy. He hoped
+      that Roderick, now that he had shaken off the oppression of his own
+      importunate faith, was not losing a tolerant temper for the silent prayers
+      of the two women at Northampton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was left to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick&rsquo;s actual moods
+      and occupations. He knew he was no letter-writer, and that, in the young
+      sculptor&rsquo;s own phrase, he had at any time rather build a monument than
+      write a note. But when a month had passed without news of him, he began to
+      be half anxious and half angry, and wrote him three lines, in the care of
+      a Continental banker, begging him at least to give some sign of whether he
+      was alive or dead. A week afterwards came an answer&mdash;brief, and dated
+      Baden-Baden. &ldquo;I know I have been a great brute,&rdquo; Roderick wrote, &ldquo;not to
+      have sent you a word before; but really I don&rsquo;t know what has got into me.
+      I have lately learned terribly well how to be idle. I am afraid to think
+      how long it is since I wrote to my mother or to Mary. Heaven help them&mdash;poor,
+      patient, trustful creatures! I don&rsquo;t know how to tell you what I am doing.
+      It seems all amusing enough while I do it, but it would make a poor show
+      in a narrative intended for your formidable eyes. I found Baxter in
+      Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he grabbed me by the arm and
+      brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a day in the Alps, drinking
+      milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep, and thinking it was all
+      very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never do, that the Alps were &lsquo;d&mdash;&mdash;d
+      rot,&rsquo; that Baden-Baden was the place, and that if I knew what was good for
+      me I would come along with him. It is a wonderful place, certainly,
+      though, thank the Lord, Baxter departed last week, blaspheming horribly at
+      trente et quarante. But you know all about it and what one does&mdash;what
+      one is liable to do. I have succumbed, in a measure, to the liabilities,
+      and I wish I had some one here to give me a thundering good blowing up.
+      Not you, dear friend; you would draw it too mild; you have too much of the
+      milk of human kindness. I have fits of horrible homesickness for my
+      studio, and I shall be devoutly grateful when the summer is over and I can
+      go back and swing a chisel. I feel as if nothing but the chisel would
+      satisfy me; as if I could rush in a rage at a block of unshaped marble.
+      There are a lot of the Roman people here, English and American; I live in
+      the midst of them and talk nonsense from morning till night. There is also
+      some one else; and to her I don&rsquo;t talk sense, nor, thank heaven, mean what
+      I say. I confess, I need a month&rsquo;s work to recover my self-respect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These lines brought Rowland no small perturbation; the more, that what
+      they seemed to point to surprised him. During the nine months of their
+      companionship Roderick had shown so little taste for dissipation that
+      Rowland had come to think of it as a canceled danger, and it greatly
+      perplexed him to learn that his friend had apparently proved so pliant to
+      opportunity. But Roderick&rsquo;s allusions were ambiguous, and it was possible
+      they might simply mean that he was out of patience with a frivolous way of
+      life and fretting wholesomely over his absent work. It was a very good
+      thing, certainly, that idleness should prove, on experiment, to sit
+      heavily on his conscience. Nevertheless, the letter needed, to Rowland&rsquo;s
+      mind, a key: the key arrived a week later. &ldquo;In common charity,&rdquo; Roderick
+      wrote, &ldquo;lend me a hundred pounds! I have gambled away my last franc&mdash;I
+      have made a mountain of debts. Send me the money first; lecture me
+      afterwards!&rdquo; Rowland sent the money by return of mail; then he proceeded,
+      not to lecture, but to think. He hung his head; he was acutely
+      disappointed. He had no right to be, he assured himself; but so it was.
+      Roderick was young, impulsive, unpracticed in stoicism; it was a hundred
+      to one that he was to pay the usual vulgar tribute to folly. But his
+      friend had regarded it as securely gained to his own belief in virtue that
+      he was not as other foolish youths are, and that he would have been
+      capable of looking at folly in the face and passing on his way. Rowland
+      for a while felt a sore sense of wrath. What right had a man who was
+      engaged to that fine girl in Northampton to behave as if his consciousness
+      were a common blank, to be overlaid with coarse sensations? Yes,
+      distinctly, he was disappointed. He had accompanied his missive with an
+      urgent recommendation to leave Baden-Baden immediately, and an offer to
+      meet Roderick at any point he would name. The answer came promptly; it ran
+      as follows: &ldquo;Send me another fifty pounds! I have been back to the tables.
+      I will leave as soon as the money comes, and meet you at Geneva. There I
+      will tell you everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an ancient terrace at Geneva, planted with trees and studded with
+      benches, overlooked by gravely aristocratic old dwellings and overlooking
+      the distant Alps. A great many generations have made it a lounging-place,
+      a great many friends and lovers strolled there, a great many confidential
+      talks and momentous interviews gone forward. Here, one morning, sitting on
+      one of the battered green benches, Roderick, as he had promised, told his
+      friend everything. He had arrived late the night before; he looked tired,
+      and yet flushed and excited. He made no professions of penitence, but he
+      practiced an unmitigated frankness, and his self-reprobation might be
+      taken for granted. He implied in every phrase that he had done with it
+      all, and that he was counting the hours till he could get back to work. We
+      shall not rehearse his confession in detail; its main outline will be
+      sufficient. He had fallen in with some very idle people, and had
+      discovered that a little example and a little practice were capable of
+      producing on his own part a considerable relish for their diversions. What
+      could he do? He never read, and he had no studio; in one way or another he
+      had to pass the time. He passed it in dangling about several very pretty
+      women in wonderful Paris toilets, and reflected that it was always
+      something gained for a sculptor to sit under a tree, looking at his
+      leisure into a charming face and saying things that made it smile and play
+      its muscles and part its lips and show its teeth. Attached to these ladies
+      were certain gentlemen who walked about in clouds of perfume, rose at
+      midday, and supped at midnight. Roderick had found himself in the mood for
+      thinking them very amusing fellows. He was surprised at his own taste, but
+      he let it take its course. It led him to the discovery that to live with
+      ladies who expect you to present them with expensive bouquets, to ride
+      with them in the Black Forest on well-looking horses, to come into their
+      opera-boxes on nights when Patti sang and prices were consequent, to
+      propose little light suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or
+      drives by moonlight to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed,
+      trinketed and gloved,&mdash;that to move in such society, we say, though
+      it might be a privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached. But the
+      tables made such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables.
+      Roderick tried them and found that at first they smoothed his path
+      delightfully. This simplification of matters, however, was only momentary,
+      for he soon perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it in fact,
+      exposed a good-looking young man to peculiar liabilities. At this point of
+      his friend&rsquo;s narrative, Rowland was reminded of Madame de Cruchecassee in
+      The Newcomes, and though he had listened in tranquil silence to the rest
+      of it, he found it hard not to say that all this had been, under the
+      circumstances, a very bad business. Roderick admitted it with bitterness,
+      and then told how much&mdash;measured simply financially&mdash;it had cost
+      him. His luck had changed; the tables had ceased to back him, and he had
+      found himself up to his knees in debt. Every penny had gone of the solid
+      sum which had seemed a large equivalent of those shining statues in Rome.
+      He had been an ass, but it was not irreparable; he could make another
+      statue in a couple of months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland frowned. &ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t play such dangerous
+      games with your facility. If you have got facility, revere it, respect it,
+      adore it, treasure it&mdash;don&rsquo;t speculate on it.&rdquo; And he wondered what
+      his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done if there had been
+      no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand. But he did not
+      formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency seemed not to have
+      presented itself to Roderick&rsquo;s imagination. The young sculptor reverted to
+      his late adventures again in the evening, and this time talked of them
+      more objectively, as the phrase is; more as if they had been the
+      adventures of another person. He related half a dozen droll things that
+      had happened to him, and, as if his responsibility had been disengaged by
+      all this free discussion, he laughed extravagantly at the memory of them.
+      Rowland sat perfectly grave, on principle. Then Roderick began to talk of
+      half a dozen statues that he had in his head, and set forth his design,
+      with his usual vividness. Suddenly, as it was relevant, he declared that
+      his Baden doings had not been altogether fruitless, for that the lady who
+      had reminded Rowland of Madame de Cruchecassee was tremendously
+      statuesque. Rowland at last said that it all might pass if he felt that he
+      was really the wiser for it. &ldquo;By the wiser,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I mean the
+      stronger in purpose, in will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t talk about will!&rdquo; Roderick answered, throwing back his head and
+      looking at the stars. This conversation also took place in the open air,
+      on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has a
+      monument. &ldquo;The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can
+      answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it &lsquo;s strong? There are
+      all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one&rsquo;s will and
+      one&rsquo;s inclinations. People talk as if the two things were essentially
+      distinct; on different sides of one&rsquo;s organism, like the heart and the
+      liver. Mine, I know, are much nearer together. It all depends upon
+      circumstances. I believe there is a certain group of circumstances
+      possible for every man, in which his will is destined to snap like a dry
+      twig.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear boy,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t talk about the will being &lsquo;destined.&rsquo; 
+      The will is destiny itself. That &lsquo;s the way to look at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at it, my dear Rowland,&rdquo; Roderick answered, &ldquo;as you find most
+      comfortable. One conviction I have gathered from my summer&rsquo;s experience,&rdquo;
+       he went on&mdash;&ldquo;it &lsquo;s as well to look it frankly in the face&mdash;is
+      that I possess an almost unlimited susceptibility to the influence of a
+      beautiful woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland stared, then strolled away, softly whistling to himself. He was
+      unwilling to admit even to himself that this speech had really the
+      sinister meaning it seemed to have. In a few days the two young men made
+      their way back to Italy, and lingered a while in Florence before going on
+      to Rome. In Florence Roderick seemed to have won back his old innocence
+      and his preference for the pleasures of study over any others. Rowland
+      began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream, or at the worst as a
+      mere sporadic piece of disorder, without roots in his companion&rsquo;s
+      character. They passed a fortnight looking at pictures and exploring for
+      out the way bits of fresco and carving, and Roderick recovered all his
+      earlier fervor of appreciation and comment. In Rome he went eagerly to
+      work again, and finished in a month two or three small things he had left
+      standing on his departure. He talked the most joyous nonsense about
+      finding himself back in his old quarters. On the first Sunday afternoon
+      following their return, on their going together to Saint Peter&rsquo;s, he
+      delivered himself of a lyrical greeting to the great church and to the
+      city in general, in a tone of voice so irrepressibly elevated that it rang
+      through the nave in rather a scandalous fashion, and almost arrested a
+      procession of canons who were marching across to the choir. He began to
+      model a new statue&mdash;a female figure, of which he had said nothing to
+      Rowland. It represented a woman, leaning lazily back in her chair, with
+      her head drooping as if she were listening, a vague smile on her lips, and
+      a pair of remarkably beautiful arms folded in her lap. With rather less
+      softness of contour, it would have resembled the noble statue of Agrippina
+      in the Capitol. Rowland looked at it and was not sure he liked it. &ldquo;Who is
+      it? what does it mean?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything you please!&rdquo; said Roderick, with a certain petulance. &ldquo;I call it
+      A Reminiscence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland then remembered that one of the Baden ladies had been
+      &ldquo;statuesque,&rdquo; and asked no more questions. This, after all, was a way of
+      profiting by experience. A few days later he took his first ride of the
+      season on the Campagna, and as, on his homeward way, he was passing across
+      the long shadow of a ruined tower, he perceived a small figure at a short
+      distance, bent over a sketch-book. As he drew near, he recognized his
+      friend Singleton. The honest little painter&rsquo;s face was scorched to
+      flame-color by the light of southern suns, and borrowed an even deeper
+      crimson from his gleeful greeting of his most appreciative patron. He was
+      making a careful and charming little sketch. On Rowland&rsquo;s asking him how
+      he had spent his summer, he gave an account of his wanderings which made
+      poor Mallet sigh with a sense of more contrasts than one. He had not been
+      out of Italy, but he had been delving deep into the picturesque heart of
+      the lovely land, and gathering a wonderful store of subjects. He had
+      rambled about among the unvisited villages of the Apennines, pencil in
+      hand and knapsack on back, sleeping on straw and eating black bread and
+      beans, but feasting on local color, rioting, as it were, on chiaroscuro,
+      and laying up a treasure of pictorial observations. He took a devout
+      satisfaction in his hard-earned wisdom and his happy frugality. Rowland
+      went the next day, by appointment, to look at his sketches, and spent a
+      whole morning turning them over. Singleton talked more than he had ever
+      done before, explained them all, and told some quaintly humorous anecdote
+      about the production of each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, how I have chattered!&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I am afraid you had
+      rather have looked at the things in peace and quiet. I did n&rsquo;t know I
+      could talk so much. But somehow, I feel very happy; I feel as if I had
+      improved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you have,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I doubt whether an artist ever passed a
+      more profitable three months. You must feel much more sure of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton looked for a long time with great intentness at a knot in the
+      floor. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at last, in a fluttered tone, &ldquo;I feel much more sure
+      of myself. I have got more facility!&rdquo; And he lowered his voice as if he
+      were communicating a secret which it took some courage to impart. &ldquo;I
+      hardly like to say it, for fear I should after all be mistaken. But since
+      it strikes you, perhaps it &lsquo;s true. It &lsquo;s a great happiness; I would not
+      exchange it for a great deal of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose it &lsquo;s a great happiness,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I shall really
+      think of you as living here in a state of scandalous bliss. I don&rsquo;t
+      believe it &lsquo;s good for an artist to be in such brutally high spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton stared for a moment, as if he thought Rowland was in earnest;
+      then suddenly fathoming the kindly jest, he walked about the room,
+      scratching his head and laughing intensely to himself. &ldquo;And Mr. Hudson?&rdquo;
+       he said, as Rowland was going; &ldquo;I hope he is well and happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very well,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;He is back at work again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there &lsquo;s a man,&rdquo; cried Singleton, &ldquo;who has taken his start once for
+      all, and does n&rsquo;t need to stop and ask himself in fear and trembling every
+      month or two whether he is advancing or not. When he stops, it &lsquo;s to rest!
+      And where did he spend his summer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greater part of it at Baden-Baden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that &lsquo;s in the Black Forest,&rdquo; cried Singleton, with profound
+      simplicity. &ldquo;They say you can make capital studies of trees there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; said Rowland, with a smile, laying an almost paternal hand on
+      the little painter&rsquo;s yellow head. &ldquo;Unfortunately trees are not Roderick&rsquo;s
+      line. Nevertheless, he tells me that at Baden he made some studies. Come
+      when you can, by the way,&rdquo; he added after a moment, &ldquo;to his studio, and
+      tell me what you think of something he has lately begun.&rdquo; Singleton
+      declared that he would come delightedly, and Rowland left him to his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He met a number of his last winter&rsquo;s friends again, and called upon Madame
+      Grandoni, upon Miss Blanchard, and upon Gloriani, shortly after their
+      return. The ladies gave an excellent account of themselves. Madame
+      Grandoni had been taking sea-baths at Rimini, and Miss Blanchard painting
+      wild flowers in the Tyrol. Her complexion was somewhat browned, which was
+      very becoming, and her flowers were uncommonly pretty. Gloriani had been
+      in Paris and had come away in high good-humor, finding no one there, in
+      the artist-world, cleverer than himself. He came in a few days to
+      Roderick&rsquo;s studio, one afternoon when Rowland was present. He examined the
+      new statue with great deference, said it was very promising, and
+      abstained, considerately, from irritating prophecies. But Rowland fancied
+      he observed certain signs of inward jubilation on the clever sculptor&rsquo;s
+      part, and walked away with him to learn his private opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; I liked it as well as I said,&rdquo; Gloriani declared in answer to
+      Rowland&rsquo;s anxious query; &ldquo;or rather I liked it a great deal better. I did
+      n&rsquo;t say how much, for fear of making your friend angry. But one can leave
+      him alone now, for he &lsquo;s coming round. I told you he could n&rsquo;t keep up the
+      transcendental style, and he has already broken down. Don&rsquo;t you see it
+      yourself, man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly like this new statue,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s because you &lsquo;re a purist. It &lsquo;s deuced clever, it &lsquo;s deuced
+      knowing, it &lsquo;s deuced pretty, but it is n&rsquo;t the topping high art of three
+      months ago. He has taken his turn sooner than I supposed. What has
+      happened to him? Has he been disappointed in love? But that &lsquo;s none of my
+      business. I congratulate him on having become a practical man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, however, was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken it
+      into his head to believe. He was discontented with his work, he applied
+      himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did n&rsquo;t know what
+      was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods. &ldquo;Is this of
+      necessity what a fellow must come to&rdquo;&mdash;he asked of Rowland, with a
+      sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which seemed to imply that his
+      companion had undertaken to insure him against perplexities and was not
+      fulfilling his contract&mdash;&ldquo;this damnable uncertainty when he goes to
+      bed at night as to whether he is going to wake up in a working humor or in
+      a swearing humor? Have we only a season, over before we know it, in which
+      we can call our faculties our own? Six months ago I could stand up to my
+      work like a man, day after day, and never dream of asking myself whether I
+      felt like it. But now, some mornings, it &lsquo;s the very devil to get going.
+      My statue looks so bad when I come into the studio that I have twenty
+      minds to smash it on the spot, and I lose three or four hours in sitting
+      there, moping and getting used to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland said that he supposed that this sort of thing was the lot of every
+      artist and that the only remedy was plenty of courage and faith. And he
+      reminded him of Gloriani&rsquo;s having forewarned him against these sterile
+      moods the year before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gloriani &lsquo;s an ass!&rdquo; said Roderick, almost fiercely. He hired a horse and
+      began to ride with Rowland on the Campagna. This delicious amusement
+      restored him in a measure to cheerfulness, but seemed to Rowland on the
+      whole not to stimulate his industry. Their rides were always very long,
+      and Roderick insisted on making them longer by dismounting in picturesque
+      spots and stretching himself in the sun among a heap of overtangled
+      stones. He let the scorching Roman luminary beat down upon him with an
+      equanimity which Rowland found it hard to emulate. But in this situation
+      Roderick talked so much amusing nonsense that, for the sake of his
+      company, Rowland consented to be uncomfortable, and often forgot that,
+      though in these diversions the days passed quickly, they brought forth
+      neither high art nor low. And yet it was perhaps by their help, after all,
+      that Roderick secured several mornings of ardent work on his new figure,
+      and brought it to rapid completion. One afternoon, when it was finished,
+      Rowland went to look at it, and Roderick asked him for his opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think yourself?&rdquo; Rowland demanded, not from pusillanimity,
+      but from real uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is curiously bad,&rdquo; Roderick answered. &ldquo;It was bad from the
+      first; it has fundamental vices. I have shuffled them in a measure out of
+      sight, but I have not corrected them. I can&rsquo;t&mdash;I can&rsquo;t&mdash;I
+      can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he cried passionately. &ldquo;They stare me in the face&mdash;they are
+      all I see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland offered several criticisms of detail, and suggested certain
+      practicable changes. But Roderick differed with him on each of these
+      points; the thing had faults enough, but they were not those faults.
+      Rowland, unruffled, concluded by saying that whatever its faults might be,
+      he had an idea people in general would like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to heaven some person in particular would buy it, and take it off
+      my hands and out of my sight!&rdquo; Roderick cried. &ldquo;What am I to do now?&rdquo; he
+      went on. &ldquo;I have n&rsquo;t an idea. I think of subjects, but they remain mere
+      lifeless names. They are mere words&mdash;they are not images. What am I
+      to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was a trifle annoyed. &ldquo;Be a man,&rdquo; he was on the point of saying,
+      &ldquo;and don&rsquo;t, for heaven&rsquo;s sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice.&rdquo;
+       But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the studio a loud,
+      peremptory ring at the outer door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick broke into a laugh. &ldquo;Talk of the devil,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you see
+      his horns! If that &lsquo;s not a customer, it ought to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the studio was promptly flung open, and a lady advanced to the
+      threshold&mdash;an imposing, voluminous person, who quite filled up the
+      doorway. Rowland immediately felt that he had seen her before, but he
+      recognized her only when she moved forward and disclosed an attendant in
+      the person of a little bright-eyed, elderly gentleman, with a bristling
+      white moustache. Then he remembered that just a year before he and his
+      companion had seen in the Ludovisi gardens a wonderfully beautiful girl,
+      strolling in the train of this conspicuous couple. He looked for her now,
+      and in a moment she appeared, following her companions with the same
+      nonchalant step as before, and leading her great snow-white poodle,
+      decorated with motley ribbons. The elder lady offered the two young men a
+      sufficiently gracious salute; the little old gentleman bowed and smiled
+      with extreme alertness. The young girl, without casting a glance either at
+      Roderick or at Rowland, looked about for a chair, and, on perceiving one,
+      sank into it listlessly, pulled her poodle towards her, and began to
+      rearrange his top-knot. Rowland saw that, even with her eyes dropped, her
+      beauty was still dazzling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust we are at liberty to enter,&rdquo; said the elder lady, with majesty.
+      &ldquo;We were told that Mr. Hudson had no fixed day, and that we might come at
+      any time. Let us not disturb you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, as one of the lesser lights of the Roman art-world, had not
+      hitherto been subject to incursions from inquisitive tourists, and, having
+      no regular reception day, was not versed in the usual formulas of welcome.
+      He said nothing, and Rowland, looking at him, saw that he was looking
+      amazedly at the young girl and was apparently unconscious of everything
+      else. &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he cried precipitately, &ldquo;it &lsquo;s that goddess of the Villa
+      Ludovisi!&rdquo; Rowland in some confusion, did the honors as he could, but the
+      little old gentleman begged him with the most obsequious of smiles to give
+      himself no trouble. &ldquo;I have been in many a studio!&rdquo; he said, with his
+      finger on his nose and a strong Italian accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going about everywhere,&rdquo; said his companion. &ldquo;I am passionately
+      fond of art!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland smiled sympathetically, and let them turn to Roderick&rsquo;s statue. He
+      glanced again at the young sculptor, to invite him to bestir himself, but
+      Roderick was still gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful young mistress of the
+      poodle, who by this time had looked up and was gazing straight at him.
+      There was nothing bold in her look; it expressed a kind of languid,
+      imperturbable indifference. Her beauty was extraordinary; it grew and grew
+      as the young man observed her. In such a face the maidenly custom of
+      averted eyes and ready blushes would have seemed an anomaly; nature had
+      produced it for man&rsquo;s delight and meant that it should surrender itself
+      freely and coldly to admiration. It was not immediately apparent, however,
+      that the young lady found an answering entertainment in the physiognomy of
+      her host; she turned her head after a moment and looked idly round the
+      room, and at last let her eyes rest on the statue of the woman seated. It
+      being left to Rowland to stimulate conversation, he began by complimenting
+      her on the beauty of her dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he &lsquo;s very handsome,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;He &lsquo;s a Florentine. The dogs in
+      Florence are handsomer than the people.&rdquo; And on Rowland&rsquo;s caressing him:
+      &ldquo;His name is Stenterello,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;Stenterello, give your hand to the
+      gentleman.&rdquo; This order was given in Italian. &ldquo;Say buon giorno a lei.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stenterello thrust out his paw and gave four short, shrill barks; upon
+      which the elder lady turned round and raised her forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, my dear, remember where you are! Excuse my foolish child,&rdquo; she
+      added, turning to Roderick with an agreeable smile. &ldquo;She can think of
+      nothing but her poodle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am teaching him to talk for me,&rdquo; the young girl went on, without
+      heeding her mother; &ldquo;to say little things in society. It will save me a
+      great deal of trouble. Stenterello, love, give a pretty smile and say
+      tanti complimenti!&rdquo; The poodle wagged his white pate&mdash;it looked like
+      one of those little pads in swan&rsquo;s-down, for applying powder to the face&mdash;and
+      repeated the barking process.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a wonderful beast,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not a beast,&rdquo; said the young girl. &ldquo;A beast is something black and
+      dirty&mdash;something you can&rsquo;t touch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a very valuable dog,&rdquo; the elder lady explained. &ldquo;He was presented
+      to my daughter by a Florentine nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not for that I care about him. It is for himself. He is better than
+      the prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, my dear!&rdquo; repeated the mother in deprecating accents, but with a
+      significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak his attention to the
+      glory of possessing a daughter who could deal in that fashion with the
+      aristocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed before
+      them, a year previous, in the Villa Ludovisi, Roderick and he had
+      exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality. Roderick
+      had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland now needed no
+      telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a
+      fellow-countrywoman. She was a person of what is called a great deal of
+      presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there, of once
+      brilliant beauty. Her daughter had come lawfully by her loveliness, but
+      Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was silly and that
+      the daughter was not. The mother had a very silly mouth&mdash;a mouth,
+      Rowland suspected, capable of expressing an inordinate degree of unreason.
+      The young girl, in spite of her childish satisfaction in her poodle, was
+      not a person of feeble understanding. Rowland received an impression that,
+      for reasons of her own, she was playing a part. What was the part and what
+      were her reasons? She was interesting; Rowland wondered what were her
+      domestic secrets. If her mother was a daughter of the great Republic, it
+      was to be supposed that the young girl was a flower of the American soil;
+      but her beauty had a robustness and tone uncommon in the somewhat facile
+      loveliness of our western maidenhood. She spoke with a vague foreign
+      accent, as if she had spent her life in strange countries. The little
+      Italian apparently divined Rowland&rsquo;s mute imaginings, for he presently
+      stepped forward, with a bow like a master of ceremonies. &ldquo;I have not done
+      my duty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in not announcing these ladies. Mrs. Light, Miss
+      Light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick
+      was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality. He altered
+      the light, pulled forward two or three figures, and made an apology for
+      not having more to show. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to have anything of an
+      exhibition&mdash;I am only a novice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed?&mdash;a novice! For a novice this is very well,&rdquo; Mrs. Light
+      declared. &ldquo;Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere smiled rapturously. &ldquo;It is stupendous!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;And we
+      have been to all the studios.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to all&mdash;heaven forbid!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light. &ldquo;But to a number that
+      I have had pointed out by artistic friends. I delight in studios: they are
+      the temples of the beautiful here below. And if you are a novice, Mr.
+      Hudson,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;you have already great admirers. Half a dozen
+      people have told us that yours were among the things to see.&rdquo; This
+      gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across to
+      the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light. &ldquo;Ah, he
+      &lsquo;s gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that has had
+      his head turned,&rdquo; Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to a confidential
+      undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of their acquaintance,
+      Rowland was bound to appreciate. &ldquo;The artists are all crazy about her.
+      When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the pictures. And when she
+      goes into a ball-room what do the other women say? Eh, Cavaliere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very beautiful,&rdquo; Rowland said, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little at
+      everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random
+      murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot. She
+      looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as a
+      feature of Roderick&rsquo;s establishment. It was the gaze, Rowland felt, which
+      the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has always at her
+      command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy. Her inspection
+      in this case seemed satisfactory. &ldquo;Are you also an artist?&rdquo; she inquired
+      with an almost caressing inflection. It was clear that what she meant was
+      something of this kind: &ldquo;Be so good as to assure me without delay that you
+      are really the young man of substance and amiability that you appear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Rowland answered simply the formal question&mdash;not the latent one.
+      &ldquo;Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking the
+      Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that she
+      could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble. Rowland
+      hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of Roderick&rsquo;s
+      renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several of his friend&rsquo;s
+      works and that she was welcome to come and see them at his rooms. She bade
+      the Cavaliere make a note of his address. &ldquo;Ah, you &lsquo;re a patron of the
+      arts,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That &lsquo;s what I should like to be if I had a little
+      money. I delight in beauty in every form. But all these people ask such
+      monstrous prices. One must be a millionaire, to think of such things, eh?
+      Twenty years ago my husband had my portrait painted, here in Rome, by
+      Papucci, who was the great man in those days. I was in a ball dress, with
+      all my jewels, my neck and arms, and all that. The man got six hundred
+      francs, and thought he was very well treated. Those were the days when a
+      family could live like princes in Italy for five thousand scudi a year.
+      The Cavaliere once upon a time was a great dandy&mdash;don&rsquo;t blush,
+      Cavaliere; any one can see that, just as any one can see that I was once a
+      pretty woman! Get him to tell you what he made a figure upon. The
+      railroads have brought in the vulgarians. That &lsquo;s what I call it now&mdash;the
+      invasion of the vulgarians! What are poor we to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had begun to murmur some remedial proposition, when he was
+      interrupted by the voice of Miss Light calling across the room, &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gentleman wishes to model my bust. Please speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere gave a little chuckle. &ldquo;Already?&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland looked round, equally surprised at the promptitude of the
+      proposal. Roderick stood planted before the young girl with his arms
+      folded, looking at her as he would have done at the Medicean Venus. He
+      never paid compliments, and Rowland, though he had not heard him speak,
+      could imagine the startling distinctness with which he made his request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He saw me a year ago,&rdquo; the young girl went on, &ldquo;and he has been thinking
+      of me ever since.&rdquo; Her tone, in speaking, was peculiar; it had a kind of
+      studied inexpressiveness, which was yet not the vulgar device of a drawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must make your daughter&rsquo;s bust&mdash;that &lsquo;s all, madame!&rdquo; cried
+      Roderick, with warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had rather you made the poodle&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said the young girl. &ldquo;Is it very
+      tiresome? I have spent half my life sitting for my photograph, in every
+      conceivable attitude and with every conceivable coiffure. I think I have
+      posed enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light, &ldquo;it may be one&rsquo;s duty to pose. But as to
+      my daughter&rsquo;s sitting to you, sir&mdash;to a young sculptor whom we don&rsquo;t
+      know&mdash;it is a matter that needs reflection. It is not a favor that &lsquo;s
+      to be had for the mere asking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t make her from life,&rdquo; said Roderick, with energy, &ldquo;I will make
+      her from memory, and if the thing &lsquo;s to be done, you had better have it
+      done as well as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma hesitates,&rdquo; said Miss Light, &ldquo;because she does n&rsquo;t know whether you
+      mean she shall pay you for the bust. I can assure you that she will not
+      pay you a sou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling, you forget yourself,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light, with an attempt at
+      majestic severity. &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she added, in a moment, with a change of
+      note, &ldquo;the bust would be my own property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; cried Roderick, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest mother,&rdquo; interposed the young girl, &ldquo;how can you carry a marble
+      bust about the world with you? Is it not enough to drag the poor
+      original?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you &lsquo;re nonsensical!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light, almost angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can always sell it,&rdquo; said the young girl, with the same artful
+      artlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light turned to Rowland, who pitied her, flushed and irritated. &ldquo;She
+      is very wicked to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere grinned in silence and walked away on tiptoe, with his hat
+      to his lips, as if to leave the field clear for action. Rowland, on the
+      contrary, wished to avert the coming storm. &ldquo;You had better not refuse,&rdquo;
+       he said to Miss Light, &ldquo;until you have seen Mr. Hudson&rsquo;s things in the
+      marble. Your mother is to come and look at some that I possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I have no doubt you will see us. I dare say Mr. Hudson is very
+      clever; but I don&rsquo;t care for modern sculpture. I can&rsquo;t look at it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall care for my bust, I promise you!&rdquo; cried Roderick, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To satisfy Miss Light,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, &ldquo;one of the old Greeks ought
+      to come to life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be worth his while,&rdquo; said Roderick, paying, to Rowland&rsquo;s
+      knowledge, his first compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might sit to Phidias, if he would promise to be very amusing and make
+      me laugh. What do you say, Stenterello? would you sit to Phidias?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must talk of this some other time,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light. &ldquo;We are in Rome
+      for the winter. Many thanks. Cavaliere, call the carriage.&rdquo; The Cavaliere
+      led the way out, backing like a silver-stick, and Miss Light, following
+      her mother, nodded, without looking at them, to each of the young men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immortal powers, what a head!&rdquo; cried Roderick, when they had gone. &ldquo;There
+      &lsquo;s my fortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is certainly very beautiful,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;But I &lsquo;m sorry you have
+      undertaken her bust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect it will bring trouble with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know. They are queer people. The mamma, I suspect, is the least
+      bit of an adventuress. Heaven knows what the daughter is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She &lsquo;s a goddess!&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so. She is all the more dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dangerous? What will she do to me? She does n&rsquo;t bite, I imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It remains to be seen. There are two kinds of women&mdash;you ought to
+      know it by this time&mdash;the safe and the unsafe. Miss Light, if I am
+      not mistaken, is one of the unsafe. A word to the wise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much obliged!&rdquo; said Roderick, and he began to whistle a triumphant air,
+      in honor, apparently, of the advent of his beautiful model.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In calling this young lady and her mamma &ldquo;queer people,&rdquo; Rowland but
+      roughly expressed his sentiment. They were so marked a variation from the
+      monotonous troop of his fellow-country people that he felt much curiosity
+      as to the sources of the change, especially since he doubted greatly
+      whether, on the whole, it elevated the type. For a week he saw the two
+      ladies driving daily in a well-appointed landau, with the Cavaliere and
+      the poodle in the front seat. From Mrs. Light he received a gracious
+      salute, tempered by her native majesty; but the young girl, looking
+      straight before her, seemed profoundly indifferent to observers. Her
+      extraordinary beauty, however, had already made observers numerous and
+      given the habitues of the Pincian plenty to talk about. The echoes of
+      their commentary reached Rowland&rsquo;s ears; but he had little taste for
+      random gossip, and desired a distinctly veracious informant. He had found
+      one in the person of Madame Grandoni, for whom Mrs. Light and her
+      beautiful daughter were a pair of old friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have known the mamma for twenty years,&rdquo; said this judicious critic,
+      &ldquo;and if you ask any of the people who have been living here as long as I,
+      you will find they remember her well. I have held the beautiful Christina
+      on my knee when she was a little wizened baby with a very red face and no
+      promise of beauty but those magnificent eyes. Ten years ago Mrs. Light
+      disappeared, and has not since been seen in Rome, except for a few days
+      last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples. Then it was you
+      met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens. When I first knew her she was the
+      unmarried but very marriageable daughter of an old American painter of
+      very bad landscapes, which people used to buy from charity and use for
+      fire-boards. His name was Savage; it used to make every one laugh, he was
+      such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman. He had married a horrible
+      wife, an Englishwoman who had been on the stage. It was said she used to
+      beat poor Savage with his mahl-stick and when the domestic finances were
+      low to lock him up in his studio and tell him he should n&rsquo;t come out until
+      he had painted half a dozen of his daubs. She had a good deal of showy
+      beauty. She would then go forth, and, her beauty helping, she would make
+      certain people take the pictures. It helped her at last to make an English
+      lord run away with her. At the time I speak of she had quite disappeared.
+      Mrs. Light was then a very handsome girl, though by no means so handsome
+      as her daughter has now become. Mr. Light was an American consul, newly
+      appointed at one of the Adriatic ports. He was a mild, fair-whiskered
+      young man, with some little property, and my impression is that he had got
+      into bad company at home, and that his family procured him his place to
+      keep him out of harm&rsquo;s way. He came up to Rome on a holiday, fell in love
+      with Miss Savage, and married her on the spot. He had not been married
+      three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever knew how. The
+      young widow came back to Rome, to her father, and here shortly afterwards,
+      in the shadow of Saint Peter&rsquo;s, her little girl was born. It might have
+      been supposed that Mrs. Light would marry again, and I know she had
+      opportunities. But she overreached herself. She would take nothing less
+      than a title and a fortune, and they were not forthcoming. She was admired
+      and very fond of admiration; very vain, very worldly, very silly. She
+      remained a pretty widow, with a surprising variety of bonnets and a dozen
+      men always in her train. Giacosa dates from this period. He calls himself
+      a Roman, but I have an impression he came up from Ancona with her. He was
+      l&rsquo;ami de la maison. He used to hold her bouquets, clean her gloves (I was
+      told), run her errands, get her opera-boxes, and fight her battles with
+      the shopkeepers. For this he needed courage, for she was smothered in
+      debt. She at last left Rome to escape her creditors. Many of them must
+      remember her still, but she seems now to have money to satisfy them. She
+      left her poor old father here alone&mdash;helpless, infirm and unable to
+      work. A subscription was shortly afterwards taken up among the foreigners,
+      and he was sent back to America, where, as I afterwards heard, he died in
+      some sort of asylum. From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely
+      of Mrs. Light as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places.
+      Once came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage in England;
+      then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left her to
+      keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained creature. She
+      pretends to be a great lady, but I consider that old Filomena, my
+      washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one. But certainly, after all,
+      she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on a lawsuit about some
+      property, with her husband&rsquo;s family, and went to America to attend to it.
+      She came back triumphant, with a long purse. She reappeared in Italy, and
+      established herself for a while in Venice. Then she came to Florence,
+      where she spent a couple of years and where I saw her. Last year she
+      passed down to Naples, which I should have said was just the place for
+      her, and this winter she has laid siege to Rome. She seems very
+      prosperous. She has taken a floor in the Palazzo F&mdash;&mdash;, she
+      keeps her carriage, and Christina and she, between them, must have a
+      pretty milliner&rsquo;s bill. Giacosa has turned up again, looking as if he had
+      been kept on ice at Ancona, for her return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of education,&rdquo; Rowland asked, &ldquo;do you imagine the mother&rsquo;s
+      adventures to have been for the daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A strange school! But Mrs. Light told me, in Florence, that she had given
+      her child the education of a princess. In other words, I suppose, she
+      speaks three or four languages, and has read several hundred French
+      novels. Christina, I suspect, is very clever. When I saw her, I was amazed
+      at her beauty, and, certainly, if there is any truth in faces, she ought
+      to have the soul of an angel. Perhaps she has. I don&rsquo;t judge her; she &lsquo;s
+      an extraordinary young person. She has been told twenty times a day by her
+      mother, since she was five years old, that she is a beauty of beauties,
+      that her face is her fortune, and that, if she plays her cards, she may
+      marry a duke. If she has not been fatally corrupted, she is a very
+      superior girl. My own impression is that she is a mixture of good and bad,
+      of ambition and indifference. Mrs. Light, having failed to make her own
+      fortune in matrimony, has transferred her hopes to her daughter, and
+      nursed them till they have become a kind of monomania. She has a hobby,
+      which she rides in secret; but some day she will let you see it. I &lsquo;m sure
+      that if you go in some evening unannounced, you will find her scanning the
+      tea-leaves in her cup, or telling her daughter&rsquo;s fortune with a greasy
+      pack of cards, preserved for the purpose. She promises her a prince&mdash;a
+      reigning prince. But if Mrs. Light is silly, she is shrewd, too, and, lest
+      considerations of state should deny her prince the luxury of a love-match,
+      she keeps on hand a few common mortals. At the worst she would take a
+      duke, an English lord, or even a young American with a proper number of
+      millions. The poor woman must be rather uncomfortable. She is always
+      building castles and knocking them down again&mdash;always casting her
+      nets and pulling them in. If her daughter were less of a beauty, her
+      transparent ambition would be very ridiculous; but there is something in
+      the girl, as one looks at her, that seems to make it very possible she is
+      marked out for one of those wonderful romantic fortunes that history now
+      and then relates. &lsquo;Who, after all, was the Empress of the French?&rsquo; Mrs.
+      Light is forever saying. &lsquo;And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does Christina say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She makes no scruple, as you know, of saying that her mother is a fool.
+      What she thinks, heaven knows. I suspect that, practically, she does not
+      commit herself. She is excessively proud, and thinks herself good enough
+      to occupy the highest station in the world; but she knows that her mother
+      talks nonsense, and that even a beautiful girl may look awkward in making
+      unsuccessful advances. So she remains superbly indifferent, and lets her
+      mother take the risks. If the prince is secured, so much the better; if he
+      is not, she need never confess to herself that even a prince has slighted
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your report is as solid,&rdquo; Rowland said to Madame Grandoni, thanking her,
+      &ldquo;as if it had been prepared for the Academy of Sciences;&rdquo; and he
+      congratulated himself on having listened to it when, a couple of days
+      later, Mrs. Light and her daughter, attended by the Cavaliere and the
+      poodle, came to his rooms to look at Roderick&rsquo;s statues. It was more
+      comfortable to know just with whom he was dealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light was prodigiously gracious, and showered down compliments not
+      only on the statues, but on all his possessions. &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;you men know how to make yourselves comfortable. If one of us poor women
+      had half as many easy-chairs and knick-knacks, we should be famously
+      abused. It &lsquo;s really selfish to be living all alone in such a place as
+      this. Cavaliere, how should you like this suite of rooms and a fortune to
+      fill them with pictures and statues? Christina, love, look at that mosaic
+      table. Mr. Mallet, I could almost beg it from you. Yes, that Eve is
+      certainly very fine. We need n&rsquo;t be ashamed of such a great-grandmother as
+      that. If she was really such a beautiful woman, it accounts for the good
+      looks of some of us. Where is Mr. What &lsquo;s-his-name, the young sculptor?
+      Why is n&rsquo;t he here to be complimented?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina had remained but for a moment in the chair which Rowland had
+      placed for her, had given but a cursory glance at the statues, and then,
+      leaving her place, had begun to wander round the room&mdash;looking at
+      herself in the mirror, touching the ornaments and curiosities, glancing at
+      the books and prints. Rowland&rsquo;s sitting-room was encumbered with
+      bric-a-brac, and she found plenty of occupation. Rowland presently joined
+      her, and pointed out some of the objects he most valued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s an odd jumble,&rdquo; she said frankly. &ldquo;Some things are very pretty&mdash;some
+      are very ugly. But I like ugly things, when they have a certain look.
+      Prettiness is terribly vulgar nowadays, and it is not every one that knows
+      just the sort of ugliness that has chic. But chic is getting dreadfully
+      common too. There &lsquo;s a hint of it even in Madame Baldi&rsquo;s bonnets. I like
+      looking at people&rsquo;s things,&rdquo; she added in a moment, turning to Rowland and
+      resting her eyes on him. &ldquo;It helps you to find out their characters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to suppose,&rdquo; asked Rowland, smiling, &ldquo;that you have arrived at any
+      conclusions as to mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am rather muddled; you have too many things; one seems to contradict
+      another. You are very artistic and yet you are very prosaic; you have what
+      is called a &lsquo;catholic&rsquo; taste and yet you are full of obstinate little
+      prejudices and habits of thought, which, if I knew you, I should find very
+      tiresome. I don&rsquo;t think I like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make a great mistake,&rdquo; laughed Rowland; &ldquo;I assure you I am very
+      amiable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am probably wrong, and if I knew you, I should find out I was
+      wrong, and that would irritate me and make me dislike you more. So you see
+      we are necessary enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t dislike you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse and worse; for you certainly will not like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very discouraging.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am fond of facing the truth, though some day you will deny that. Where
+      is that queer friend of yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean Mr. Hudson. He is represented by these beautiful works.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Light looked for some moments at Roderick&rsquo;s statues. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;they are not so silly as most of the things we have seen. They have no
+      chic, and yet they are beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You describe them perfectly,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;They are beautiful, and yet
+      they have no chic. That &lsquo;s it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he will promise to put none into my bust, I have a mind to let him
+      make it. A request made in those terms deserves to be granted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what terms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did n&rsquo;t you hear him? &lsquo;Mademoiselle, you almost satisfy my conception of
+      the beautiful. I must model your bust.&rsquo; That almost should be rewarded. He
+      is like me; he likes to face the truth. I think we should get on
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere approached Rowland, to express the pleasure he had derived
+      from his beautiful &ldquo;collection.&rdquo; His smile was exquisitely bland, his
+      accent appealing, caressing, insinuating. But he gave Rowland an odd sense
+      of looking at a little waxen image, adjusted to perform certain gestures
+      and emit certain sounds. It had once contained a soul, but the soul had
+      leaked out. Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there are more profitless
+      things than mere sound and gesture, in a consummate Italian. And the
+      Cavaliere, too, had soul enough left to desire to speak a few words on his
+      own account, and call Rowland&rsquo;s attention to the fact that he was not,
+      after all, a hired cicerone, but an ancient Roman gentleman. Rowland felt
+      sorry for him; he hardly knew why. He assured him in a friendly fashion
+      that he must come again; that his house was always at his service. The
+      Cavaliere bowed down to the ground. &ldquo;You do me too much honor,&rdquo; he
+      murmured. &ldquo;If you will allow me&mdash;it is not impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had prepared to depart. &ldquo;If you are not afraid to
+      come and see two quiet little women, we shall be most happy!&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;We have no statues nor pictures&mdash;we have nothing but each other. Eh,
+      darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, and the Cavaliere,&rdquo; added her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poodle, please!&rdquo; cried the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland glanced at the Cavaliere; he was smiling more blandly than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later Rowland presented himself, as civility demanded, at Mrs.
+      Light&rsquo;s door. He found her living in one of the stately houses of the Via
+      dell&rsquo; Angelo Custode, and, rather to his surprise, was told she was at
+      home. He passed through half a dozen rooms and was ushered into an immense
+      saloon, at one end of which sat the mistress of the establishment, with a
+      piece of embroidery. She received him very graciously, and then, pointing
+      mysteriously to a large screen which was unfolded across the embrasure of
+      one of the deep windows, &ldquo;I am keeping guard!&rdquo; she said. Rowland looked
+      interrogative; whereupon she beckoned him forward and motioned him to look
+      behind the screen. He obeyed, and for some moments stood gazing. Roderick,
+      with his back turned, stood before an extemporized pedestal, ardently
+      shaping a formless mass of clay. Before him sat Christina Light, in a
+      white dress, with her shoulders bare, her magnificent hair twisted into a
+      classic coil, and her head admirably poised. Meeting Rowland&rsquo;s gaze, she
+      smiled a little, only with her deep gray eyes, without moving. She looked
+      divinely beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. Christina
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The brilliant Roman winter came round again, and Rowland enjoyed it, in a
+      certain way, more deeply than before. He grew at last to feel that sense
+      of equal possession, of intellectual nearness, which it belongs to the
+      peculiar magic of the ancient city to infuse into minds of a cast that she
+      never would have produced. He became passionately, unreasoningly fond of
+      all Roman sights and sensations, and to breathe the Roman atmosphere began
+      to seem a needful condition of being. He could not have defined and
+      explained the nature of his great love, nor have made up the sum of it by
+      the addition of his calculable pleasures. It was a large, vague, idle,
+      half-profitless emotion, of which perhaps the most pertinent thing that
+      may be said is that it enforced a sort of oppressive reconciliation to the
+      present, the actual, the sensuous&mdash;to life on the terms that there
+      offered themselves. It was perhaps for this very reason that, in spite of
+      the charm which Rome flings over one&rsquo;s mood, there ran through Rowland&rsquo;s
+      meditations an undertone of melancholy, natural enough in a mind which
+      finds its horizon insidiously limited to the finite, even in very
+      picturesque forms. Whether it is one that tacitly concedes to the Roman
+      Church the monopoly of a guarantee of immortality, so that if one is
+      indisposed to bargain with her for the precious gift, one must do without
+      it altogether; or whether in an atmosphere so heavily weighted with echoes
+      and memories one grows to believe that there is nothing in one&rsquo;s
+      consciousness that is not foredoomed to moulder and crumble and become
+      dust for the feet, and possible malaria for the lungs, of future
+      generations&mdash;the fact at least remains that one parts half-willingly
+      with one&rsquo;s hopes in Rome, and misses them only under some very exceptional
+      stress of circumstance. For this reason one may perhaps say that there is
+      no other place in which one&rsquo;s daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and
+      none, at the same time, in which acute attacks of depression are more
+      intolerable. Rowland found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision
+      that to live in Rome was an education to one&rsquo;s senses and one&rsquo;s
+      imagination, but he sometimes wondered whether this was not a questionable
+      gain in case of one&rsquo;s not being prepared to live wholly by one&rsquo;s
+      imagination and one&rsquo;s senses. The tranquil profundity of his daily
+      satisfaction seemed sometimes to turn, by a mysterious inward impulse, and
+      face itself with questioning, admonishing, threatening eyes. &ldquo;But
+      afterwards...?&rdquo; it seemed to ask, with a long reverberation; and he could
+      give no answer but a shy affirmation that there was no such thing as
+      afterwards, and a hope, divided against itself, that his actual way of
+      life would last forever. He often felt heavy-hearted; he was sombre
+      without knowing why; there were no visible clouds in his heaven, but there
+      were cloud-shadows on his mood. Shadows projected, they often were,
+      without his knowing it, by an undue apprehension that things after all
+      might not go so ideally well with Roderick. When he understood his anxiety
+      it vexed him, and he rebuked himself for taking things unmanfully hard. If
+      Roderick chose to follow a crooked path, it was no fault of his; he had
+      given him, he would continue to give him, all that he had offered him&mdash;friendship,
+      sympathy, advice. He had not undertaken to provide him with unflagging
+      strength of purpose, nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil,
+      Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local
+      influence. More than once he declared to his companion that he meant to
+      live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter&rsquo;s, and that he cared little
+      if he never again drew breath in American air. &ldquo;For a man of my
+      temperament, Rome is the only possible place,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it &lsquo;s better to
+      recognize the fact early than late. So I shall never go home unless I am
+      absolutely forced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your idea of &lsquo;force&rsquo;?&rdquo; asked Rowland, smiling. &ldquo;It seems to me
+      you have an excellent reason for going home some day or other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you mean my engagement?&rdquo; Roderick answered with unaverted eyes. &ldquo;Yes,
+      I am distinctly engaged, in Northampton, and impatiently waited for!&rdquo; And
+      he gave a little sympathetic sigh. &ldquo;To reconcile Northampton and Rome is
+      rather a problem. Mary had better come out here. Even at the worst I have
+      no intention of giving up Rome within six or eight years, and an
+      engagement of that duration would be rather absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Garland could hardly leave your mother,&rdquo; Rowland observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course my mother should come. I think I will suggest it in my next
+      letter. It will take her a year or two to make up her mind to it, but if
+      she consents it will brighten her up. It &lsquo;s too small a life, over there,
+      even for a timid old lady. It is hard to imagine,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;any change
+      in Mary being a change for the better; but I should like her to take a
+      look at the world and have her notions stretched a little. One is never so
+      good, I suppose, but that one can improve a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish your mother and Miss Garland to come,&rdquo; Rowland suggested,
+      &ldquo;you had better go home and bring them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can&rsquo;t think of leaving Europe, for many a day,&rdquo; Roderick answered.
+      &ldquo;At present it would quite break the charm. I am just beginning to profit,
+      to get used to things and take them naturally. I am sure the sight of
+      Northampton Main Street would permanently upset me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was reassuring to hear that Roderick, in his own view, was but &ldquo;just
+      beginning&rdquo; to spread his wings, and Rowland, if he had had any
+      forebodings, might have suffered them to be modified by this declaration.
+      This was the first time since their meeting at Geneva that Roderick had
+      mentioned Miss Garland&rsquo;s name, but the ice being broken, he indulged for
+      some time afterward in frequent allusions to his betrothed, which always
+      had an accent of scrupulous, of almost studied, consideration. An
+      uninitiated observer, hearing him, would have imagined her to be a person
+      of a certain age&mdash;possibly an affectionate maiden aunt&mdash;who had
+      once done him a kindness which he highly appreciated: perhaps presented
+      him with a check for a thousand dollars. Rowland noted the difference
+      between his present frankness and his reticence during the first six
+      months of his engagement, and sometimes wondered whether it was not rather
+      an anomaly that he should expatiate more largely as the happy event
+      receded. He had wondered over the whole matter, first and last, in a great
+      many different ways, and looked at it in all possible lights. There was
+      something terribly hard to explain in the fact of his having fallen in
+      love with his cousin. She was not, as Rowland conceived her, the sort of
+      girl he would have been likely to fancy, and the operation of sentiment,
+      in all cases so mysterious, was particularly so in this one. Just why it
+      was that Roderick should not logically have fancied Miss Garland, his
+      companion would have been at loss to say, but I think the conviction had
+      its roots in an unformulated comparison between himself and the accepted
+      suitor. Roderick and he were as different as two men could be, and yet
+      Roderick had taken it into his head to fall in love with a woman for whom
+      he himself had been keeping in reserve, for years, a profoundly
+      characteristic passion. That if he chose to conceive a great notion of the
+      merits of Roderick&rsquo;s mistress, the irregularity here was hardly
+      Roderick&rsquo;s, was a view of the case to which poor Rowland did scanty
+      justice. There were women, he said to himself, whom it was every one&rsquo;s
+      business to fall in love with a little&mdash;women beautiful, brilliant,
+      artful, easily fascinating. Miss Light, for instance, was one of these;
+      every man who spoke to her did so, if not in the language, at least with
+      something of the agitation, the divine tremor, of a lover. There were
+      other women&mdash;they might have great beauty, they might have small;
+      perhaps they were generally to be classified as plain&mdash;whose triumphs
+      in this line were rare, but immutably permanent. Such a one preeminently,
+      was Mary Garland. Upon the doctrine of probabilities, it was unlikely that
+      she had had an equal charm for each of them, and was it not possible,
+      therefore, that the charm for Roderick had been simply the charm imagined,
+      unquestioningly accepted: the general charm of youth, sympathy, kindness&mdash;of
+      the present feminine, in short&mdash;enhanced indeed by several fine
+      facial traits? The charm in this case for Rowland was&mdash;the charm!&mdash;the
+      mysterious, individual, essential woman. There was an element in the
+      charm, as his companion saw it, which Rowland was obliged to recognize,
+      but which he forbore to ponder; the rather important attraction, namely,
+      of reciprocity. As to Miss Garland being in love with Roderick and
+      becoming charming thereby, this was a point with which his imagination
+      ventured to take no liberties; partly because it would have been
+      indelicate, and partly because it would have been vain. He contented
+      himself with feeling that the young girl was still as vivid an image in
+      his memory as she had been five days after he left her, and with drifting
+      nearer and nearer to the impression that at just that crisis any other
+      girl would have answered Roderick&rsquo;s sentimental needs as well. Any other
+      girl indeed would do so still! Roderick had confessed as much to him at
+      Geneva, in saying that he had been taking at Baden the measure of his
+      susceptibility to female beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His extraordinary success in modeling the bust of the beautiful Miss Light
+      was pertinent evidence of this amiable quality. She sat to him,
+      repeatedly, for a fortnight, and the work was rapidly finished. On one of
+      the last days Roderick asked Rowland to come and give his opinion as to
+      what was still wanting; for the sittings had continued to take place in
+      Mrs. Light&rsquo;s apartment, the studio being pronounced too damp for the fair
+      model. When Rowland presented himself, Christina, still in her white
+      dress, with her shoulders bare, was standing before a mirror, readjusting
+      her hair, the arrangement of which, on this occasion, had apparently not
+      met the young sculptor&rsquo;s approval. He stood beside her, directing the
+      operation with a peremptoriness of tone which seemed to Rowland to denote
+      a considerable advance in intimacy. As Rowland entered, Christina was
+      losing patience. &ldquo;Do it yourself, then!&rdquo; she cried, and with a rapid
+      movement unloosed the great coil of her tresses and let them fall over her
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were magnificent, and with her perfect face dividing their rippling
+      flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to
+      martyrdom. Rowland&rsquo;s eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her own
+      manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as the
+      remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was not a
+      superficial one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hudson &lsquo;s a sculptor,&rdquo; said Rowland, with warmth. &ldquo;But if I were only a
+      painter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank Heaven you are not!&rdquo; said Christina. &ldquo;I am having quite enough of
+      this minute inspection of my charms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear young man, hands off!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light, coming forward and
+      seizing her daughter&rsquo;s hair. &ldquo;Christina, love, I am surprised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it indelicate?&rdquo; Christina asked. &ldquo;I beg Mr. Mallet&rsquo;s pardon.&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Light gathered up the dusky locks and let them fall through her fingers,
+      glancing at her visitor with a significant smile. Rowland had never been
+      in the East, but if he had attempted to make a sketch of an old
+      slave-merchant, calling attention to the &ldquo;points&rdquo; of a Circassian beauty,
+      he would have depicted such a smile as Mrs. Light&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Mamma &lsquo;s not really
+      shocked,&rdquo; added Christina in a moment, as if she had guessed her mother&rsquo;s
+      by-play. &ldquo;She is only afraid that Mr. Hudson might have injured my hair,
+      and that, per consequenza, I should sell for less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You unnatural child!&rdquo; cried mamma. &ldquo;You deserve that I should make a
+      fright of you!&rdquo; And with half a dozen skillful passes she twisted the
+      tresses into a single picturesque braid, placed high on the head, as a
+      kind of coronal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does your mother do when she wants to do you justice?&rdquo; Rowland
+      asked, observing the admirable line of the young girl&rsquo;s neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do her justice when I say she says very improper things. What is one to
+      do with such a thorn in the flesh?&rdquo; Mrs. Light demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of it at your leisure, Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; said Christina, &ldquo;and when you
+      &lsquo;ve discovered something, let us hear. But I must tell you that I shall
+      not willingly believe in any remedy of yours, for you have something in
+      your physiognomy that particularly provokes me to make the remarks that my
+      mother so sincerely deplores. I noticed it the first time I saw you. I
+      think it &lsquo;s because your face is so broad. For some reason or other, broad
+      faces exasperate me; they fill me with a kind of rabbia. Last summer, at
+      Carlsbad, there was an Austrian count, with enormous estates and some
+      great office at court. He was very attentive&mdash;seriously so; he was
+      really very far gone. Cela ne tenait qu&rsquo; a moi! But I could n&rsquo;t; he was
+      impossible! He must have measured, from ear to ear, at least a yard and a
+      half. And he was blond, too, which made it worse&mdash;as blond as
+      Stenterello; pure fleece! So I said to him frankly, &lsquo;Many thanks, Herr
+      Graf; your uniform is magnificent, but your face is too fat.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid that mine also,&rdquo; said Rowland, with a smile, &ldquo;seems just now
+      to have assumed an unpardonable latitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I take it you know very well that we are looking for a husband, and
+      that none but tremendous swells need apply. Surely, before these
+      gentlemen, mamma, I may speak freely; they are disinterested. Mr. Mallet
+      won&rsquo;t do, because, though he &lsquo;s rich, he &lsquo;s not rich enough. Mamma made
+      that discovery the day after we went to see you, moved to it by the
+      promising look of your furniture. I hope she was right, eh? Unless you
+      have millions, you know, you have no chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel like a beggar,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, after mature
+      reflection, that on the whole you have enough. Mr. Hudson, of course, is
+      nowhere; he has nothing but his genius and his beaux yeux.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick had stood looking at Christina intently while she delivered
+      herself, softly and slowly, of this surprising nonsense. When she had
+      finished, she turned and looked at him; their eyes met, and he blushed a
+      little. &ldquo;Let me model you, and he who can may marry you!&rdquo; he said,
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light, while her daughter talked, had been adding a few touches to
+      her coiffure. &ldquo;She is not so silly as you might suppose,&rdquo; she said to
+      Rowland, with dignity. &ldquo;If you will give me your arm, we will go and look
+      at the bust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that represent a silly girl?&rdquo; Christina demanded, when they stood
+      before it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland transferred his glance several times from the portrait to the
+      original. &ldquo;It represents a young lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;whom I should not
+      pretend to judge off-hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may be a fool, but you are not sure. Many thanks! You have seen me
+      half a dozen times. You are either very slow or I am very deep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am certainly slow,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t expect to make up my mind
+      about you within six months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give you six months if you will promise then a perfectly frank opinion.
+      Mind, I shall not forget; I shall insist upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, though I am slow, I am tolerably brave,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;We shall
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina looked at the bust with a sigh. &ldquo;I am afraid, after all,&rdquo; she
+      said, &ldquo;that there &lsquo;s very little wisdom in it save what the artist has put
+      there. Mr. Hudson looked particularly wise while he was working; he
+      scowled and growled, but he never opened his mouth. It is very kind of him
+      not to have represented me gaping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had talked a lot of stuff to you,&rdquo; said Roderick, roundly, &ldquo;the
+      thing would not have been a tenth so good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it good, after all? Mr. Mallet is a famous connoisseur; has he not
+      come here to pronounce?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bust was in fact a very happy performance, and Roderick had risen to
+      the level of his subject. It was thoroughly a portrait, and not a vague
+      fantasy executed on a graceful theme, as the busts of pretty women, in
+      modern sculpture, are apt to be. The resemblance was deep and vivid; there
+      was extreme fidelity of detail and yet a noble simplicity. One could say
+      of the head that, without idealization, it was a representation of ideal
+      beauty. Rowland, however, as we know, was not fond of exploding into
+      superlatives, and, after examining the piece, contented himself with
+      suggesting two or three alterations of detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, how can you be so cruel?&rdquo; demanded Mrs. Light, with soft
+      reproachfulness. &ldquo;It is surely a wonderful thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rowland knows it &lsquo;s a wonderful thing,&rdquo; said Roderick, smiling. &ldquo;I can
+      tell that by his face. The other day I finished something he thought bad,
+      and he looked very differently from this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did Mr. Mallet look?&rdquo; asked Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Rowland,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;I am speaking of my seated woman. You
+      looked as if you had on a pair of tight boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my child, you &lsquo;ll not understand that!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light. &ldquo;You never
+      yet had a pair that were small enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a pity, Mr. Hudson,&rdquo; said Christina, gravely, &ldquo;that you could not
+      have introduced my feet into the bust. But we can hang a pair of slippers
+      round the neck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I nevertheless like your statues, Roderick,&rdquo; Rowland rejoined, &ldquo;better
+      than your jokes. This is admirable. Miss Light, you may be proud!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Mallet, for the permission,&rdquo; rejoined the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am dying to see it in the marble, with a red velvet screen behind it,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Placed there under the Sassoferrato!&rdquo; Christina went on. &ldquo;I hope you keep
+      well in mind, Mr. Hudson, that you have not a grain of property in your
+      work, and that if mamma chooses, she may have it photographed and the
+      copies sold in the Piazza di Spagna, at five francs apiece, without your
+      having a sou of the profits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;It was so nominated in the bond. My profits are
+      here!&rdquo; and he tapped his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be prettier if you said here!&rdquo; And Christina touched her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My precious child, how you do run on!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; the young girl answered. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t talk a word of sense
+      so long as he is in the room. I don&rsquo;t say that to make you go,&rdquo; she added,
+      &ldquo;I say it simply to justify myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland bowed in silence. Roderick declared that he must get at work and
+      requested Christina to take her usual position, and Mrs. Light proposed to
+      her visitor that they should adjourn to her boudoir. This was a small
+      room, hardly more spacious than an alcove, opening out of the drawing-room
+      and having no other issue. Here, as they entered, on a divan near the
+      door, Rowland perceived the Cavaliere Giacosa, with his arms folded, his
+      head dropped upon his breast, and his eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeping at his post!&rdquo; said Rowland with a kindly laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a punishable offense,&rdquo; rejoined Mrs. Light, sharply. She was on
+      the point of calling him, in the same tone, when he suddenly opened his
+      eyes, stared a moment, and then rose with a smile and a bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, dear lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I was overcome by the&mdash;the great
+      heat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Cavaliere!&rdquo; cried the lady, &ldquo;you know we are perishing here
+      with the cold! You had better go and cool yourself in one of the other
+      rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I obey, dear lady,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere; and with another smile and bow to
+      Rowland he departed, walking very discreetly on his toes. Rowland
+      out-stayed him but a short time, for he was not fond of Mrs. Light, and he
+      found nothing very inspiring in her frank intimation that if he chose, he
+      might become a favorite. He was disgusted with himself for pleasing her;
+      he confounded his fatal urbanity. In the court-yard of the palace he
+      overtook the Cavaliere, who had stopped at the porter&rsquo;s lodge to say a
+      word to his little girl. She was a young lady of very tender years and she
+      wore a very dirty pinafore. He had taken her up in his arms and was
+      singing an infantine rhyme to her, and she was staring at him with big,
+      soft Roman eyes. On seeing Rowland he put her down with a kiss, and
+      stepped forward with a conscious grin, an unresentful admission that he
+      was sensitive both to chubbiness and ridicule. Rowland began to pity him
+      again; he had taken his dismissal from the drawing-room so meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t keep your promise,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;to come and see me. Don&rsquo;t
+      forget it. I want you to tell me about Rome thirty years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty years ago? Ah, dear sir, Rome is Rome still; a place where strange
+      things happen! But happy things too, since I have your renewed permission
+      to call. You do me too much honor. Is it in the morning or in the evening
+      that I should least intrude?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your own time, Cavaliere; only come, sometime. I depend upon you,&rdquo;
+       said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere thanked him with an humble obeisance. To the Cavaliere, too,
+      he felt that he was, in Roman phrase, sympathetic, but the idea of
+      pleasing this extremely reduced gentleman was not disagreeable to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Light&rsquo;s bust stood for a while on exhibition in Roderick&rsquo;s studio,
+      and half the foreign colony came to see it. With the completion of his
+      work, however, Roderick&rsquo;s visits at the Palazzo F&mdash;&mdash; by no
+      means came to an end. He spent half his time in Mrs. Light&rsquo;s drawing-room,
+      and began to be talked about as &ldquo;attentive&rdquo; to Christina. The success of
+      the bust restored his equanimity, and in the garrulity of his good-humor
+      he suffered Rowland to see that she was just now the object uppermost in
+      his thoughts. Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener than
+      speaker; partly because Roderick&rsquo;s own tone was so resonant and exultant,
+      and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for having called
+      her unsafe, he was too perplexed to defend himself. The impression
+      remained that she was unsafe; that she was a complex, willful, passionate
+      creature, who might easily engulf a too confiding spirit in the eddies of
+      her capricious temper. And yet he strongly felt her charm; the eddies had
+      a strange fascination! Roderick, in the glow of that renewed admiration
+      provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal, was never weary of
+      descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea of it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;till I began to look at her with an eye
+      to reproducing line for line and curve for curve. Her face is the most
+      exquisite piece of modeling that ever came from creative hands. Not a line
+      without meaning, not a hair&rsquo;s breadth that is not admirably finished. And
+      then her mouth! It &lsquo;s as if a pair of lips had been shaped to utter pure
+      truth without doing it dishonor!&rdquo; Later, after he had been working for a
+      week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain, she would still
+      be the most fascinating of women. &ldquo;I &lsquo;ve quite forgotten her beauty,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;or rather I have ceased to perceive it as something distinct and
+      defined, something independent of the rest of her. She is all one, and all
+      consummately interesting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does she do&mdash;what does she say, that is so remarkable?&rdquo; Rowland
+      had asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say? Sometimes nothing&mdash;sometimes everything. She is never the same.
+      Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word, without a
+      smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore. She hardly looks at
+      me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work. On other days she
+      laughs and chatters and asks endless questions, and pours out the most
+      irresistible nonsense. She is a creature of moods; you can&rsquo;t count upon
+      her; she keeps observation on the stretch. And then, bless you, she has
+      seen such a lot! Her talk is full of the oddest allusions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is altogether a very singular type of young lady,&rdquo; said Rowland, after
+      the visit which I have related at length. &ldquo;It may be a charm, but it is
+      certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the charm of
+      shrinking innocence and soft docility. Our American girls are accused of
+      being more knowing than any others, and Miss Light is nominally an
+      American. But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make her what she is.
+      The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a product of the old
+      world, and certainly you were not far wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she has an atmosphere,&rdquo; said Roderick, in the tone of high
+      appreciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young unmarried women,&rdquo; Rowland answered, &ldquo;should be careful not to have
+      too much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t forgive her,&rdquo; cried his companion, &ldquo;for hitting you so
+      hard! A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
+      notice of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man is never flattered at a woman&rsquo;s not liking him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure she does n&rsquo;t like you? That &lsquo;s to the credit of your
+      humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade himself
+      that he was in favor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have also,&rdquo; said Rowland, laughing, &ldquo;to be a fellow of
+      remarkable ingenuity!&rdquo; He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick
+      reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he was
+      not engaged to than of the girl he was. But it amounted almost to
+      arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland to pretend to know how often
+      Roderick thought of Miss Garland. He wondered gloomily, at any rate,
+      whether for men of his companion&rsquo;s large, easy power, there was not a
+      larger moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who, yielding
+      Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was), had no reason
+      to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their accounts. Was it
+      not a part of the eternal fitness of things that Roderick, while
+      rhapsodizing about Miss Light, should have it at his command to look at
+      you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded blue, and to shake off
+      your musty imputations by a toss of his picturesque brown locks? Or had
+      he, in fact, no conscience to speak of? Happy fellow, either way!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick on his
+      model and what he had made of her. &ldquo;Devilish pretty, through and through!&rdquo;
+       he said as he looked at the bust. &ldquo;Capital handling of the neck and
+      throat; lovely work on the nose. You &lsquo;re a detestably lucky fellow, my
+      boy! But you ought not to have squandered such material on a simple bust;
+      you should have made a great imaginative figure. If I could only have got
+      hold of her, I would have put her into a statue in spite of herself. What
+      a pity she is not a ragged Trasteverine, whom we might have for a franc an
+      hour! I have been carrying about in my head for years a delicious design
+      for a fantastic figure, but it has always stayed there for want of a
+      tolerable model. I have seen intimations of the type, but Miss Light is
+      the perfection of it. As soon as I saw her I said to myself, &lsquo;By Jove,
+      there &lsquo;s my statue in the flesh!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your subject?&rdquo; asked Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take it ill,&rdquo; said Gloriani. &ldquo;You know I &lsquo;m the very deuce for
+      observation. She would make a magnificent Herodias!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Roderick had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know he thought
+      Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom), he might have been
+      soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton, who came and sat for an
+      hour in a sort of mental prostration before both bust and artist. But
+      Roderick&rsquo;s attitude before his patient little devotee was one of
+      undisguised though friendly amusement; and, indeed, judged from a strictly
+      plastic point of view, the poor fellow&rsquo;s diminutive stature, his enormous
+      mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently ridiculous. &ldquo;Nay,
+      don&rsquo;t envy our friend,&rdquo; Rowland said to Singleton afterwards, on his
+      expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of his own paltry
+      performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick&rsquo;s talent. &ldquo;You sail
+      nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be contented with what
+      you are and paint me another picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t envy Hudson anything he possesses,&rdquo; Singleton said, &ldquo;because
+      to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness. &lsquo;Complete,&rsquo; 
+      that &lsquo;s what he is; while we little clevernesses are like half-ripened
+      plums, only good eating on the side that has had a glimpse of the sun.
+      Nature has made him so, and fortune confesses to it! He is the handsomest
+      fellow in Rome, he has the most genius, and, as a matter of course, the
+      most beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to be his model. If that
+      is not completeness, where shall we find it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, going into Roderick&rsquo;s studio, Rowland found the young
+      sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard&mdash;if this is not too flattering a
+      description of his gracefully passive tolerance of her presence. He had
+      never liked her and never climbed into her sky-studio to observe her
+      wonderful manipulation of petals. He had once quoted Tennyson against her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In all Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s roses you may be sure there is a moral,&rdquo; he had
+      said. &ldquo;You can see it sticking out its head, and, if you go to smell the
+      flower, it scratches your nose.&rdquo; But on this occasion she had come with a
+      propitiatory gift&mdash;introducing her friend Mr. Leavenworth. Mr.
+      Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully
+      brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored face, which seemed,
+      somehow, to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of superior
+      benevolence, so that (with his smooth, white forehead) it bore a certain
+      resemblance to a large parlor with a very florid carpet, but no pictures
+      on the walls. He held his head high, talked sonorously, and told Roderick,
+      within five minutes, that he was a widower, traveling to distract his
+      mind, and that he had lately retired from the proprietorship of large
+      mines of borax in Pennsylvania. Roderick supposed at first that, in his
+      character of depressed widower, he had come to order a tombstone; but
+      observing then the extreme blandness of his address to Miss Blanchard, he
+      credited him with a judicious prevision that by the time the tombstone was
+      completed, a monument of his inconsolability might have become an
+      anachronism. But Mr. Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make a
+      rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me into
+      mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded by the
+      memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views. I ordered
+      in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you think you
+      could do something for my library? It is to be filled with well-selected
+      authors, and I think a pure white image in this style,&rdquo;&mdash;pointing to
+      one of Roderick&rsquo;s statues,&mdash;&ldquo;standing out against the morocco and
+      gilt, would have a noble effect. The subject I have already fixed upon. I
+      desire an allegorical representation of Culture. Do you think, now,&rdquo; asked
+      Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, &ldquo;you could rise to the conception?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,&rdquo; remarked Miss
+      Blanchard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at her a moment, and then&mdash;&ldquo;The simplest thing I
+      could do,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss
+      Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for
+      the allegory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there was
+      ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of
+      Roderick&rsquo;s genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to
+      Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental,
+      more impersonal. &ldquo;If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of
+      Miss Blanchard,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I should prefer to have it in no factitious
+      disguise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were
+      discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. &ldquo;Who is
+      your friend?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune&mdash;which is
+      magnificent. One of nature&rsquo;s gentlemen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss
+      Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an
+      opinion on the young girl&rsquo;s beauty, and, in her own fashion, she expressed
+      it epigrammatically. &ldquo;She looks half like a Madonna and half like a
+      ballerina,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young
+      sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron&rsquo;s
+      conception. &ldquo;His conception be hanged!&rdquo; Roderick exclaimed, after he had
+      departed. &ldquo;His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear and
+      a photographic album in her hand. I shall have to conceive, myself. For
+      the money, I ought to be able to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society.
+      &ldquo;Heaven knows how!&rdquo; Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned to
+      her several evidences of the lady&rsquo;s prosperity. &ldquo;In such a case there is
+      nothing like audacity. A month ago she knew no one but her washerwoman,
+      and now I am told that the cards of Roman princesses are to be seen on her
+      table. She is evidently determined to play a great part, and she has the
+      wit to perceive that, to make remunerative acquaintances, you must seem
+      yourself to be worth knowing. You must have striking rooms and a confusing
+      variety of dresses, and give good dinners, and so forth. She is spending a
+      lot of money, and you &lsquo;ll see that in two or three weeks she will take
+      upon herself to open the season by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it
+      is Christina&rsquo;s beauty that floats her. People go to see her because they
+      are curious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they go again because they are charmed,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Miss
+      Christina is a very remarkable young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day. She
+      came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply
+      interesting. I think she &lsquo;s an actress, but she believes in her part while
+      she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to believe that
+      she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are sitting, and told
+      me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my eyes. She cried,
+      herself, profusely, and as naturally as possible. She said she was weary
+      of life and that she knew no one but me she could speak frankly to. She
+      must speak, or she would go mad. She sobbed as if her heart would break. I
+      assure you it &lsquo;s well for you susceptible young men that you don&rsquo;t see her
+      when she sobs. She said, in so many words, that her mother was an immoral
+      woman. Heaven knows what she meant. She meant, I suppose, that she makes
+      debts that she knows she can&rsquo;t pay. She said the life they led was
+      horrible; that it was monstrous a poor girl should be dragged about the
+      world to be sold to the highest bidder. She was meant for better things;
+      she could be perfectly happy in poverty. It was not money she wanted. I
+      might not believe her, but she really cared for serious things. Sometimes
+      she thought of taking poison!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say to that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recommended her,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, &ldquo;to come and see me instead. I
+      would help her about as much, and I was, on the whole, less unpleasant. Of
+      course I could help her only by letting her talk herself out and kissing
+      her and patting her beautiful hands and telling her to be patient and she
+      would be happy yet. About once in two months I expect her to reappear, on
+      the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my existence. I believe I
+      melted down to the point of telling her that I would find some good,
+      quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she declared, almost with fury,
+      that she was sick unto death of husbands, and begged I would never again
+      mention the word. And, in fact, it was a rash offer; for I am sure that
+      there is not a man of the kind that might really make a woman happy but
+      would be afraid to marry mademoiselle. Looked at in that way she is
+      certainly very much to be pitied, and indeed, altogether, though I don&rsquo;t
+      think she either means all she says or, by a great deal, says all that she
+      means. I feel very sorry for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments,
+      and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendrissement. He
+      imagined more than once that there had been a passionate scene between
+      them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found
+      effective. But Christina&rsquo;s face told no tales, and she moved about,
+      beautiful and silent, looking absently over people&rsquo;s heads, barely heeding
+      the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the soul of a
+      world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body of a
+      goddess. &ldquo;Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is twenty,&rdquo;
+       observers asked, &ldquo;to have left all her illusions behind?&rdquo; And the general
+      verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she was
+      intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was not
+      conceded were free to reflect that she was &ldquo;not at all liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this
+      conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and, in especial, with
+      the spectacle of Roderick&rsquo;s inveterate devotion. All Rome might behold
+      that he, at least, &ldquo;liked&rdquo; Christina Light. Wherever she appeared he was
+      either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was perpetually at her
+      side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of a disconnected talk,
+      the fate of which was, to judge by her face, profoundly immaterial to the
+      young lady. People in general smiled at the radiant good faith of the
+      handsome young sculptor, and asked each other whether he really supposed
+      that beauties of that quality were meant to wed with poor artists. But
+      although Christina&rsquo;s deportment, as I have said, was one of superb
+      inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from Roderick no suspicion that he
+      suffered from snubbing, and he was therefore surprised at an incident
+      which befell one evening at a large musical party. Roderick, as usual, was
+      in the field, and, on the ladies taking the chairs which had been arranged
+      for them, he immediately placed himself beside Christina. As most of the
+      gentlemen were standing, his position made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at
+      Ophelia&rsquo;s feet, at the play. Rowland was leaning, somewhat apart, against
+      the chimney-piece. There was a long, solemn pause before the music began,
+      and in the midst of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole
+      length of the immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped
+      before him. She was neither pale nor flushed; she had a soft smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you do me a favor?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson that
+      he is not in a New England village&mdash;that it is not the custom in Rome
+      to address one&rsquo;s conversation exclusively, night after night, to the same
+      poor girl, and that&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice. She made a
+      gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm and led her back to
+      her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, who burst into joyous
+      laughter. &ldquo;She &lsquo;s a delightfully strange girl!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;She must do
+      everything that comes into her head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, she has often said to me, &lsquo;Mind you now, I forbid you to
+      leave me. Here comes that tiresome So-and-so.&rsquo; She cares as little about
+      the custom as I do. What could be a better proof than her walking up to
+      you, with five hundred people looking at her? Is that the custom for young
+      girls in Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then, should she take such a step?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, as she sat there, it came into her head. That &lsquo;s reason enough
+      for her. I have imagined she wishes me well, as they say here&mdash;though
+      she has never distinguished me in such a way as that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Grandoni had foretold the truth; Mrs. Light, a couple of weeks
+      later, convoked all Roman society to a brilliant ball. Rowland went late,
+      and found the staircase so encumbered with flower-pots and servants that
+      he was a long time making his way into the presence of the hostess. At
+      last he approached her, as she stood making courtesies at the door, with
+      her daughter by her side. Some of Mrs. Light&rsquo;s courtesies were very low,
+      for she had the happiness of receiving a number of the social potentates
+      of the Roman world. She was rosy with triumph, to say nothing of a less
+      metaphysical cause, and was evidently vastly contented with herself, with
+      her company, and with the general promise of destiny. Her daughter was
+      less overtly jubilant, and distributed her greetings with impartial
+      frigidity. She had never been so beautiful. Dressed simply in vaporous
+      white, relieved with half a dozen white roses, the perfection of her
+      features and of her person and the mysterious depth of her expression
+      seemed to glow with the white light of a splendid pearl. She recognized no
+      one individually, and made her courtesy slowly, gravely, with her eyes on
+      the ground. Rowland fancied that, as he stood before her, her obeisance
+      was slightly exaggerated, as with an intention of irony; but he smiled
+      philosophically to himself, and reflected, as he passed into the room,
+      that, if she disliked him, he had nothing to reproach himself with. He
+      walked about, had a few words with Miss Blanchard, who, with a fillet of
+      cameos in her hair, was leaning on the arm of Mr. Leavenworth, and at last
+      came upon the Cavaliere Giacosa, modestly stationed in a corner. The
+      little gentleman&rsquo;s coat-lappet was decorated with an enormous bouquet and
+      his neck encased in a voluminous white handkerchief of the fashion of
+      thirty years ago. His arms were folded, and he was surveying the scene
+      with contracted eyelids, through which you saw the glitter of his
+      intensely dark, vivacious pupil. He immediately embarked on an elaborate
+      apology for not having yet manifested, as he felt it, his sense of the
+      honor Rowland had done him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am always on service with these ladies, you see,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;and
+      that is a duty to which one would not willingly be faithless for an
+      instant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;you are a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light, in
+      her situation, is very happy in having you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are old friends,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, gravely. &ldquo;Old friends. I knew
+      the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest woman in Rome&mdash;or
+      rather in Ancona, which is even better. The beautiful Christina, now, is
+      perhaps the most beautiful young girl in Europe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to touch
+      the piano keys.&rdquo; And at these faded memories, the Cavaliere&rsquo;s eyes
+      glittered more brightly. Rowland half expected him to proceed, with a
+      little flash of long-repressed passion, &ldquo;And now&mdash;and now, sir, they
+      treat me as you observed the other day!&rdquo; But the Cavaliere only looked out
+      at him keenly from among his wrinkles, and seemed to say, with all the
+      vividness of the Italian glance, &ldquo;Oh, I say nothing more. I am not so
+      shallow as to complain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently the Cavaliere was not shallow, and Rowland repeated
+      respectfully, &ldquo;You are a devoted friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s very true. I am a devoted friend. A man may do himself justice,
+      after twenty years!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, after a pause, made some remark about the beauty of the ball. It
+      was very brilliant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stupendous!&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, solemnly. &ldquo;It is a great day. We have
+      four Roman princes, to say nothing of others.&rdquo; And he counted them over on
+      his fingers and held up his hand triumphantly. &ldquo;And there she stands, the
+      girl to whom I&mdash;I, Giuseppe Giacosa&mdash;taught her alphabet and her
+      piano-scales; there she stands in her incomparable beauty, and Roman
+      princes come and bow to her. Here, in his corner, her old master permits
+      himself to be proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very friendly of him,&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere contracted his lids a little more and gave another keen
+      glance. &ldquo;It is very natural, signore. The Christina is a good girl; she
+      remembers my little services. But here comes,&rdquo; he added in a moment, &ldquo;the
+      young Prince of the Fine Arts. I am sure he has bowed lowest of all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room and
+      casting about him his usual luminous, unshrinking looks. He presently
+      joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere, and immediately demanded
+      of Rowland, &ldquo;Have you seen her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen Miss Light,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;She &lsquo;s magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m half crazy!&rdquo; cried Roderick; so loud that several persons turned
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid his hand on his arm. Roderick
+      was trembling. &ldquo;If you will go away,&rdquo; Rowland said instantly, &ldquo;I will go
+      with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away?&rdquo; cried Roderick, almost angrily. &ldquo;I intend to dance with her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently laid his hand
+      on his other arm. &ldquo;Softly, softly, dear young man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let me speak
+      to you as a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, speak even as an enemy and I shall not mind it,&rdquo; Roderick answered,
+      frowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be very reasonable, then, and go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the deuce should I go away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are in love,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might as well be in love here as in the streets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carry your love as far as possible from Christina. She will not listen to
+      you&mdash;she can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She &lsquo;can&rsquo;t&rsquo;?&rdquo; demanded Roderick. &ldquo;She is not a person of whom you may say
+      that. She can if she will; she does as she chooses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to a certain point. It would take too long to explain; I only beg you
+      to believe that if you continue to love Miss Light you will be very
+      unhappy. Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune? Otherwise
+      you can never have her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Cavaliere folded his arms again, like a man who has done his duty.
+      Roderick wiped his forehead and looked askance at Rowland; he seemed to be
+      guessing his thoughts and they made him blush a little. But he smiled
+      blandly, and addressing the Cavaliere, &ldquo;I &lsquo;m much obliged to you for the
+      information,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now that I have obtained it, let me tell you that
+      I am no more in love with Miss Light than you are. Mr. Mallet knows that.
+      I admire her&mdash;yes, profoundly. But that &lsquo;s no one&rsquo;s business but my
+      own, and though I have, as you say, neither a princely title nor a
+      princely fortune, I mean to suffer neither those advantages nor those who
+      possess them to diminish my right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you are not in love, my dear young man,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, with his
+      hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, &ldquo;so much the better. But let me
+      entreat you, as an affectionate friend, to keep a watch on your emotions.
+      You are young, you are handsome, you have a brilliant genius and a
+      generous heart, but&mdash;I may say it almost with authority&mdash;Christina
+      is not for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Roderick was in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently
+      seemed to him an obtrusive negation of an inspiring possibility. &ldquo;You
+      speak as if she had made her choice!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Without pretending to
+      confidential information on the subject, I am sure she has not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but she must make it soon,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere. And raising his
+      forefinger, he laid it against his under lip. &ldquo;She must choose a name and
+      a fortune&mdash;and she will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will do exactly as her inclination prompts! She will marry the man
+      who pleases her, if he has n&rsquo;t a dollar! I know her better than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere turned a little paler than usual, and smiled more urbanely.
+      &ldquo;No, no, my dear young man, you do not know her better than I. You have
+      not watched her, day by day, for twenty years. I too have admired her. She
+      is a good girl; she has never said an unkind word to me; the blessed
+      Virgin be thanked! But she must have a brilliant destiny; it has been
+      marked out for her, and she will submit. You had better believe me; it may
+      save you much suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall see!&rdquo; said Roderick, with an excited laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly we shall see. But I retire from the discussion,&rdquo; the Cavaliere
+      added. &ldquo;I have no wish to provoke you to attempt to prove to me that I am
+      wrong. You are already excited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance the
+      cotillon with Miss Light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cotillon? has she promised?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick patted the air with a grand confidence. &ldquo;You &lsquo;ll see!&rdquo; His
+      gesture might almost have been taken to mean that the state of his
+      relations with Miss Light was such that they quite dispensed with vain
+      formalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug. &ldquo;You make a great many mourners!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has made one already!&rdquo; Rowland murmured to himself. This was evidently
+      not the first time that reference had been made between Roderick and the
+      Cavaliere to the young man&rsquo;s possible passion, and Roderick had failed to
+      consider it the simplest and most natural course to say in three words to
+      the vigilant little gentleman that there was no cause for alarm&mdash;his
+      affections were preoccupied. Rowland hoped, silently, with some dryness,
+      that his motives were of a finer kind than they seemed to be. He turned
+      away; it was irritating to look at Roderick&rsquo;s radiant, unscrupulous
+      eagerness. The tide was setting toward the supper-room and he drifted with
+      it to the door. The crowd at this point was dense, and he was obliged to
+      wait for some minutes before he could advance. At last he felt his
+      neighbors dividing behind him, and turning he saw Christina pressing her
+      way forward alone. She was looking at no one, and, save for the fact of
+      her being alone, you would not have supposed she was in her mother&rsquo;s
+      house. As she recognized Rowland she beckoned to him, took his arm, and
+      motioned him to lead her into the supper-room. She said nothing until he
+      had forced a passage and they stood somewhat isolated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find,&rdquo; she then said,
+      &ldquo;and then go and get me a piece of bread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing more? There seems to be everything conceivable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A simple roll. Nothing more, on your peril. Only bring something for
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window (embrasures in Roman
+      palaces are deep) was a retreat sufficiently obscure for Miss Light to
+      execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity. A
+      roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he presented
+      it, he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at loss to understand why
+      she should have selected for the honor of a tete-a-tete an individual for
+      whom she had so little taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I dislike you,&rdquo; said Christina. &ldquo;To tell the truth, I had
+      forgotten it. There are so many people here whom I dislike more, that when
+      I espied you just now, you seemed like an intimate friend. But I have not
+      come into this corner to talk nonsense,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;You must not think
+      I always do, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never heard you do anything else,&rdquo; said Rowland, deliberately,
+      having decided that he owed her no compliments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. I like your frankness. It &lsquo;s quite true. You see, I am a
+      strange girl. To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical. Don&rsquo;t flatter
+      yourself you have said anything very clever if you ever take it into your
+      head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is, I can&rsquo;t help
+      it. I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess to get out
+      of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more
+      interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. If a person wished to
+      do me a favor I would say to him, &lsquo;I beg you, with tears in my eyes, to
+      interest me. Be strong, be positive, be imperious, if you will; only be
+      something,&mdash;something that, in looking at, I can forget my detestable
+      self!&rsquo; Perhaps that is nonsense too. If it is, I can&rsquo;t help it. I can only
+      apologize for the nonsense I know to be such and that I talk&mdash;oh, for
+      more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I were to try, you
+      would understand me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I should never understand,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;why a person
+      should willingly talk nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That proves how little you know about women. But I like your frankness.
+      When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea you
+      were more formal,&mdash;how do you say it?&mdash;more guinde. I am very
+      capricious. To-night I like you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am not guinde,&rdquo; said Rowland, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so. Now I have an idea that you
+      would make a useful friend&mdash;an intimate friend&mdash;a friend to whom
+      one could tell everything. For such a friend, what would n&rsquo;t I give!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland looked at her in some perplexity. Was this touching sincerity, or
+      unfathomable coquetry? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but
+      then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle. &ldquo;I hesitate to
+      recommend myself out and out for the office,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I believe that
+      if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do, I should
+      not be found wanting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge one
+      not by isolated acts, but by one&rsquo;s whole conduct. I care for your opinion&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t know why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor do I, I confess,&rdquo; said Rowland with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of this affair?&rdquo; she continued, without heeding his
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your ball? Why, it &lsquo;s a very grand affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s horrible&mdash;that &lsquo;s what it is! It &lsquo;s a mere rabble! There are
+      people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma
+      went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one they
+      knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she is satisfied! It is not
+      my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying. I have twenty
+      minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma go through
+      with it as she can. By the way,&rdquo; she added in a moment, without a visible
+      reason for the transition, &ldquo;can you tell me something to read?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you recommend me some books?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;I know you are a great
+      reader. I have no one else to ask. We can buy no books. We can make debts
+      for jewelry and bonnets and five-button gloves, but we can&rsquo;t spend a sou
+      for ideas. And yet, though you may not believe it, I like ideas quite as
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be most happy to lend you some books,&rdquo; Rowland said. &ldquo;I will pick
+      some out to-morrow and send them to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No novels, please! I am tired of novels. I can imagine better stories for
+      myself than any I read. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing
+      nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be served. Your taste agrees with my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment, looking at him. Then suddenly&mdash;&ldquo;Tell me
+      something about Mr. Hudson,&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;You are great friends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Rowland; &ldquo;we are great friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about him. Come, begin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where shall I begin? You know him for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t know him; I don&rsquo;t find him so easy to know. Since he has
+      finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly, he has become a
+      great talker. He says very fine things; but does he mean all he says?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Few of us do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do, I imagine. You ought to know, for he tells me you discovered
+      him.&rdquo; Rowland was silent, and Christina continued, &ldquo;Do you consider him
+      very clever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unquestionably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His talent is really something out of the common way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it seems to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In short, he &lsquo;s a man of genius?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, call it genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him by the hand
+      and set him on his feet in Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the popular legend?&rdquo; asked Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you need n&rsquo;t be modest. There was no great merit in it; there would
+      have been none at least on my part in the same circumstances. Real
+      geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in the wilderness,
+      I would have brought him out into the market-place to see how he would
+      behave. It would be excessively amusing. You must find it so to watch Mr.
+      Hudson, eh? Tell me this: do you think he is going to be a great man&mdash;become
+      famous, have his life written, and all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t prophesy, but I have good hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a
+      moment absently, turning it so as to see&mdash;or almost to see&mdash;the
+      dimple in her elbow. This was apparently a frequent gesture with her;
+      Rowland had already observed it. It was as coolly and naturally done as if
+      she had been in her room alone. &ldquo;So he &lsquo;s a man of genius,&rdquo; she suddenly
+      resumed. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have a man
+      of genius perpetually hanging about? He is the first I ever saw, but I
+      should have known he was not a common mortal. There is something strange
+      about him. To begin with, he has no manners. You may say that it &lsquo;s not
+      for me to blame him, for I have none myself. That &lsquo;s very true, but the
+      difference is that I can have them when I wish to (and very charming ones
+      too; I &lsquo;ll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will never have them.
+      And yet, somehow, one sees he &lsquo;s a gentleman. He seems to have something
+      urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and defiant. You see it
+      in his eyes. They are the finest, by the way, I ever saw. When a person
+      has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad manners. I suppose that
+      is what they call the sacred fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would have
+      another roll. She merely shook her head and went on:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me how you found him. Where was he&mdash;how was he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was in a place called Northampton. Did you ever hear of it? He was
+      studying law&mdash;but not learning it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It appears it was something horrible, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This little village. No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have received a false impression. Northampton is not as gay as Rome,
+      but Roderick had some charming friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about them. Who were they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance: a
+      delightful woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young&mdash;pretty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a good deal of both. And very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he make love to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, who else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lived with his mother. She is the best of women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I know all that one&rsquo;s mother is. But she does not count as
+      society. And who else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina&rsquo;s insistence was the
+      result of a general interest in Roderick&rsquo;s antecedents or of a particular
+      suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little askance,
+      waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his engagement
+      to the Cavaliere, it was probable that with this beautiful girl he had not
+      been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it was public; that
+      other girl was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland felt a kind of dumb anger
+      rising in his heart. He deliberated a moment intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you frowning at?&rdquo; Christina asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was another person,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;the most important of all: the
+      young girl to whom he is engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows. &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Hudson is
+      engaged?&rdquo; she said, very simply. &ldquo;Is she pretty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not called a beauty,&rdquo; said Rowland. He meant to practice great
+      brevity, but in a moment he added, &ldquo;I have seen beauties, however, who
+      pleased me less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she pleases you, too? Why don&rsquo;t they marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her
+      elbow. &ldquo;Ah, he &lsquo;s engaged?&rdquo; she repeated in the same tone. &ldquo;He never told
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them were beginning
+      to return to the dancing-room, and immediately afterwards he saw Roderick
+      making his way toward themselves. Roderick presented himself before Miss
+      Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t claim that you have promised me the cotillon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I
+      consider that you have given me hopes which warrant the confidence that
+      you will dance with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina looked at him a moment. &ldquo;Certainly I have made no promises,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should keep
+      myself free and let it depend on circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beseech you to dance with me!&rdquo; said Roderick, with vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina rose and began to laugh. &ldquo;You say that very well, but the
+      Italians do it better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof. Mrs. Light hastily
+      approached, leading, rather than led by, a tall, slim young man, of an
+      unmistakably Southern physiognomy. &ldquo;My precious love,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;what a
+      place to hide in! We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I have
+      chosen a cavalier for you, and chosen well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, joined his two
+      hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile, &ldquo;May I venture to hope, dear
+      signorina, for the honor of your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you may!&rdquo; said Mrs. Light. &ldquo;The honor is for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a courtesy
+      as profound as his own bow. &ldquo;You are very kind, but you are too late. I
+      have just accepted!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my own darling!&rdquo; murmured&mdash;almost moaned&mdash;Mrs. Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance&mdash;a glance brilliant
+      on both sides. She passed her hand into his arm; he tossed his clustering
+      locks and led her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she had rejected
+      leaning against a doorway. He was ugly, but what is called
+      distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye, a sallow complexion, a
+      long, thin neck; his hair was cropped en brosse. He looked very young, yet
+      extremely bored. He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an
+      imperceptible moustache. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by,
+      and, having joined him, asked him the young man&rsquo;s name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, &ldquo;he &lsquo;s a pezzo grosso! A Neapolitan. Prince
+      Casamassima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. Frascati
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One day, on entering Roderick&rsquo;s lodging (not the modest rooms on the
+      Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous apartment
+      on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table addressed to himself.
+      It was from Roderick, and consisted of but three lines: &ldquo;I am gone to
+      Frascati&mdash;for meditation. If I am not at home on Friday, you had
+      better join me.&rdquo; On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to
+      Frascati. Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending his
+      days, according to his own account, lying under the trees of the Villa
+      Mondragone, reading Ariosto. He was in a sombre mood; &ldquo;meditation&rdquo; seemed
+      not to have been fruitful. Nothing especially pertinent to our narrative
+      had passed between the two young men since Mrs. Light&rsquo;s ball, save a few
+      words bearing on an incident of that entertainment. Rowland informed
+      Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his engagement. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know whether you &lsquo;ll thank me,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;but it &lsquo;s my duty to
+      let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly rising.
+      &ldquo;Why should n&rsquo;t I thank you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I am not ashamed of my
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason
+      for not having it known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man does n&rsquo;t gossip about such a matter with strangers,&rdquo; Roderick
+      rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With strangers&mdash;no!&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick continued his work; but after a moment, turning round with a
+      frown: &ldquo;If you supposed I had a reason for being silent, pray why should
+      you have spoken?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not speak idly, my dear Roderick. I weighed the matter before I
+      spoke, and promised myself to let you know immediately afterwards. It
+      seemed to me that Miss Light had better know that your affections are
+      pledged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cavaliere has put it into your head, then, that I am making love to
+      her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; in that case I would not have spoken to her first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean, then, that she is making love to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is what I mean,&rdquo; said Rowland, after a pause. &ldquo;That girl finds you
+      interesting, and is pleased, even though she may play indifference, at
+      your finding her so. I said to myself that it might save her some
+      sentimental disappointment to know without delay that you are not at
+      liberty to become indefinitely interested in other women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to have taken the measure of my liberty with extraordinary
+      minuteness!&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must do me justice. I am the cause of your separation from Miss
+      Garland, the cause of your being exposed to temptations which she hardly
+      even suspects. How could I ever face her,&rdquo; Rowland demanded, with much
+      warmth of tone, &ldquo;if at the end of it all she should be unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea that Miss Garland had made such an impression on you. You
+      are too zealous; I take it she did n&rsquo;t charge you to look after her
+      interests.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If anything happens to you, I am accountable. You must understand that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a view of the situation I can&rsquo;t accept; in your own interest, no
+      less than in mine. It can only make us both very uncomfortable. I know all
+      I owe you; I feel it; you know that! But I am not a small boy nor an outer
+      barbarian any longer, and, whatever I do, I do with my eyes open. When I
+      do well, the merit &lsquo;s mine; if I do ill, the fault &lsquo;s mine! The idea that
+      I make you nervous is detestable. Dedicate your nerves to some better
+      cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a quarrel, we shall
+      settle it between ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had found himself wondering, shortly before, whether possibly his
+      brilliant young friend was without a conscience; now it dimly occurred to
+      him that he was without a heart. Rowland, as we have already intimated,
+      was a man with a moral passion, and no small part of it had gone forth
+      into his relations with Roderick. There had been, from the first, no
+      protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had implicitly
+      offered everything that belongs to friendship, and Roderick had,
+      apparently, as deliberately accepted it. Rowland, indeed, had taken an
+      exquisite satisfaction in his companion&rsquo;s deep, inexpressive assent to his
+      interest in him. &ldquo;Here is an uncommonly fine thing,&rdquo; he said to himself:
+      &ldquo;a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship does the thing
+      that love alone generally has the credit of&mdash;knocks the bottom out of
+      pride!&rdquo; His reflective judgment of Roderick, as time went on, had indulged
+      in a great many irrepressible vagaries; but his affection, his sense of
+      something in his companion&rsquo;s whole personality that overmastered his heart
+      and beguiled his imagination, had never for an instant faltered. He
+      listened to Roderick&rsquo;s last words, and then he smiled as he rarely smiled&mdash;with
+      bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t at all like your telling me I am too zealous,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I had
+      not been zealous, I should never have cared a fig for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick flushed deeply, and thrust his modeling tool up to the handle
+      into the clay. &ldquo;Say it outright! You have been a great fool to believe in
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I desire to say nothing of the kind, and you don&rsquo;t honestly believe I
+      do!&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;It seems to me I am really very good-natured even to
+      reply to such nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick sat down, crossed his arms, and fixed his eyes on the floor.
+      Rowland looked at him for some moments; it seemed to him that he had never
+      so clearly read his companion&rsquo;s strangely commingled character&mdash;his
+      strength and his weakness, his picturesque personal attractiveness and his
+      urgent egoism, his exalted ardor and his puerile petulance. It would have
+      made him almost sick, however, to think that, on the whole, Roderick was
+      not a generous fellow, and he was so far from having ceased to believe in
+      him that he felt just now, more than ever, that all this was but the
+      painful complexity of genius. Rowland, who had not a grain of genius
+      either to make one say he was an interested reasoner, or to enable one to
+      feel that he could afford a dangerous theory or two, adhered to his
+      conviction of the essential salubrity of genius. Suddenly he felt an
+      irresistible compassion for his companion; it seemed to him that his
+      beautiful faculty of production was a double-edged instrument, susceptible
+      of being dealt in back-handed blows at its possessor. Genius was
+      priceless, inspired, divine; but it was also, at its hours, capricious,
+      sinister, cruel; and men of genius, accordingly, were alternately very
+      enviable and very helpless. It was not the first time he had had a sense
+      of Roderick&rsquo;s standing helpless in the grasp of his temperament. It had
+      shaken him, as yet, but with a half good-humored wantonness; but,
+      henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle him more roughly. These were not
+      times, therefore, for a friend to have a short patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you err, you say, the fault &lsquo;s your own,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;It is
+      because your faults are your own that I care about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s voice, when he spoke with feeling, had an extraordinary amenity.
+      Roderick sat staring a moment longer at the floor, then he sprang up and
+      laid his hand affectionately on his friend&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;You are the best
+      man in the world,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I am a vile brute. Only,&rdquo; he added in a
+      moment, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t understand me!&rdquo; And he looked at him with eyes of such
+      radiant lucidity that one might have said (and Rowland did almost say so,
+      himself) that it was the fault of one&rsquo;s own grossness if one failed to
+      read to the bottom of that beautiful soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland smiled sadly. &ldquo;What is it now? Explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can&rsquo;t explain!&rdquo; cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work.
+      &ldquo;I have only one way of expressing my deepest feelings&mdash;it &lsquo;s this!&rdquo;
+       And he swung his tool. He stood looking at the half-wrought clay for a
+      moment, and then flung the instrument down. &ldquo;And even this half the time
+      plays me false!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt that his irritation had not subsided, and he himself had no
+      taste for saying disagreeable things. Nevertheless he saw no sufficient
+      reason to forbear uttering the words he had had on his conscience from the
+      beginning. &ldquo;We must do what we can and be thankful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And let me
+      assure you of this&mdash;that it won&rsquo;t help you to become entangled with
+      Miss Light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick pressed his hand to his forehead with vehemence and then shook it
+      in the air, despairingly; a gesture that had become frequent with him
+      since he had been in Italy. &ldquo;No, no, it &lsquo;s no use; you don&rsquo;t understand
+      me! But I don&rsquo;t blame you. You can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it will help you, then?&rdquo; said Rowland, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that when you expect a man to produce beautiful and wonderful
+      works of art, you ought to allow him a certain freedom of action, you
+      ought to give him a long rope, you ought to let him follow his fancy and
+      look for his material wherever he thinks he may find it! A mother can&rsquo;t
+      nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist can&rsquo;t bring
+      his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You demand of
+      us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the imagination. In
+      labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in life we must be
+      mere machines. It won&rsquo;t do. When you have got an artist to deal with, you
+      must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don&rsquo;t say they are
+      pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with; I don&rsquo;t say they
+      satisfy themselves any better than other people. I only say that if you
+      want them to produce, you must let them conceive. If you want a bird to
+      sing, you must not cover up its cage. Shoot them, the poor devils, drown
+      them, exterminate them, if you will, in the interest of public morality;
+      it may be morality would gain&mdash;I dare say it would! But if you suffer
+      them to live, let them live on their own terms and according to their own
+      inexorable needs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland burst out laughing. &ldquo;I have no wish whatever either to shoot you
+      or to drown you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why launch such a tirade against a warning
+      offered you altogether in the interest of your freest development? Do you
+      really mean that you have an inexorable need of embarking on a flirtation
+      with Miss Light?&mdash;a flirtation as to the felicity of which there may
+      be differences of opinion, but which cannot at best, under the
+      circumstances, be called innocent. Your last summer&rsquo;s adventures were more
+      so! As for the terms on which you are to live, I had an idea you had
+      arranged them otherwise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have arranged nothing&mdash;thank God! I don&rsquo;t pretend to arrange. I am
+      young and ardent and inquisitive, and I admire Miss Light. That &lsquo;s enough.
+      I shall go as far as admiration leads me. I am not afraid. Your genuine
+      artist may be sometimes half a madman, but he &lsquo;s not a coward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose that in your speculation you should come to grief, not only
+      sentimentally but artistically?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come what come will! If I &lsquo;m to fizzle out, the sooner I know it the
+      better. Sometimes I half suspect it. But let me at least go out and
+      reconnoitre for the enemy, and not sit here waiting for him, cudgeling my
+      brains for ideas that won&rsquo;t come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Do what he would, Rowland could not think of Roderick&rsquo;s theory of
+      unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case under
+      discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion. But he saw it was vain
+      to combat longer, for inclination was powerfully on Roderick&rsquo;s side. He
+      laid his hand on Roderick&rsquo;s shoulder, looked at him a moment with troubled
+      eyes, then shook his head mournfully and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t work any more,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;You have upset me! I &lsquo;ll go and
+      stroll on the Pincian.&rdquo; And he tossed aside his working-jacket and
+      prepared himself for the street. As he was arranging his cravat before the
+      glass, something occurred to him which made him thoughtful. He stopped a
+      few moments afterward, as they were going out, with his hand on the
+      door-knob. &ldquo;You did, from your own point of view, an indiscreet thing,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;to tell Miss Light of my engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland looked at him with a glance which was partly an interrogation, but
+      partly, also, an admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she &lsquo;s the coquette you say,&rdquo; Roderick added, &ldquo;you have given her a
+      reason the more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that &lsquo;s the girl you propose to devote yourself to?&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t say it, mind! I only say that she &lsquo;s the most interesting
+      creature in the world! The next time you mean to render me a service, pray
+      give me notice beforehand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was perfectly characteristic of Roderick that, a fortnight later, he
+      should have let his friend know that he depended upon him for society at
+      Frascati, as freely as if no irritating topic had ever been discussed
+      between them. Rowland thought him generous, and he had at any rate a
+      liberal faculty of forgetting that he had given you any reason to be
+      displeased with him. It was equally characteristic of Rowland that he
+      complied with his friend&rsquo;s summons without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. His
+      cousin Cecilia had once told him that he was the dupe of his intense
+      benevolence. She put the case with too little favor, or too much, as the
+      reader chooses; it is certain, at least, that he had a constitutional
+      tendency towards magnanimous interpretations. Nothing happened, however,
+      to suggest to him that he was deluded in thinking that Roderick&rsquo;s
+      secondary impulses were wiser than his primary ones, and that the rounded
+      total of his nature had a harmony perfectly attuned to the most amiable of
+      its brilliant parts. Roderick&rsquo;s humor, for the time, was pitched in a
+      minor key; he was lazy, listless, and melancholy, but he had never been
+      more friendly and kindly and appealingly submissive. Winter had begun, by
+      the calendar, but the weather was divinely mild, and the two young men
+      took long slow strolls on the hills and lounged away the mornings in the
+      villas. The villas at Frascati are delicious places, and replete with
+      romantic suggestiveness. Roderick, as he had said, was meditating, and if
+      a masterpiece was to come of his meditations, Rowland was perfectly
+      willing to bear him company and coax along the process. But Roderick let
+      him know from the first that he was in a miserably sterile mood, and,
+      cudgel his brains as he would, could think of nothing that would serve for
+      the statue he was to make for Mr. Leavenworth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is worse out here than in Rome,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for here I am face to face
+      with the dead blank of my mind! There I could n&rsquo;t think of anything
+      either, but there I found things to make me forget that I needed to.&rdquo; This
+      was as frank an allusion to Christina Light as could have been expected
+      under the circumstances; it seemed, indeed, to Rowland surprisingly frank,
+      and a pregnant example of his companion&rsquo;s often strangely irresponsible
+      way of looking at harmful facts. Roderick was silent sometimes for hours,
+      with a puzzled look on his face and a constant fold between his even
+      eyebrows; at other times he talked unceasingly, with a slow, idle,
+      half-nonsensical drawl. Rowland was half a dozen times on the point of
+      asking him what was the matter with him; he was afraid he was going to be
+      ill. Roderick had taken a great fancy to the Villa Mondragone, and used to
+      declaim fantastic compliments to it as they strolled in the winter
+      sunshine on the great terrace which looks toward Tivoli and the iridescent
+      Sabine mountains. He carried his volume of Ariosto in his pocket, and took
+      it out every now and then and spouted half a dozen stanzas to his
+      companion. He was, as a general thing, very little of a reader; but at
+      intervals he would take a fancy to one of the classics and peruse it for a
+      month in disjointed scraps. He had picked up Italian without study, and
+      had a wonderfully sympathetic accent, though in reading aloud he ruined
+      the sense of half the lines he rolled off so sonorously. Rowland, who
+      pronounced badly but understood everything, once said to him that Ariosto
+      was not the poet for a man of his craft; a sculptor should make a
+      companion of Dante. So he lent him the Inferno, which he had brought with
+      him, and advised him to look into it. Roderick took it with some
+      eagerness; perhaps it would brighten his wits. He returned it the next day
+      with disgust; he had found it intolerably depressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sculptor should model as Dante writes&mdash;you &lsquo;re right there,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;But when his genius is in eclipse, Dante is a dreadfully smoky
+      lamp. By what perversity of fate,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;has it come about that I
+      am a sculptor at all? A sculptor is such a confoundedly special genius;
+      there are so few subjects he can treat, so few things in life that bear
+      upon his work, so few moods in which he himself is inclined to it.&rdquo; (It
+      may be noted that Rowland had heard him a dozen times affirm the flat
+      reverse of all this.) &ldquo;If I had only been a painter&mdash;a little quiet,
+      docile, matter-of-fact painter, like our friend Singleton&mdash;I should
+      only have to open my Ariosto here to find a subject, to find color and
+      attitudes, stuffs and composition; I should only have to look up from the
+      page at that mouldy old fountain against the blue sky, at that cypress
+      alley wandering away like a procession of priests in couples, at the crags
+      and hollows of the Sabine hills, to find myself grasping my brush. Best of
+      all would be to be Ariosto himself, or one of his brotherhood. Then
+      everything in nature would give you a hint, and every form of beauty be
+      part of your stock. You would n&rsquo;t have to look at things only to say,&mdash;with
+      tears of rage half the time,&mdash;&lsquo;Oh, yes, it &lsquo;s wonderfully pretty, but
+      what the deuce can I do with it?&rsquo; But a sculptor, now! That &lsquo;s a pretty
+      trade for a fellow who has got his living to make and yet is so damnably
+      constituted that he can&rsquo;t work to order, and considers that,
+      aesthetically, clock ornaments don&rsquo;t pay! You can&rsquo;t model the serge-coated
+      cypresses, nor those mouldering old Tritons and all the sunny sadness of
+      that dried-up fountain; you can&rsquo;t put the light into marble&mdash;the
+      lovely, caressing, consenting Italian light that you get so much of for
+      nothing. Say that a dozen times in his life a man has a complete
+      sculpturesque vision&mdash;a vision in which the imagination recognizes a
+      subject and the subject kindles the imagination. It is a remunerative rate
+      of work, and the intervals are comfortable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, as the two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed grass at
+      the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa Mondragone, Roderick
+      delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious speculations as to the
+      possible mischances of one&rsquo;s genius. &ldquo;What if the watch should run down,&rdquo;
+       he asked, &ldquo;and you should lose the key? What if you should wake up some
+      morning and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped? Such things
+      have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have had to grin and
+      bear it. The whole matter of genius is a mystery. It bloweth where it
+      listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism. If it gets out of order we
+      can&rsquo;t mend it; if it breaks down altogether we can&rsquo;t set it going again.
+      We must let it choose its own pace, and hold our breath lest it should
+      lose its balance. It &lsquo;s dealt out in different doses, in big cups and
+      little, and when you have consumed your portion it &lsquo;s as naif to ask for
+      more as it was for Oliver Twist to ask for more porridge. Lucky for you if
+      you &lsquo;ve got one of the big cups; we drink them down in the dark, and we
+      can&rsquo;t tell their size until we tip them up and hear the last gurgle. Those
+      of some men last for life; those of others for a couple of years. Nay,
+      what are you smiling at so damnably?&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;Nothing is more common
+      than for an artist who has set out on his journey on a high-stepping horse
+      to find himself all of a sudden dismounted and invited to go his way on
+      foot. You can number them by the thousand&mdash;the people of two or three
+      successes; the poor fellows whose candle burnt out in a night. Some of
+      them groped their way along without it, some of them gave themselves up
+      for blind and sat down by the wayside to beg. Who shall say that I &lsquo;m not
+      one of these? Who shall assure me that my credit is for an unlimited sum?
+      Nothing proves it, and I never claimed it; or if I did, I did so in the
+      mere boyish joy of shaking off the dust of Northampton. If you believed
+      so, my dear fellow, you did so at your own risk! What am I, what are the
+      best of us, but an experiment? Do I succeed&mdash;do I fail? It does n&rsquo;t
+      depend on me. I &lsquo;m prepared for failure. It won&rsquo;t be a disappointment,
+      simply because I shan&rsquo;t survive it. The end of my work shall be the end of
+      my life. When I have played my last card, I shall cease to care for the
+      game. I &lsquo;m not making vulgar threats of suicide; for destiny, I trust,
+      won&rsquo;t add insult to injury by putting me to that abominable trouble. But I
+      have a conviction that if the hour strikes here,&rdquo; and he tapped his
+      forehead, &ldquo;I shall disappear, dissolve, be carried off in a cloud! For the
+      past ten days I have had the vision of some such fate perpetually swimming
+      before my eyes. My mind is like a dead calm in the tropics, and my
+      imagination as motionless as the phantom ship in the Ancient Mariner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland listened to this outbreak, as he often had occasion to listen to
+      Roderick&rsquo;s heated monologues, with a number of mental restrictions. Both
+      in gravity and in gayety he said more than he meant, and you did him
+      simple justice if you privately concluded that neither the glow of purpose
+      nor the chill of despair was of so intense a character as his florid
+      diction implied. The moods of an artist, his exaltations and depressions,
+      Rowland had often said to himself, were like the pen-flourishes a
+      writing-master makes in the air when he begins to set his copy. He may
+      bespatter you with ink, he may hit you in the eye, but he writes a
+      magnificent hand. It was nevertheless true that at present poor Roderick
+      gave unprecedented tokens of moral stagnation, and as for genius being
+      held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was at a loss to
+      see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him. He sighed to
+      himself, and wished that his companion had a trifle more of little Sam
+      Singleton&rsquo;s evenness of impulse. But then, was Singleton a man of genius?
+      He answered that such reflections seemed to him unprofitable, not to say
+      morbid; that the proof of the pudding was in the eating; that he did n&rsquo;t
+      know about bringing a genius that had palpably spent its last breath back
+      to life again, but that he was satisfied that vigorous effort was a cure
+      for a great many ills that seemed far gone. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t heed your mood,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;and don&rsquo;t believe there is any calm so dead that your own lungs
+      can&rsquo;t ruffle it with a breeze. If you have work to do, don&rsquo;t wait to feel
+      like it; set to work and you will feel like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set to work and produce abortions!&rdquo; cried Roderick with ire. &ldquo;Preach that
+      to others. Production with me must be either pleasure or nothing. As I
+      said just now, I must either stay in the saddle or not go at all. I won&rsquo;t
+      do second-rate work; I can&rsquo;t if I would. I have no cleverness, apart from
+      inspiration. I am not a Gloriani! You are right,&rdquo; he added after a while;
+      &ldquo;this is unprofitable talk, and it makes my head ache. I shall take a nap
+      and see if I can dream of a bright idea or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his face upward to the parasol of the great pine, closed his
+      eyes, and in a short time forgot his sombre fancies. January though it
+      was, the mild stillness seemed to vibrate with faint midsummer sounds.
+      Rowland sat listening to them and wishing that, for the sake of his own
+      felicity, Roderick&rsquo;s temper were graced with a certain absent ductility.
+      He was brilliant, but was he, like many brilliant things, brittle?
+      Suddenly, to his musing sense, the soft atmospheric hum was overscored
+      with distincter sounds. He heard voices beyond a mass of shrubbery, at the
+      turn of a neighboring path. In a moment one of them began to seem
+      familiar, and an instant later a large white poodle emerged into view. He
+      was slowly followed by his mistress. Miss Light paused a moment on seeing
+      Rowland and his companion; but, though the former perceived that he was
+      recognized, she made no bow. Presently she walked directly toward him. He
+      rose and was on the point of waking Roderick, but she laid her finger on
+      her lips and motioned him to forbear. She stood a moment looking at
+      Roderick&rsquo;s handsome slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What delicious oblivion!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Happy man! Stenterello&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      she pointed to his face&mdash;&ldquo;wake him up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poodle extended a long pink tongue and began to lick Roderick&rsquo;s cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; asked Rowland, &ldquo;if he is happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I want companions in misery! Besides, I want to show off my dog.&rdquo;
+       Roderick roused himself, sat up, and stared. By this time Mrs. Light had
+      approached, walking with a gentleman on each side of her. One of these was
+      the Cavaliere Giacosa; the other was Prince Casamassima. &ldquo;I should have
+      liked to lie down on the grass and go to sleep,&rdquo; Christina added. &ldquo;But it
+      would have been unheard of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not quite,&rdquo; said the Prince, in English, with a tone of great
+      precision. &ldquo;There was already a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charming!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light. &ldquo;Do you hear that, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the prince says a brilliant thing, it would be a pity to lose it,&rdquo;
+       said the young girl. &ldquo;Your servant, sir!&rdquo; And she smiled at him with a
+      grace that might have reassured him, if he had thought her compliment
+      ambiguous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick meanwhile had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to exclaim
+      on the oddity of their meeting and to explain that the day was so lovely
+      that she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the country. And
+      who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr. Hudson sleeping
+      under a tree!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I beg your pardon; I was not sleeping,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know that Mr. Mallet is Mr. Hudson&rsquo;s sheep-dog?&rdquo; asked
+      Christina. &ldquo;He was mounting guard to keep away the wolves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To indifferent purpose, madame!&rdquo; said Rowland, indicating the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the way you spend your time?&rdquo; Christina demanded of Roderick. &ldquo;I
+      never yet happened to learn what men were doing when they supposed women
+      were not watching them but it was something vastly below their
+      reputation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When, pray,&rdquo; said Roderick, smoothing his ruffled locks, &ldquo;are women not
+      watching them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall give you something better to do, at any rate. How long have you
+      been here? It &lsquo;s an age since I have seen you. We consider you domiciled
+      here, and expect you to play host and entertain us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick said that he could offer them nothing but to show them the great
+      terrace, with its view; and ten minutes later the group was assembled
+      there. Mrs. Light was extravagant in her satisfaction; Christina looked
+      away at the Sabine mountains, in silence. The prince stood by, frowning at
+      the rapture of the elder lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is nothing,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;My word of honor. Have you seen the
+      terrace at San Gaetano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that terrace,&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Light, amorously. &ldquo;I suppose it is
+      magnificent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is four hundred feet long, and paved with marble. And the view is a
+      thousand times more beautiful than this. You see, far away, the blue, blue
+      sea and the little smoke of Vesuvio!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christina, love,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Light forthwith, &ldquo;the prince has a terrace
+      four hundred feet long, all paved with marble!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere gave a little cough and began to wipe his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stupendous!&rdquo; said Christina. &ldquo;To go from one end to the other, the prince
+      must have out his golden carriage.&rdquo; This was apparently an allusion to one
+      of the other items of the young man&rsquo;s grandeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always laugh at me,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;I know no more what to say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a sad smile and shook her head. &ldquo;No, no, dear
+      prince, I don&rsquo;t laugh at you. Heaven forbid! You are much too serious an
+      affair. I assure you I feel your importance. What did you inform us was
+      the value of the hereditary diamonds of the Princess Casamassima?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are laughing at me yet!&rdquo; said the poor young man, standing rigid
+      and pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does n&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; Christina went on. &ldquo;We have a note of it; mamma
+      writes all those things down in a little book!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you are laughed at, dear prince, at least it &lsquo;s in company,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Light, caressingly; and she took his arm, as if to resist his possible
+      displacement under the shock of her daughter&rsquo;s sarcasm. But the prince
+      looked heavy-eyed toward Rowland and Roderick, to whom the young girl was
+      turning, as if he had much rather his lot were cast with theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the villa inhabited?&rdquo; Christina asked, pointing to the vast melancholy
+      structure which rises above the terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not privately,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;It is occupied by a Jesuits&rsquo; college, for
+      little boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can women go in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid not.&rdquo; And Roderick began to laugh. &ldquo;Fancy the poor little
+      devils looking up from their Latin declensions and seeing Miss Light
+      standing there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see the poor little devils, with their rosy cheeks and
+      their long black gowns, and when they were pretty, I should n&rsquo;t scruple to
+      kiss them. But if I can&rsquo;t have that amusement I must have some other. We
+      must not stand planted on this enchanting terrace as if we were stakes
+      driven into the earth. We must dance, we must feast, we must do something
+      picturesque. Mamma has arranged, I believe, that we are to go back to
+      Frascati to lunch at the inn. I decree that we lunch here and send the
+      Cavaliere to the inn to get the provisions! He can take the carriage,
+      which is waiting below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Light carried out this undertaking with unfaltering ardor. The
+      Cavaliere was summoned, and he stook to receive her commands hat in hand,
+      with his eyes cast down, as if she had been a princess addressing her
+      major-domo. She, however, laid her hand with friendly grace upon his
+      button-hole, and called him a dear, good old Cavaliere, for being always
+      so willing. Her spirits had risen with the occasion, and she talked
+      irresistible nonsense. &ldquo;Bring the best they have,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;no matter if
+      it ruins us! And if the best is very bad, it will be all the more amusing.
+      I shall enjoy seeing Mr. Mallet try to swallow it for propriety&rsquo;s sake!
+      Mr. Hudson will say out like a man that it &lsquo;s horrible stuff, and that he
+      &lsquo;ll be choked first! Be sure you bring a dish of maccaroni; the prince
+      must have the diet of the Neapolitan nobility. But I leave all that to
+      you, my poor, dear Cavaliere; you know what &lsquo;s good! Only be sure, above
+      all, you bring a guitar. Mr. Mallet will play us a tune, I &lsquo;ll dance with
+      Mr. Hudson, and mamma will pair off with the prince, of whom she is so
+      fond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she concluded her recommendations, she patted her bland old
+      servitor caressingly on the shoulder. He looked askance at Rowland; his
+      little black eye glittered; it seemed to say, &ldquo;Did n&rsquo;t I tell you she was
+      a good girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere returned with zealous speed, accompanied by one of the
+      servants of the inn, laden with a basket containing the materials of a
+      rustic luncheon. The porter of the villa was easily induced to furnish a
+      table and half a dozen chairs, and the repast, when set forth, was
+      pronounced a perfect success; not so good as to fail of the proper
+      picturesqueness, nor yet so bad as to defeat the proper function of
+      repasts. Christina continued to display the most charming animation, and
+      compelled Rowland to reflect privately that, think what one might of her,
+      the harmonious gayety of a beautiful girl was the most beautiful sight in
+      nature. Her good-humor was contagious. Roderick, who an hour before had
+      been descanting on madness and suicide, commingled his laughter with hers
+      in ardent devotion; Prince Casamassima stroked his young moustache and
+      found a fine, cool smile for everything; his neighbor, Mrs. Light, who had
+      Rowland on the other side, made the friendliest confidences to each of the
+      young men, and the Cavaliere contributed to the general hilarity by the
+      solemnity of his attention to his plate. As for Rowland, the spirit of
+      kindly mirth prompted him to propose the health of this useful old
+      gentleman, as the effective author of their pleasure. A moment later he
+      wished he had held his tongue, for although the toast was drunk with
+      demonstrative good-will, the Cavaliere received it with various small
+      signs of eager self-effacement which suggested to Rowland that his
+      diminished gentility but half relished honors which had a flavor of
+      patronage. To perform punctiliously his mysterious duties toward the two
+      ladies, and to elude or to baffle observation on his own merits&mdash;this
+      seemed the Cavaliere&rsquo;s modest programme. Rowland perceived that Mrs.
+      Light, who was not always remarkable for tact, seemed to have divined his
+      humor on this point. She touched her glass to her lips, but offered him no
+      compliment and immediately gave another direction to the conversation. He
+      had brought no guitar, so that when the feast was over there was nothing
+      to hold the little group together. Christina wandered away with Roderick
+      to another part of the terrace; the prince, whose smile had vanished, sat
+      gnawing the head of his cane, near Mrs. Light, and Rowland strolled apart
+      with the Cavaliere, to whom he wished to address a friendly word in
+      compensation for the discomfort he had inflicted on his modesty. The
+      Cavaliere was a mine of information upon all Roman places and people; he
+      told Rowland a number of curious anecdotes about the old Villa Mondragone.
+      &ldquo;If history could always be taught in this fashion!&rdquo; thought Rowland. &ldquo;It
+      &lsquo;s the ideal&mdash;strolling up and down on the very spot commemorated,
+      hearing sympathetic anecdotes from deeply indigenous lips.&rdquo; At last, as
+      they passed, Rowland observed the mournful physiognomy of Prince
+      Casamassima, and, glancing toward the other end of the terrace, saw that
+      Roderick and Christina had disappeared from view. The young man was
+      sitting upright, in an attitude, apparently habitual, of ceremonious
+      rigidity; but his lower jaw had fallen and was propped up with his cane,
+      and his dull dark eye was fixed upon the angle of the villa which had just
+      eclipsed Miss Light and her companion. His features were grotesque and his
+      expression vacuous; but there was a lurking delicacy in his face which
+      seemed to tell you that nature had been making Casamassimas for a great
+      many centuries, and, though she adapted her mould to circumstances, had
+      learned to mix her material to an extraordinary fineness and to perform
+      the whole operation with extreme smoothness. The prince was stupid,
+      Rowland suspected, but he imagined he was amiable, and he saw that at any
+      rate he had the great quality of regarding himself in a thoroughly serious
+      light. Rowland touched his companion&rsquo;s arm and pointed to the melancholy
+      nobleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why in the world does he not go after her and insist on being noticed!&rdquo;
+       he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he &lsquo;s very proud!&rdquo; said the Cavaliere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s all very well, but a gentleman who cultivates a passion for that
+      young lady must be prepared to make sacrifices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks he has already made a great many. He comes of a very great
+      family&mdash;a race of princes who for six hundred years have married none
+      but the daughters of princes. But he is seriously in love, and he would
+      marry her to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she will not have him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she is very proud, too!&rdquo; The Cavaliere was silent a moment, as if he
+      were measuring the propriety of frankness. He seemed to have formed a high
+      opinion of Rowland&rsquo;s discretion, for he presently continued: &ldquo;It would be
+      a great match, for she brings him neither a name nor a fortune&mdash;nothing
+      but her beauty. But the signorina will receive no favors; I know her well!
+      She would rather have her beauty blasted than seem to care about the
+      marriage, and if she ever accepts the prince it will be only after he has
+      implored her on his knees!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she does care about it,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;and to bring him to his knees
+      she is working upon his jealousy by pretending to be interested in my
+      friend Hudson. If you said more, you would say that, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere&rsquo;s shrewdness exchanged a glance with Rowland&rsquo;s. &ldquo;By no
+      means. Miss Light is a singular girl; she has many romantic ideas. She
+      would be quite capable of interesting herself seriously in an interesting
+      young man, like your friend, and doing her utmost to discourage a splendid
+      suitor, like the prince. She would act sincerely and she would go very
+      far. But it would be unfortunate for the young man,&rdquo; he added, after a
+      pause, &ldquo;for at the last she would retreat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A singular girl, indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would accept the more brilliant parti. I can answer for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what would be her motive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would be forced. There would be circumstances.... I can&rsquo;t tell you
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this implies that the rejected suitor would also come back. He might
+      grow tired of waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this one is good! Look at him now.&rdquo; Rowland looked, and saw that the
+      prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was marching restlessly to and
+      fro between the villa and the parapet of the terrace. Every now and then
+      he looked at his watch. &ldquo;In this country, you know,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere,
+      &ldquo;a young lady never goes walking alone with a handsome young man. It seems
+      to him very strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must be very
+      much in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he will overlook it. He is far gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this exemplary lover, then; what is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Neapolitan; one of the oldest houses in Italy. He is a prince in your
+      English sense of the word, for he has a princely fortune. He is very
+      young; he is only just of age; he saw the signorina last winter in Naples.
+      He fell in love with her from the first, but his family interfered, and an
+      old uncle, an ecclesiastic, Monsignor B&mdash;&mdash;, hurried up to
+      Naples, seized him, and locked him up. Meantime he has passed his
+      majority, and he can dispose of himself. His relations are moving heaven
+      and earth to prevent his marrying Miss Light, and they have sent us word
+      that he forfeits his property if he takes his wife out of a certain line.
+      I have investigated the question minutely, and I find this is but a
+      fiction to frighten us. He is perfectly free; but the estates are such
+      that it is no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands. For Italy,
+      it is an extraordinary case of unincumbered property. The prince has been
+      an orphan from his third year; he has therefore had a long minority and
+      made no inroads upon his fortune. Besides, he is very prudent and orderly;
+      I am only afraid that some day he will pull the purse-strings too tight.
+      All these years his affairs have been in the hands of Monsignor B&mdash;&mdash;,
+      who has managed them to perfection&mdash;paid off mortagages, planted
+      forests, opened up mines. It is now a magnificent fortune; such a fortune
+      as, with his name, would justify the young man in pretending to any
+      alliance whatsoever. And he lays it all at the feet of that young girl who
+      is wandering in yonder boschetto with a penniless artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is certainly a phoenix of princes! The signora must be in a state of
+      bliss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave. &ldquo;The signora has a high esteem
+      for his character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His character, by the way,&rdquo; rejoined Rowland, with a smile; &ldquo;what sort of
+      a character is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Prince Casamassima is a veritable prince! He is a very good young
+      man. He is not brilliant, nor witty, but he &lsquo;ll not let himself be made a
+      fool of. He &lsquo;s very grave and very devout&mdash;though he does propose to
+      marry a Protestant. He will handle that point after marriage. He &lsquo;s as you
+      see him there: a young man without many ideas, but with a very firm grasp
+      of a single one&mdash;the conviction that Prince Casamassima is a very
+      great person, that he greatly honors any young lady by asking for her
+      hand, and that things are going very strangely when the young lady turns
+      her back upon him. The poor young man, I am sure, is profoundly perplexed.
+      But I whisper to him every day, &lsquo;Pazienza, Signor Principe!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you firmly believe,&rdquo; said Rowland, in conclusion, &ldquo;that Miss Light
+      will accept him just in time not to lose him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I count upon it. She would make too perfect a princess to miss her
+      destiny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you hold that nevertheless, in the mean while, in listening to, say,
+      my friend Hudson, she will have been acting in good faith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable
+      smile. &ldquo;Eh, dear signore, the Christina is very romantic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much so, you intimate, that she will eventually retract, in
+      consequence not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward
+      pressure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If everything else fails, there is that resource. But it is mysterious,
+      as you say, and you need n&rsquo;t try to guess it. You will never know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor signorina, then, will suffer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too much, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the poor young man! You maintain that there is nothing but
+      disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses his heart to
+      her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere hesitated. &ldquo;He had better,&rdquo; he said in a moment, &ldquo;go and
+      pursue his studies in Florence. There are very fine antiques in the
+      Uffizi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, to whom her restless protege had not
+      yet returned. &ldquo;That &lsquo;s right,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;sit down here; I have something
+      serious to say to you. I am going to talk to you as a friend. I want your
+      assistance. In fact, I demand it; it &lsquo;s your duty to render it. Look at
+      that unhappy young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;he seems unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy and
+      owns one of the greatest properties, and he is pining away with love for
+      my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the Cavaliere tells me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cavaliere should n&rsquo;t gossip,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light dryly. &ldquo;Such
+      information should come from me. The prince is pining, as I say; he &lsquo;s
+      consumed, he &lsquo;s devoured. It &lsquo;s a real Italian passion; I know what that
+      means!&rdquo; And the lady gave a speaking glance, which seemed to coquet for a
+      moment with retrospect. &ldquo;Meanwhile, if you please, my daughter is hiding
+      in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson. I could cry with rage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If things are so bad as that,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;it seems to me that you
+      ought to find nothing easier than to dispatch the Cavaliere to bring the
+      guilty couple back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never in the world! My hands are tied. Do you know what Christina would
+      do? She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business&mdash;Heaven
+      forgive her!&mdash;and send me word that, if she had a mind to, she would
+      walk in the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and
+      delivering such a message as that before the prince! Think of a girl
+      wantonly making light of such a chance as hers! He would marry her
+      to-morrow, at six o&rsquo;clock in the morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is certainly very sad,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That costs you little to say. If you had left your precious young meddler
+      to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a world of
+      distress!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;You came and
+      disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done my best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish, then, you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me a
+      favor. Take him to travel. Go to the East&mdash;go to Timbuctoo. Then,
+      when Christina is Princess Casamassima,&rdquo; Mrs. Light added in a moment, &ldquo;he
+      may come back if he chooses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she really care for him?&rdquo; Rowland asked, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thinks she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs
+      follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of them
+      don&rsquo;t last long; but this one may last long enough to give the prince a
+      chill. If that were to happen, I don&rsquo;t know what I should do! I should be
+      the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after all I &lsquo;ve
+      suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years blighted by a
+      caprice. For I can assure you, sir,&rdquo; Mrs. Light went on, &ldquo;that if my
+      daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the credit is mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious. He saw that the lady&rsquo;s
+      irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and he
+      assumed designedly the attitude of a zealous auditor. She began to retail
+      her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her
+      disappointments, in the cause of her daughter&rsquo;s matrimonial fortunes. It
+      was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince continued to
+      pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking the time
+      allowed for the young lady to come to her senses. Mrs. Light evidently, at
+      an early period, had gathered her maternal hopes into a sacred sheaf,
+      which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and treated like a sort
+      of fetish. They had been her religion; she had none other, and she
+      performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the light of day. The
+      poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated, so thrust in and out
+      of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so dressed and undressed, so
+      mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by this time much of its early
+      freshness, and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity. But it
+      was still brought forth in moments of trouble to have its tinseled
+      petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar. Rowland observed that
+      Mrs. Light had a genuine maternal conscience; she considered that she had
+      been performing a sacred duty in bringing up Christina to set her cap for
+      a prince, and when the future looked dark, she found consolation in
+      thinking that destiny could never have the heart to deal a blow at so
+      deserving a person. This conscience upside down presented to Rowland&rsquo;s
+      fancy a real physical image; he was on the point, half a dozen times, of
+      bursting out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether you believe in presentiments,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light, &ldquo;and
+      I don&rsquo;t care! I have had one for the last fifteen years. People have
+      laughed at it, but they have n&rsquo;t laughed me out of it. It has been
+      everything to me. I could n&rsquo;t have lived without it. One must believe in
+      something! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old. I
+      remember the day and the place, as if it were yesterday. She was a very
+      ugly baby; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her, and
+      I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her. She had an Italian
+      nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow up pretty.
+      I could n&rsquo;t believe her; I used to contradict her, and we were forever
+      squabbling. I was just a little silly in those days&mdash;surely I may say
+      it now&mdash;and I was very fond of being amused. If my daughter was ugly,
+      it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of amusement.
+      People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl; if it was so,
+      I &lsquo;ve made up for it since. One day I went to drive on the Pincio in very
+      low spirits. A trusted friend had greatly disappointed me. While I was
+      there he passed me in a carriage, driving with a horrible woman who had
+      made trouble between us. I got out of my carriage to walk about, and at
+      last sat down on a bench. I can show you the spot at this hour. While I
+      sat there a child came wandering along the path&mdash;a little girl of
+      four or five, very fantastically dressed in crimson and orange. She
+      stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her queer little
+      dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one of these
+      contadine. At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself, &lsquo;Bless me,
+      what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a magnificent
+      head of hair! If my poor Christina were only like that!&rsquo; The child turned
+      away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me. All of a sudden I
+      gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms, and covered it with
+      kisses. It was Christina, my own precious child, so disguised by the
+      ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in making for her,
+      that her own mother had not recognized her. She knew me, but she said
+      afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked so angry. Of
+      course my face was sad. I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home
+      post-haste, pulled off her rags, and, as I may say, wrapped her in cotton.
+      I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature in ten millions,
+      she was to be a beauty of beauties, a priceless treasure! Every day, after
+      that, the certainty grew. From that time I lived only for my daughter. I
+      watched her, I caressed her from morning till night, I worshipped her. I
+      went to see doctors about her, I took every sort of advice. I was
+      determined she should be perfection. The things that have been done for
+      that girl, sir&mdash;you would n&rsquo;t believe them; they would make you
+      smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told that she must have a bath
+      every morning of molten pearls, I would have found means to give it to
+      her. She never raised a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but
+      perfumes, she walked upon velvet. She never was out of my sight, and from
+      that day to this I have never said a sharp word to her. By the time she
+      was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel, and so noticed wherever
+      we went that I had to make her wear a veil, like a woman of twenty. Her
+      hair reached down to her feet; her hands were the hands of a princess.
+      Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful, and that she had
+      only to play her cards. She had masters, professors, every educational
+      advantage. They told me she was a little prodigy. She speaks French,
+      Italian, German, better than most natives. She has a wonderful genius for
+      music, and might make her fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her
+      otherwise! I traveled all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel.
+      The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child&rsquo;s party at
+      Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let
+      him have her educated for the ballet. I said, &lsquo;No, I thank you, sir; she
+      is meant to be something finer than a princesse de theatre.&rsquo; I had a
+      passionate belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she
+      might be a princess out and out. It has never left me till this hour, and
+      I can assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments.
+      Financial, some of them; I don&rsquo;t mind confessing it! I have raised money
+      on that girl&rsquo;s face! I &lsquo;ve taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her
+      veil, and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe! She, of
+      course, was too young to understand me. And yet, as a child, you would
+      have said she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she
+      had the manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess. She would
+      have nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one
+      of her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
+      At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent
+      for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played at
+      kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I have
+      gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a sign&mdash;a
+      symbol&mdash;a portent. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n&rsquo;t such
+      things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and does n&rsquo;t
+      history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish girl at a
+      second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!... The Empress
+      certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray? I &lsquo;ve dreamt
+      of it, sometimes every night for a month. I won&rsquo;t tell you I have been to
+      consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers; you &lsquo;ll call me
+      an old imbecile. Imbecile if you please! I have refused magnificent offers
+      because I believed that somehow or other&mdash;if wars and revolutions
+      were needed to bring it about&mdash;we should have nothing less than that.
+      There might be another coup d&rsquo;etat somewhere, and another brilliant young
+      sovereign looking out for a wife! At last, however,&rdquo; Mrs. Light proceeded
+      with incomparable gravity, &ldquo;since the overturning of the poor king of
+      Naples and that charming queen, and the expulsion of all those dear little
+      old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the dreadful radical talk that is
+      going on all over the world, it has come to seem to me that with Christina
+      in such a position I should be really very nervous. Even in such a
+      position she would hold her head very high, and if anything should happen
+      to her, she would make no concessions to the popular fury. The best thing,
+      if one is prudent, seems to be a nobleman of the highest possible rank,
+      short of belonging to a reigning stock. There you see one striding up and
+      down, looking at his watch, and counting the minutes till my daughter
+      reappears!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland listened to all this with a huge compassion for the heroine of the
+      tale. What an education, what a history, what a school of character and of
+      morals! He looked at the prince and wondered whether he too had heard Mrs.
+      Light&rsquo;s story. If he had he was a brave man. &ldquo;I certainly hope you &lsquo;ll
+      keep him,&rdquo; he said to Mrs. Light. &ldquo;You have played a dangerous game with
+      your daughter; it would be a pity not to win. But there is hope for you
+      yet; here she comes at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her
+      companion with the same indifferent tread with which she had departed.
+      Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek which she
+      had not carried away with her, and there was certainly a light in
+      Roderick&rsquo;s eyes which he had not seen there for a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless my soul, how they are all looking at us!&rdquo; she cried, as they
+      advanced. &ldquo;One would think we were prisoners of the Inquisition!&rdquo; And she
+      paused and glanced from the prince to her mother, and from Rowland to the
+      Cavaliere, and then threw back her head and burst into far-ringing
+      laughter. &ldquo;What is it, pray? Have I been very improper? Am I ruined
+      forever? Dear prince, you are looking at me as if I had committed the
+      unpardonable sin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I myself,&rdquo; said the prince, &ldquo;would never have ventured to ask you to walk
+      with me alone in the country for an hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more fool you, dear prince, as the vulgar say! Our walk has been
+      charming. I hope you, on your side, have enjoyed each other&rsquo;s society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear daughter,&rdquo; said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined
+      son-in-law, &ldquo;I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach
+      home. We will go back to the carriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something serious! Decidedly, it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson, stand
+      firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring
+      previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr. Mallet,
+      I see also,&rdquo; Christina added, &ldquo;has something serious to say to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his lately-stirred pity
+      in his eyes. &ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it must be for some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am at your service. I see our good-humor is gone. And I only wanted to
+      be amiable! It is very discouraging. Cavaliere, you, only, look as if you
+      had a little of the milk of human kindness left; from your venerable
+      visage, at least; there is no telling what you think. Give me your arm and
+      take me away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in the
+      grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends
+      farewell. Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes; a
+      manoeuvre for which Rowland imagined the prince was grateful, as it
+      enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his attitude of
+      distinguished disapproval. Rowland found himself aroused from sleep early
+      the next morning, to see Roderick standing before him, dressed for
+      departure, with his bag in his hand. &ldquo;I am off,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am back to
+      work. I have an idea. I must strike while the iron &lsquo;s hot! Farewell!&rdquo; And
+      he departed by the first train. Rowland went alone by the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. Saint Cecilia&rsquo;s
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rowland went often to the Coliseum; he never wearied of it. One morning,
+      about a month after his return from Frascati, as he was strolling across
+      the vast arena, he observed a young woman seated on one of the fragments
+      of stone which are ranged along the line of the ancient parapet. It seemed
+      to him that he had seen her before, but he was unable to localize her
+      face. Passing her again, he perceived that one of the little red-legged
+      French soldiers at that time on guard there had approached her and was
+      gallantly making himself agreeable. She smiled brilliantly, and Rowland
+      recognized the smile (it had always pleased him) of a certain comely
+      Assunta, who sometimes opened the door for Mrs. Light&rsquo;s visitors. He
+      wondered what she was doing alone in the Coliseum, and conjectured that
+      Assunta had admirers as well as her young mistress, but that, being
+      without the same domiciliary conveniencies, she was using this massive
+      heritage of her Latin ancestors as a boudoir. In other words, she had an
+      appointment with her lover, who had better, from present appearances, be
+      punctual. It was a long time since Rowland had ascended to the ruinous
+      upper tiers of the great circus, and, as the day was radiant and the
+      distant views promised to be particularly clear, he determined to give
+      himself the pleasure. The custodian unlocked the great wooden wicket, and
+      he climbed through the winding shafts, where the eager Roman crowds had
+      billowed and trampled, not pausing till he reached the highest accessible
+      point of the ruin. The views were as fine as he had supposed; the lights
+      on the Sabine Mountains had never been more lovely. He gazed to his
+      satisfaction and retraced his steps. In a moment he paused again on an
+      abutment somewhat lower, from which the glance dropped dizzily into the
+      interior. There are chance anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions
+      of the Coliseum which offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an
+      Alpine cliff. In those days a multitude of delicate flowers and sprays of
+      wild herbage had found a friendly soil in the hoary crevices, and they
+      bloomed and nodded amid the antique masonry as freely as they would have
+      done in the virgin rock. Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound
+      of voices rising up from below. He had but to step slightly forward to
+      find himself overlooking two persons who had seated themselves on a narrow
+      ledge, in a sunny corner. They had apparently had an eye to extreme
+      privacy, but they had not observed that their position was commanded by
+      Rowland&rsquo;s stand-point. One of these airy adventurers was a lady, thickly
+      veiled, so that, even if he had not been standing directly above her,
+      Rowland could not have seen her face. The other was a young man, whose
+      face was also invisible, but who, as Rowland stood there, gave a toss of
+      his clustering locks which was equivalent to the signature&mdash;Roderick
+      Hudson. A moment&rsquo;s reflection, hereupon, satisfied him of the identity of
+      the lady. He had been unjust to poor Assunta, sitting patient in the
+      gloomy arena; she had not come on her own errand. Rowland&rsquo;s discoveries
+      made him hesitate. Should he retire as noiselessly as possible, or should
+      he call out a friendly good morning? While he was debating the question,
+      he found himself distinctly hearing his friends&rsquo; words. They were of such
+      a nature as to make him unwilling to retreat, and yet to make it awkward
+      to be discovered in a position where it would be apparent that he had
+      heard them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If what you say is true,&rdquo; said Christina, with her usual soft
+      deliberateness&mdash;it made her words rise with peculiar distinctness to
+      Rowland&rsquo;s ear&mdash;&ldquo;you are simply weak. I am sorry! I hoped&mdash;I
+      really believed&mdash;you were not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am not weak,&rdquo; answered Roderick, with vehemence; &ldquo;I maintain that I
+      am not weak! I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can&rsquo;t help that. Weakness is
+      a man&rsquo;s own fault!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incomplete, then!&rdquo; said Christina, with a laugh. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s the same thing,
+      so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement. Is it written, then,
+      that I shall really never know what I have so often dreamed of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you dreamed of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man whom I can perfectly respect!&rdquo; cried the young girl, with a sudden
+      flame. &ldquo;A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire. I meet one, as
+      I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe to be cast in a
+      larger mould than most of the vile human breed, to be large in character,
+      great in talent, strong in will! In such a man as that, I say, one&rsquo;s weary
+      imagination at last may rest; or it may wander if it will, yet never need
+      to wander far from the deeps where one&rsquo;s heart is anchored. When I first
+      knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck me. I observed you, as women
+      observe, and I fancied you had the sacred fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before heaven, I believe I have!&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but so little! It flickers and trembles and sputters; it goes out,
+      you tell me, for whole weeks together. From your own account, it &lsquo;s ten to
+      one that in the long run you &lsquo;re a failure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them they
+      make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to
+      refute you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the man who is strong with what I call strength,&rdquo; Christina replied,
+      &ldquo;would neither rise nor fall by anything I could say! I am a poor, weak
+      woman; I have no strength myself, and I can give no strength. I am a
+      miserable medley of vanity and folly. I am silly, I am ignorant, I am
+      affected, I am false. I am the fruit of a horrible education, sown on a
+      worthless soil. I am all that, and yet I believe I have one merit! I
+      should know a great character when I saw it, and I should delight in it
+      with a generosity which would do something toward the remission of my
+      sins. For a man who should really give me a certain feeling&mdash;which I
+      have never had, but which I should know when it came&mdash;I would send
+      Prince Casamassima and his millions to perdition. I don&rsquo;t know what you
+      think of me for saying all this; I suppose we have not climbed up here
+      under the skies to play propriety. Why have you been at such pains to
+      assure me, after all, that you are a little man and not a great one, a
+      weak one and not a strong? I innocently imagined that your eyes declared
+      you were strong. But your voice condemns you; I always wondered at it; it
+      &lsquo;s not the voice of a conqueror!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me something to conquer,&rdquo; cried Roderick, &ldquo;and when I say that I
+      thank you from my soul, my voice, whatever you think of it, shall speak
+      the truth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina for a moment said nothing. Rowland was too interested to think
+      of moving. &ldquo;You pretend to such devotion,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;and yet I am sure
+      you have never really chosen between me and that person in America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do me the favor not to speak of her,&rdquo; said Roderick, imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? I say no ill of her, and I think all kinds of good. I am certain
+      she is a far better girl than I, and far more likely to make you happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is happiness, this present, palpable moment,&rdquo; said Roderick; &ldquo;though
+      you have such a genius for saying the things that torture me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s greater happiness than you deserve, then! You have never chosen, I
+      say; you have been afraid to choose. You have never really faced the fact
+      that you are false, that you have broken your faith. You have never looked
+      at it and seen that it was hideous, and yet said, &lsquo;No matter, I &lsquo;ll brave
+      the penalty, I &lsquo;ll bear the shame!&rsquo; You have closed your eyes; you have
+      tried to stifle remembrance, to persuade yourself that you were not
+      behaving as badly as you seemed to be, and there would be some way, after
+      all, of compassing bliss and yet escaping trouble. You have faltered and
+      drifted, you have gone on from accident to accident, and I am sure that at
+      this present moment you can&rsquo;t tell what it is you really desire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick was sitting with his knees drawn up and bent, and his hands
+      clapsed around his legs. He bent his head and rested his forehead on his
+      knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina went on with a sort of infernal calmness: &ldquo;I believe that,
+      really, you don&rsquo;t greatly care for your friend in America any more than
+      you do for me. You are one of the men who care only for themselves and for
+      what they can make of themselves. That &lsquo;s very well when they can make
+      something great, and I could interest myself in a man of extraordinary
+      power who should wish to turn all his passions to account. But if the
+      power should turn out to be, after all, rather ordinary? Fancy feeling
+      one&rsquo;s self ground in the mill of a third-rate talent! If you have doubts
+      about yourself, I can&rsquo;t reassure you; I have too many doubts myself, about
+      everything in this weary world. You have gone up like a rocket, in your
+      profession, they tell me; are you going to come down like the stick? I
+      don&rsquo;t pretend to know; I repeat frankly what I have said before&mdash;that
+      all modern sculpture seems to me weak, and that the only things I care for
+      are some of the most battered of the antiques of the Vatican. No, no, I
+      can&rsquo;t reassure you; and when you tell me&mdash;with a confidence in my
+      discretion of which, certainly, I am duly sensible&mdash;that at times you
+      feel terribly small, why, I can only answer, &lsquo;Ah, then, my poor friend, I
+      am afraid you are small.&rsquo; The language I should like to hear, from a
+      certain person, would be the language of absolute decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick raised his head, but he said nothing; he seemed to be exchanging
+      a long glance with his companion. The result of it was to make him fling
+      himself back with an inarticulate murmur. Rowland, admonished by the
+      silence, was on the point of turning away, but he was arrested by a
+      gesture of the young girl. She pointed for a moment into the blue air.
+      Roderick followed the direction of her gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that little flower we see outlined against that dark niche,&rdquo; she
+      asked, &ldquo;as intensely blue as it looks through my veil?&rdquo; She spoke
+      apparently with the amiable design of directing the conversation into a
+      less painful channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, from where he stood, could see the flower she meant&mdash;a
+      delicate plant of radiant hue, which sprouted from the top of an immense
+      fragment of wall some twenty feet from Christina&rsquo;s place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick turned his head and looked at it without answering. At last,
+      glancing round, &ldquo;Put up your veil!&rdquo; he said. Christina complied. &ldquo;Does it
+      look as blue now?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what a lovely color!&rdquo; she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to have it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to have it?&rdquo; he repeated in a ringing voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look as if you would eat me up,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s harmless if I
+      say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower. It was
+      separated from the ledge on which he stood by a rugged surface of vertical
+      wall, which dropped straight into the dusky vaults behind the arena.
+      Suddenly he took off his hat and flung it behind him. Christina then
+      sprang to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will bring it you,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seized his arm. &ldquo;Are you crazy? Do you mean to kill yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not kill myself. Sit down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me. Not till you do!&rdquo; And she grasped his arm with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture to her former
+      place. &ldquo;Go there!&rdquo; he cried fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can never, never!&rdquo; she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands. &ldquo;I
+      implore you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland had
+      never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which awakened the
+      echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, &ldquo;Sit down!&rdquo; She hesitated a moment
+      and then she dropped on the ground and buried her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more. He saw Roderick clasp in his
+      left arm the jagged corner of the vertical partition along which he
+      proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for a
+      resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the
+      possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil.
+      The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains
+      apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had
+      long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets
+      and grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances on a level
+      with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed. The relics of the
+      cornice were utterly worthless as a support. Rowland had observed this,
+      and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated. If the thing were possible, he
+      felt a sudden admiring glee at the thought of Roderick&rsquo;s doing it. It
+      would be finely done, it would be gallant, it would have a sort of
+      masculine eloquence as an answer to Christina&rsquo;s sinister persiflage. But
+      it was not possible! Rowland left his place with a bound, and scrambled
+      down some neighboring steps, and the next moment a stronger pair of hands
+      than Christina&rsquo;s were laid upon Roderick&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned, staring, pale and angry. Christina rose, pale and staring, too,
+      but beautiful in her wonder and alarm. &ldquo;My dear Roderick,&rdquo; said Rowland,
+      &ldquo;I am only preventing you from doing a very foolish thing. That &lsquo;s an
+      exploit for spiders, not for young sculptors of promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then closed his
+      eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t resist you,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;But I have made you obey,&rdquo; he added, turning to Christina. &ldquo;Am I
+      weak now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him and
+      addressed Rowland: &ldquo;Be so good as to show me the way out of this horrible
+      place!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He helped her back into the corridor; Roderick followed after a short
+      interval. Of course, as they were descending the steps, came questions for
+      Rowland to answer, and more or less surprise. Where had he come from? how
+      happened he to have appeared at just that moment? Rowland answered that he
+      had been rambling overhead, and that, looking out of an aperture, he had
+      seen a gentleman preparing to undertake a preposterous gymnastic feat, and
+      a lady swooning away in consequence. Interference seemed justifiable, and
+      he had made it as prompt as possible. Roderick was far from hanging his
+      head, like a man who has been caught in the perpetration of an extravagant
+      folly; but if he held it more erect than usual Rowland believed that this
+      was much less because he had made a show of personal daring than because
+      he had triumphantly proved to Christina that, like a certain person she
+      had dreamed of, he too could speak the language of decision. Christina
+      descended to the arena in silence, apparently occupied with her own
+      thoughts. She betrayed no sense of the privacy of her interview with
+      Roderick needing an explanation. Rowland had seen stranger things in New
+      York! The only evidence of her recent agitation was that, on being joined
+      by her maid, she declared that she was unable to walk home; she must have
+      a carriage. A fiacre was found resting in the shadow of the Arch of
+      Constantine, and Rowland suspected that after she had got into it she
+      disburdened herself, under her veil, of a few natural tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had played eavesdropper to so good a purpose that he might justly
+      have omitted the ceremony of denouncing himself to Roderick. He preferred,
+      however, to let him know that he had overheard a portion of his talk with
+      Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it seems to you,&rdquo; Roderick said, &ldquo;a proof that I am utterly
+      infatuated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Light seemed to me to know very well how far she could go,&rdquo; Rowland
+      answered. &ldquo;She was twisting you round her finger. I don&rsquo;t think she
+      exactly meant to defy you; but your crazy pursuit of that flower was a
+      proof that she could go all lengths in the way of making a fool of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Roderick, meditatively; &ldquo;she is making a fool of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you expect to come of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing good!&rdquo; And Roderick put his hands into his pockets and looked as
+      if he had announced the most colorless fact in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the light of your late interview, what do you make of your young
+      lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could tell you that, it would be plain sailing. But she &lsquo;ll not tell
+      me again I am weak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very sure you are not weak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may be, but she shall never know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked his
+      companion whether he was going to his studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick started out of a reverie and passed his hands over his eyes. &ldquo;Oh
+      no, I can&rsquo;t settle down to work after such a scene as that. I was not
+      afraid of breaking my neck then, but I feel all in a tremor now. I will go&mdash;I
+      will go and sit in the sun on the Pincio!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Promise me this, first,&rdquo; said Rowland, very solemnly: &ldquo;that the next time
+      you meet Miss Light, it shall be on the earth and not in the air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Since his return from Frascati, Roderick had been working doggedly at the
+      statue ordered by Mr. Leavenworth. To Rowland&rsquo;s eye he had made a very
+      fair beginning, but he had himself insisted, from the first, that he liked
+      neither his subject nor his patron, and that it was impossible to feel any
+      warmth of interest in a work which was to be incorporated into the
+      ponderous personality of Mr. Leavenworth. It was all against the grain; he
+      wrought without love. Nevertheless after a fashion he wrought, and the
+      figure grew beneath his hands. Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s friend was ordering works
+      of art on every side, and his purveyors were in many cases persons whom
+      Roderick declared it was infamy to be paired with. There had been grand
+      tailors, he said, who declined to make you a coat unless you got the hat
+      you were to wear with it from an artist of their own choosing. It seemed
+      to him that he had an equal right to exact that his statue should not form
+      part of the same system of ornament as the &ldquo;Pearl of Perugia,&rdquo; a picture
+      by an American confrere who had, in Mr. Leavenworth&rsquo;s opinion, a
+      prodigious eye for color. As a customer, Mr. Leavenworth used to drop into
+      Roderick&rsquo;s studio, to see how things were getting on, and give a friendly
+      hint or so. He would seat himself squarely, plant his gold-topped cane
+      between his legs, which he held very much apart, rest his large white
+      hands on the head, and enunciate the principles of spiritual art, as he
+      hoisted them one by one, as you might say, out of the depths of his moral
+      consciousness. His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the
+      sense of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the
+      matter was that the good gentleman&rsquo;s placid vanity had an integument whose
+      toughness no sarcastic shaft could pierce. Roderick admitted that in
+      thinking over the tribulations of struggling genius, the danger of dying
+      of over-patronage had never occurred to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deterring effect of the episode of the Coliseum was apparently of long
+      continuance; if Roderick&rsquo;s nerves had been shaken his hand needed time to
+      recover its steadiness. He cultivated composure upon principles of his
+      own; by frequenting entertainments from which he returned at four o&rsquo;clock
+      in the morning, and lapsing into habits which might fairly be called
+      irregular. He had hitherto made few friends among the artistic fraternity;
+      chiefly because he had taken no trouble about it, and there was in his
+      demeanor an elastic independence of the favor of his fellow-mortals which
+      made social advances on his own part peculiarly necessary. Rowland had
+      told him more than once that he ought to fraternize a trifle more with the
+      other artists, and he had always answered that he had not the smallest
+      objection to fraternizing: let them come! But they came on rare occasions,
+      and Roderick was not punctilious about returning their visits. He declared
+      there was not one of them whose works gave him the smallest desire to make
+      acquaintance with the insides of their heads. For Gloriani he professed a
+      superb contempt, and, having been once to look at his wares, never crossed
+      his threshold again. The only one of the fraternity for whom by his own
+      admission he cared a straw was little Singleton; but he expressed his
+      regard only in a kind of sublime hilarity whenever he encountered this
+      humble genius, and quite forgot his existence in the intervals. He had
+      never been to see him, but Singleton edged his way, from time to time,
+      timidly, into Roderick&rsquo;s studio, and agreed with characteristic modesty
+      that brilliant fellows like the sculptor might consent to receive homage,
+      but could hardly be expected to render it. Roderick never exactly accepted
+      homage, and apparently did not quite observe whether poor Singleton spoke
+      in admiration or in blame. Roderick&rsquo;s taste as to companions was
+      singularly capricious. There were very good fellows, who were disposed to
+      cultivate him, who bored him to death; and there were others, in whom even
+      Rowland&rsquo;s good-nature was unable to discover a pretext for tolerance, in
+      whom he appeared to find the highest social qualities. He used to give the
+      most fantastic reasons for his likes and dislikes. He would declare he
+      could n&rsquo;t speak a civil word to a man who brushed his hair in a certain
+      fashion, and he would explain his unaccountable fancy for an individual of
+      imperceptible merit by telling you that he had an ancestor who in the
+      thirteenth century had walled up his wife alive. &ldquo;I like to talk to a man
+      whose ancestor has walled up his wife alive,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;You may not
+      see the fun of it, and think poor P&mdash;&mdash; is a very dull fellow.
+      It &lsquo;s very possible; I don&rsquo;t ask you to admire him. But, for reasons of my
+      own, I like to have him about. The old fellow left her for three days with
+      her face uncovered, and placed a long mirror opposite to her, so that she
+      could see, as he said, if her gown was a fit!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His relish for an odd flavor in his friends had led him to make the
+      acquaintance of a number of people outside of Rowland&rsquo;s well-ordered
+      circle, and he made no secret of their being very queer fish. He formed an
+      intimacy, among others, with a crazy fellow who had come to Rome as an
+      emissary of one of the Central American republics, to drive some
+      ecclesiastical bargain with the papal government. The Pope had given him
+      the cold shoulder, but since he had not prospered as a diplomatist, he had
+      sought compensation as a man of the world, and his great flamboyant
+      curricle and negro lackeys were for several weeks one of the striking
+      ornaments of the Pincian. He spoke a queer jargon of Italian, Spanish,
+      French, and English, humorously relieved with scraps of ecclesiastical
+      Latin, and to those who inquired of Roderick what he found to interest him
+      in such a fantastic jackanapes, the latter would reply, looking at his
+      interlocutor with his lucid blue eyes, that it was worth any sacrifice to
+      hear him talk nonsense! The two had gone together one night to a ball
+      given by a lady of some renown in the Spanish colony, and very late, on
+      his way home, Roderick came up to Rowland&rsquo;s rooms, in whose windows he had
+      seen a light. Rowland was going to bed, but Roderick flung himself into an
+      armchair and chattered for an hour. The friends of the Costa Rican envoy
+      were as amusing as himself, and in very much the same line. The mistress
+      of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and gold heels to her
+      slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had sent for a pair of
+      castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced a fandango, while the
+      gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor. &ldquo;It was awfully low,&rdquo; Roderick
+      said; &ldquo;all of a sudden I perceived it, and bolted. Nothing of that kind
+      ever amuses me to the end: before it &lsquo;s half over it bores me to death; it
+      makes me sick. Hang it, why can&rsquo;t a poor fellow enjoy things in peace? My
+      illusions are all broken-winded; they won&rsquo;t carry me twenty paces! I can&rsquo;t
+      laugh and forget; my laugh dies away before it begins. Your friend
+      Stendhal writes on his book-covers (I never got farther) that he has seen
+      too early in life la beaute parfaite. I don&rsquo;t know how early he saw it; I
+      saw it before I was born&mdash;in another state of being! I can&rsquo;t describe
+      it positively; I can only say I don&rsquo;t find it anywhere now. Not at the
+      bottom of champagne glasses; not, strange as it may seem, in that extra
+      half-yard or so of shoulder that some women have their ball-dresses cut to
+      expose. I don&rsquo;t find it at merry supper-tables, where half a dozen ugly
+      men with pomatumed heads are rapidly growing uglier still with heat and
+      wine; not when I come away and walk through these squalid black streets,
+      and go out into the Forum and see a few old battered stone posts standing
+      there like gnawed bones stuck into the earth. Everything is mean and dusky
+      and shabby, and the men and women who make up this so-called brilliant
+      society are the meanest and shabbiest of all. They have no real
+      spontaneity; they are all cowards and popinjays. They have no more dignity
+      than so many grasshoppers. Nothing is good but one!&rdquo; And he jumped up and
+      stood looking at one of his statues, which shone vaguely across the room
+      in the dim lamplight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, do tell us,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;what to hold on by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those things of mine were tolerably good,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;But my idea was
+      better&mdash;and that &lsquo;s what I mean!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland said nothing. He was willing to wait for Roderick to complete the
+      circle of his metamorphoses, but he had no desire to officiate as chorus
+      to the play. If Roderick chose to fish in troubled waters, he must land
+      his prizes himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I &lsquo;m an impudent humbug,&rdquo; the latter said at last, &ldquo;coming up
+      to moralize at this hour of the night. You think I want to throw dust into
+      your eyes, to put you off the scent. That &lsquo;s your eminently rational view
+      of the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me from taking any view at all,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have given me up, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have merely suspended judgment. I am waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have ceased then positively to believe in me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made an angry gesture. &ldquo;Oh, cruel boy! When you have hit your mark
+      and made people care for you, you should n&rsquo;t twist your weapon about at
+      that rate in their vitals. Allow me to say I am sleepy. Good night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some days afterward it happened that Rowland, on a long afternoon ramble,
+      took his way through one of the quiet corners of the Trastevere. He was
+      particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could hardly have
+      expressed the charm he found in it. As you pass away from the dusky,
+      swarming purlieus of the Ghetto, you emerge into a region of empty,
+      soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys, where the shabby houses seem
+      mouldering away in disuse, and yet your footstep brings figures of
+      startling Roman type to the doorways. There are few monuments here, but no
+      part of Rome seemed more historic, in the sense of being weighted with a
+      crushing past, blighted with the melancholy of things that had had their
+      day. When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow, battered
+      walls, and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of small closed
+      churches, the place acquired a strange fascination. The church of Saint
+      Cecilia has one of these sunny, waste-looking courts; the edifice seems
+      abandoned to silence and the charity of chance devotion. Rowland never
+      passed it without going in, and he was generally the only visitor. He
+      entered it now, but found that two persons had preceded him. Both were
+      women. One was at her prayers at one of the side altars; the other was
+      seated against a column at the upper end of the nave. Rowland walked to
+      the altar, and paid, in a momentary glance at the clever statue of the
+      saint in death, in the niche beneath it, the usual tribute to the charm of
+      polished ingenuity. As he turned away he looked at the person seated and
+      recognized Christina Light. Seeing that she perceived him, he advanced to
+      speak to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands in her lap; she
+      seemed to be tired. She was dressed simply, as if for walking and escaping
+      observation. When he had greeted her he glanced back at her companion, and
+      recognized the faithful Assunta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina smiled. &ldquo;Are you looking for Mr. Hudson? He is not here, I am
+      happy to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;This is a strange place to find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all! People call me a strange girl, and I might as well have the
+      comfort of it. I came to take a walk; that, by the way, is part of my
+      strangeness. I can&rsquo;t loll all the morning on a sofa, and all the afternoon
+      in a carriage. I get horribly restless. I must move; I must do something
+      and see something. Mamma suggests a cup of tea. Meanwhile I put on an old
+      dress and half a dozen veils, I take Assunta under my arm, and we start on
+      a pedestrian tour. It &lsquo;s a bore that I can&rsquo;t take the poodle, but he
+      attracts attention. We trudge about everywhere; there is nothing I like so
+      much. I hope you will congratulate me on the simplicity of my tastes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you on your wisdom. To live in Rome and not to walk would,
+      I think, be poor pleasure. But you are terribly far from home, and I am
+      afraid you are tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little&mdash;enough to sit here a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I offer you my company while you rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will promise to amuse me. I am in dismal spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland said he would do what he could, and brought a chair and placed it
+      near her. He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her; he
+      mistrusted her; and yet he felt it a kind of privilege to watch her, and
+      he found a peculiar excitement in talking to her. The background of her
+      nature, as he would have called it, was large and mysterious, and it
+      emitted strange, fantastic gleams and flashes. Watching for these rather
+      quickened one&rsquo;s pulses. Moreover, it was not a disadvantage to talk to a
+      girl who made one keep guard on one&rsquo;s composure; it diminished one&rsquo;s
+      chronic liability to utter something less than revised wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assunta had risen from her prayers, and, as he took his place, was coming
+      back to her mistress. But Christina motioned her away. &ldquo;No, no; while you
+      are about it, say a few dozen more!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Pray for me,&rdquo; she added in
+      English. &ldquo;Pray, I say nothing silly. She has been at it half an hour; I
+      envy her capacity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you never felt in any degree,&rdquo; Rowland asked, &ldquo;the fascination of
+      Catholicism?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have been through that, too! There was a time when I wanted
+      immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter. It was when I was
+      about sixteen years old. I read the Imitation and the Life of Saint
+      Catherine. I fully believed in the miracles of the saints, and I was dying
+      to have one of my own. The least little accident that could have been
+      twisted into a miracle would have carried me straight into the bosom of
+      the church. I had the real religious passion. It has passed away, and, as
+      I sat here just now, I was wondering what had become of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady&rsquo;s tone
+      which he would have called a want of veracity, and this epitome of her
+      religious experience failed to strike him as an absolute statement of
+      fact. But the trait was not disagreeable, for she herself was evidently
+      the foremost dupe of her inventions. She had a fictitious history in which
+      she believed much more fondly than in her real one, and an infinite
+      capacity for extemporized reminiscence adapted to the mood of the hour.
+      She liked to idealize herself, to take interesting and picturesque
+      attitudes to her own imagination; and the vivacity and spontaneity of her
+      character gave her, really, a starting-point in experience; so that the
+      many-colored flowers of fiction which blossomed in her talk were not so
+      much perversions, as sympathetic exaggerations, of fact. And Rowland felt
+      that whatever she said of herself might have been, under the imagined
+      circumstances; impulse was there, audacity, the restless, questioning
+      temperament. &ldquo;I am afraid I am sadly prosaic,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for in these many
+      months now that I have been in Rome, I have never ceased for a moment to
+      look at Catholicism simply from the outside. I don&rsquo;t see an opening as big
+      as your finger-nail where I could creep into it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you believe?&rdquo; asked Christina, looking at him. &ldquo;Are you
+      religious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe in God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina let her beautiful eyes wander a while, and then gave a little
+      sigh. &ldquo;You are much to be envied!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, I imagine, in that line have nothing to envy me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have. Rest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too young to say that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not young; I have never been young! My mother took care of that. I
+      was a little wrinkled old woman at ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; said Rowland, in a moment, &ldquo;that you are fond of painting
+      yourself in dark colors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him a while in silence. &ldquo;Do you wish,&rdquo; she demanded at last,
+      &ldquo;to win my eternal gratitude? Prove to me that I am better than I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have first to know what you really suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. &ldquo;It would n&rsquo;t do. You would be horrified to learn even
+      the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of evil
+      displayed in my very mistakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I will ask no questions. But, at a venture, I
+      promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it be, can it be,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;that you too are trying to flatter me?
+      I thought you and I had fallen, from the first, into rather a
+      truth-speaking vein.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have not abandoned it!&rdquo; said Rowland; and he determined, since he
+      had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage farther. The
+      opportunity seemed excellent. But while he was hesitating as to just how
+      to begin, the young girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in
+      her lap, &ldquo;Please tell me about your religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you about it? I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed a little. &ldquo;Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot be put into
+      words, nor communicated to my base ears?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can&rsquo;t detach
+      myself from it sufficiently to talk about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive. It should
+      wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to sway all hearts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One&rsquo;s religion takes the color of one&rsquo;s general disposition. I am not
+      aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair! I am
+      sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it, can be
+      terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before you came
+      in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of anything but
+      this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you know that your
+      faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those castles that we
+      are called fools for building when we lodge them in this life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know it, any more than any one knows the contrary. But one&rsquo;s
+      religion is extremely ingenious in doing without knowledge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In such a world as this it certainly needs to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland smiled. &ldquo;What is your particular quarrel with this world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a general quarrel. Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent. We all
+      seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque. It all comes over
+      me here so dismally! The very atmosphere of this cold, deserted church
+      seems to mock at one&rsquo;s longing to believe in something. Who cares for it
+      now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously? Poor stupid Assunta there
+      gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does n&rsquo;t understand, and you and I,
+      proper, passionless tourists, come lounging in to rest from a walk. And
+      yet the Catholic church was once the proudest institution in the world,
+      and had quite its own way with men&rsquo;s souls. When such a mighty structure
+      as that turns out to have a flaw, what faith is one to put in one&rsquo;s poor
+      little views and philosophies? What is right and what is wrong? What is
+      one really to care for? What is the proper rule of life? I am tired of
+      trying to discover, and I suspect it &lsquo;s not worth the trouble. Live as
+      most amuses you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your perplexities are so terribly comprehensive,&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling,
+      &ldquo;that one hardly knows where to meet them first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care much for anything you can say, because it &lsquo;s sure to be
+      half-hearted. You are not in the least contented, yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am an observer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one is absolutely contented, I suppose, but I assure you I complain of
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the worse for your honesty. To begin with, you are in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not have me complain of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it does n&rsquo;t go well. There are grievous obstacles. So much I know!
+      You need n&rsquo;t protest; I ask no questions. You will tell no one&mdash;me
+      least of all. Why does one never see you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if I came to see you,&rdquo; said Rowland, deliberating, &ldquo;it would n&rsquo;t be,
+      it could n&rsquo;t be, for a trivial reason&mdash;because I had not been in a
+      month, because I was passing, because I admire you. It would be because I
+      should have something very particular to say. I have not come, because I
+      have been slow in making up my mind to say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are simply cruel. Something particular, in this ocean of inanities?
+      In common charity, speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt whether you will like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope to heaven it &lsquo;s not a compliment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be called a compliment to your reasonableness. You perhaps
+      remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it been hanging fire all this time? Explode! I promise not to stop my
+      ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It relates to my friend Hudson.&rdquo; And Rowland paused. She was looking at
+      him expectantly; her face gave no sign. &ldquo;I am rather disturbed in mind
+      about him. He seems to me at times to be in an unpromising way.&rdquo; He paused
+      again, but Christina said nothing. &ldquo;The case is simply this,&rdquo; he went on.
+      &ldquo;It was by my advice he renounced his career at home and embraced his
+      present one. I made him burn his ships. I brought him to Rome, I launched
+      him in the world, and I stand surety, in a measure, to&mdash;to his
+      mother, for his prosperity. It is not such smooth sailing as it might be,
+      and I am inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he is to succeed,
+      he must work&mdash;quietly, devotedly. It is not news to you, I imagine,
+      that Hudson is a great admirer of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not of
+      confusion, but of deep deliberation. Surprising frankness had, as a
+      general thing, struck Rowland as the key-note of her character, but she
+      had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of
+      calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly
+      extravagant to call portentous. He had of course asked himself how far it
+      was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs of a
+      cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had an
+      uncomfortable analogy with the shrewdness that uses a cat&rsquo;s paw and lets
+      it risk being singed. But he decided that even rigid discretion is not
+      bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation, and Christina
+      presently reassured him as to the limits of her susceptibility. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Hudson is in love with me!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland flinched a trifle. Then&mdash;&ldquo;Am I,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;from this point
+      of view of mine, to be glad or sorry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated a moment. &ldquo;You wish him to be great in his profession? And
+      for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Decidedly. I don&rsquo;t say it &lsquo;s a general rule, but I think it is a rule for
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would at least do himself justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And by that you mean a great deal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked and
+      polished slabs of the pavement. At last, looking up, &ldquo;You have not
+      forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By no means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is still engaged, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the best of my belief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by something
+      I can do for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should be
+      exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him.
+      Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless
+      time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don&rsquo;t know your own mind
+      very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense of
+      the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I might not
+      say the great word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need n&rsquo;t; I know it. I am a horrible coquette.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity. I
+      am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There &lsquo;s nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s brow contracted impatiently. &ldquo;I cannot imagine it, then!&rdquo; he
+      affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, &ldquo;I am not so bad as you
+      think,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether
+      circumstances don&rsquo;t make the thing an extreme improbability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse and worse. I can be bullied, then, or bribed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not so candid,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;as you pretend to be. My feeling
+      is this. Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the
+      stimulus of strong emotion, of passion. He&rsquo;s better without it; he&rsquo;s
+      emotional and passionate enough when he &lsquo;s left to himself. The sooner
+      passion is at rest, therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work, and
+      the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more, the
+      better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him, I should have
+      nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere. But I strongly suspect
+      you don&rsquo;t, and therefore I would suggest, most respectfully, that you
+      should let him alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him for ever
+      more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier. He will be
+      better able to concentrate himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he doing now? Wherein does he dissatisfy you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly say. He &lsquo;s like a watch that &lsquo;s running down. He is moody,
+      desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens, what a list! And it &lsquo;s all poor me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not all. But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you are
+      a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina raised her hand to her eyes, and bent her head thoughtfully.
+      Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather
+      surprised him by her gentleness. At last, without moving, &ldquo;If I were to
+      marry him,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;what would have become of his fiancee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am bound to suppose that she would be extremely unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make her reflections,
+      left his place and strolled away. Poor Assunta, sitting patiently on a
+      stone bench, and unprovided, on this occasion, with military consolation,
+      gave him a bright, frank smile, which might have been construed as an
+      expression of regret for herself, and of sympathy for her mistress.
+      Rowland presently seated himself again near Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think,&rdquo; she asked, looking at him, &ldquo;of your friend&rsquo;s
+      infidelity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was he very much in love with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asked her to marry him. You may judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she rich?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she is poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she very much in love with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know her too little to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused again, and then resumed: &ldquo;You have settled in your mind, then,
+      that I will never seriously listen to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it unlikely, until the contrary is proved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall it be proved? How do you know what passes between us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can judge, of course, but from appearance; but, like you, I am an
+      observer. Hudson has not at all the air of a prosperous suitor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is depressed, there is a reason. He has a bad conscience. One must
+      hope so, at least. On the other hand, simply as a friend,&rdquo; she continued
+      gently, &ldquo;you think I can do him no good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty, as she made this
+      remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland had an uncomfortable sense
+      of being put at a disadvantage. &ldquo;There are doubtless many good things you
+      might do, if you had proper opportunity,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you seem to be
+      sailing with a current which leaves you little leisure for quiet
+      benevolence. You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which a poor
+      artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In plain English, I am hopelessly frivolous. You put it very generously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t hesitate to say all my thought,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;For better or
+      worse, you seem to me to belong, both by character and by circumstance, to
+      what is called the world, the great world. You are made to ornament it
+      magnificently. You are not made to be an artist&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. But even from your point of view, that would depend upon the
+      artist. Extraordinary talent might make him a member of the great world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland smiled. &ldquo;That is very true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, as it is,&rdquo; Christina continued in a moment, &ldquo;you take a low view of
+      me&mdash;no, you need n&rsquo;t protest&mdash;I wonder what you would think if
+      you knew certain things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for example, how I was brought up. I have had a horrible education.
+      There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it, since I have
+      turned and judged my circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Miss Light!&rdquo; Rowland murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little, quick laugh. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want to hear? you don&rsquo;t want to
+      have to think about that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I a right to? You need n&rsquo;t justify yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes,
+      then fell to musing again. &ldquo;Is there not some novel or some play,&rdquo; she
+      asked at last, &ldquo;in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a
+      young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I hope she consents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forget. But tell me,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;shall you consider&mdash;admitting
+      your proposition&mdash;that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that
+      he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic, sublime&mdash;something
+      with a fine name like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about to reply
+      that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he instantly
+      suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides, it would not
+      express his meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do something I shall greatly respect,&rdquo; he contented himself with
+      saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid. &ldquo;What have I
+      to do to-day?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assunta meditated. &ldquo;Eh, it &lsquo;s a very busy day! Fortunately I have a better
+      memory than the signorina,&rdquo; she said, turning to Rowland. She began to
+      count on her fingers. &ldquo;We have to go to the Pie di Marmo to see about
+      those laces that were sent to be washed. You said also that you wished to
+      say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress. You want
+      some moss-rosebuds for to-night, and you won&rsquo;t get them for nothing! You
+      dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman is to powder your hair.
+      You &lsquo;re to come home in time to receive, for the signora gives a dance.
+      And so away, away till morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, the moss-roses!&rdquo; Christina murmured, caressingly. &ldquo;I must have a
+      quantity&mdash;at least a hundred. Nothing but buds, eh? You must sew them
+      in a kind of immense apron, down the front of my dress. Packed tight
+      together, eh? It will be delightfully barbarous. And then twenty more or
+      so for my hair. They go very well with powder; don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo; And
+      she turned to Rowland. &ldquo;I am going en Pompadour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Spanish Embassy, or whatever it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All down the front, signorina? Dio buono! You must give me time!&rdquo; Assunta
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;ll go!&rdquo; And she left her place. She walked slowly to the door of
+      the church, looking at the pavement, and Rowland could not guess whether
+      she was thinking of her apron of moss-rosebuds or of her opportunity for
+      moral sublimity. Before reaching the door she turned away and stood gazing
+      at an old picture, indistinguishable with blackness, over an altar. At
+      last they passed out into the court. Glancing at her in the open air,
+      Rowland was startled; he imagined he saw the traces of hastily suppressed
+      tears. They had lost time, she said, and they must hurry; she sent Assunta
+      to look for a fiacre. She remained silent a while, scratching the ground
+      with the point of her parasol, and then at last, looking up, she thanked
+      Rowland for his confidence in her &ldquo;reasonableness.&rdquo; &ldquo;It &lsquo;s really very
+      comfortable to be asked, to be expected, to do something good, after all
+      the horrid things one has been used to doing&mdash;instructed, commanded,
+      forced to do! I &lsquo;ll think over what you have said to me.&rdquo; In that deserted
+      quarter fiacres are rare, and there was some delay in Assunta&rsquo;s procuring
+      one. Christina talked of the church, of the picturesque old court, of that
+      strange, decaying corner of Rome. Rowland was perplexed; he was ill at
+      ease. At last the fiacre arrived, but she waited a moment longer. &ldquo;So,
+      decidedly,&rdquo; she suddenly asked, &ldquo;I can only harm him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me feel very brutal,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he is such a fine fellow that it would be really a great pity, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall praise him no more,&rdquo; Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away quickly, but she lingered still. &ldquo;Do you remember
+      promising me, soon after we first met, that at the end of six months you
+      would tell me definitely what you thought of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a foolish promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gave it. Bear it in mind. I will think of what you have said to me.
+      Farewell.&rdquo; She stepped into the carriage, and it rolled away. Rowland
+      stood for some minutes, looking after it, and then went his way with a
+      sigh. If this expressed general mistrust, he ought, three days afterward,
+      to have been reassured. He received by the post a note containing these
+      words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done it. Begin and respect me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;C. L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To be perfectly satisfactory, indeed, the note required a commentary. He
+      called that evening upon Roderick, and found one in the information
+      offered him at the door, by the old serving-woman&mdash;the startling
+      information that the signorino had gone to Naples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. Provocation
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About a month later, Rowland addressed to his cousin Cecilia a letter of
+      which the following is a portion:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... &ldquo;So much for myself; yet I tell you but a tithe of my own story unless
+      I let you know how matters stand with poor Hudson, for he gives me more to
+      think about just now than anything else in the world. I need a good deal
+      of courage to begin this chapter. You warned me, you know, and I made
+      rather light of your warning. I have had all kinds of hopes and fears, but
+      hitherto, in writing to you, I have resolutely put the hopes foremost.
+      Now, however, my pride has forsaken me, and I should like hugely to give
+      expression to a little comfortable despair. I should like to say, &lsquo;My dear
+      wise woman, you were right and I was wrong; you were a shrewd observer and
+      I was a meddlesome donkey!&rsquo; When I think of a little talk we had about the
+      &lsquo;salubrity of genius,&rsquo; I feel my ears tingle. If this is salubrity, give
+      me raging disease! I &lsquo;m pestered to death; I go about with a chronic
+      heartache; there are moments when I could shed salt tears. There &lsquo;s a
+      pretty portrait of the most placid of men! I wish I could make you
+      understand; or rather, I wish you could make me! I don&rsquo;t understand a jot;
+      it &lsquo;s a hideous, mocking mystery; I give it up! I don&rsquo;t in the least give
+      it up, you know; I &lsquo;m incapable of giving it up. I sit holding my head by
+      the hour, racking my brain, wondering what under heaven is to be done. You
+      told me at Northampton that I took the thing too easily; you would tell me
+      now, perhaps, that I take it too hard. I do, altogether; but it can&rsquo;t be
+      helped. Without flattering myself, I may say I &lsquo;m sympathetic. Many
+      another man before this would have cast his perplexities to the winds and
+      declared that Mr. Hudson must lie on his bed as he had made it. Some men,
+      perhaps, would even say that I am making a mighty ado about nothing; that
+      I have only to give him rope, and he will tire himself out. But he tugs at
+      his rope altogether too hard for me to hold it comfortably. I certainly
+      never pretended the thing was anything else than an experiment; I promised
+      nothing, I answered for nothing; I only said the case was hopeful, and
+      that it would be a shame to neglect it. I have done my best, and if the
+      machine is running down I have a right to stand aside and let it scuttle.
+      Amen, amen! No, I can write that, but I can&rsquo;t feel it. I can&rsquo;t be just; I
+      can only be generous. I love the poor fellow and I can&rsquo;t give him up. As
+      for understanding him, that &lsquo;s another matter; nowadays I don&rsquo;t believe
+      even you would. One&rsquo;s wits are sadly pestered over here, I assure you, and
+      I &lsquo;m in the way of seeing more than one puzzling specimen of human nature.
+      Roderick and Miss Light, between them!... Have n&rsquo;t I already told you
+      about Miss Light? Last winter everything was perfection. Roderick struck
+      out bravely, did really great things, and proved himself, as I supposed,
+      thoroughly solid. He was strong, he was first-rate; I felt perfectly
+      secure and sang private paeans of joy. We had passed at a bound into the
+      open sea, and left danger behind. But in the summer I began to be puzzled,
+      though I succeeded in not being alarmed. When we came back to Rome,
+      however, I saw that the tide had turned and that we were close upon the
+      rocks. It is, in fact, another case of Ulysses alongside of the Sirens;
+      only Roderick refuses to be tied to the mast. He is the most extraordinary
+      being, the strangest mixture of qualities. I don&rsquo;t understand so much
+      force going with so much weakness&mdash;such a brilliant gift being
+      subject to such lapses. The poor fellow is incomplete, and it is really
+      not his own fault; Nature has given him the faculty out of hand and bidden
+      him be hanged with it. I never knew a man harder to advise or assist, if
+      he is not in the mood for listening. I suppose there is some key or other
+      to his character, but I try in vain to find it; and yet I can&rsquo;t believe
+      that Providence is so cruel as to have turned the lock and thrown the key
+      away. He perplexes me, as I say, to death, and though he tires out my
+      patience, he still fascinates me. Sometimes I think he has n&rsquo;t a grain of
+      conscience, and sometimes I think that, in a way, he has an excess. He
+      takes things at once too easily and too hard; he is both too lax and too
+      tense, too reckless and too ambitious, too cold and too passionate. He has
+      developed faster even than you prophesied, and for good and evil alike he
+      takes up a formidable space. There &lsquo;s too much of him for me, at any rate.
+      Yes, he is hard; there is no mistake about that. He &lsquo;s inflexible, he &lsquo;s
+      brittle; and though he has plenty of spirit, plenty of soul, he has n&rsquo;t
+      what I call a heart. He has something that Miss Garland took for one, and
+      I &lsquo;m pretty sure she &lsquo;s a judge. But she judged on scanty evidence. He has
+      something that Christina Light, here, makes believe at times that she
+      takes for one, but she is no judge at all! I think it is established that,
+      in the long run, egotism makes a failure in conduct: is it also true that
+      it makes a failure in the arts?... Roderick&rsquo;s standard is immensely high;
+      I must do him that justice. He will do nothing beneath it, and while he is
+      waiting for inspiration, his imagination, his nerves, his senses must have
+      something to amuse them. This is a highly philosophical way of saying that
+      he has taken to dissipation, and that he has just been spending a month at
+      Naples&mdash;a city where &lsquo;pleasure&rsquo; is actively cultivated&mdash;in very
+      bad company. Are they all like that, all the men of genius? There are a
+      great many artists here who hammer away at their trade with exemplary
+      industry; in fact I am surprised at their success in reducing the matter
+      to a steady, daily grind: but I really don&rsquo;t think that one of them has
+      his exquisite quality of talent. It is in the matter of quantity that he
+      has broken down. The bottle won&rsquo;t pour; he turns it upside down; it &lsquo;s no
+      use! Sometimes he declares it &lsquo;s empty&mdash;that he has done all he was
+      made to do. This I consider great nonsense; but I would nevertheless take
+      him on his own terms if it was only I that was concerned. But I keep
+      thinking of those two praying, trusting neighbors of yours, and I feel
+      wretchedly like a swindler. If his working mood came but once in five
+      years I would willingly wait for it and maintain him in leisure, if need
+      be, in the intervals; but that would be a sorry account to present to
+      them. Five years of this sort of thing, moreover, would effectually settle
+      the question. I wish he were less of a genius and more of a charlatan! He
+      &lsquo;s too confoundedly all of one piece; he won&rsquo;t throw overboard a grain of
+      the cargo to save the rest. Fancy him thus with all his brilliant personal
+      charm, his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a nervous
+      nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there is mighty
+      little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably foolish last
+      summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a while he was
+      steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled over. Now,
+      literally, he &lsquo;s lying prone. He came into my room last night, miserably
+      tipsy. I assure you, it did n&rsquo;t amuse me..... About Miss Light it &lsquo;s a
+      long story. She is one of the great beauties of all time, and worth coming
+      barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to see. Her complexion, her
+      glance, her step, her dusky tresses, may have been seen before in a
+      goddess, but never in a woman. And you may take this for truth, because I
+      &lsquo;m not in love with her. On the contrary! Her education has been simply
+      infernal. She is corrupt, perverse, as proud as the queen of Sheba, and an
+      appalling coquette; but she is generous, and with patience and skill you
+      may enlist her imagination in a good cause as well as in a bad one. The
+      other day I tried to manipulate it a little. Chance offered me an
+      interview to which it was possible to give a serious turn, and I boldly
+      broke ground and begged her to suffer my poor friend to go in peace. After
+      a good deal of finessing she consented, and the next day, with a single
+      word, packed him off to Naples to drown his sorrow in debauchery. I have
+      come to the conclusion that she is more dangerous in her virtuous moods
+      than in her vicious ones, and that she probably has a way of turning her
+      back which is the most provoking thing in the world. She &lsquo;s an actress,
+      she could n&rsquo;t forego doing the thing dramatically, and it was the dramatic
+      touch that made it fatal. I wished her, of course, to let him down easily;
+      but she desired to have the curtain drop on an attitude, and her attitudes
+      deprive inflammable young artists of their reason..... Roderick made an
+      admirable bust of her at the beginning of the winter, and a dozen women
+      came rushing to him to be done, mutatis mutandis, in the same style. They
+      were all great ladies and ready to take him by the hand, but he told them
+      all their faces did n&rsquo;t interest him, and sent them away vowing his
+      destruction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point of his long effusion, Rowland had paused and put by his
+      letter. He kept it three days and then read it over. He was disposed at
+      first to destroy it, but he decided finally to keep it, in the hope that
+      it might strike a spark of useful suggestion from the flint of Cecilia&rsquo;s
+      good sense. We know he had a talent for taking advice. And then it might
+      be, he reflected, that his cousin&rsquo;s answer would throw some light on Mary
+      Garland&rsquo;s present vision of things. In his altered mood he added these few
+      lines:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I unburdened myself the other day of this monstrous load of perplexity; I
+      think it did me good, and I let it stand. I was in a melancholy muddle,
+      and I was trying to work myself free. You know I like discussion, in a
+      quiet way, and there is no one with whom I can have it as quietly as with
+      you, most sagacious of cousins! There is an excellent old lady with whom I
+      often chat, and who talks very much to the point. But Madame Grandoni has
+      disliked Roderick from the first, and if I were to take her advice I would
+      wash my hands of him. You will laugh at me for my long face, but you would
+      do that in any circumstances. I am half ashamed of my letter, for I have a
+      faith in my friend that is deeper than my doubts. He was here last
+      evening, talking about the Naples Museum, the Aristides, the bronzes, the
+      Pompeian frescoes, with such a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the
+      ultimate future seemed blasphemy. I walked back to his lodging with him,
+      and he was as mild as midsummer moonlight. He has the ineffable something
+      that charms and convinces; my last word about him shall not be a harsh
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into his friend&rsquo;s studio,
+      he found Roderick suffering from the grave infliction of a visit from Mr.
+      Leavenworth. Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being bored, and
+      he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation. He had lately begun
+      a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an image of serene,
+      irresponsible, sensuous life. The real lazzarone, he had admitted, was a
+      vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone&mdash;and his own had been subtly
+      idealized&mdash;was a precursor of the millennium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying gaze to the
+      figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?&rdquo; he sympathetically
+      observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Roderick seriously, &ldquo;he &lsquo;s not dying, he &lsquo;s only drunk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but intoxication, you know,&rdquo; Mr. Leavenworth rejoined, &ldquo;is not a
+      proper subject for sculpture. Sculpture should not deal with transitory
+      attitudes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude! Nothing is more permanent,
+      more sculpturesque, more monumental!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An entertaining paradox,&rdquo; said Mr. Leavenworth, &ldquo;if we had time to
+      exercise our wits upon it. I remember at Florence an intoxicated figure by
+      Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration of a great mind.
+      I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever. I have traveled through Europe
+      on cold water. The most varied and attractive lists of wines are offered
+      me, but I brush them aside. No cork has ever been drawn at my command!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set of
+      muscles,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;I think I will make a figure in that position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Bacchus, realistically treated! My dear young friend, never trifle with
+      your lofty mission. Spotless marble should represent virtue, not vice!&rdquo;
+       And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise the spirit
+      of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely benignity to another
+      object&mdash;a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light. &ldquo;An ideal head, I
+      presume,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;a fanciful representation of one of the pagan
+      goddesses&mdash;a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad? I often regret that
+      our American artists should not boldly cast off that extinct
+      nomenclature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is neither a naiad nor a dryad,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;and her name is as
+      good as yours or mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call her&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Leavenworth blandly inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Light,&rdquo; Rowland interposed, in charity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, our great American beauty! Not a pagan goddess&mdash;an American,
+      Christian lady! Yes, I have had the pleasure of conversing with Miss
+      Light. Her conversational powers are not remarkable, but her beauty is of
+      a high order. I observed her the other evening at a large party, where
+      some of the proudest members of the European aristocracy were present&mdash;duchesses,
+      princesses, countesses, and others distinguished by similar titles. But
+      for beauty, grace, and elegance my fair countrywoman left them all
+      nowhere. What women can compare with a truly refined American lady? The
+      duchesses the other night had no attractions for my eyes; they looked
+      coarse and sensual! It seemed to me that the tyranny of class distinctions
+      must indeed be terrible when such countenances could inspire admiration.
+      You see more beautiful girls in an hour on Broadway than in the whole tour
+      of Europe. Miss Light, now, on Broadway, would excite no particular
+      remark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has never been there!&rdquo; cried Roderick, triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m afraid she never will be there. I suppose you have heard the news
+      about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What news?&rdquo; Roderick had stood with his back turned, fiercely poking at
+      his lazzarone; but at Mr. Leavenworth&rsquo;s last words he faced quickly about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s the news of the hour, I believe. Miss Light is admired by the
+      highest people here. They tacitly recognize her superiority. She has had
+      offers of marriage from various great lords. I was extremely happy to
+      learn this circumstance, and to know that they all had been left sighing.
+      She has not been dazzled by their titles and their gilded coronets. She
+      has judged them simply as men, and found them wanting. One of them,
+      however, a young Neapolitan prince, I believe, has after a long probation
+      succeeded in making himself acceptable. Miss Light has at last said yes,
+      and the engagement has just been announced. I am not generally a retailer
+      of gossip of this description, but the fact was alluded to an hour ago by
+      a lady with whom I was conversing, and here, in Europe, these
+      conversational trifles usurp the lion&rsquo;s share of one&rsquo;s attention. I
+      therefore retained the circumstance. Yes, I regret that Miss Light should
+      marry one of these used-up foreigners. Americans should stand by each
+      other. If she wanted a brilliant match we could have fixed it for her. If
+      she wanted a fine fellow&mdash;a fine, sharp, enterprising modern man&mdash;I
+      would have undertaken to find him for her without going out of the city of
+      New York. And if she wanted a big fortune, I would have found her twenty
+      that she would have had hard work to spend: money down&mdash;not tied up
+      in fever-stricken lands and worm-eaten villas! What is the name of the
+      young man? Prince Castaway, or some such thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was well for Mr. Leavenworth that he was a voluminous and imperturbable
+      talker; for the current of his eloquence floated him past the short,
+      sharp, startled cry with which Roderick greeted his &ldquo;conversational
+      trifle.&rdquo; The young man stood looking at him with parted lips and an
+      excited eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The position of woman,&rdquo; Mr. Leavenworth placidly resumed, &ldquo;is certainly a
+      very degraded one in these countries. I doubt whether a European princess
+      can command the respect which in our country is exhibited toward the
+      obscurest females. The civilization of a country should be measured by the
+      deference shown to the weaker sex. Judged by that standard, where are
+      they, over here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Mr. Leavenworth had not observed Roderick&rsquo;s emotion, it was not
+      lost upon Rowland, who was making certain uncomfortable reflections upon
+      it. He saw that it had instantly become one with the acute irritation
+      produced by the poor gentleman&rsquo;s oppressive personality, and that an
+      explosion of some sort was imminent. Mr. Leavenworth, with calm
+      unconsciousness, proceeded to fire the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now for our Culture!&rdquo; he said in the same sonorous tones, demanding
+      with a gesture the unveiling of the figure, which stood somewhat apart,
+      muffled in a great sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with concentrated rancor, and
+      then strode to the statue and twitched off the cover. Mr. Leavenworth
+      settled himself into his chair with an air of flattered proprietorship,
+      and scanned the unfinished image. &ldquo;I can conscientiously express myself as
+      gratified with the general conception,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The figure has
+      considerable majesty, and the countenance wears a fine, open expression.
+      The forehead, however, strikes me as not sufficiently intellectual. In a
+      statue of Culture, you know, that should be the great point. The eye
+      should instinctively seek the forehead. Could n&rsquo;t you heighten it up a
+      little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, for all answer, tossed the sheet back over the statue. &ldquo;Oblige
+      me, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;oblige me! Never mention that thing again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mention it? Why my dear sir&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mention it. It &lsquo;s an abomination!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An abomination! My Culture!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours indeed!&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s none of mine. I disown it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disown it, if you please,&rdquo; said Mr. Leavenworth sternly, &ldquo;but finish it
+      first!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;d rather smash it!&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is folly, sir. You must keep your engagements.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made no engagement. A sculptor is n&rsquo;t a tailor. Did you ever hear of
+      inspiration? Mine is dead! And it &lsquo;s no laughing matter. You yourself
+      killed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;killed your inspiration?&rdquo; cried Mr. Leavenworth, with the
+      accent of righteous wrath. &ldquo;You &lsquo;re a very ungrateful boy! If ever I
+      encouraged and cheered and sustained any one, I &lsquo;m sure I have done so to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appreciate your good intentions, and I don&rsquo;t wish to be uncivil. But
+      your encouragement is&mdash;superfluous. I can&rsquo;t work for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call this ill-humor, young man!&rdquo; said Mr. Leavenworth, as if he had
+      found the damning word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I &lsquo;m in an infernal humor!&rdquo; Roderick answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray, sir, is it my infelicitous allusion to Miss Light&rsquo;s marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s your infelicitous everything! I don&rsquo;t say that to offend you; I beg
+      your pardon if it does. I say it by way of making our rupture complete,
+      irretrievable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had stood by in silence, but he now interfered. &ldquo;Listen to me,&rdquo; he
+      said, laying his hand on Roderick&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;You are standing on the edge of
+      a gulf. If you suffer anything that has passed to interrupt your work on
+      that figure, you take your plunge. It &lsquo;s no matter that you don&rsquo;t like it;
+      you will do the wisest thing you ever did if you make that effort of will
+      necessary for finishing it. Destroy the statue then, if you like, but make
+      the effort. I speak the truth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at him with eyes that still inexorableness made almost
+      tender. &ldquo;You too!&rdquo; he simply said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt that he might as well attempt to squeeze water from a
+      polished crystal as hope to move him. He turned away and walked into the
+      adjoining room with a sense of sickening helplessness. In a few moments he
+      came back and found that Mr. Leavenworth had departed&mdash;presumably in
+      a manner somewhat portentous. Roderick was sitting with his elbows on his
+      knees and his head in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made one more attempt. &ldquo;You decline to think of what I urge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one more point&mdash;that you shouldn&rsquo;t, for a month, go to Mrs.
+      Light&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go there this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That too is an utter folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are such things as necessary follies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not reflecting; you are speaking in passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then do you make me speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland meditated a moment. &ldquo;Is it also necessary that you should lose the
+      best friend you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked up. &ldquo;That &lsquo;s for you to settle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His best friend clapped on his hat and strode away; in a moment the door
+      closed behind him. Rowland walked hard for nearly a couple of hours. He
+      passed up the Corso, out of the Porta del Popolo and into the Villa
+      Borghese, of which he made a complete circuit. The keenness of his
+      irritation subsided, but it left him with an intolerable weight upon his
+      heart. When dusk had fallen, he found himself near the lodging of his
+      friend Madame Grandoni. He frequently paid her a visit during the hour
+      which preceded dinner, and he now ascended her unillumined staircase and
+      rang at her relaxed bell-rope with an especial desire for diversion. He
+      was told that, for the moment, she was occupied, but that if he would come
+      in and wait, she would presently be with him. He had not sat musing in the
+      firelight for ten minutes when he heard the jingle of the door-bell and
+      then a rustling and murmuring in the hall. The door of the little saloon
+      opened, but before the visitor appeared he had recognized her voice.
+      Christina Light swept forward, preceded by her poodle, and almost filling
+      the narrow parlor with the train of her dress. She was colored here and
+      there by the flicking firelight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They told me you were here,&rdquo; she said simply, as she took a seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you came in? It is very brave,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the brave one, when one thinks of it! Where is the padrona?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Occupied for the moment. But she is coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already waited ten minutes; I expect her from moment to moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanwhile we are alone?&rdquo; And she glanced into the dusky corners of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless Stenterello counts,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he knows my secrets&mdash;unfortunate brute!&rdquo; She sat silent awhile,
+      looking into the firelight. Then at last, glancing at Rowland, &ldquo;Come! say
+      something pleasant!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been very happy to hear of your engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t mean that. I have heard that so often, only since breakfast,
+      that it has lost all sense. I mean some of those unexpected, charming
+      things that you said to me a month ago at Saint Cecilia&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I offended you, then,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I was afraid I had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, it occurred to you? Why have n&rsquo;t I seen you since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; And he began to hesitate for an explanation. &ldquo;I
+      have called, but you have never been at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were careful to choose the wrong times. You have a way with a poor
+      girl! You sit down and inform her that she is a person with whom a
+      respectable young man cannot associate without contamination; your friend
+      is a very nice fellow, you are very careful of his morals, you wish him to
+      know none but nice people, and you beg me therefore to desist. You request
+      me to take these suggestions to heart and to act upon them as promptly as
+      possible. They are not particularly flattering to my vanity. Vanity,
+      however, is a sin, and I listen submissively, with an immense desire to be
+      just. If I have many faults I know it, in a general way, and I try on the
+      whole to do my best. &lsquo;Voyons,&rsquo; I say to myself, &lsquo;it is n&rsquo;t particularly
+      charming to hear one&rsquo;s self made out such a low person, but it is worth
+      thinking over; there &lsquo;s probably a good deal of truth in it, and at any
+      rate we must be as good a girl as we can. That &lsquo;s the great point! And
+      then here &lsquo;s a magnificent chance for humility. If there &lsquo;s doubt in the
+      matter, let the doubt count against one&rsquo;s self. That is what Saint
+      Catherine did, and Saint Theresa, and all the others, and they are said to
+      have had in consequence the most ineffable joys. Let us go in for a little
+      ineffable joy!&rsquo; I tried it; I swallowed my rising sobs, I made you my
+      courtesy, I determined I would not be spiteful, nor passionate, nor
+      vengeful, nor anything that is supposed to be particularly feminine. I was
+      a better girl than you made out&mdash;better at least than you thought;
+      but I would let the difference go and do magnificently right, lest I
+      should not do right enough. I thought of it a deal for six hours when I
+      know I did n&rsquo;t seem to be, and then at last I did it! Santo Dio!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Miss Light, my dear Miss Light!&rdquo; said Rowland, pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since then,&rdquo; the young girl went on, &ldquo;I have been waiting for the
+      ineffable joys. They have n&rsquo;t yet turned up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray listen to me!&rdquo; Rowland urged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, nothing, nothing has come of it. I have passed the dreariest
+      month of my life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Miss Light, you are a very terrible young lady!&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good many things. We &lsquo;ll talk them over. But first, forgive me if I
+      have offended you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him a moment, hesitating, and then thrust her hands into her
+      muff. &ldquo;That means nothing. Forgiveness is between equals, and you don&rsquo;t
+      regard me as your equal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I don&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina rose and moved for a moment about the room. Then turning
+      suddenly, &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t believe in me!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;not a grain! I don&rsquo;t know
+      what I would not give to force you to believe in me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland sprang up, protesting, but before he had time to go far one of the
+      scanty portieres was raised, and Madame Grandoni came in, pulling her wig
+      straight. &ldquo;But you shall believe in me yet,&rdquo; murmured Christina, as she
+      passed toward her hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Grandoni turned tenderly to Christina. &ldquo;I must give you a very
+      solemn kiss, my dear; you are the heroine of the hour. You have really
+      accepted him, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you ought to know best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I don&rsquo;t care!&rdquo; She stood with her hand in Madame
+      Grandoni&rsquo;s, but looking askance at Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a pretty state of mind,&rdquo; said the old lady, &ldquo;for a young person
+      who is going to become a princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina shrugged her shoulders. &ldquo;Every one expects me to go into
+      ecstacies over that! Could anything be more vulgar? They may chuckle by
+      themselves! Will you let me stay to dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can dine on a risotto. But I imagine you are expected at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right. Prince Casamassima dines there, en famille. But I &lsquo;m not
+      in his family, yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know you are very wicked? I have half a mind not to keep you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina dropped her eyes, reflectively. &ldquo;I beg you will let me stay,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;If you wish to cure me of my wickedness you must be very
+      patient and kind with me. It will be worth the trouble. You must show
+      confidence in me.&rdquo; And she gave another glance at Rowland. Then suddenly,
+      in a different tone, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what I &lsquo;m saying!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I am
+      weary, I am more lonely than ever, I wish I were dead!&rdquo; The tears rose to
+      her eyes, she struggled with them an instant, and buried her face in her
+      muff; but at last she burst into uncontrollable sobs and flung her arms
+      upon Madame Grandoni&rsquo;s neck. This shrewd woman gave Rowland a significant
+      nod, and a little shrug, over the young girl&rsquo;s beautiful bowed head, and
+      then led Christina tenderly away into the adjoining room. Rowland, left
+      alone, stood there for an instant, intolerably puzzled, face to face with
+      Miss Light&rsquo;s poodle, who had set up a sharp, unearthly cry of sympathy
+      with his mistress. Rowland vented his confusion in dealing a rap with his
+      stick at the animal&rsquo;s unmelodious muzzle, and then rapidly left the house.
+      He saw Mrs. Light&rsquo;s carriage waiting at the door, and heard afterwards
+      that Christina went home to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A couple of days later he went, for a fortnight, to Florence. He had
+      twenty minds to leave Italy altogether; and at Florence he could at least
+      more freely decide upon his future movements. He felt profoundly,
+      incurably disgusted. Reflective benevolence stood prudently aside, and for
+      the time touched the source of his irritation with no softening
+      side-lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of March, and by the middle of March in Florence the
+      spring is already warm and deep. He had an infinite relish for the place
+      and the season, but as he strolled by the Arno and paused here and there
+      in the great galleries, they failed to soothe his irritation. He was sore
+      at heart, and as the days went by the soreness deepened rather than
+      healed. He felt as if he had a complaint against fortune; good-natured as
+      he was, his good-nature this time quite declined to let it pass. He had
+      tried to be wise, he had tried to be kind, he had embarked upon an
+      estimable enterprise; but his wisdom, his kindness, his energy, had been
+      thrown back in his face. He was disappointed, and his disappointment had
+      an angry spark in it. The sense of wasted time, of wasted hope and faith,
+      kept him constant company. There were times when the beautiful things
+      about him only exasperated his discontent. He went to the Pitti Palace,
+      and Raphael&rsquo;s Madonna of the Chair seemed, in its soft serenity, to mock
+      him with the suggestion of unattainable repose. He lingered on the bridges
+      at sunset, and knew that the light was enchanting and the mountains
+      divine, but there seemed to be something horribly invidious and unwelcome
+      in the fact. He felt, in a word, like a man who has been cruelly defrauded
+      and who wishes to have his revenge. Life owed him, he thought, a
+      compensation, and he would be restless and resentful until he found it. He
+      knew&mdash;or he seemed to know&mdash;where he should find it; but he
+      hardly told himself, and thought of the thing under mental protest, as a
+      man in want of money may think of certain funds that he holds in trust. In
+      his melancholy meditations the idea of something better than all this,
+      something that might softly, richly interpose, something that might
+      reconcile him to the future, something that might make one&rsquo;s tenure of
+      life deep and zealous instead of harsh and uneven&mdash;the idea of
+      concrete compensation, in a word&mdash;shaped itself sooner or later into
+      the image of Mary Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very odd, you may say, that at this time of day Rowland should still be
+      brooding over a plain girl of whom he had had but the lightest of glimpses
+      two years before; very odd that so deep an impression should have been
+      made by so lightly-pressed an instrument. We must admit the oddity and
+      offer simply in explanation that his sentiment apparently belonged to that
+      species of emotion of which, by the testimony of the poets, the very name
+      and essence is oddity. One night he slept but half an hour; he found his
+      thoughts taking a turn which excited him portentously. He walked up and
+      down his room half the night. It looked out on the Arno; the noise of the
+      river came in at the open window; he felt like dressing and going down
+      into the streets. Toward morning he flung himself into a chair; though he
+      was wide awake he was less excited. It seemed to him that he saw his idea
+      from the outside, that he judged it and condemned it; yet it stood there
+      before him, distinct, and in a certain way imperious. During the day he
+      tried to banish it and forget it; but it fascinated, haunted, at moments
+      frightened him. He tried to amuse himself, paid visits, resorted to
+      several rather violent devices for diverting his thoughts. If on the
+      morrow he had committed a crime, the persons whom he had seen that day
+      would have testified that he had talked strangely and had not seemed like
+      himself. He felt certainly very unlike himself; long afterwards, in
+      retrospect, he used to reflect that during those days he had for a while
+      been literally beside himself. His idea persisted; it clung to him like a
+      sturdy beggar. The sense of the matter, roughly expressed, was this: If
+      Roderick was really going, as he himself had phrased it, to &ldquo;fizzle out,&rdquo;
+       one might help him on the way&mdash;one might smooth the descensus Averno.
+      For forty-eight hours there swam before Rowland&rsquo;s eyes a vision of
+      Roderick, graceful and beautiful as he passed, plunging, like a diver,
+      from an eminence into a misty gulf. The gulf was destruction,
+      annihilation, death; but if death was decreed, why should not the agony be
+      brief? Beyond this vision there faintly glimmered another, as in the
+      children&rsquo;s game of the &ldquo;magic lantern&rdquo; a picture is superposed on the
+      white wall before the last one has quite faded. It represented Mary
+      Garland standing there with eyes in which the horror seemed slowly, slowly
+      to expire, and hanging, motionless hands which at last made no resistance
+      when his own offered to take them. When, of old, a man was burnt at the
+      stake it was cruel to have to be present; but if one was present it was
+      kind to lend a hand to pile up the fuel and make the flames do their work
+      quickly and the smoke muffle up the victim. With all deference to your
+      kindness, this was perhaps an obligation you would especially feel if you
+      had a reversionary interest in something the victim was to leave behind
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, in the midst of all this, Rowland walked heedlessly out of
+      one of the city gates and found himself on the road to Fiesole. It was a
+      completely lovely day; the March sun felt like May, as the English poet of
+      Florence says; the thick-blossomed shrubs and vines that hung over the
+      walls of villa and podere flung their odorous promise into the warm, still
+      air. Rowland followed the winding, climbing lanes; lingered, as he got
+      higher, beneath the rusty cypresses, beside the low parapets, where you
+      look down on the charming city and sweep the vale of the Arno; reached the
+      little square before the cathedral, and rested awhile in the massive,
+      dusky church; then climbed higher, to the Franciscan convent which is
+      poised on the very apex of the mountain. He rang at the little gateway; a
+      shabby, senile, red-faced brother admitted him with almost maudlin
+      friendliness. There was a dreary chill in the chapel and the corridors,
+      and he passed rapidly through them into the delightfully steep and tangled
+      old garden which runs wild over the forehead of the great hill. He had
+      been in it before, and he was very fond of it. The garden hangs in the
+      air, and you ramble from terrace to terrace and wonder how it keeps from
+      slipping down, in full consummation of its bereaved forlornness, into the
+      nakedly romantic gorge beneath. It was just noon when Rowland went in, and
+      after roaming about awhile he flung himself in the sun on a mossy stone
+      bench and pulled his hat over his eyes. The short shadows of the
+      brown-coated cypresses above him had grown very long, and yet he had not
+      passed back through the convent. One of the monks, in his faded
+      snuff-colored robe, came wandering out into the garden, reading his greasy
+      little breviary. Suddenly he came toward the bench on which Rowland had
+      stretched himself, and paused a moment, attentively. Rowland was lingering
+      there still; he was sitting with his head in his hands and his elbows on
+      his knees. He seemed not to have heard the sandaled tread of the good
+      brother, but as the monk remained watching him, he at last looked up. It
+      was not the ignoble old man who had admitted him, but a pale, gaunt
+      personage, of a graver and more ascetic, and yet of a benignant, aspect.
+      Rowland&rsquo;s face bore the traces of extreme trouble. The frate kept his
+      finger in his little book, and folded his arms picturesquely across his
+      breast. It can hardly be determined whether his attitude, as he bent his
+      sympathetic Italian eye upon Rowland, was a happy accident or the result
+      of an exquisite spiritual discernment. To Rowland, at any rate, under the
+      emotion of that moment, it seemed blessedly opportune. He rose and
+      approached the monk, and laid his hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;did you ever see the Devil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The frate gazed, gravely, and crossed himself. &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was here,&rdquo; Rowland went on, &ldquo;here in this lovely garden, as he was
+      once in Paradise, half an hour ago. But have no fear; I drove him out.&rdquo;
+       And Rowland stooped and picked up his hat, which had rolled away into a
+      bed of cyclamen, in vague symbolism of an actual physical tussle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been tempted, my brother?&rdquo; asked the friar, tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hideously!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have resisted&mdash;and conquered!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I have conquered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The blessed Saint Francis be praised! It is well done. If you like, we
+      will offer a mass for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a Catholic,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frate smiled with dignity. &ldquo;That is a reason the more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it &lsquo;s for you, then, to choose. Shake hands with me,&rdquo; Rowland added;
+      &ldquo;that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out, to stop a moment in
+      your chapel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They shook hands and separated. The frate crossed himself, opened his
+      book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky. Rowland passed
+      back into the convent, and paused long enough in the chapel to look for
+      the alms-box. He had had what is vulgarly termed a great scare; he
+      believed, very poignantly for the time, in the Devil, and he felt an
+      irresistible need to subscribe to any institution which engaged to keep
+      him at a distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards he went in search
+      of Roderick. He found him on the Pincian with his back turned to the
+      crowd, looking at the sunset. &ldquo;I went to Florence,&rdquo; Rowland said, &ldquo;and I
+      thought of going farther; but I came back on purpose to give you another
+      piece of advice. Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of
+      responsibility to&mdash;to those various sacred things you have forgotten,
+      is in sending for your mother to join you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stared. &ldquo;For my mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For your mother&mdash;and for Miss Garland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.
+      &ldquo;For Mary Garland&mdash;for my mother?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Send for them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to ask.
+      You are still engaged to Miss Garland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick frowned darkly, but assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would give you pleasure, then, to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick turned away and for some moments answered nothing. &ldquo;Pleasure!&rdquo; he
+      said at last, huskily. &ldquo;Call it pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I regard you as a sick man,&rdquo; Rowland continued. &ldquo;In such a case Miss
+      Garland would say that her place was at your side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at him some time askance, mistrustfully. &ldquo;Is this a
+      deep-laid snare?&rdquo; he asked slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had come back with all his patience rekindled, but these words
+      gave it an almost fatal chill. &ldquo;Heaven forgive you!&rdquo; he cried bitterly.
+      &ldquo;My idea has been simply this. Try, in decency, to understand it. I have
+      tried to befriend you, to help you, to inspire you with confidence, and I
+      have failed. I took you from the hands of your mother and your betrothed,
+      and it seemed to me my duty to restore you to their hands. That &lsquo;s all I
+      have to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going, but Roderick forcibly detained him. It would have been but a
+      rough way of expressing it to say that one could never know how Roderick
+      would take a thing. It had happened more than once that when hit hard,
+      deservedly, he had received the blow with touching gentleness. On the
+      other hand, he had often resented the softest taps. The secondary effect
+      of Rowland&rsquo;s present admonition seemed reassuring. &ldquo;I beg you to wait,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;to forgive that shabby speech, and to let me reflect.&rdquo; And he
+      walked up and down awhile, reflecting. At last he stopped, with a look in
+      his face that Rowland had not seen all winter. It was a strikingly
+      beautiful look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How strange it is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that the simplest devices are the last that
+      occur to one!&rdquo; And he broke into a light laugh. &ldquo;To see Mary Garland is
+      just what I want. And my mother&mdash;my mother can&rsquo;t hurt me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will write, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will telegraph. They must come, at whatever cost. Striker can arrange
+      it all for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a couple of days he told Rowland that he had received a telegraphic
+      answer to his message, informing him that the two ladies were to sail
+      immediately for Leghorn, in one of the small steamers which ply between
+      that port and New York. They would arrive, therefore, in less than a
+      month. Rowland passed this month of expectation in no very serene frame of
+      mind. His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his
+      agitated conscience; but there was something intolerable in the thought of
+      the suffering to which the event was probably subjecting those undefended
+      women. They had scraped together their scanty funds and embarked, at
+      twenty-four hours&rsquo; notice, upon the dreadful sea, to journey tremulously
+      to shores darkened by the shadow of deeper alarms. He could only promise
+      himself to be their devoted friend and servant. Preoccupied as he was, he
+      was able to observe that expectation, with Roderick, took a form which
+      seemed singular even among his characteristic singularities. If redemption&mdash;Roderick
+      seemed to reason&mdash;was to arrive with his mother and his affianced
+      bride, these last moments of error should be doubly erratic. He did
+      nothing; but inaction, with him, took on an unwonted air of gentle gayety.
+      He laughed and whistled and went often to Mrs. Light&rsquo;s; though Rowland
+      knew not in what fashion present circumstances had modified his relations
+      with Christina. The month ebbed away and Rowland daily expected to hear
+      from Roderick that he had gone to Leghorn to meet the ship. He heard
+      nothing, and late one evening, not having seen his friend in three or four
+      days, he stopped at Roderick&rsquo;s lodging to assure himself that he had gone
+      at last. A cab was standing in the street, but as it was a couple of doors
+      off he hardly heeded it. The hall at the foot of the staircase was dark,
+      like most Roman halls, and he paused in the street-doorway on hearing the
+      advancing footstep of a person with whom he wished to avoid coming into
+      collision. While he did so he heard another footstep behind him, and
+      turning round found that Roderick in person had just overtaken him. At the
+      same moment a woman&rsquo;s figure advanced from within, into the light of the
+      street-lamp, and a face, half-startled, glanced at him out of the
+      darkness. He gave a cry&mdash;it was the face of Mary Garland. Her glance
+      flew past him to Roderick, and in a second a startled exclamation broke
+      from her own lips. It made Rowland turn again. Roderick stood there, pale,
+      apparently trying to speak, but saying nothing. His lips were parted and
+      he was wavering slightly with a strange movement&mdash;the movement of a
+      man who has drunk too much. Then Rowland&rsquo;s eyes met Miss Garland&rsquo;s again,
+      and her own, which had rested a moment on Roderick&rsquo;s, were formidable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. Mary Garland
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      How it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn on his mother&rsquo;s
+      arrival never clearly transpired; for he undertook to give no elaborate
+      explanation of his fault. He never indulged in professions (touching
+      personal conduct) as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and as
+      he would have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to embrace
+      his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland&rsquo;s presence, at
+      least) no apology for having left her to come in search of him. It was to
+      be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season, the voyage of the
+      two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that, according to common
+      probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the morrow (as he declared
+      that he had intended), he would have had a day or two of waiting at
+      Leghorn. Rowland&rsquo;s silent inference was that Christina Light had beguiled
+      him into letting the time slip, and it was accompanied with a silent
+      inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously or maliciously. He had told
+      her, presumably, that his mother and his cousin were about to arrive; and
+      it was pertinent to remember hereupon that she was a young lady of
+      mysterious impulses. Rowland heard in due time the story of the adventures
+      of the two ladies from Northampton. Miss Garland&rsquo;s wish, at Leghorn, on
+      finding they were left at the mercy of circumstances, had been to
+      telegraph to Roderick and await an answer; for she knew that their arrival
+      was a trifle premature. But Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s maternal heart had taken the
+      alarm. Roderick&rsquo;s sending for them was, to her imagination, a confession
+      of illness, and his not being at Leghorn, a proof of it; an hour&rsquo;s delay
+      was therefore cruel both to herself and to him. She insisted on immediate
+      departure; and, unskilled as they were in the mysteries of foreign (or
+      even of domestic) travel, they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome.
+      They had arrived late in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns, had
+      got into a cab and proceeded to Roderick&rsquo;s lodging. At the door, poor Mrs.
+      Hudson&rsquo;s frightened anxiety had overcome her, and she had sat quaking and
+      crying in the vehicle, too weak to move. Miss Garland had bravely gone in,
+      groped her way up the dusky staircase, reached Roderick&rsquo;s door, and, with
+      the assistance of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she had
+      culled from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage, had
+      learned from the old woman who had her cousin&rsquo;s household economy in
+      charge that he was in the best of health and spirits, and had gone forth a
+      few hours before with his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies the
+      evening after their arrival. Mrs. Hudson spoke of them at great length and
+      with an air of clinging confidence in Rowland which told him how
+      faithfully time had served him, in her imagination. But her fright was
+      over, though she was still catching her breath a little, like a person
+      dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep. She was excessively
+      bewildered and confused, and seemed more than ever to demand a tender
+      handling from her friends. Before Miss Garland, Rowland was distinctly
+      conscious that he trembled. He wondered extremely what was going on in her
+      mind; what was her silent commentary on the incidents of the night before.
+      He wondered all the more, because he immediately perceived that she was
+      greatly changed since their parting, and that the change was by no means
+      for the worse. She was older, easier, more free, more like a young woman
+      who went sometimes into company. She had more beauty as well, inasmuch as
+      her beauty before had been the depth of her expression, and the sources
+      from which this beauty was fed had in these two years evidently not wasted
+      themselves. Rowland felt almost instantly&mdash;he could hardly have said
+      why: it was in her voice, in her tone, in the air&mdash;that a total
+      change had passed over her attitude towards himself. She trusted him now,
+      absolutely; whether or no she liked him, she believed he was solid. He
+      felt that during the coming weeks he would need to be solid. Mrs. Hudson
+      was at one of the smaller hotels, and her sitting-room was frugally
+      lighted by a couple of candles. Rowland made the most of this dim
+      illumination to try to detect the afterglow of that frightened flash from
+      Miss Garland&rsquo;s eyes the night before. It had been but a flash, for what
+      provoked it had instantly vanished. Rowland had murmured a rapturous
+      blessing on Roderick&rsquo;s head, as he perceived him instantly apprehend the
+      situation. If he had been drinking, its gravity sobered him on the spot;
+      in a single moment he collected his wits. The next moment, with a ringing,
+      jovial cry, he was folding the young girl in his arms, and the next he was
+      beside his mother&rsquo;s carriage, half smothered in her sobs and caresses.
+      Rowland had recommended a hotel close at hand, and had then discreetly
+      withdrawn. Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly, and Miss
+      Garland&rsquo;s brow was serene. It was serene now, twenty-four hours later; but
+      nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment. What had become
+      of it? It had dropped down deep into her memory, and it was lying there
+      for the present in the shade. But with another week, Rowland said to
+      himself, it would leap erect again; the lightest friction would strike a
+      spark from it. Rowland thought he had schooled himself to face the issue
+      of Mary Garland&rsquo;s advent, casting it even in a tragical phase; but in her
+      personal presence&mdash;in which he found a poignant mixture of the
+      familiar and the strange&mdash;he seemed to face it and all that it might
+      bring with it for the first time. In vulgar parlance, he stood uneasy in
+      his shoes. He felt like walking on tiptoe, not to arouse the sleeping
+      shadows. He felt, indeed, almost like saying that they might have their
+      own way later, if they would only allow to these first few days the clear
+      light of ardent contemplation. For Rowland at last was ardent, and all the
+      bells within his soul were ringing bravely in jubilee. Roderick, he
+      learned, had been the whole day with his mother, and had evidently
+      responded to her purest trust. He appeared to her appealing eyes still
+      unspotted by the world. That is what it is, thought Rowland, to be
+      &ldquo;gifted,&rdquo; to escape not only the superficial, but the intrinsic penalties
+      of misconduct. The two ladies had spent the day within doors, resting from
+      the fatigues of travel. Miss Garland, Rowland suspected, was not so
+      fatigued as she suffered it to be assumed. She had remained with Mrs.
+      Hudson, to attend to her personal wants, which the latter seemed to think,
+      now that she was in a foreign land, with a southern climate and a Catholic
+      religion, would forthwith become very complex and formidable, though as
+      yet they had simply resolved themselves into a desire for a great deal of
+      tea and for a certain extremely familiar old black and white shawl across
+      her feet, as she lay on the sofa. But the sense of novelty was evidently
+      strong upon Miss Garland, and the light of expectation was in her eye. She
+      was restless and excited; she moved about the room and went often to the
+      window; she was observing keenly; she watched the Italian servants
+      intently, as they came and went; she had already had a long colloquy with
+      the French chambermaid, who had expounded her views on the Roman question;
+      she noted the small differences in the furniture, in the food, in the
+      sounds that came in from the street. Rowland felt, in all this, that her
+      intelligence, here, would have a great unfolding. He wished immensely he
+      might have a share in it; he wished he might show her Rome. That, of
+      course, would be Roderick&rsquo;s office. But he promised himself at least to
+      take advantage of off-hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It behooves you to appreciate your good fortune,&rdquo; he said to her. &ldquo;To be
+      young and elastic, and yet old enough and wise enough to discriminate and
+      reflect, and to come to Italy for the first time&mdash;that is one of the
+      greatest pleasures that life offers us. It is but right to remind you of
+      it, so that you make the most of opportunity and do not accuse yourself,
+      later, of having wasted the precious season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland looked at him, smiling intently, and went to the window
+      again. &ldquo;I expect to enjoy it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid; I am not
+      wasteful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid we are not qualified, you know,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;We are
+      told that you must know so much, that you must have read so many books.
+      Our taste has not been cultivated. When I was a young lady at school, I
+      remember I had a medal, with a pink ribbon, for &lsquo;proficiency in Ancient
+      History&rsquo;&mdash;the seven kings, or is it the seven hills? and Quintus
+      Curtius and Julius Caesar and&mdash;and that period, you know. I believe I
+      have my medal somewhere in a drawer, now, but I have forgotten all about
+      the kings. But after Roderick came to Italy we tried to learn something
+      about it. Last winter Mary used to read &lsquo;Corinne&rsquo; to me in the evenings,
+      and in the mornings she used to read another book, to herself. What was
+      it, Mary, that book that was so long, you know,&mdash;in fifteen volumes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was Sismondi&rsquo;s Italian Republics,&rdquo; said Mary, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland could not help laughing; whereupon Mary blushed. &ldquo;Did you finish
+      it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and began another&mdash;a shorter one&mdash;Roscoe&rsquo;s Leo the Tenth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you find them interesting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a woman&rsquo;s answer! And do you like art?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment. &ldquo;I have never seen it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have great advantages, now, my dear, with Roderick and Mr. Mallet,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;I am sure no young lady ever had such advantages. You
+      come straight to the highest authorities. Roderick, I suppose, will show
+      you the practice of art, and Mr. Mallet, perhaps, if he will be so good,
+      will show you the theory. As an artist&rsquo;s wife, you ought to know something
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One learns a good deal about it, here, by simply living,&rdquo; said Rowland;
+      &ldquo;by going and coming about one&rsquo;s daily avocations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear, how wonderful that we should be here in the midst of it!&rdquo;
+       murmured Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;To think of art being out there in the streets! We
+      did n&rsquo;t see much of it last evening, as we drove from the depot. But the
+      streets were so dark and we were so frightened! But we are very easy now;
+      are n&rsquo;t we, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very happy,&rdquo; said Mary, gravely, and wandered back to the window
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick came in at this moment and kissed his mother, and then went over
+      and joined Miss Garland. Rowland sat with Mrs. Hudson, who evidently had a
+      word which she deemed of some value for his private ear. She followed
+      Roderick with intensely earnest eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to tell you, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;how very grateful&mdash;how very
+      thankful&mdash;what a happy mother I am! I feel as if I owed it all to
+      you, sir. To find my poor boy so handsome, so prosperous, so elegant, so
+      famous&mdash;and ever to have doubted of you! What must you think of me?
+      You &lsquo;re our guardian angel, sir. I often say so to Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland wore, in response to this speech, a rather haggard brow. He could
+      only murmur that he was glad she found Roderick looking well. He had of
+      course promptly asked himself whether the best discretion dictated that he
+      should give her a word of warning&mdash;just turn the handle of the door
+      through which, later, disappointment might enter. He had determined to say
+      nothing, but simply to wait in silence for Roderick to find effective
+      inspiration in those confidently expectant eyes. It was to be supposed
+      that he was seeking for it now; he remained sometime at the window with
+      his cousin. But at last he turned away and came over to the fireside with
+      a contraction of the eyebrows which seemed to intimate that Miss Garland&rsquo;s
+      influence was for the moment, at least, not soothing. She presently
+      followed him, and for an instant Rowland observed her watching him as if
+      she thought him strange. &ldquo;Strange enough,&rdquo; thought Rowland, &ldquo;he may seem
+      to her, if he will!&rdquo; Roderick directed his glance to his friend with a
+      certain peremptory air, which&mdash;roughly interpreted&mdash;was
+      equivalent to a request to share the intellectual expense of entertaining
+      the ladies. &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; Rowland cried within himself; &ldquo;is he already
+      tired of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, of course, we must begin to put you through the mill,&rdquo;
+       Roderick said to his mother. &ldquo;And be it hereby known to Mallet that we
+      count upon him to turn the wheel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do as you please, my son,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;So long as I have
+      you with me I don&rsquo;t care where I go. We must not take up too much of Mr.
+      Mallet&rsquo;s time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His time is inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Have you,
+      Rowland? If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it! Where will
+      you go first? You have your choice&mdash;from the Scala Santa to the
+      Cloaca Maxima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us take things in order,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;We will go first to Saint
+      Peter&rsquo;s. Miss Garland, I hope you are impatient to see Saint Peter&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to go first to Roderick&rsquo;s studio,&rdquo; said Miss Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a very nasty place,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;At your pleasure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we must see your beautiful things before we can look contentedly at
+      anything else,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no beautiful things,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;You may see what there is!
+      What makes you look so odd?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This inquiry was abruptly addressed to his mother, who, in response,
+      glanced appealingly at Mary and raised a startled hand to her smooth hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it &lsquo;s your face,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;What has happened to it these two
+      years? It has changed its expression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother has prayed a great deal,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did n&rsquo;t suppose, of course, it was from doing anything bad! It makes
+      you a very good face&mdash;very interesting, very solemn. It has very fine
+      lines in it; something might be done with it.&rdquo; And Rowland held one of the
+      candles near the poor lady&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was covered with confusion. &ldquo;My son, my son,&rdquo; she said with dignity,
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a flash all his old alacrity had come to him. &ldquo;I suppose a man may
+      admire his own mother!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;If you please, madame, you &lsquo;ll sit to
+      me for that head. I see it, I see it! I will make something that a queen
+      can&rsquo;t get done for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland respectfully urged her to assent; he saw Roderick was in the vein
+      and would probably do something eminently original. She gave her promise,
+      at last, after many soft, inarticulate protests and a frightened petition
+      that she might be allowed to keep her knitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland returned the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part Roderick
+      had assigned to him. It had been arranged that they should go to Saint
+      Peter&rsquo;s. Roderick was in high good-humor, and, in the carriage, was
+      watching his mother with a fine mixture of filial and professional
+      tenderness. Mrs. Hudson looked up mistrustfully at the tall, shabby
+      houses, and grasped the side of the barouche in her hand, as if she were
+      in a sail-boat, in dangerous waters. Rowland sat opposite to Miss Garland.
+      She was totally oblivious of her companions; from the moment the carriage
+      left the hotel, she sat gazing, wide-eyed and absorbed, at the objects
+      about them. If Rowland had felt disposed he might have made a joke of her
+      intense seriousness. From time to time he told her the name of a place or
+      a building, and she nodded, without looking at him. When they emerged into
+      the great square between Bernini&rsquo;s colonnades, she laid her hand on Mrs.
+      Hudson&rsquo;s arm and sank back in the carriage, staring up at the vast yellow
+      facade of the church. Inside the church, Roderick gave his arm to his
+      mother, and Rowland constituted himself the especial guide of Miss
+      Garland. He walked with her slowly everywhere, and made the entire
+      circuit, telling her all he knew of the history of the building. This was
+      a great deal, but she listened attentively, keeping her eyes fixed on the
+      dome. To Rowland himself it had never seemed so radiantly sublime as at
+      these moments; he felt almost as if he had contrived it himself and had a
+      right to be proud of it. He left Miss Garland a while on the steps of the
+      choir, where she had seated herself to rest, and went to join their
+      companions. Mrs. Hudson was watching a great circle of tattered contadini,
+      who were kneeling before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their
+      tatters fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort of terrified
+      pity, and could not be induced to look at anything else. Rowland went back
+      to Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you think of Europe?&rdquo; he asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it &lsquo;s horrible!&rdquo; she said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel so strangely&mdash;I could almost cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart, in
+      an hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, surely, you &lsquo;re pleased&mdash;you &lsquo;re interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is as
+      if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me lies an
+      immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little narrow,
+      familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you did n&rsquo;t come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow
+      little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that golden
+      mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of certain people
+      and things at home. To enjoy, as you say, as these things demand of one to
+      enjoy them, is to break with one&rsquo;s past. And breaking is a pain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it
+      is your duty. Yours especially!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why mine especially?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the most
+      liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are extremely
+      intelligent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you. I
+      don&rsquo;t want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is
+      susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it,
+      let it go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of the
+      great church. &ldquo;But what you say,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;means change!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Change for the better!&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me very
+      frightful to develop,&rdquo; she added, with her complete smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it with
+      a good grace as with a bad! Since one can&rsquo;t escape life, it is better to
+      take it by the hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this what you call life?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by &lsquo;this&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Peter&rsquo;s&mdash;all this splendor, all Rome&mdash;pictures, ruins,
+      statues, beggars, monks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things are
+      impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex
+      civilization.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don&rsquo;t like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested it.
+      While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful things&mdash;things
+      that you are made to understand. They won&rsquo;t leave you as they found you;
+      then you can judge. Don&rsquo;t tell me I know nothing about your understanding.
+      I have a right to assume it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. &ldquo;I am not sure I understand
+      that,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+      &ldquo;You need n&rsquo;t be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some people is
+      that it is so remarkably small.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s large enough; it&rsquo;s very wonderful. There are things in Rome,
+      then,&rdquo; she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, &ldquo;that are very,
+      very beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lots of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of the most beautiful things in the world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unquestionably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they? which things have most beauty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is according to taste. I should say the statues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something about
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But to
+      know them is a thing for one&rsquo;s leisure. The more time you spend among
+      them, the more you care for them.&rdquo; After a moment&rsquo;s hesitation he went on:
+      &ldquo;Why should you grudge time? It &lsquo;s all in your way, since you are to be an
+      artist&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have thought of that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It may be that I shall always live
+      here, among the most beautiful things in the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very possibly! I should like to see you ten years hence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say I shall seem greatly altered. But I am sure of one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That for the most part I shall be quite the same. I ask nothing better
+      than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even
+      if they are true, it won&rsquo;t matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am
+      now&mdash;a young woman from the country! The fruit of a civilization not
+      old and complex, but new and simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am delighted to hear it: that &lsquo;s an excellent foundation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so
+      kindly of it. Therefore I warn you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not frightened. I should like vastly to say something to you: Be
+      what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but she
+      seemed at least slightly disturbed. She proposed that they should join
+      their companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want
+      of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic
+      temples. &ldquo;Mary, dear,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;suppose we had to kiss that
+      dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at
+      Northampton, as bright as that! I think it&rsquo;s so heathenish; but Roderick
+      says he thinks it &lsquo;s sublime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s sublimer than
+      anything that your religion asks you to do!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and listening to a
+      nasal Puritan! I admit that &lsquo;s difficult. But it &lsquo;s not sublime. I am
+      speaking of ceremonies, of forms. It is in my line, you know, to make much
+      of forms. I think this is a very beautiful one. Could n&rsquo;t you do it?&rdquo; he
+      demanded, looking at his cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked back at him intently and then shook her head. &ldquo;I think not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I could n&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this little discussion our four friends were standing near the
+      venerable image of Saint Peter, and a squalid, savage-looking peasant, a
+      tattered ruffian of the most orthodox Italian aspect, had been performing
+      his devotions before it. He turned away, crossing himself, and Mrs. Hudson
+      gave a little shudder of horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After that,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;I suppose he thinks he is as good as any one!
+      And here is another. Oh, what a beautiful person!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A young lady had approached the sacred effigy, after having wandered away
+      from a group of companions. She kissed the brazen toe, touched it with her
+      forehead, and turned round, facing our friends. Rowland then recognized
+      Christina Light. He was stupefied: had she suddenly embraced the Catholic
+      faith? It was but a few weeks before that she had treated him to a
+      passionate profession of indifference. Had she entered the church to put
+      herself en regle with what was expected of a Princess Casamassima? While
+      Rowland was mentally asking these questions she was approaching him and
+      his friends, on her way to the great altar. At first she did not perceive
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Garland had been gazing at her. &ldquo;You told me,&rdquo; she said gently, to
+      Rowland, &ldquo;that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things in the
+      world. This surely is one of them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Christina&rsquo;s eye met Rowland&rsquo;s and before giving him any
+      sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at his companions. She saw
+      Roderick, but she gave him no bow; she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked
+      at Mary Garland. At Mary Garland she looked fixedly, piercingly, from head
+      to foot, as the slow pace at which she was advancing made possible. Then
+      suddenly, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time, she gave
+      him a charming nod, a radiant smile. In a moment he was at her side. She
+      stopped, and he stood talking to her; she continued to look at Miss
+      Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Roderick knows her!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson, in an awe-struck whisper. &ldquo;I
+      supposed she was some great princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is&mdash;almost!&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;She is the most beautiful girl in
+      Europe, and Roderick has made her bust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her bust? Dear, dear!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson, vaguely shocked. &ldquo;What a
+      strange bonnet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has very strange eyes,&rdquo; said Mary, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two ladies, with Rowland, began to descend toward the door of the
+      church. On their way they passed Mrs. Light, the Cavaliere, and the
+      poodle, and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which these
+      personages stood to Roderick&rsquo;s young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of it, Mary!&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;What splendid people he must know!
+      No wonder he found Northampton dull!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the poor little old gentleman,&rdquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you call him poor?&rdquo; Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems so!&rdquo; she answered simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were reaching the door they were overtaken by Roderick, whose
+      interview with Miss Light had perceptibly brightened his eye. &ldquo;So you are
+      acquainted with princesses!&rdquo; said his mother softly, as they passed into
+      the portico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Light is not a princess!&rdquo; said Roderick, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Mr. Mallet says so,&rdquo; urged Mrs. Hudson, rather disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant that she was going to be!&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s by no means certain that she is even going to be!&rdquo; Roderick
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick almost immediately demanded that his mother should sit to him, at
+      his studio, for her portrait, and Rowland ventured to add another word of
+      urgency. If Roderick&rsquo;s idea really held him, it was an immense pity that
+      his inspiration should be wasted; inspiration, in these days, had become
+      too precious a commodity. It was arranged therefore that, for the present,
+      during the mornings, Mrs. Hudson should place herself at her son&rsquo;s
+      service. This involved but little sacrifice, for the good lady&rsquo;s appetite
+      for antiquities was diminutive and bird-like, the usual round of galleries
+      and churches fatigued her, and she was glad to purchase immunity from
+      sight-seeing by a regular afternoon drive. It became natural in this way
+      that, Miss Garland having her mornings free, Rowland should propose to be
+      the younger lady&rsquo;s guide in whatever explorations she might be disposed to
+      make. She said she knew nothing about it, but she had a great curiosity,
+      and would be glad to see anything that he would show her. Rowland could
+      not find it in his heart to accuse Roderick of neglect of the young girl;
+      for it was natural that the inspirations of a capricious man of genius,
+      when they came, should be imperious; but of course he wondered how Miss
+      Garland felt, as the young man&rsquo;s promised wife, on being thus
+      expeditiously handed over to another man to be entertained. However she
+      felt, he was certain he would know little about it. There had been,
+      between them, none but indirect allusions to her engagement, and Rowland
+      had no desire to discuss it more largely; for he had no quarrel with
+      matters as they stood. They wore the same delightful aspect through the
+      lovely month of May, and the ineffable charm of Rome at that period seemed
+      but the radiant sympathy of nature with his happy opportunity. The weather
+      was divine; each particular morning, as he walked from his lodging to Mrs.
+      Hudson&rsquo;s modest inn, seemed to have a blessing upon it. The elder lady had
+      usually gone off to the studio, and he found Miss Garland sitting alone at
+      the open window, turning the leaves of some book of artistic or
+      antiquarian reference that he had given her. She always had a smile, she
+      was always eager, alert, responsive. She might be grave by nature, she
+      might be sad by circumstance, she might have secret doubts and pangs, but
+      she was essentially young and strong and fresh and able to enjoy. Her
+      enjoyment was not especially demonstrative, but it was curiously diligent.
+      Rowland felt that it was not amusement and sensation that she coveted, but
+      knowledge&mdash;facts that she might noiselessly lay away, piece by piece,
+      in the perfumed darkness of her serious mind, so that, under this head at
+      least, she should not be a perfectly portionless bride. She never merely
+      pretended to understand; she let things go, in her modest fashion, at the
+      moment, but she watched them on their way, over the crest of the hill, and
+      when her fancy seemed not likely to be missed it went hurrying after them
+      and ran breathless at their side, as it were, and begged them for the
+      secret. Rowland took an immense satisfaction in observing that she never
+      mistook the second-best for the best, and that when she was in the
+      presence of a masterpiece, she recognized the occasion as a mighty one.
+      She said many things which he thought very profound&mdash;that is, if they
+      really had the fine intention he suspected. This point he usually tried to
+      ascertain; but he was obliged to proceed cautiously, for in her
+      mistrustful shyness it seemed to her that cross-examination must
+      necessarily be ironical. She wished to know just where she was going&mdash;what
+      she would gain or lose. This was partly on account of a native
+      intellectual purity, a temper of mind that had not lived with its door
+      ajar, as one might say, upon the high-road of thought, for passing ideas
+      to drop in and out at their pleasure; but had made much of a few long
+      visits from guests cherished and honored&mdash;guests whose presence was a
+      solemnity. But it was even more because she was conscious of a sort of
+      growing self-respect, a sense of devoting her life not to her own ends,
+      but to those of another, whose life would be large and brilliant. She had
+      been brought up to think a great deal of &ldquo;nature&rdquo; and nature&rsquo;s innocent
+      laws; but now Rowland had spoken to her ardently of culture; her strenuous
+      fancy had responded, and she was pursuing culture into retreats where the
+      need for some intellectual effort gave a noble severity to her purpose.
+      She wished to be very sure, to take only the best, knowing it to be the
+      best. There was something exquisite in this labor of pious self-adornment,
+      and Rowland helped it, though its fruits were not for him. In spite of her
+      lurking rigidity and angularity, it was very evident that a nervous,
+      impulsive sense of beauty was constantly at play in her soul, and that her
+      actual experience of beautiful things moved her in some very deep places.
+      For all that she was not demonstrative, that her manner was simple, and
+      her small-talk of no very ample flow; for all that, as she had said, she
+      was a young woman from the country, and the country was West Nazareth, and
+      West Nazareth was in its way a stubborn little fact, she was feeling the
+      direct influence of the great amenities of the world, and they were
+      shaping her with a divinely intelligent touch. &ldquo;Oh exquisite virtue of
+      circumstance!&rdquo; cried Rowland to himself, &ldquo;that takes us by the hand and
+      leads us forth out of corners where, perforce, our attitudes are a trifle
+      contracted, and beguiles us into testing mistrusted faculties!&rdquo; When he
+      said to Mary Garland that he wished he might see her ten years hence, he
+      was paying mentally an equal compliment to circumstance and to the girl
+      herself. Capacity was there, it could be freely trusted; observation would
+      have but to sow its generous seed. &ldquo;A superior woman&rdquo;&mdash;the idea had
+      harsh associations, but he watched it imaging itself in the vagueness of
+      the future with a kind of hopeless confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went a great deal to Saint Peter&rsquo;s, for which Rowland had an
+      exceeding affection, a large measure of which he succeeded in infusing
+      into his companion. She confessed very speedily that to climb the long,
+      low, yellow steps, beneath the huge florid facade, and then to push the
+      ponderous leathern apron of the door, to find one&rsquo;s self confronted with
+      that builded, luminous sublimity, was a sensation of which the keenness
+      renewed itself with surprising generosity. In those days the hospitality
+      of the Vatican had not been curtailed, and it was an easy and delightful
+      matter to pass from the gorgeous church to the solemn company of the
+      antique marbles. Here Rowland had with his companion a great deal of talk,
+      and found himself expounding aesthetics a perte de vue. He discovered that
+      she made notes of her likes and dislikes in a new-looking little
+      memorandum book, and he wondered to what extent she reported his own
+      discourse. These were charming hours. The galleries had been so cold all
+      winter that Rowland had been an exile from them; but now that the sun was
+      already scorching in the great square between the colonnades, where the
+      twin fountains flashed almost fiercely, the marble coolness of the long,
+      image-bordered vistas made them a delightful refuge. The great herd of
+      tourists had almost departed, and our two friends often found themselves,
+      for half an hour at a time, in sole and tranquil possession of the
+      beautiful Braccio Nuovo. Here and there was an open window, where they
+      lingered and leaned, looking out into the warm, dead air, over the towers
+      of the city, at the soft-hued, historic hills, at the stately shabby
+      gardens of the palace, or at some sunny, empty, grass-grown court, lost in
+      the heart of the labyrinthine pile. They went sometimes into the chambers
+      painted by Raphael, and of course paid their respects to the Sistine
+      Chapel; but Mary&rsquo;s evident preference was to linger among the statues.
+      Once, when they were standing before that noblest of sculptured portraits,
+      the so-called Demosthenes, in the Braccio Nuovo, she made the only
+      spontaneous allusion to her projected marriage, direct or indirect, that
+      had yet fallen from her lips. &ldquo;I am so glad,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that Roderick is
+      a sculptor and not a painter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The allusion resided chiefly in the extreme earnestness with which the
+      words were uttered. Rowland immediately asked her the reason of her
+      gladness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s not that painting is not fine,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but that sculpture is
+      finer. It is more manly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland tried at times to make her talk about herself, but in this she had
+      little skill. She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant to
+      social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a desire to
+      draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and thoughts. He
+      told her his desire and what suggested it. &ldquo;It appears, then,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;that, after all, one can grow at home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unquestionably, if one has a motive. Your growth, then, was unconscious?
+      You did not watch yourself and water your roots?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paid no heed to his question. &ldquo;I am willing to grant,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that
+      Europe is more delightful than I supposed; and I don&rsquo;t think that,
+      mentally, I had been stingy. But you must admit that America is better
+      than you have supposed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not a fault to find with the country which produced you!&rdquo; Rowland
+      thought he might risk this, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you want me to change&mdash;to assimilate Europe, I suppose you
+      would call it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have felt that desire only on general principles. Shall I tell you what
+      I feel now? America has made you thus far; let America finish you! I
+      should like to ship you back without delay and see what becomes of you.
+      That sounds unkind, and I admit there is a cold intellectual curiosity in
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. &ldquo;The charm is broken; the thread is snapped! I prefer
+      to remain here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Invariably, when he was inclined to make of something they were talking of
+      a direct application to herself, she wholly failed to assist him; she made
+      no response. Whereupon, once, with a spark of ardent irritation, he told
+      her she was very &ldquo;secretive.&rdquo; At this she colored a little, and he said
+      that in default of any larger confidence it would at least be a
+      satisfaction to make her confess to that charge. But even this
+      satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making, two or
+      three times afterward, a softly ironical allusion to her slyness. He told
+      her that she was what is called in French a sournoise. &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; she
+      answered, almost indifferently, &ldquo;and now please tell me again&mdash;I have
+      forgotten it&mdash;what you said an &lsquo;architrave&rsquo; was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the occasion of her asking him a question of this kind that he
+      charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had been
+      curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless ardor,
+      with having an insatiable avidity for facts. &ldquo;You are always snatching at
+      information,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you will never consent to have any disinterested
+      conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She frowned a little, as she always did when he arrested their talk upon
+      something personal. But this time she assented, and said that she knew she
+      was eager for facts. &ldquo;One must make hay while the sun shines,&rdquo; she added.
+      &ldquo;I must lay up a store of learning against dark days. Somehow, my
+      imagination refuses to compass the idea that I may be in Rome
+      indefinitely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew he had divined her real motives; but he felt that if he might have
+      said to her&mdash;what it seemed impossible to say&mdash;that fortune
+      possibly had in store for her a bitter disappointment, she would have been
+      capable of answering, immediately after the first sense of pain, &ldquo;Say then
+      that I am laying up resources for solitude!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But all the accusations were not his. He had been watching, once, during
+      some brief argument, to see whether she would take her forefinger out of
+      her Murray, into which she had inserted it to keep a certain page. It
+      would have been hard to say why this point interested him, for he had not
+      the slightest real apprehension that she was dry or pedantic. The simple
+      human truth was, the poor fellow was jealous of science. In preaching
+      science to her, he had over-estimated his powers of self-effacement.
+      Suddenly, sinking science for the moment, she looked at him very frankly
+      and began to frown. At the same time she let the Murray slide down to the
+      ground, and he was so charmed with this circumstance that he made no
+      movement to pick it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are singularly inconsistent, Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That first day that we were in Saint Peter&rsquo;s you said things that
+      inspired me. You bade me plunge into all this. I was all ready; I only
+      wanted a little push; yours was a great one; here I am in mid-ocean! And
+      now, as a reward for my bravery, you have repeatedly snubbed me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Distinctly, then,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I strike you as inconsistent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I have played my part very ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your part? What is your part supposed to have been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated a moment. &ldquo;That of usefulness, pure and simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you!&rdquo; she said; and picking up her Murray, she fairly
+      buried herself in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening he said something to her which necessarily increased her
+      perplexity, though it was not uttered with such an intention. &ldquo;Do you
+      remember,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;my begging you, the other day, to do occasionally as
+      I told you? It seemed to me you tacitly consented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very tacitly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never yet really presumed on your consent. But now I would like
+      you to do this: whenever you catch me in the act of what you call
+      inconsistency, ask me the meaning of some architectural term. I will know
+      what you mean; a word to the wise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning they spent among the ruins of the Palatine, that sunny
+      desolation of crumbling, over-tangled fragments, half excavated and half
+      identified, known as the Palace of the Caesars. Nothing in Rome is more
+      interesting, and no locality has such a confusion of picturesque charms.
+      It is a vast, rambling garden, where you stumble at every step on the
+      disinterred bones of the past; where damp, frescoed corridors, relics,
+      possibly, of Nero&rsquo;s Golden House, serve as gigantic bowers, and where, in
+      the springtime, you may sit on a Latin inscription, in the shade of a
+      flowering almond-tree, and admire the composition of the Campagna. The day
+      left a deep impression on Rowland&rsquo;s mind, partly owing to its intrinsic
+      sweetness, and partly because his companion, on this occasion, let her
+      Murray lie unopened for an hour, and asked several questions irrelevant to
+      the Consuls and the Caesars. She had begun by saying that it was coming
+      over her, after all, that Rome was a ponderously sad place. The sirocco
+      was gently blowing, the air was heavy, she was tired, she looked a little
+      pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;seems to say that all things are vanity. If one
+      is doing something, I suppose one feels a certain strength within one to
+      contradict it. But if one is idle, surely it is depressing to live, year
+      after year, among the ashes of things that once were mighty. If I were to
+      remain here I should either become permanently &lsquo;low,&rsquo; as they say, or I
+      would take refuge in some dogged daily work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would open a school for those beautiful little beggars; though I am
+      sadly afraid I should never bring myself to scold them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am idle,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;and yet I have kept up a certain spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call you idle,&rdquo; she answered with emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very good of you. Do you remember our talking about that in
+      Northampton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;During that picnic? Perfectly. Has your coming abroad succeeded, for
+      yourself, as well as you hoped?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I may say that it has turned out as well as I expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I look so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it seems to me. But&rdquo;&mdash;and she hesitated a moment&mdash;&ldquo;I imagine
+      you look happy whether you are so or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder
+      excavated fresco: I am made to grin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you come back here next winter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you settled here forever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Forever&rsquo; is a long time. I live only from year to year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you never marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland gave a laugh. &ldquo;&lsquo;Forever&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;never!&rsquo; You handle large ideas. I
+      have not taken a vow of celibacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would n&rsquo;t you like to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this she made no rejoinder: but presently she asked, &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you
+      write a book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland laughed, this time more freely. &ldquo;A book! What book should I
+      write?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A history; something about art or antiquities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have neither the learning nor the talent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said she had supposed
+      otherwise. &ldquo;You ought, at any rate,&rdquo; she continued in a moment, &ldquo;to do
+      something for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For myself? I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed to live for
+      himself&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how it seems,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;to careless observers. But
+      we know&mdash;we know that you have lived&mdash;a great deal&mdash;for
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words with a
+      little jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has had that speech on her conscience,&rdquo; thought Rowland; &ldquo;she has
+      been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her that now was her
+      time to make it and have done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with due
+      solemnity. &ldquo;You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel. Mrs.
+      Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels. Of course Roderick
+      has expressed himself. I have been wanting to thank you too; I do, from my
+      heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic mask
+      much more than the comic. But Miss Garland was not looking at him; she had
+      taken up her Murray again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland
+      frequently saw her again in the evening. He was apt to spend half an hour
+      in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension on the slope of the
+      Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly with his mother, was present on
+      these occasions. Rowland saw him little at other times, and for three
+      weeks no observations passed between them on the subject of Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s
+      advent. To Rowland&rsquo;s vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits to proceed
+      from the presence of the two ladies remained shrouded in mystery. Roderick
+      was peculiarly inscrutable. He was preoccupied with his work on his
+      mother&rsquo;s portrait, which was taking a very happy turn; and often, when he
+      sat silent, with his hands in his pockets, his legs outstretched, his head
+      thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to be supposed that his fancy
+      was hovering about the half-shaped image in his studio, exquisite even in
+      its immaturity. He said little, but his silence did not of necessity imply
+      disaffection, for he evidently found it a deep personal luxury to lounge
+      away the hours in an atmosphere so charged with feminine tenderness. He
+      was not alert, he suggested nothing in the way of excursions (Rowland was
+      the prime mover in such as were attempted), but he conformed passively at
+      least to the tranquil temper of the two women, and made no harsh comments
+      nor sombre allusions. Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his
+      friend injustice in denying him the sentiment of duty. He refused
+      invitations, to Rowland&rsquo;s knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little
+      table-d&rsquo;hote; wherever his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh
+      with religious constancy. Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s felicity betrayed itself in a
+      remarkable tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk
+      gown. Her tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers
+      that the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch is an
+      inanimate terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust, and that it is even a
+      safe audacity to tickle its nose. As to whether the love-knot of which
+      Mary Garland had the keeping still held firm, who should pronounce? The
+      young girl, as we know, did not wear it on her sleeve. She always sat at
+      the table, near the candles, with a piece of needle-work. This was the
+      attitude in which Rowland had first seen her, and he thought, now that he
+      had seen her in several others, it was not the least becoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. The Cavaliere
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There befell at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable to
+      go to the hotel. Late in the evening of the second one Roderick came into
+      his room. In a few moments he announced that he had finished the bust of
+      his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it &lsquo;s magnificent!&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s one of the best things I have
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Never again talk to me about your
+      inspiration being dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? This may be its last kick! I feel very tired. But it &lsquo;s a
+      masterpiece, though I do say it. They tell us we owe so much to our
+      parents. Well, I &lsquo;ve paid the filial debt handsomely!&rdquo; He walked up and
+      down the room a few moments, with the purpose of his visit evidently still
+      undischarged. &ldquo;There &lsquo;s one thing more I want to say,&rdquo; he presently
+      resumed. &ldquo;I feel as if I ought to tell you!&rdquo; He stopped before Rowland
+      with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded. &ldquo;Your invention is
+      a failure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My invention?&rdquo; Rowland repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bringing out my mother and Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A failure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s no use! They don&rsquo;t help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had fancied that Roderick had no more surprises for him; but he
+      was now staring at him, wide-eyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They bore me!&rdquo; Roderick went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh!&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, listen!&rdquo; said Roderick with perfect gentleness. &ldquo;I am not
+      complaining of them; I am simply stating a fact. I am very sorry for them;
+      I am greatly disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you given them a fair trial?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should n&rsquo;t you say so? It seems to me I have behaved beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done very well; I have been building great hopes on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done too well, then. After the first forty-eight hours my own
+      hopes collapsed. But I determined to fight it out; to stand within the
+      temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend! Do you want to know the
+      result? Another week of it, and I shall begin to hate them. I shall want
+      to poison them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miserable boy!&rdquo; cried Rowland. &ldquo;They are the loveliest of women!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely! But they mean no more to me than a Bible text to an
+      atheist!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I utterly fail,&rdquo; said Rowland, in a moment, &ldquo;to understand your relation
+      to Miss Garland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides. &ldquo;She
+      adores me! That &lsquo;s my relation.&rdquo; And he smiled strangely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you broken your engagement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Broken it? You can&rsquo;t break a ray of moonshine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you absolutely no affection for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment. &ldquo;Dead&mdash;dead&mdash;dead!&rdquo;
+       he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; Rowland asked presently, &ldquo;if you begin to comprehend the
+      beauty of Miss Garland&rsquo;s character. She is a person of the highest merit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently&mdash;or I would not have cared for her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has that no charm for you now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t force a fellow to say rude things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can only say that you don&rsquo;t know what you are giving up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick gave a quickened glance. &ldquo;Do you know, so well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admire her immeasurably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick smiled, we may almost say sympathetically. &ldquo;You have not wasted
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s thoughts were crowding upon him fast. If Roderick was resolute,
+      why oppose him? If Mary was to be sacrificed, why, in that way, try to
+      save her? There was another way; it only needed a little presumption to
+      make it possible. Rowland tried, mentally, to summon presumption to his
+      aid; but whether it came or not, it found conscience there before it.
+      Conscience had only three words, but they were cogent. &ldquo;For her sake&mdash;for
+      her sake,&rdquo; it dumbly murmured, and Rowland resumed his argument. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      know what I would n&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;rather than that Miss Garland should
+      suffer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing to be said,&rdquo; Roderick answered reflectively. &ldquo;She is
+      very strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, if she &lsquo;s strong, believe that with a longer chance, a better
+      chance, she will still regain your affection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what you ask?&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;Make love to a girl I hate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As her lover, I should hate her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me!&rdquo; said Rowland with vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, listen you to me! Do you really urge my marrying a woman who would
+      bore me to death? I would let her know it in very good season, and then
+      where would she be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland walked the length of the room a couple of times and then stopped
+      suddenly. &ldquo;Go your way, then! Say all this to her, not to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To her? I am afraid of her; I want you to help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Roderick,&rdquo; said Rowland with an eloquent smile, &ldquo;I can help you
+      no more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick frowned, hesitated a moment, and then took his hat. &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;I am not so afraid of her as all that!&rdquo; And he turned, as if to
+      depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried Rowland, as he laid his hand on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick paused and stood waiting, with his irritated brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back; sit down there and listen to me. Of anything you were to say
+      in your present state of mind you would live most bitterly to repent. You
+      don&rsquo;t know what you really think; you don&rsquo;t know what you really feel. You
+      don&rsquo;t know your own mind; you don&rsquo;t do justice to Miss Garland. All this
+      is impossible here, under these circumstances. You &lsquo;re blind, you &lsquo;re
+      deaf, you &lsquo;re under a spell. To break it, you must leave Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave Rome! Rome was never so dear to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s not of the smallest consequence. Leave it instantly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where shall I go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to some place where you may be alone with your mother and Miss
+      Garland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone? You will not come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you desire it, I will come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick inclining his head a little, looked at his friend askance. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I wish you liked Miss Garland either a
+      little less, or a little more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt himself coloring, but he paid no heed to Roderick&rsquo;s speech.
+      &ldquo;You ask me to help you,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;On these present conditions I can
+      do nothing. But if you will postpone all decision as to the continuance of
+      your engagement a couple of months longer, and meanwhile leave Rome, leave
+      Italy, I will do what I can to &lsquo;help you,&rsquo; as you say, in the event of
+      your still wishing to break it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must do without your help then! Your conditions are impossible. I will
+      leave Rome at the time I have always intended&mdash;at the end of June. My
+      rooms and my mother&rsquo;s are taken till then; all my arrangements are made
+      accordingly. Then, I will depart; not before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not frank,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Your real reason for staying has
+      nothing to do with your rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick&rsquo;s face betrayed neither embarrassment nor resentment. &ldquo;If I &lsquo;m
+      not frank, it &lsquo;s for the first time in my life. Since you know so much
+      about my real reason, let me hear it! No, stop!&rdquo; he suddenly added, &ldquo;I
+      won&rsquo;t trouble you. You are right, I have a motive. On the twenty-fourth of
+      June Miss Light is to be married. I take an immense interest in all that
+      concerns her, and I wish to be present at her wedding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said the other day at Saint Peter&rsquo;s that it was by no means
+      certain her marriage would take place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently I was wrong: the invitations, I am told, are going out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt that it would be utterly vain to remonstrate, and that the
+      only thing for him was to make the best terms possible. &ldquo;If I offer no
+      further opposition to your waiting for Miss Light&rsquo;s marriage,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period, to
+      defer to my judgment&mdash;to say nothing that may be a cause of suffering
+      to Miss Garland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a certain period? What period?&rdquo; Roderick demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t drive so close a bargain! Don&rsquo;t you understand that I have
+      taken you away from her, that I suffer in every nerve in consequence, and
+      that I must do what I can to restore you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what you can, then,&rdquo; said Roderick gravely, putting out his hand. &ldquo;Do
+      what you can!&rdquo; His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute a promise,
+      and upon this they parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick&rsquo;s bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what he
+      called the filial debt, was at least a most admirable production. Rowland,
+      at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening, and this
+      unscrupulous genius immediately began to ask questions about it. &ldquo;I am
+      told our high-flying friend has come down,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He has been doing a
+      queer little old woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A queer little old woman!&rdquo; Rowland exclaimed. &ldquo;My dear sir, she is
+      Hudson&rsquo;s mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason for her being queer! It is a bust for terra-cotta,
+      eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By no means; it is for marble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a pity. It was described to me as a charming piece of quaintness:
+      a little demure, thin-lipped old lady, with her head on one side, and the
+      prettiest wrinkles in the world&mdash;a sort of fairy godmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see it, and judge for yourself,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I see I shall be disappointed. It &lsquo;s quite the other thing, the sort
+      of thing they put into the campo-santos. I wish that boy would listen to
+      me an hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a day or two later Rowland met him again in the street, and, as they
+      were near, proposed they should adjourn to Roderick&rsquo;s studio. He
+      consented, and on entering they found the young master. Roderick&rsquo;s
+      demeanor to Gloriani was never conciliatory, and on this occasion supreme
+      indifference was apparently all he had to offer. But Gloriani, like a
+      genuine connoisseur, cared nothing for his manners; he cared only for his
+      skill. In the bust of Mrs. Hudson there was something almost touching; it
+      was an exquisite example of a ruling sense of beauty. The poor lady&rsquo;s
+      small, neat, timorous face had certainly no great character, but Roderick
+      had reproduced its sweetness, its mildness, its minuteness, its still
+      maternal passion, with the most unerring art. It was perfectly
+      unflattered, and yet admirably tender; it was the poetry of fidelity.
+      Gloriani stood looking at it a long time most intently. Roderick wandered
+      away into the neighboring room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo; said the sculptor at last. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you like it?&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like it? It &lsquo;s a pearl of pearls. Tell me this,&rdquo; he added: &ldquo;is he very
+      fond of his mother; is he a very good son?&rdquo; And he gave Rowland a sharp
+      look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, she adores him,&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s not an answer! But it &lsquo;s none of my business. Only if I, in his
+      place, being suspected of having&mdash;what shall I call it?&mdash;a cold
+      heart, managed to do that piece of work, oh, oh! I should be called a
+      pretty lot of names. Charlatan, poseur, arrangeur! But he can do as he
+      chooses! My dear young man, I know you don&rsquo;t like me,&rdquo; he went on, as
+      Roderick came back. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a pity; you are strong enough not to care about
+      me at all. You are very strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Roderick curtly. &ldquo;I am very weak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you last year that you would n&rsquo;t keep it up. I was a great ass.
+      You will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; retorted Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I &lsquo;m a great ass, all the same, eh? Well, call me what you will,
+      so long as you turn out this sort of thing! I don&rsquo;t suppose it makes any
+      particular difference, but I should like to say now I believe in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with a strange hardness in his
+      face. It flushed slowly, and two glittering, angry tears filled his eyes.
+      It was the first time Rowland had ever seen them there; he saw them but
+      once again. Poor Gloriani, he was sure, had never in his life spoken with
+      less of irony; but to Roderick there was evidently a sense of mockery in
+      his profession of faith. He turned away with a muttered, passionate
+      imprecation. Gloriani was accustomed to deal with complex problems, but
+      this time he was hopelessly puzzled. &ldquo;What &lsquo;s the matter with him?&rdquo; he
+      asked, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland gave a sad smile, and touched his forehead. &ldquo;Genius, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloriani sent another parting, lingering look at the bust of Mrs. Hudson.
+      &ldquo;Well, it &lsquo;s deuced perfect, it &lsquo;s deuced simple; I do believe in him!&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;But I &lsquo;m glad I &lsquo;m not a genius. It makes,&rdquo; he added with a laugh,
+      as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his back still
+      turned, &ldquo;it makes a more sociable studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had purchased, as he supposed, temporary tranquillity for Mary
+      Garland; but his own humor in these days was not especially peaceful. He
+      was attempting, in a certain sense, to lead the ideal life, and he found
+      it, at the least, not easy. The days passed, but brought with them no
+      official invitation to Miss Light&rsquo;s wedding. He occasionally met her, and
+      he occasionally met Prince Casamassima; but always separately, never
+      together. They were apparently taking their happiness in the inexpressive
+      manner proper to people of social eminence. Rowland continued to see
+      Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt a confirmed affection. He had always
+      talked to her with frankness, but now he made her a confidant of all his
+      hidden dejection. Roderick and Roderick&rsquo;s concerns had been a common theme
+      with him, and it was in the natural course to talk of Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s
+      arrival and Miss Garland&rsquo;s fine smile. Madame Grandoni was an intelligent
+      listener, and she lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell.
+      &ldquo;At one moment you tell me the girl is plain,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;the next you
+      tell me she &lsquo;s pretty. I will invite them, and I shall see for myself. But
+      one thing is very clear: you are in love with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than that,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;you have been in love with her these two
+      years. There was that certain something about you!... I knew you were a
+      mild, sweet fellow, but you had a touch of it more than was natural. Why
+      did n&rsquo;t you tell me at once? You would have saved me a great deal of
+      trouble. And poor Augusta Blanchard too!&rdquo; And herewith Madame Grandoni
+      communicated a pertinent fact: Augusta Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth were
+      going to make a match. The young lady had been staying for a month at
+      Albano, and Mr. Leavenworth had been dancing attendance. The event was a
+      matter of course. Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself with a
+      failure of attention to Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s doings, made some such
+      observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you did not find it so!&rdquo; cried his hostess. &ldquo;It was a matter of
+      course, perhaps, that Mr. Leavenworth, who seems to be going about Europe
+      with the sole view of picking up furniture for his &lsquo;home,&rsquo; as he calls it,
+      should think Miss Blanchard a very handsome piece; but it was not a matter
+      of course&mdash;or it need n&rsquo;t have been&mdash;that she should be willing
+      to become a sort of superior table-ornament. She would have accepted you
+      if you had tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are supposing the insupposable,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;She never gave me a
+      particle of encouragement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have had her do? The poor girl did her best, and I am sure
+      that when she accepted Mr. Leavenworth she thought of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thought of the pleasure her marriage would give me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, pleasure indeed! She is a thoroughly good girl, but she has her
+      little grain of feminine spite, like the rest. Well, he &lsquo;s richer than
+      you, and she will have what she wants; but before I forgive you I must
+      wait and see this new arrival&mdash;what do you call her?&mdash;Miss
+      Garland. If I like her, I will forgive you; if I don&rsquo;t, I shall always
+      bear you a grudge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she might
+      offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland was a figment
+      of her fancy. Miss Garland was engaged to another man, and he himself had
+      no claims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, &ldquo;if I like her, we &lsquo;ll have it that
+      you ought to be in love with her. If you fail in this, it will be a double
+      misdemeanor. The man she &lsquo;s engaged to does n&rsquo;t care a straw for her.
+      Leave me alone and I &lsquo;ll tell her what I think of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Christina Light&rsquo;s marriage, Madame Grandoni could make no definite
+      statement. The young girl, of late, had made her several flying visits, in
+      the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial shopping and dress-fitting; she
+      had spoken of the event with a toss of her head, as a matter which, with a
+      wise old friend who viewed things in their essence, she need not pretend
+      to treat as a solemnity. It was for Prince Casamassima to do that. &ldquo;It is
+      what they call a marriage of reason,&rdquo; she once said. &ldquo;That means, you
+      know, a marriage of madness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you said in the way of advice?&rdquo; Rowland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very little, but that little has favored the prince. I know nothing of
+      the mysteries of the young lady&rsquo;s heart. It may be a gold-mine, but at any
+      rate it &lsquo;s a mine, and it &lsquo;s a long journey down into it. But the marriage
+      in itself is an excellent marriage. It &lsquo;s not only brilliant, but it &lsquo;s
+      safe. I think Christina is quite capable of making it a means of misery;
+      but there is no position that would be sacred to her. Casamassima is an
+      irreproachable young man; there is nothing against him but that he is a
+      prince. It is not often, I fancy, that a prince has been put through his
+      paces at this rate. No one knows the wedding-day; the cards of invitation
+      have been printed half a dozen times over, with a different date; each
+      time Christina has destroyed them. There are people in Rome who are
+      furious at the delay; they want to get away; they are in a dreadful fright
+      about the fever, but they are dying to see the wedding, and if the day
+      were fixed, they would make their arrangements to wait for it. I think it
+      very possible that after having kept them a month and produced a dozen
+      cases of malaria, Christina will be married at midnight by an old friar,
+      with simply the legal witnesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true, then, that she has become a Catholic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she tells me. One day she got up in the depths of despair; at her
+      wit&rsquo;s end, I suppose, in other words, for a new sensation. Suddenly it
+      occurred to her that the Catholic church might after all hold the key,
+      might give her what she wanted! She sent for a priest; he happened to be a
+      clever man, and he contrived to interest her. She put on a black dress and
+      a black lace veil, and looking handsomer than ever she rustled into the
+      Catholic church. The prince, who is very devout, and who had her heresy
+      sorely on his conscience, was thrown into an ecstasy. May she never have a
+      caprice that pleases him less!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had already asked Madame Grandoni what, to her perception, was the
+      present state of matters between Christina and Roderick; and he now
+      repeated his question with some earnestness of apprehension. &ldquo;The girl is
+      so deucedly dramatic,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I don&rsquo;t know what coup de theatre
+      she may have in store for us. Such a stroke was her turning Catholic; such
+      a stroke would be her some day making her courtesy to a disappointed world
+      as Princess Casamassima, married at midnight, in her bonnet. She might do&mdash;she
+      may do&mdash;something that would make even more starers! I &lsquo;m prepared
+      for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that she might elope with your sculptor, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m prepared for anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that he &lsquo;s ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that she is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They &lsquo;re a precious pair! I think this. You by no means exhaust the
+      subject when you say that Christina is dramatic. It &lsquo;s my belief that in
+      the course of her life she will do a certain number of things from pure
+      disinterested passion. She &lsquo;s immeasurably proud, and if that is often a
+      fault in a virtuous person, it may be a merit in a vicious one. She needs
+      to think well of herself; she knows a fine character, easily, when she
+      meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison, even though the comparison
+      is made by herself alone; and when the estimate she may have made of
+      herself grows vague, she needs to do something to give it definite,
+      impressive form. What she will do in such a case will be better or worse,
+      according to her opportunity; but I imagine it will generally be something
+      that will drive her mother to despair; something of the sort usually
+      termed &lsquo;unworldly.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, as he was taking his leave, after some further exchange of
+      opinions, rendered Miss Light the tribute of a deeply meditative sigh.
+      &ldquo;She has bothered me half to death,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but somehow I can&rsquo;t manage,
+      as I ought, to hate her. I admire her, half the time, and a good part of
+      the rest I pity her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I most pity her!&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This enlightened woman came the next day to call upon the two ladies from
+      Northampton. She carried their shy affections by storm, and made them
+      promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow. Her visit was
+      an era in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing but make sudden
+      desultory allusions to her, for the next thirty-six hours. &ldquo;To think of
+      her being a foreigner!&rdquo; she would exclaim, after much intent reflection,
+      over her knitting; &ldquo;she speaks so beautifully!&rdquo; Then in a little while,
+      &ldquo;She was n&rsquo;t so much dressed as you might have expected. Did you notice
+      how easy it was in the waist? I wonder if that &lsquo;s the fashion?&rdquo; Or, &ldquo;She
+      &lsquo;s very old to wear a hat; I should never dare to wear a hat!&rdquo; Or, &ldquo;Did
+      you notice her hands?&mdash;very pretty hands for such a stout person. A
+      great many rings, but nothing very handsome. I suppose they are
+      hereditary.&rdquo; Or, &ldquo;She &lsquo;s certainly not handsome, but she &lsquo;s very
+      sweet-looking. I wonder why she does n&rsquo;t have something done to her
+      teeth.&rdquo; Rowland also received a summons to Madame Grandoni&rsquo;s tea-drinking,
+      and went betimes, as he had been requested. He was eagerly desirous to
+      lend his mute applause to Mary Garland&rsquo;s debut in the Roman social world.
+      The two ladies had arrived, with Roderick, silent and careless, in
+      attendance. Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by Mr. Leavenworth,
+      and the party was completed by a dozen artists of both sexes and various
+      nationalities. It was a friendly and easy assembly, like all Madame
+      Grandoni&rsquo;s parties, and in the course of the evening there was some
+      excellent music. People played and sang for Madame Grandoni, on easy
+      terms, who, elsewhere, were not to be heard for the asking. She was
+      herself a superior musician, and singers found it a privilege to perform
+      to her accompaniment. Rowland talked to various persons, but for the first
+      time in his life his attention visibly wandered; he could not keep his
+      eyes off Mary Garland. Madame Grandoni had said that he sometimes spoke of
+      her as pretty and sometimes as plain; to-night, if he had had occasion to
+      describe her appearance, he would have called her beautiful. She was
+      dressed more than he had ever seen her; it was becoming, and gave her a
+      deeper color and an ampler presence. Two or three persons were introduced
+      to her who were apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them
+      with her brilliant natural smile. Rowland, from an opposite corner,
+      reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard&rsquo;s
+      classic contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed him hardly more
+      than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value. Roderick could not be
+      accused of rancor, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied
+      familiarity, and, lounging against the wall, with hands in pockets, was
+      discoursing to him with candid serenity. Now that he had done him an
+      impertinence, he evidently found him less intolerable. Mr. Leavenworth
+      stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth,
+      without looking at the young sculptor, like a large, drowsy dog snapping
+      at flies. Rowland had found it disagreeable to be told Miss Blanchard
+      would have married him for the asking, and he would have felt some
+      embarrassment in going to speak to her if his modesty had not found
+      incredulity so easy. The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had
+      never been present to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all ways,
+      to be compassed with a great effort. He had half an hour&rsquo;s talk with her;
+      a farewell talk, as it seemed to him&mdash;a farewell not to a real
+      illusion, but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever
+      be an acceptable pis-aller. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her
+      engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness. But
+      she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs. Browning and
+      George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her responding on
+      this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a &ldquo;glorious heart.&rdquo; Rowland wished
+      to manifest an extreme regard, but toward the end of the talk his zeal
+      relaxed, and he fell a-thinking that a certain natural ease in a woman was
+      the most delightful thing in the world. There was Christina Light, who had
+      too much, and here was Miss Blanchard, who had too little, and there was
+      Mary Garland (in whom the quality was wholly uncultivated), who had just
+      the right amount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to Madame Grandoni in an adjoining room, where she was pouring out
+      tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make you an excellent cup,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;because I have forgiven
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, answering nothing; but he swallowed his tea with great
+      gusto, and a slight deepening of his color; by all of which one would have
+      known that he was gratified. In a moment he intimated that, in so far as
+      he had sinned, he had forgiven himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a lovely girl,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;There is a great deal
+      there. I have taken a great fancy to her, and she must let me make a
+      friend of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very plain,&rdquo; said Rowland, slowly, &ldquo;very simple, very ignorant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which, being interpreted, means, &lsquo;She is very handsome, very subtle, and
+      has read hundreds of volumes on winter evenings in the country.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a veritable sorceress,&rdquo; cried Rowland; &ldquo;you frighten me away!&rdquo; As
+      he was turning to leave her, there rose above the hum of voices in the
+      drawing-room the sharp, grotesque note of a barking dog. Their eyes met in
+      a glance of intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is the sorceress!&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;The sorceress and her
+      necromantic poodle!&rdquo; And she hastened back to the post of hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland followed her, and found Christina Light standing in the middle of
+      the drawing-room, and looking about in perplexity. Her poodle, sitting on
+      his haunches and gazing at the company, had apparently been expressing a
+      sympathetic displeasure at the absence of a welcome. But in a moment
+      Madame Grandoni had come to the young girl&rsquo;s relief, and Christina had
+      tenderly kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea,&rdquo; said Christina, surveying the assembly, &ldquo;that you had
+      such a lot of grand people, or I would not have come in. The servant said
+      nothing; he took me for an invitee. I came to spend a neighborly
+      half-hour; you know I have n&rsquo;t many left! It was too dismally dreary at
+      home. I hoped I should find you alone, and I brought Stenterello to play
+      with the cat. I don&rsquo;t know that if I had known about all this I would have
+      dared to come in; but since I &lsquo;ve stumbled into the midst of it, I beg you
+      &lsquo;ll let me stay. I am not dressed, but am I very hideous? I will sit in a
+      corner and no one will notice me. My dear, sweet lady, do let me stay.
+      Pray, why did n&rsquo;t you ask me? I never have been to a little party like
+      this. They must be very charming. No dancing&mdash;tea and conversation?
+      No tea, thank you; but if you could spare a biscuit for Stenterello; a
+      sweet biscuit, please. Really, why did n&rsquo;t you ask me? Do you have these
+      things often? Madame Grandoni, it &lsquo;s very unkind!&rdquo; And the young girl, who
+      had delivered herself of the foregoing succession of sentences in her
+      usual low, cool, penetrating voice, uttered these last words with a
+      certain tremor of feeling. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;I do very well for balls
+      and great banquets, but when people wish to have a cosy, friendly,
+      comfortable evening, they leave me out, with the big flower-pots and the
+      gilt candlesticks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure you &lsquo;re welcome to stay, my dear,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, &ldquo;and
+      at the risk of displeasing you I must confess that if I did n&rsquo;t invite
+      you, it was because you &lsquo;re too grand. Your dress will do very well, with
+      its fifty flounces, and there is no need of your going into a corner.
+      Indeed, since you &lsquo;re here, I propose to have the glory of it. You must
+      remain where my people can see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are evidently determined to do that by the way they stare. Do they
+      think I intend to dance a tarantella? Who are they all; do I know them?&rdquo;
+       And lingering in the middle of the room, with her arm passed into Madame
+      Grandoni&rsquo;s, she let her eyes wander slowly from group to group. They were
+      of course observing her. Standing in the little circle of lamplight, with
+      the hood of an Eastern burnous, shot with silver threads, falling back
+      from her beautiful head, one hand gathering together its voluminous,
+      shimmering folds, and the other playing with the silken top-knot on the
+      uplifted head of her poodle, she was a figure of radiant picturesqueness.
+      She seemed to be a sort of extemporized tableau vivant. Rowland&rsquo;s position
+      made it becoming for him to speak to her without delay. As she looked at
+      him he saw that, judging by the light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a
+      humor of which she had not yet treated him to a specimen. In a simpler
+      person he would have called it exquisite kindness; but in this young
+      lady&rsquo;s deportment the flower was one thing and the perfume another. &ldquo;Tell
+      me about these people,&rdquo; she said to him. &ldquo;I had no idea there were so many
+      people in Rome I had not seen. What are they all talking about? It &lsquo;s all
+      beyond me, I suppose. There is Miss Blanchard, sitting as usual in profile
+      against a dark object. She is like a head on a postage-stamp. And there is
+      that nice little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman
+      for a mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancee, of
+      course she &lsquo;s here. Ah, I see!&rdquo; She paused; she was looking intently at
+      Miss Garland. Rowland measured the intentness of her glance, and suddenly
+      acquired a firm conviction. &ldquo;I should like so much to know her!&rdquo; she said,
+      turning to Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;She has a charming face; I am sure she &lsquo;s an
+      angel. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second thoughts, I
+      had rather you did n&rsquo;t. I will speak to her bravely myself, as a friend of
+      her cousin.&rdquo; Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged glances of baffled
+      conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous, crumpled it together,
+      and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a corner, gave it in charge to
+      her poodle. He stationed himself upon it, on his haunches, with upright
+      vigilance. Christina crossed the room with the step and smile of a
+      ministering angel, and introduced herself to Mary Garland. She had once
+      told Rowland that she would show him, some day, how gracious her manners
+      could be; she was now redeeming her promise. Rowland, watching her, saw
+      Mary Garland rise slowly, in response to her greeting, and look at her
+      with serious deep-gazing eyes. The almost dramatic opposition of these two
+      keenly interesting girls touched Rowland with a nameless apprehension, and
+      after a moment he preferred to turn away. In doing so he noticed Roderick.
+      The young sculptor was standing planted on the train of a lady&rsquo;s dress,
+      gazing across at Christina&rsquo;s movements with undisguised earnestness. There
+      were several more pieces of music; Rowland sat in a corner and listened to
+      them. When they were over, several people began to take their leave, Mrs.
+      Hudson among the number. Rowland saw her come up to Madame Grandoni,
+      clinging shyly to Mary Garland&rsquo;s arm. Miss Garland had a brilliant eye and
+      a deep color in her cheek. The two ladies looked about for Roderick, but
+      Roderick had his back turned. He had approached Christina, who, with an
+      absent air, was sitting alone, where she had taken her place near Miss
+      Garland, looking at the guests pass out of the room. Christina&rsquo;s eye, like
+      Miss Garland&rsquo;s, was bright, but her cheek was pale. Hearing Roderick&rsquo;s
+      voice, she looked up at him sharply; then silently, with a single quick
+      gesture, motioned him away. He obeyed her, and came and joined his mother
+      in bidding good night to Madame Grandoni. Christina, in a moment, met
+      Rowland&rsquo;s glance, and immediately beckoned him to come to her. He was
+      familiar with her spontaneity of movement, and was scarcely surprised. She
+      made a place for him on the sofa beside her; he wondered what was coming
+      now. He was not sure it was not a mere fancy, but it seemed to him that he
+      had never seen her look just as she was looking then. It was a humble,
+      touching, appealing look, and it threw into wonderful relief the nobleness
+      of her beauty. &ldquo;How many more metamorphoses,&rdquo; he asked himself, &ldquo;am I to
+      be treated to before we have done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to tell you,&rdquo; said Christina. &ldquo;I have taken an immense fancy to
+      Miss Garland. Are n&rsquo;t you glad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delighted!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; she said with soft dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it so hard to believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that people in general should admire her, but that I should. But I
+      want to tell you; I want to tell some one, and I can&rsquo;t tell Miss Garland
+      herself. She thinks me already a horrid false creature, and if I were to
+      express to her frankly what I think of her, I should simply disgust her.
+      She would be quite right; she has repose, and from that point of view I
+      and my doings must seem monstrous. Unfortunately, I have n&rsquo;t repose. I am
+      trembling now; if I could ask you to feel my arm, you would see! But I
+      want to tell you that I admire Miss Garland more than any of the people
+      who call themselves her friends&mdash;except of course you. Oh, I know
+      that! To begin with, she is extremely handsome, and she does n&rsquo;t know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not generally thought handsome,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently! That &lsquo;s the vulgarity of the human mind. Her head has great
+      character, great natural style. If a woman is not to be a supreme beauty
+      in the regular way, she will choose, if she &lsquo;s wise, to look like that.
+      She &lsquo;ll not be thought pretty by people in general, and desecrated, as she
+      passes, by the stare of every vile wretch who chooses to thrust his nose
+      under her bonnet; but a certain number of superior people will find it one
+      of the delightful things of life to look at her. That lot is as good as
+      another! Then she has a beautiful character!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You found that out soon!&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long did it take you? I found it out before I ever spoke to her. I
+      met her the other day in Saint Peter&rsquo;s; I knew it then. I knew it&mdash;do
+      you want to know how long I have known it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I did n&rsquo;t mean to cross-examine you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember mamma&rsquo;s ball in December? We had some talk and you then
+      mentioned her&mdash;not by name. You said but three words, but I saw you
+      admired her, and I knew that if you admired her she must have a beautiful
+      character. That &lsquo;s what you require!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; cried Rowland, &ldquo;you make three words go very far!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Hudson has also spoken of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that &lsquo;s better!&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; he does n&rsquo;t like her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he tell you so?&rdquo; The question left Rowland&rsquo;s lips before he could
+      stay it, which he would have done on a moment&rsquo;s reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina looked at him intently. &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;That would have
+      been dishonorable, would n&rsquo;t it? But I know it from my knowledge of him.
+      He does n&rsquo;t like perfection; he is not bent upon being safe, in his
+      likings; he &lsquo;s willing to risk something! Poor fellow, he risks too much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was silent; he did not care for the thrust; but he was profoundly
+      mystified. Christina beckoned to her poodle, and the dog marched stiffly
+      across to her. She gave a loving twist to his rose-colored top-knot, and
+      bade him go and fetch her burnous. He obeyed, gathered it up in his teeth,
+      and returned with great solemnity, dragging it along the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do her justice. I do her full justice,&rdquo; she went on, with soft
+      earnestness. &ldquo;I like to say that, I like to be able to say it. She &lsquo;s full
+      of intelligence and courage and devotion. She does n&rsquo;t do me a grain of
+      justice; but that is no harm. There is something so fine in the aversions
+      of a good woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would give Miss Garland a chance,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I am sure she
+      would be glad to be your friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by a chance? She has only to take it. I told her I liked
+      her immensely, and she frowned as if I had said something disgusting. She
+      looks very handsome when she frowns.&rdquo; Christina rose, with these words,
+      and began to gather her mantle about her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t often like women,&rdquo; she
+      went on. &ldquo;In fact I generally detest them. But I should like to know Miss
+      Garland well. I should like to have a friendship with her; I have never
+      had one; they must be very delightful. But I shan&rsquo;t have one now, either&mdash;not
+      if she can help it! Ask her what she thinks of me; see what she will say.
+      I don&rsquo;t want to know; keep it to yourself. It &lsquo;s too sad. So we go through
+      life. It &lsquo;s fatality&mdash;that &lsquo;s what they call it, is n&rsquo;t it? We please
+      the people we don&rsquo;t care for, we displease those we do! But I appreciate
+      her, I do her justice; that &lsquo;s the more important thing. It &lsquo;s because I
+      have imagination. She has none. Never mind; it &lsquo;s her only fault. I do her
+      justice; I understand very well.&rdquo; She kept softly murmuring and looking
+      about for Madame Grandoni. She saw the good lady near the door, and put
+      out her hand to Rowland for good night. She held his hand an instant,
+      fixing him with her eyes, the living splendor of which, at this moment,
+      was something transcendent. &ldquo;Yes, I do her justice,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;And
+      you do her more; you would lay down your life for her.&rdquo; With this she
+      turned away, and before he could answer, she left him. She went to Madame
+      Grandoni, grasped her two hands, and held out her forehead to be kissed.
+      The next moment she was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a happy accident!&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni. &ldquo;She never looked so
+      beautiful, and she made my little party brilliant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautiful, verily!&rdquo; Rowland answered. &ldquo;But it was no accident.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a plan. She wished to see Miss Garland. She knew she was to be
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Roderick, evidently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why did she wish to see Miss Garland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven knows! I give it up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the wicked girl!&rdquo; murmured Madame Grandoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Rowland; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t say that now. She &lsquo;s too beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you men! The best of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; cried Rowland, &ldquo;she &lsquo;s too good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The opportunity presenting itself the next day, he failed not, as you may
+      imagine, to ask Mary Garland what she thought of Miss Light. It was a
+      Saturday afternoon, the time at which the beautiful marbles of the Villa
+      Borghese are thrown open to the public. Mary had told him that Roderick
+      had promised to take her to see them, with his mother, and he joined the
+      party in the splendid Casino. The warm weather had left so few strangers
+      in Rome that they had the place almost to themselves. Mrs. Hudson had
+      confessed to an invincible fear of treading, even with the help of her
+      son&rsquo;s arm, the polished marble floors, and was sitting patiently on a
+      stool, with folded hands, looking shyly, here and there, at the undraped
+      paganism around her. Roderick had sauntered off alone, with an irritated
+      brow, which seemed to betray the conflict between the instinct of
+      observation and the perplexities of circumstance. Miss Garland was
+      wandering in another direction, and though she was consulting her
+      catalogue, Rowland fancied it was from habit; she too was preoccupied. He
+      joined her, and she presently sat down on a divan, rather wearily, and
+      closed her Murray. Then he asked her abruptly how Christina had pleased
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she had been
+      thinking of Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like her!&rdquo; she said with decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she &lsquo;s false.&rdquo; This was said without petulance or bitterness, but
+      with a very positive air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she wished to please you; she tried,&rdquo; Rowland rejoined, in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not. She wished to please herself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more. No allusion to Christina
+      had passed between them since the day they met her at Saint Peter&rsquo;s, but
+      he knew that she knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who
+      loves, that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her. To
+      what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain; but last night&rsquo;s
+      interview, apparently, had not reassured her. It was, under these
+      circumstances, equally unbecoming for Rowland either to depreciate or to
+      defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having
+      verified the girl&rsquo;s own assurance that she had made a bad impression. He
+      tried to talk of indifferent matters&mdash;about the statues and the
+      frescoes; but to-day, plainly, aesthetic curiosity, with Miss Garland, had
+      folded its wings. Curiosity of another sort had taken its place. Mary was
+      longing, he was sure, to question him about Christina; but she found a
+      dozen reasons for hesitating. Her questions would imply that Roderick had
+      not treated her with confidence, for information on this point should
+      properly have come from him. They would imply that she was jealous, and to
+      betray her jealousy was intolerable to her pride. For some minutes, as she
+      sat scratching the brilliant pavement with the point of her umbrella, it
+      was to be supposed that her pride and her anxiety held an earnest debate.
+      At last anxiety won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A propos of Miss Light,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;do you know her well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly say that. But I have seen her repeatedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes and no. I think I am sorry for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had spoken with her eyes on the pavement. At this she looked up.
+      &ldquo;Sorry for her? Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;she is unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are her misfortunes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;she has a horrible mother, and she has had a most injurious
+      education.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Miss Garland was silent. Then, &ldquo;Is n&rsquo;t she very beautiful?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s measured by what men think! She is extremely clever, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, incontestably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has beautiful dresses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, any number of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And beautiful manners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And plenty of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money enough, apparently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she receives great admiration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she is to marry a prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland rose and turned to rejoin her companions, commenting these
+      admissions with a pregnant silence. &ldquo;Poor Miss Light!&rdquo; she said at last,
+      simply. And in this it seemed to Rowland there was a touch of bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very late on the following evening his servant brought him the card of a
+      visitor. He was surprised at a visit at such an hour, but it may be said
+      that when he read the inscription&mdash;Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa&mdash;his
+      surprise declined. He had had an unformulated conviction that there was to
+      be a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni&rsquo;s; the Cavaliere had come
+      to usher it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had come, evidently, on a portentous errand. He was as pale as ashes
+      and prodigiously serious; his little cold black eye had grown ardent, and
+      he had left his caressing smile at home. He saluted Rowland, however, with
+      his usual obsequious bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have more than once done me the honor to invite me to call upon you,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;I am ashamed of my long delay, and I can only say to you,
+      frankly, that my time this winter has not been my own.&rdquo; Rowland assented,
+      ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative of the adage &ldquo;Better late
+      than never,&rdquo; begged him to be seated, and offered him a cigar. The
+      Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly the fragrant weed, and then declared that,
+      if his kind host would allow him, he would reserve it for consumption at
+      another time. He apparently desired to intimate that the solemnity of his
+      errand left him no breath for idle smoke-puffings. Rowland stayed himself,
+      just in time, from an enthusiastic offer of a dozen more cigars, and, as
+      he watched the Cavaliere stow his treasure tenderly away in his
+      pocket-book, reflected that only an Italian could go through such a
+      performance with uncompromised dignity. &ldquo;I must confess,&rdquo; the little old
+      man resumed, &ldquo;that even now I come on business not of my own&mdash;or my
+      own, at least, only in a secondary sense. I have been dispatched as an
+      ambassador, an envoy extraordinary, I may say, by my dear friend Mrs.
+      Light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can in any way be of service to Mrs. Light, I shall be happy,&rdquo;
+       Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, dear sir, Casa Light is in commotion. The signora is in
+      trouble&mdash;in terrible trouble.&rdquo; For a moment Rowland expected to hear
+      that the signora&rsquo;s trouble was of a nature that a loan of five thousand
+      francs would assuage. But the Cavaliere continued: &ldquo;Miss Light has
+      committed a great crime; she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her
+      mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dagger!&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere patted the air an instant with his finger-tips. &ldquo;I speak
+      figuratively. She has broken off her marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Broken it off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Short! She has turned the prince from the door.&rdquo; And the Cavaliere, when
+      he had made this announcement, folded his arms and bent upon Rowland his
+      intense, inscrutable gaze. It seemed to Rowland that he detected in the
+      polished depths of it a sort of fantastic gleam of irony or of triumph;
+      but superficially, at least, Giacosa did nothing to discredit his
+      character as a presumably sympathetic representative of Mrs. Light&rsquo;s
+      affliction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland heard his news with a kind of fierce disgust; it seemed the
+      sinister counterpart of Christina&rsquo;s preternatural mildness at Madame
+      Grandoni&rsquo;s tea-party. She had been too plausible to be honest. Without
+      being able to trace the connection, he yet instinctively associated her
+      present rebellion with her meeting with Mary Garland. If she had not seen
+      Mary, she would have let things stand. It was monstrous to suppose that
+      she could have sacrificed so brilliant a fortune to a mere movement of
+      jealousy, to a refined instinct of feminine deviltry, to a desire to
+      frighten poor Mary from her security by again appearing in the field. Yet
+      Rowland remembered his first impression of her; she was &ldquo;dangerous,&rdquo; and
+      she had measured in each direction the perturbing effect of her rupture.
+      She was smiling her sweetest smile at it! For half an hour Rowland simply
+      detested her, and longed to denounce her to her face. Of course all he
+      could say to Giacosa was that he was extremely sorry. &ldquo;But I am not
+      surprised,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not surprised?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Miss Light everything is possible. Is n&rsquo;t that true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another ripple seemed to play for an instant in the current of the old
+      man&rsquo;s irony, but he waived response. &ldquo;It was a magnificent marriage,&rdquo; he
+      said, solemnly. &ldquo;I do not respect many people, but I respect Prince
+      Casamassima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should judge him indeed to be a very honorable young man,&rdquo; said
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, young as he is, he &lsquo;s made of the old stuff. And now, perhaps he &lsquo;s
+      blowing his brains out. He is the last of his house; it &lsquo;s a great house.
+      But Miss Light will have put an end to it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the view she takes of it?&rdquo; Rowland ventured to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time, unmistakably, the Cavaliere smiled, but still in that very
+      out-of-the-way place. &ldquo;You have observed Miss Light with attention,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;and this brings me to my errand. Mrs. Light has a high opinion of
+      your wisdom, of your kindness, and she has reason to believe you have
+      influence with her daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;with her daughter? Not a grain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is possibly your modesty. Mrs. Light believes that something may yet
+      be done, and that Christina will listen to you. She begs you to come and
+      see her before it is too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But all this, my dear Cavaliere, is none of my business,&rdquo; Rowland
+      objected. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t possibly, in such a matter, take the responsibility of
+      advising Miss Light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor, in brief but
+      intense reflection. Then looking up, &ldquo;Unfortunately,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she has no
+      man near her whom she respects; she has no father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a fatally foolish mother!&rdquo; Rowland gave himself the satisfaction of
+      exclaiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere was so pale that he could not easily have turned paler; yet
+      it seemed for a moment that his dead complexion blanched. &ldquo;Eh, signore,
+      such as she is, the mother appeals to you. A very handsome woman&mdash;disheveled,
+      in tears, in despair, in dishabille!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland reflected a moment, not on the attractions of Mrs. Light under the
+      circumstances thus indicated by the Cavaliere, but on the satisfaction he
+      would take in accusing Christina to her face of having struck a cruel
+      blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must add,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, &ldquo;that Mrs. Light desires also to speak
+      to you on the subject of Mr. Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She considers Mr. Hudson, then, connected with this step of her
+      daughter&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Intimately. He must be got out of Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Light, then, must get an order from the Pope to remove him. It &lsquo;s
+      not in my power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere assented, deferentially. &ldquo;Mrs. Light is equally helpless.
+      She would leave Rome to-morrow, but Christina will not budge. An order
+      from the Pope would do nothing. A bull in council would do nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She &lsquo;s a remarkable young lady,&rdquo; said Rowland, with bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Cavaliere rose and responded coldly, &ldquo;She has a great spirit.&rdquo; And
+      it seemed to Rowland that her great spirit, for mysterious reasons, gave
+      him more pleasure than the distressing use she made of it gave him pain.
+      He was on the point of charging him with his inconsistency, when Giacosa
+      resumed: &ldquo;But if the marriage can be saved, it must be saved. It &lsquo;s a
+      beautiful marriage. It will be saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Notwithstanding Miss Light&rsquo;s great spirit to the contrary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Light, notwithstanding her great spirit, will call Prince
+      Casamassima back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven grant it!&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, solemnly, &ldquo;that heaven will have much
+      to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland gave him a questioning look, but he laid his finger on his lips.
+      And with Rowland&rsquo;s promise to present himself on the morrow at Casa Light,
+      he shortly afterwards departed. He left Rowland revolving many things:
+      Christina&rsquo;s magnanimity, Christina&rsquo;s perversity, Roderick&rsquo;s contingent
+      fortune, Mary Garland&rsquo;s certain trouble, and the Cavaliere&rsquo;s own fine
+      ambiguities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s promise to the Cavaliere obliged him to withdraw from an
+      excursion which he had arranged with the two ladies from Northampton.
+      Before going to Casa Light he repaired in person to Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s hotel,
+      to make his excuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found Roderick&rsquo;s mother sitting with tearful eyes, staring at an open
+      note that lay in her lap. At the window sat Miss Garland, who turned her
+      intense regard upon him as he came in. Mrs. Hudson quickly rose and came
+      to him, holding out the note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In pity&rsquo;s name,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;what is the matter with my boy? If he is
+      ill, I entreat you to take me to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not ill, to my knowledge,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;What have you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A note&mdash;a dreadful note. He tells us we are not to see him for a
+      week. If I could only go to his room! But I am afraid, I am afraid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine there is no need of going to his room. What is the occasion,
+      may I ask, of his note?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was to have gone with us on this drive to&mdash;what is the place?&mdash;to
+      Cervara. You know it was arranged yesterday morning. In the evening he was
+      to have dined with us. But he never came, and this morning arrives this
+      awful thing. Oh dear, I &lsquo;m so excited! Would you mind reading it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland took the note and glanced at its half-dozen lines. &ldquo;I cannot go to
+      Cervara,&rdquo; they ran; &ldquo;I have something else to do. This will occupy me
+      perhaps for a week, and you &lsquo;ll not see me. Don&rsquo;t miss me&mdash;learn not
+      to miss me. R. H.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it means,&rdquo; Rowland commented, &ldquo;that he has taken up a piece of work,
+      and that it is all-absorbing. That &lsquo;s very good news.&rdquo; This explanation
+      was not sincere; but he had not the courage not to offer it as a stop-gap.
+      But he found he needed all his courage to maintain it, for Miss Garland
+      had left her place and approached him, formidably unsatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does not work in the evening,&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t he come for
+      five minutes? Why does he write such a cruel, cold note to his poor mother&mdash;to
+      poor Mary? What have we done that he acts so strangely? It &lsquo;s this wicked,
+      infectious, heathenish place!&rdquo; And the poor lady&rsquo;s suppressed mistrust of
+      the Eternal City broke out passionately. &ldquo;Oh, dear Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; she went
+      on, &ldquo;I am sure he has the fever and he &lsquo;s already delirious!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sure it &lsquo;s not that,&rdquo; said Miss Garland, with a certain
+      dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still looking at Rowland; his eyes met hers, and his own glance
+      fell. This made him angry, and to carry off his confusion he pretended to
+      be looking at the floor, in meditation. After all, what had he to be
+      ashamed of? For a moment he was on the point of making a clean breast of
+      it, of crying out, &ldquo;Dearest friends, I abdicate: I can&rsquo;t help you!&rdquo; But he
+      checked himself; he felt so impatient to have his three words with
+      Christina. He grasped his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will see what it is!&rdquo; he cried. And then he was glad he had not
+      abdicated, for as he turned away he glanced again at Mary and saw that,
+      though her eyes were full of trouble, they were not hard and accusing, but
+      charged with appealing friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went straight to Roderick&rsquo;s apartment, deeming this, at an early hour,
+      the safest place to seek him. He found him in his sitting-room, which had
+      been closely darkened to keep out the heat. The carpets and rugs had been
+      removed, the floor of speckled concrete was bare and lightly sprinkled
+      with water. Here and there, over it, certain strongly perfumed flowers had
+      been scattered. Roderick was lying on his divan in a white dressing-gown,
+      staring up at the frescoed ceiling. The room was deliciously cool, and
+      filled with the moist, sweet odor of the circumjacent roses and violets.
+      All this seemed highly fantastic, and yet Rowland hardly felt surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother was greatly alarmed at your note,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I came to
+      satisfy myself that, as I believed, you are not ill.&rdquo; Roderick lay
+      motionless, except that he slightly turned his head toward his friend. He
+      was smelling a large white rose, and he continued to present it to his
+      nose. In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but his
+      handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy. He let them rest for some
+      time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual swoon,
+      whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal matters. &ldquo;Oh, I
+      &lsquo;m not ill,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I have never been better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your note, nevertheless, and your absence,&rdquo; Rowland said, &ldquo;have very
+      naturally alarmed your mother. I advise you to go to her directly and
+      reassure her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to her? Going to her would be worse than staying away. Staying away at
+      present is a kindness.&rdquo; And he inhaled deeply his huge rose, looking up
+      over it at Rowland. &ldquo;My presence, in fact, would be indecent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indecent? Pray explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you see, as regards Mary Garland. I am divinely happy! Does n&rsquo;t it
+      strike you? You ought to agree with me. You wish me to spare her feelings;
+      I spare them by staying away. Last night I heard something&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard it, too,&rdquo; said Rowland with brevity. &ldquo;And it &lsquo;s in honor of this
+      piece of news that you have taken to your bed in this fashion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extremes meet! I can&rsquo;t get up for joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?&mdash;from Miss Light
+      herself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By no means. It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Casamassima&rsquo;s loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t talk about certainties. I don&rsquo;t want to be arrogant, I don&rsquo;t want
+      to offend the immortal gods. I &lsquo;m keeping very quiet, but I can&rsquo;t help
+      being happy. I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she threw
+      overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel bound to tell you,&rdquo; was in the course of a moment Rowland&rsquo;s
+      response to this speech, &ldquo;that I am now on my way to Mrs. Light&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you, I envy you!&rdquo; Roderick murmured, imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter, with whom
+      she has taken it into her head that I have influence. I don&rsquo;t know to what
+      extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you notice I shall not speak in
+      your interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes. &ldquo;Pray
+      don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he simply answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you. You &lsquo;re
+      incapable of doing anything disloyal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your visions,
+      and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with anxiety?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used to
+      it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least forbear
+      to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for the moment, I
+      have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I should n&rsquo;t be
+      able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I lock myself up as
+      a dangerous character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can only say, &lsquo;May your pleasure never grow less, or your danger
+      greater!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose. &ldquo;God&rsquo;s will be
+      done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs. Light&rsquo;s. This
+      afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him. Since the Cavaliere&rsquo;s report
+      of her condition she had somewhat smoothed and trimmed the exuberance of
+      her distress, but she was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she
+      clutched Rowland by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes,
+      he were her single floating spar. Rowland greatly pitied her, for there is
+      something respectable in passionate grief, even in a very bad cause; and
+      as pity is akin to love, he endured her rather better than he had done
+      hitherto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak to her, plead with her, command her!&rdquo; she cried, pressing and
+      shaking his hands. &ldquo;She &lsquo;ll not heed us, no more than if we were a pair of
+      clocks a-ticking. Perhaps she will listen to you; she always liked you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She always disliked me,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;But that does n&rsquo;t matter now. I
+      have come here simply because you sent for me, not because I can help you.
+      I cannot advise your daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, cruel, deadly man! You must advise her; you shan&rsquo;t leave this house
+      till you have advised her!&rdquo; the poor woman passionately retorted. &ldquo;Look at
+      me in my misery and refuse to help me! Oh, you need n&rsquo;t be afraid, I know
+      I &lsquo;m a fright, I have n&rsquo;t an idea what I have on. If this goes on, we may
+      both as well turn scarecrows. If ever a woman was desperate, frantic,
+      heart-broken, I am that woman. I can&rsquo;t begin to tell you. To have
+      nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! to have lavished one&rsquo;s self
+      upon a viper that turns and stings her own poor mother! To have toiled and
+      prayed, to have pushed and struggled, to have eaten the bread of
+      bitterness, and all the rest of it, sir&mdash;and at the end of all things
+      to find myself at this pass. It can&rsquo;t be, it &lsquo;s too cruel, such things
+      don&rsquo;t happen, the Lord don&rsquo;t allow it. I &lsquo;m a religious woman, sir, and
+      the Lord knows all about me. With his own hand he had given me his reward!
+      I would have lain down in the dust and let her walk over me; I would have
+      given her the eyes out of my head, if she had taken a fancy to them. No,
+      she &lsquo;s a cruel, wicked, heartless, unnatural girl! I speak to you, Mr.
+      Mallet, in my dire distress, as to my only friend. There is n&rsquo;t a creature
+      here that I can look to&mdash;not one of them all that I have faith in.
+      But I always admired you. I said to Christina the first time I saw you
+      that there at last was a real gentleman. Come, don&rsquo;t disappoint me now! I
+      feel so terribly alone, you see; I feel what a nasty, hard, heartless
+      world it is that has come and devoured my dinners and danced to my
+      fiddles, and yet that has n&rsquo;t a word to throw to me in my agony! Oh, the
+      money, alone, that I have put into this thing, would melt the heart of a
+      Turk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this frenzied outbreak Rowland had had time to look round the room,
+      and to see the Cavaliere sitting in a corner, like a major-domo on the
+      divan of an antechamber, pale, rigid, and inscrutable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have it at heart to tell you,&rdquo; Rowland said, &ldquo;that if you consider my
+      friend Hudson&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light gave a toss of her head and hands. &ldquo;Oh, it &lsquo;s not that. She
+      told me last night to bother her no longer with Hudson, Hudson! She did
+      n&rsquo;t care a button for Hudson. I almost wish she did; then perhaps one
+      might understand it. But she does n&rsquo;t care for anything in the wide world,
+      except to do her own hard, wicked will, and to crush me and shame me with
+      her cruelty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I am as much at sea as you, and my presence
+      here is an impertinence. I should like to say three words to Miss Light on
+      my own account. But I must absolutely and inexorably decline to urge the
+      cause of Prince Casamassima. This is simply impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light burst into angry tears. &ldquo;Because the poor boy is a prince, eh?
+      because he &lsquo;s of a great family, and has an income of millions, eh? That
+      &lsquo;s why you grudge him and hate him. I knew there were vulgar people of
+      that way of feeling, but I did n&rsquo;t expect it of you. Make an effort, Mr.
+      Mallet; rise to the occasion; forgive the poor fellow his splendor. Be
+      just, be reasonable! It &lsquo;s not his fault, and it &lsquo;s not mine. He &lsquo;s the
+      best, the kindest young man in the world, and the most correct and moral
+      and virtuous! If he were standing here in rags, I would say it all the
+      same. The man first&mdash;the money afterwards: that was always my motto,
+      and always will be. What do you take me for? Do you suppose I would give
+      Christina to a vicious person? do you suppose I would sacrifice my
+      precious child, little comfort as I have in her, to a man against whose
+      character one word could be breathed? Casamassima is only too good, he &lsquo;s
+      a saint of saints, he &lsquo;s stupidly good! There is n&rsquo;t such another in the
+      length and breadth of Europe. What he has been through in this house, not
+      a common peasant would endure. Christina has treated him as you would n&rsquo;t
+      treat a dog. He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted! He has been
+      driven hither and thither till he did n&rsquo;t know where he was. He has stood
+      there where you stand&mdash;there, with his name and his millions and his
+      devotion&mdash;as white as your handkerchief, with hot tears in his eyes,
+      and me ready to go down on my knees to him and say, &lsquo;My own sweet prince,
+      I could kiss the ground you tread on, but it is n&rsquo;t decent that I should
+      allow you to enter my house and expose yourself to these horrors again.&rsquo; 
+      And he would come back, and he would come back, and go through it all
+      again, and take all that was given him, and only want the girl the more! I
+      was his confidant; I know everything. He used to beg my forgiveness for
+      Christina. What do you say to that? I seized him once and kissed him, I
+      did! To find that and to find all the rest with it, and to believe it was
+      a gift straight from the pitying angels of heaven, and then to see it
+      dashed away before your eyes and to stand here helpless&mdash;oh, it &lsquo;s a
+      fate I hope you may ever be spared!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would seem, then, that in the interest of Prince Casamassima himself I
+      ought to refuse to interfere,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes. The intensity of
+      her grief and anger gave her a kind of majesty, and Rowland, for the
+      moment, felt ashamed of the ironical ring of his observation. &ldquo;Very good,
+      sir,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sorry your heart is not so tender as your
+      conscience. My compliments to your conscience! It must give you great
+      happiness. Heaven help me! Since you fail us, we are indeed driven to the
+      wall. But I have fought my own battles before, and I have never lost
+      courage, and I don&rsquo;t see why I should break down now. Cavaliere, come
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giacosa rose at her summons and advanced with his usual deferential
+      alacrity. He shook hands with Rowland in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mallet refuses to say a word,&rdquo; Mrs. Light went on. &ldquo;Time presses,
+      every moment is precious. Heaven knows what that poor boy may be doing. If
+      at this moment a clever woman should get hold of him she might be as ugly
+      as she pleased! It &lsquo;s horrible to think of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere fixed his eyes on Rowland, and his look, which the night
+      before had been singular, was now most extraordinary. There was a nameless
+      force of anguish in it which seemed to grapple with the young man&rsquo;s
+      reluctance, to plead, to entreat, and at the same time to be glazed over
+      with a reflection of strange things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, though most vaguely, Rowland felt the presence of a new element
+      in the drama that was going on before him. He looked from the Cavaliere to
+      Mrs. Light, whose eyes were now quite dry, and were fixed in stony
+      hardness on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could bring yourself,&rdquo; the Cavaliere said, in a low, soft,
+      caressing voice, &ldquo;to address a few words of solemn remonstrance to Miss
+      Light, you would, perhaps, do more for us than you know. You would save
+      several persons a great pain. The dear signora, first, and then Christina
+      herself. Christina in particular. Me too, I might take the liberty to
+      add!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble petition.
+      He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor little
+      unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion of the
+      mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched the
+      Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and it
+      stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. Light. His idea
+      embarrassed him, and to carry off his embarrassment, he repeated that it
+      was folly to suppose that his words would have any weight with Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere stepped forward and laid two fingers on Rowland&rsquo;s breast.
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to know the truth? You are the only man whose words she
+      remembers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was going from surprise to surprise. &ldquo;I will say what I can!&rdquo; he
+      said. By this time he had ventured to glance at Mrs. Light. She was
+      looking at him askance, as if, upon this, she was suddenly mistrusting his
+      motives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you fail,&rdquo; she said sharply, &ldquo;we have something else! But please to
+      lose no time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had hardly spoken when the sound of a short, sharp growl caused the
+      company to turn. Christina&rsquo;s fleecy poodle stood in the middle of the vast
+      saloon, with his muzzle lowered, in pompous defiance of the three
+      conspirators against the comfort of his mistress. This young lady&rsquo;s claims
+      for him seemed justified; he was an animal of amazingly delicate
+      instincts. He had preceded Christina as a sort of van-guard of defense,
+      and she now slowly advanced from a neighboring room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be so good as to listen to Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; her mother said, in a
+      terrible voice, &ldquo;and to reflect carefully upon what he says. I suppose you
+      will admit that he is disinterested. In half an hour you shall hear from
+      me again!&rdquo; And passing her hand through the Cavaliere&rsquo;s arm, she swept
+      rapidly out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina looked hard at Rowland, but offered him no greeting. She was
+      very pale, and, strangely enough, it at first seemed to Rowland that her
+      beauty was in eclipse. But he very soon perceived that it had only changed
+      its character, and that if it was a trifle less brilliant than usual, it
+      was admirably touching and noble. The clouded light of her eyes, the
+      magnificent gravity of her features, the conscious erectness of her head,
+      might have belonged to a deposed sovereign or a condemned martyr. &ldquo;Why
+      have you come here at this time?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother sent for me in pressing terms, and I was very glad to have an
+      opportunity to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you come to help me, or to persecute me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have as little power to do one as I have desire to do the other. I came
+      in great part to ask you a question. First, your decision is irrevocable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina&rsquo;s two hands had been hanging clasped in front of her; she
+      separated them and flung them apart by an admirable gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you have done this if you had not seen Miss Garland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with quickened attention; then suddenly, &ldquo;This is
+      interesting!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let us have it out.&rdquo; And she flung herself into
+      a chair and pointed to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t answer my question,&rdquo; Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no right, that I know of, to ask it. But it &lsquo;s a very clever
+      one; so clever that it deserves an answer. Very likely I would not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night, when I said that to myself, I was extremely angry,&rdquo; Rowland
+      rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, and you are not angry now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am less angry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How very stupid! But you can say something at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to say what is uppermost in my mind, I would say that, face to
+      face with you, it is never possible to condemn you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perche?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, yourself! But I can at least say now what I felt last night. It
+      seemed to me that you had consciously, cruelly dealt a blow at that poor
+      girl. Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment!&rdquo; And with her eyes fixed on him, she inclined her head on
+      one side, meditatively. Then a cold, brilliant smile covered her face, and
+      she made a gesture of negation. &ldquo;I see your train of reasoning, but it &lsquo;s
+      quite wrong. I meant no harm to Miss Garland; I should be extremely sorry
+      to make her suffer. Tell me you believe that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was said with ineffable candor. Rowland heard himself answering, &ldquo;I
+      believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet, in a sense, your supposition was true,&rdquo; Christina continued. &ldquo;I
+      conceived, as I told you, a great admiration for Miss Garland, and I
+      frankly confess I was jealous of her. What I envied her was simply her
+      character! I said to myself, &lsquo;She, in my place, would n&rsquo;t marry
+      Casamassima.&rsquo; I could not help saying it, and I said it so often that I
+      found a kind of inspiration in it. I hated the idea of being worse than
+      she&mdash;of doing something that she would n&rsquo;t do. I might be bad by
+      nature, but I need n&rsquo;t be by volition. The end of it all was that I found
+      it impossible not to tell the prince that I was his very humble servant,
+      but that I could not marry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure it was only of Miss Garland&rsquo;s character that you were
+      jealous, not of&mdash;not of&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak out, I beg you. We are talking philosophy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not of her affection for her cousin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure is a good deal to ask. Still, I think I may say it! There are two
+      reasons; one, at least, I can tell you: her affection has not a shadow&rsquo;s
+      weight with Mr. Hudson! Why then should one fear it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is the other reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me; that is my own affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was puzzled, baffled, charmed, inspired, almost, all at once. &ldquo;I
+      have promised your mother,&rdquo; he presently resumed, &ldquo;to say something in
+      favor of Prince Casamassima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head sadly. &ldquo;Prince Casamassima needs nothing that you can
+      say for him. He is a magnificent parti. I know it perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know also of the extreme affliction of your mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her affliction is demonstrative. She has been abusing me for the last
+      twenty-four hours as if I were the vilest of the vile.&rdquo; To see Christina
+      sit there in the purity of her beauty and say this, might have made one
+      bow one&rsquo;s head with a kind of awe. &ldquo;I have failed of respect to her at
+      other times, but I have not done so now. Since we are talking philosophy,&rdquo;
+       she pursued with a gentle smile, &ldquo;I may say it &lsquo;s a simple matter! I don&rsquo;t
+      love him. Or rather, perhaps, since we are talking philosophy, I may say
+      it &lsquo;s not a simple matter. I spoke just now of inspiration. The
+      inspiration has been great, but&mdash;I frankly confess it&mdash;the
+      choice has been hard. Shall I tell you?&rdquo; she demanded, with sudden ardor;
+      &ldquo;will you understand me? It was on the one side the world, the splendid,
+      beautiful, powerful, interesting world. I know what that is; I have tasted
+      of the cup, I know its sweetness. Ah, if I chose, if I let myself go, if I
+      flung everything to the winds, the world and I would be famous friends! I
+      know its merits, and I think, without vanity, it would see mine. You would
+      see some fine things! I should like to be a princess, and I think I should
+      be a very good one; I would play my part well. I am fond of luxury, I am
+      fond of a great society, I am fond of being looked at. I am corrupt,
+      corruptible, corruption! Ah, what a pity that could n&rsquo;t be, too! Mercy of
+      Heaven!&rdquo; There was a passionate tremor in her voice; she covered her face
+      with her hands and sat motionless. Rowland saw that an intense agitation,
+      hitherto successfully repressed, underlay her calmness, and he could
+      easily believe that her battle had been fierce. She rose quickly and
+      turned away, walked a few paces, and stopped. In a moment she was facing
+      him again, with tears in her eyes and a flush in her cheeks. &ldquo;But you need
+      n&rsquo;t think I &lsquo;m afraid!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have chosen, and I shall hold to it.
+      I have something here, here, here!&rdquo; and she patted her heart. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s my
+      own. I shan&rsquo;t part with it. Is it what you call an ideal? I don&rsquo;t know; I
+      don&rsquo;t care! It is brighter than the Casamassima diamonds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that certain things are your own affair,&rdquo; Rowland presently
+      rejoined; &ldquo;but I must nevertheless make an attempt to learn what all this
+      means&mdash;what it promises for my friend Hudson. Is there any hope for
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a point I can&rsquo;t discuss with you minutely. I like him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you marry him if he were to ask you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has asked me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he asks again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall marry no one just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roderick,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;has great hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he know of my rupture with the prince?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is making a great holiday of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to smooth his silky
+      fleece. &ldquo;I like him very much,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;much more than I used to.
+      Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia&rsquo;s, I have felt a
+      great friendship for him. There &lsquo;s something very fine about him; he &lsquo;s
+      not afraid of anything. He is not afraid of failure; he is not afraid of
+      ruin or death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow!&rdquo; said Rowland, bitterly; &ldquo;he is fatally picturesque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Picturesque, yes; that &lsquo;s what he is. I am very sorry for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother told me just now that you had said that you did n&rsquo;t care a
+      straw for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely! I meant as a lover. One does n&rsquo;t want a lover one pities,
+      and one does n&rsquo;t want&mdash;of all things in the world&mdash;a picturesque
+      husband! I should like Mr. Hudson as something else. I wish he were my
+      brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage. Then I could adore
+      him. I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all disagreeable
+      rubs and shocks. I am much stronger than he, and I would stand between him
+      and the world. Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother, I should be willing
+      to live and die an old maid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever told him all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so; I &lsquo;ve told him five hundred things! If it would please you,
+      I will tell him again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Heaven forbid!&rdquo; cried poor Rowland, with a groan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation, and
+      feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway was
+      lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room. She stopped half-way, and
+      gave the young persons a flushed and menacing look. It found apparently
+      little to reassure her, and she moved away with a passionate toss of her
+      drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister compulsion to which
+      the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal flight of hers there
+      was a certain painful effort and tension of wing; but it was none the less
+      piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down to the base earth she was
+      doing her adventurous utmost to spurn. She would need all her magnanimity
+      for her own trial, and it seemed gross to make further demands upon it on
+      Roderick&rsquo;s behalf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland took up his hat. &ldquo;You asked a while ago if I had come to help
+      you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly
+      glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood silent a moment, reflecting. Then at last, looking up, &ldquo;You
+      remember,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;your promising me six months ago to tell me what you
+      finally thought of me? I should like you to tell me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could hardly help smiling. Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact
+      that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one; and this little
+      speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot. She had played her great
+      scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole in the
+      curtain and she was watching the house! But she blushed as she perceived
+      his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault venial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an excellent girl!&rdquo; he said, in a particular tone, and gave her
+      his hand in farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light&rsquo;s apartment, the pride and
+      joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing visitor
+      passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these Rowland
+      found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted lady herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well?&rdquo; she cried, seizing his arm. &ldquo;Has she listened to you&mdash;have
+      you moved her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Heaven&rsquo;s name, dear madame,&rdquo; Rowland begged, &ldquo;leave the poor girl
+      alone! She is behaving very well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behaving very well? Is that all you have to tell me? I don&rsquo;t believe you
+      said a proper word to her. You are conspiring together to kill me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland tried to soothe her, to remonstrate, to persuade her that it was
+      equally cruel and unwise to try to force matters. But she answered him
+      only with harsh lamentations and imprecations, and ended by telling him
+      that her daughter was her property, not his, and that his interference was
+      most insolent and most scandalous. Her disappointment seemed really to
+      have crazed her, and his only possible rejoinder was to take a summary
+      departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later he came upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting with his elbows
+      on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried in thought that Rowland
+      had to call him before he roused himself. Giacosa looked at him a moment
+      keenly, and then gave a shake of the head, interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland gave a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded by a long,
+      melancholy sigh. &ldquo;But her mother is determined to force matters,&rdquo; said
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems that it must be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you consider that it must be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t differ with Mrs. Light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a great cruelty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cavaliere gave a tragic shrug. &ldquo;Eh! it is n&rsquo;t an easy world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should do nothing to make it harder, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you have? It &lsquo;s a magnificent marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You disappoint me, Cavaliere,&rdquo; said Rowland, solemnly. &ldquo;I imagined you
+      appreciated the great elevation of Miss Light&rsquo;s attitude. She does n&rsquo;t
+      love the prince; she has let the matter stand or fall by that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man grasped him by the hand and stood a moment with averted eyes.
+      At last, looking at him, he held up two fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have two hearts,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;one for myself, one for the world. This one
+      opposes Miss Light, the other adores her! One suffers horribly at what the
+      other does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand double people, Cavaliere,&rdquo; Rowland said, &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t
+      pretend to understand you. But I have guessed that you are going to play
+      some secret card.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The card is Mrs. Light&rsquo;s, not mine,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a menace, at any rate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sword of Damocles! It hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten
+      minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there is
+      something written in strange characters. Don&rsquo;t scratch your head; you will
+      not make it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I have guessed it,&rdquo; Rowland said, after a pregnant silence. The
+      Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added, &ldquo;Though
+      there are some signs, indeed, I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puzzle them out at your leisure,&rdquo; said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand.
+      &ldquo;I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post. I wish you were a Catholic; I
+      would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us
+      the next half-hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For &lsquo;us&rsquo;? For whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all of us. At any rate remember this: I worship the Christina!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light&rsquo;s dress; he turned away, and the
+      Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post. Rowland for the next couple of
+      days pondered his riddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. Mrs. Hudson
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went to
+      Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally good
+      health and spirits. After this he called again on the two ladies from
+      Northampton, but, as Roderick&rsquo;s absence continued, he was able neither to
+      furnish nor to obtain much comfort. Miss Garland&rsquo;s apprehensive face
+      seemed to him an image of his own state of mind. He was profoundly
+      depressed; he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished it
+      would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages. On the afternoon
+      of the third day he went into Saint Peter&rsquo;s, his frequent resort whenever
+      the outer world was disagreeable. From a heart-ache to a Roman rain there
+      were few importunate pains the great church did not help him to forget. He
+      had wandered there for half an hour, when he came upon a short figure,
+      lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers. He saw it was that of an
+      artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a memento of some fleeting
+      variation in the scenery of the basilica; and in a moment he perceived
+      that the artist was little Sam Singleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his
+      modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity.
+      Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days, was
+      as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk. There
+      was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips to some
+      simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense of extreme moral
+      refreshment. On this occasion he mentally blessed the ingenuous little
+      artist, and heard presently with keen regret that he was to leave Rome on
+      the morrow. Singleton had come to bid farewell to Saint Peter&rsquo;s, and he
+      was gathering a few supreme memories. He had earned a purse-full of money,
+      and he was meaning to take a summer&rsquo;s holiday; going to Switzerland, to
+      Germany, to Paris. In the autumn he was to return home; his family&mdash;composed,
+      as Rowland knew, of a father who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried
+      sisters, one of whom gave lyceum-lectures on woman&rsquo;s rights, the whole
+      resident at Buffalo, New York&mdash;had been writing him peremptory
+      letters and appealing to him as a son, brother, and fellow-citizen. He
+      would have been grateful for another year in Rome, but what must be must
+      be, and he had laid up treasure which, in Buffalo, would seem infinite.
+      They talked some time; Rowland hoped they might meet in Switzerland, and
+      take a walk or two together. Singleton seemed to feel that Buffalo had
+      marked him for her own; he was afraid he should not see Rome again for
+      many a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you expect to live at Buffalo?&rdquo; Rowland asked sympathetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it will depend upon the views&mdash;upon the attitude&mdash;of my
+      family,&rdquo; Singleton replied. &ldquo;Oh, I think I shall get on; I think it can be
+      done. If I find it can be done, I shall really be quite proud of it; as an
+      artist of course I mean, you know. Do you know I have some nine hundred
+      sketches? I shall live in my portfolio. And so long as one is not in Rome,
+      pray what does it matter where one is? But how I shall envy all you Romans&mdash;you
+      and Mr. Gloriani, and Mr. Hudson, especially!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t envy Hudson; he has nothing to envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton grinned at what he considered a harmless jest. &ldquo;Yes, he &lsquo;s going
+      to be the great man of our time! And I say, Mr. Mallet, is n&rsquo;t it a mighty
+      comfort that it &lsquo;s we who have turned him out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Between ourselves,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;he has disappointed me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton stared, open-mouthed. &ldquo;Dear me, what did you expect?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly,&rdquo; said Rowland to himself, &ldquo;what did I expect?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess,&rdquo; cried Singleton, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t judge him rationally. He fascinates
+      me; he &lsquo;s the sort of man one makes one&rsquo;s hero of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strictly speaking, he is not a hero,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton looked intensely grave, and, with almost tearful eyes, &ldquo;Is there
+      anything amiss&mdash;anything out of the way, about him?&rdquo; he timidly
+      asked. Then, as Rowland hesitated to reply, he quickly added, &ldquo;Please, if
+      there is, don&rsquo;t tell me! I want to know no evil of him, and I think I
+      should hardly believe it. In my memories of this Roman artist-life, he
+      will be the central figure. He will stand there in radiant relief, as
+      beautiful and unspotted as one of his own statues!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said Rowland, gravely. He remembered afresh that the sea is
+      inhabited by big fishes and little, and that the latter often find their
+      way down the throats of the former. Singleton was going to spend the
+      afternoon in taking last looks at certain other places, and Rowland
+      offered to join him on his sentimental circuit. But as they were preparing
+      to leave the church, he heard himself suddenly addressed from behind.
+      Turning, he beheld a young woman whom he immediately recognized as Madame
+      Grandoni&rsquo;s maid. Her mistress was present, she said, and begged to confer
+      with him before he departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This summons obliged Rowland to separate from Singleton, to whom he bade
+      farewell. He followed the messenger, and presently found Madame Grandoni
+      occupying a liberal area on the steps of the tribune, behind the great
+      altar, where, spreading a shawl on the polished red marble, she had
+      comfortably seated herself. He expected that she had something especial to
+      impart, and she lost no time in bringing forth her treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shout very loud,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;remember that we are in church; there
+      &lsquo;s a limit to the noise one may make even in Saint Peter&rsquo;s. Christina
+      Light was married this morning to Prince Casamassima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland did not shout at all; he gave a deep, short murmur: &ldquo;Married&mdash;this
+      morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married this morning, at seven o&rsquo;clock, le plus tranquillement du monde,
+      before three or four persons. The young couple left Rome an hour
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some moments this seemed to him really terrible; the dark little drama
+      of which he had caught a glimpse had played itself out. He had believed
+      that Christina would resist; that she had succumbed was a proof that the
+      pressure had been cruel. Rowland&rsquo;s imagination followed her forth with an
+      irresistible tremor into the world toward which she was rolling away, with
+      her detested husband and her stifled ideal; but it must be confessed that
+      if the first impulse of his compassion was for Christina, the second was
+      for Prince Casamassima. Madame Grandoni acknowledged an extreme curiosity
+      as to the secret springs of these strange doings: Casamassima&rsquo;s sudden
+      dismissal, his still more sudden recall, the hurried private marriage.
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said Rowland, hereupon, &ldquo;and I will tell you something.&rdquo; And he
+      related, in detail, his last visit to Mrs. Light and his talk with this
+      lady, with Christina, and with the Cavaliere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it &lsquo;s all very curious. But it &lsquo;s a riddle, and I only
+      half guess it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;I desire to harm no one; but certain suppositions
+      have taken shape in my mind which serve as a solvent to several
+      ambiguities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very true,&rdquo; Madame Grandoni answered, &ldquo;that the Cavaliere, as he
+      stands, has always needed to be explained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is explained by the hypothesis that, three-and-twenty years ago, at
+      Ancona, Mrs. Light had a lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. Ancona was dull, Mrs. Light was lively, and&mdash;three-and-twenty
+      years ago&mdash;perhaps, the Cavaliere was fascinating. Doubtless it would
+      be fairer to say that he was fascinated. Poor Giacosa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has had his compensation,&rdquo; Rowland said. &ldquo;He has been passionately
+      fond of Christina.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally. But has Christina never wondered why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she had been near guessing, her mother&rsquo;s shabby treatment of him would
+      have put her off the scent. Mrs. Light&rsquo;s conscience has apparently told
+      her that she could expiate an hour&rsquo;s too great kindness by twenty years&rsquo; 
+      contempt. So she kept her secret. But what is the profit of having a
+      secret unless you can make some use of it? The day at last came when she
+      could turn hers to account; she could let the skeleton out of the closet
+      and create a panic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither do I morally,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I only conceive that there was a
+      horrible, fabulous scene. The poor Cavaliere stood outside, at the door,
+      white as a corpse and as dumb. The mother and daughter had it out
+      together. Mrs. Light burnt her ships. When she came out she had three
+      lines of writing in her daughter&rsquo;s hand, which the Cavaliere was
+      dispatched with to the prince. They overtook the young man in time, and,
+      when he reappeared, he was delighted to dispense with further waiting. I
+      don&rsquo;t know what he thought of the look in his bride&rsquo;s face; but that is
+      how I roughly reconstruct history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christina was forced to decide, then, that she could not afford not to be
+      a princess?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was reduced by humiliation. She was assured that it was not for her
+      to make conditions, but to thank her stars that there were none made for
+      her. If she persisted, she might find it coming to pass that there would
+      be conditions, and the formal rupture&mdash;the rupture that the world
+      would hear of and pry into&mdash;would then proceed from the prince and
+      not from her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s all nonsense!&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To us, yes; but not to the proudest girl in the world, deeply wounded in
+      her pride, and not stopping to calculate probabilities, but muffling her
+      shame, with an almost sensuous relief, in a splendor that stood within her
+      grasp and asked no questions. Is it not possible that the late Mr. Light
+      had made an outbreak before witnesses who are still living?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly her marriage now,&rdquo; said Madame Grandoni, less analytically,
+      &ldquo;has the advantage that it takes her away from her&mdash;parents!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady&rsquo;s farther comments upon the event are not immediately pertinent
+      to our history; there were some other comments of which Rowland had a
+      deeply oppressive foreboding. He called, on the evening of the morrow upon
+      Mrs. Hudson, and found Roderick with the two ladies. Their companion had
+      apparently but lately entered, and Rowland afterwards learned that it was
+      his first appearance since the writing of the note which had so distressed
+      his mother. He had flung himself upon a sofa, where he sat with his chin
+      upon his breast, staring before him with a sinister spark in his eye. He
+      fixed his gaze on Rowland, but gave him no greeting. He had evidently been
+      saying something to startle the women; Mrs. Hudson had gone and seated
+      herself, timidly and imploringly, on the edge of the sofa, trying to take
+      his hand. Miss Garland was applying herself to some needlework with
+      conscious intentness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson gave Rowland, on his entrance, a touching look of gratitude.
+      &ldquo;Oh, we have such blessed news!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Roderick is ready to leave
+      Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s not blessed news; it &lsquo;s most damnable news!&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but we are very glad, my son, and I am sure you will be when you get
+      away. You &lsquo;re looking most dreadfully thin; is n&rsquo;t he, Mr. Mallet? It &lsquo;s
+      plain enough you need a change. I &lsquo;m sure we will go wherever you like.
+      Where would you like to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick turned his head slowly and looked at her. He had let her take his
+      hand, which she pressed tenderly between her own. He gazed at her for some
+      time in silence. &ldquo;Poor mother!&rdquo; he said at last, in a portentous tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own dear son!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson in all the innocence of her trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw where you go! I don&rsquo;t care a straw for anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear boy, you must not say that before all of us here&mdash;before
+      Mary, before Mr. Mallet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;Mr. Mallet?&rdquo; Roderick repeated, almost savagely. He released
+      himself from the clasp of his mother&rsquo;s hand and turned away, leaning his
+      elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. There was a
+      silence; Rowland said nothing because he was watching Miss Garland. &ldquo;Why
+      should I stand on ceremony with Mary and Mr. Mallet?&rdquo; Roderick presently
+      added. &ldquo;Mary pretends to believe I &lsquo;m a fine fellow, and if she believes
+      it as she ought to, nothing I can say will alter her opinion. Mallet knows
+      I &lsquo;m a hopeless humbug; so I need n&rsquo;t mince my words with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, don&rsquo;t use such dreadful language!&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;Are
+      n&rsquo;t we all devoted to you, and proud of you, and waiting only to hear what
+      you want, so that we may do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick got up, and began to walk about the room; he was evidently in a
+      restless, reckless, profoundly demoralized condition. Rowland felt that it
+      was literally true that he did not care a straw for anything, but he
+      observed with anxiety that Mrs. Hudson, who did not know on what delicate
+      ground she was treading, was disposed to chide him caressingly, as a mere
+      expression of tenderness. He foresaw that she would bring down the
+      hovering thunderbolt on her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s name,&rdquo; Roderick cried, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t remind me of my obligations! It &lsquo;s
+      intolerable to me, and I don&rsquo;t believe it &lsquo;s pleasant to Mallet. I know
+      they &lsquo;re tremendous&mdash;I know I shall never repay them. I &lsquo;m bankrupt!
+      Do you know what that means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor lady sat staring, dismayed, and Rowland angrily interfered.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk such stuff to your mother!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see you &lsquo;re
+      frightening her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frightening her? she may as well be frightened first as last. Do I
+      frighten you, mother?&rdquo; Roderick demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Roderick, what do you mean?&rdquo; whimpered the poor lady. &ldquo;Mr. Mallet,
+      what does he mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that I &lsquo;m an angry, savage, disappointed, miserable man!&rdquo; Roderick
+      went on. &ldquo;I mean that I can&rsquo;t do a stroke of work nor think a profitable
+      thought! I mean that I &lsquo;m in a state of helpless rage and grief and shame!
+      Helpless, helpless&mdash;that &lsquo;s what it is. You can&rsquo;t help me, poor
+      mother&mdash;not with kisses, nor tears, nor prayers! Mary can&rsquo;t help me&mdash;not
+      for all the honor she does me, nor all the big books on art that she pores
+      over. Mallet can&rsquo;t help me&mdash;not with all his money, nor all his good
+      example, nor all his friendship, which I &lsquo;m so profoundly well aware of:
+      not with it all multiplied a thousand times and repeated to all eternity!
+      I thought you would help me, you and Mary; that &lsquo;s why I sent for you. But
+      you can&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t think it! The sooner you give up the idea the better for
+      you. Give up being proud of me, too; there &lsquo;s nothing left of me to be
+      proud of! A year ago I was a mighty fine fellow; but do you know what has
+      become of me now? I have gone to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in the ring of Roderick&rsquo;s voice, as he uttered these
+      words, which sent them home with convincing force. He was not talking for
+      effect, or the mere sensuous pleasure of extravagant and paradoxical
+      utterance, as had often enough been the case ere this; he was not even
+      talking viciously or ill-humoredly. He was talking passionately,
+      desperately, and from an irresistible need to throw off the oppressive
+      burden of his mother&rsquo;s confidence. His cruel eloquence brought the poor
+      lady to her feet, and she stood there with clasped hands, petrified and
+      voiceless. Mary Garland quickly left her place, came straight to Roderick,
+      and laid her hand on his arm, looking at him with all her tormented heart
+      in her eyes. He made no movement to disengage himself; he simply shook his
+      head several times, in dogged negation of her healing powers. Rowland had
+      been living for the past month in such intolerable expectancy of disaster
+      that now that the ice was broken, and the fatal plunge taken, his foremost
+      feeling was almost elation; but in a moment his orderly instincts and his
+      natural love of superficial smoothness overtook it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t see, Roderick,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the profit of your talking in
+      just this way at just this time. Don&rsquo;t you see how you are making your
+      mother suffer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I enjoy it myself?&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;Is the suffering all on your side
+      and theirs? Do I look as if I were happy, and were stirring you up with a
+      stick for my amusement? Here we all are in the same boat; we might as well
+      understand each other! These women must know that I &lsquo;m not to be counted
+      on. That sounds remarkably cool, no doubt, and I certainly don&rsquo;t deny your
+      right to be utterly disgusted with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you keep what you have got to say till another time,&rdquo; said Mary,
+      &ldquo;and let me hear it alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I &lsquo;ll let you hear it as often as you please; but what &lsquo;s the use of
+      keeping it? I &lsquo;m in the humor; it won&rsquo;t keep! It &lsquo;s a very simple matter.
+      I &lsquo;m a failure, that &lsquo;s all; I &lsquo;m not a first-rate man. I &lsquo;m second-rate,
+      tenth-rate, anything you please. After that, it &lsquo;s all one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Garland turned away and buried her face in her hands; but Roderick,
+      struck, apparently, in some unwonted fashion with her gesture, drew her
+      towards him again, and went on in a somewhat different tone. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s hardly
+      worth while we should have any private talk about this, Mary,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;The thing would be comfortable for neither of us. It &lsquo;s better, after
+      all, that it be said once for all and dismissed. There are things I can&rsquo;t
+      talk to you about. Can I, at least? You are such a queer creature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can imagine nothing you should n&rsquo;t talk to me about,&rdquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not afraid?&rdquo; he demanded, sharply, looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away abruptly, with lowered eyes, hesitating a moment.
+      &ldquo;Anything you think I should hear, I will hear,&rdquo; she said. And then she
+      returned to her place at the window and took up her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a great blow,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;I was a great ass, but it does
+      n&rsquo;t make the blow any easier to bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mallet, tell me what Roderick means!&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson, who had found
+      her voice, in a tone more peremptory than Rowland had ever heard her use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to have told you before,&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;Really, Rowland, if
+      you will allow me to say so, you ought! You could have given a much better
+      account of all this than I myself; better, especially, in that it would
+      have been more lenient to me. You ought to have let them down gently; it
+      would have saved them a great deal of pain. But you always want to keep
+      things so smooth! Allow me to say that it &lsquo;s very weak of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hereby renounce such weakness!&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what is it, sir; what is it?&rdquo; groaned Mrs. Hudson, insistently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s what Roderick says: he &lsquo;s a failure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Garland, on hearing this declaration, gave Rowland a single glance
+      and then rose, laid down her work, and walked rapidly out of the room.
+      Mrs. Hudson tossed her head and timidly bristled. &ldquo;This from you, Mr.
+      Mallet!&rdquo; she said with an injured air which Rowland found harrowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Roderick, most characteristically, did not in the least resent his
+      friend&rsquo;s assertion; he sent him, on the contrary, one of those large,
+      clear looks of his, which seemed to express a stoical pleasure in
+      Rowland&rsquo;s frankness, and which set his companion, then and there,
+      wondering again, as he had so often done before, at the extraordinary
+      contradictions of his temperament. &ldquo;My dear mother,&rdquo; Roderick said, &ldquo;if
+      you had had eyes that were not blinded by this sad maternal vanity, you
+      would have seen all this for yourself; you would have seen that I &lsquo;m
+      anything but prosperous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it anything about money?&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;Oh, do write to Mr.
+      Striker!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money?&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;I have n&rsquo;t a cent of money; I &lsquo;m bankrupt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Mallet, how could you let him?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Hudson, terribly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything I have is at his service,&rdquo; said Rowland, feeling ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course Mr. Mallet will help you, my son!&rdquo; cried the poor lady,
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave Mr. Mallet alone!&rdquo; said Roderick. &ldquo;I have squeezed him dry; it
+      &lsquo;s not my fault, at least, if I have n&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roderick, what have you done with all your money?&rdquo; his mother demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thrown it away! It was no such great amount. I have done nothing this
+      winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done no work! Why in the world did n&rsquo;t you guess it and spare me
+      all this? Could n&rsquo;t you see I was idle, distracted, dissipated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dissipated, my dear son?&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s over for the present! But could n&rsquo;t you see&mdash;could n&rsquo;t Mary
+      see&mdash;that I was in a damnably bad way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt Miss Garland saw,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary has said nothing!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she &lsquo;s a fine girl!&rdquo; Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you done anything that will hurt poor Mary?&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only been thinking night and day of another woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson dropped helplessly into her seat again. &ldquo;Oh dear, dear, had
+      n&rsquo;t we better go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to get out of her way!&rdquo; Roderick said. &ldquo;She has started on a career
+      of her own, and she does n&rsquo;t care a straw for me. My head was filled with
+      her; I could think of nothing else; I would have sacrificed everything to
+      her&mdash;you, Mary, Mallet, my work, my fortune, my future, my honor! I
+      was in a fine state, eh? I don&rsquo;t pretend to be giving you good news; but I
+      &lsquo;m telling the simple, literal truth, so that you may know why I have gone
+      to the dogs. She pretended to care greatly for all this, and to be willing
+      to make any sacrifice in return; she had a magnificent chance, for she was
+      being forced into a mercenary marriage with a man she detested. She led me
+      to believe that she would give this up, and break short off, and keep
+      herself free and sacred and pure for me. This was a great honor, and you
+      may believe that I valued it. It turned my head, and I lived only to see
+      my happiness come to pass. She did everything to encourage me to hope it
+      would; everything that her infernal coquetry and falsity could suggest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, this is too much!&rdquo; Rowland broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you defend her?&rdquo; Roderick cried, with a renewal of his passion. &ldquo;Do
+      you pretend to say that she gave me no hopes?&rdquo; He had been speaking with
+      growing bitterness, quite losing sight of his mother&rsquo;s pain and
+      bewilderment in the passionate joy of publishing his wrongs. Since he was
+      hurt, he must cry out; since he was in pain, he must scatter his pain
+      abroad. Of his never thinking of others, save as they spoke and moved from
+      his cue, as it were, this extraordinary insensibility to the injurious
+      effects of his eloquence was a capital example; the more so as the motive
+      of his eloquence was never an appeal for sympathy or compassion, things to
+      which he seemed perfectly indifferent and of which he could make no use.
+      The great and characteristic point with him was the perfect absoluteness
+      of his own emotions and experience. He never saw himself as part of a
+      whole; only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged, isolated individual, rejoicing
+      or raging, as the case might be, but needing in any case absolutely to
+      affirm himself. All this, to Rowland, was ancient history, but his
+      perception of it stirred within him afresh, at the sight of Roderick&rsquo;s
+      sense of having been betrayed. That he, under the circumstances, should
+      not in fairness be the first to lodge a complaint of betrayal was a point
+      to which, at his leisure, Rowland was of course capable of rendering
+      impartial justice; but Roderick&rsquo;s present desperation was so peremptory
+      that it imposed itself on one&rsquo;s sympathies. &ldquo;Do you pretend to say,&rdquo; he
+      went on, &ldquo;that she did n&rsquo;t lead me along to the very edge of fulfillment
+      and stupefy me with all that she suffered me to believe, all that she
+      sacredly promised? It amused her to do it, and she knew perfectly well
+      what she really meant. She never meant to be sincere; she never dreamed
+      she could be. She &lsquo;s a ravenous flirt, and why a flirt is a flirt is more
+      than I can tell you. I can&rsquo;t understand playing with those matters; for me
+      they &lsquo;re serious, whether I take them up or lay them down. I don&rsquo;t see
+      what &lsquo;s in your head, Rowland, to attempt to defend Miss Light; you were
+      the first to cry out against her! You told me she was dangerous, and I
+      pooh-poohed you. You were right; you &lsquo;re always right. She &lsquo;s as cold and
+      false and heartless as she &lsquo;s beautiful, and she has sold her heartless
+      beauty to the highest bidder. I hope he knows what he gets!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my son,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson, plaintively, &ldquo;how could you ever care for
+      such a dreadful creature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would take long to tell you, dear mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s lately-deepened sympathy and compassion for Christina was still
+      throbbing in his mind, and he felt that, in loyalty to it, he must say a
+      word for her. &ldquo;You believed in her too much at first,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;and
+      you believe in her too little now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick looked at him with eyes almost lurid, beneath lowering brows.
+      &ldquo;She is an angel, then, after all?&mdash;that &lsquo;s what you want to prove!&rdquo;
+       he cried. &ldquo;That &lsquo;s consoling for me, who have lost her! You &lsquo;re always
+      right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy, be wrong for once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, be merciful!&rdquo; said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which, for
+      all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow&rsquo;s stare covered a
+      great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension&mdash;a presentiment of
+      what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be capable of, in the way
+      of suddenly generated animosity. There was no space in Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s tiny
+      maternal mind for complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only
+      by turning another over flat and perching on top of it. She was evidently
+      not following Roderick at all in his dusky aberrations. Sitting without,
+      in dismay, she only saw that all was darkness and trouble, and as
+      Roderick&rsquo;s glory had now quite outstripped her powers of imagination and
+      urged him beyond her jurisdiction, so that he had become a thing too
+      precious and sacred for blame, she found it infinitely comfortable to lay
+      the burden of their common affliction upon Rowland&rsquo;s broad shoulders. Had
+      he not promised to make them all rich and happy? And this was the end of
+      it! Rowland felt as if his trials were, in a sense, only beginning. &ldquo;Had
+      n&rsquo;t you better forget all this, my dear?&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson said. &ldquo;Had n&rsquo;t you
+      better just quietly attend to your work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Work, madame?&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;My work &lsquo;s over. I can&rsquo;t work&mdash;I
+      have n&rsquo;t worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental
+      collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and break
+      the spell of my idleness. But there &lsquo;s a perfect vacuum here!&rdquo; And he
+      tapped his forehead. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s bigger than ever; it grows bigger every hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little mother,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since! I quarreled
+      with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my nerves,
+      and threw away five thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Threw away&mdash;five thousand dollars!&rdquo; Roderick had been wandering
+      among formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate. But
+      here was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a
+      moment, looked it in the face. She repeated her son&rsquo;s words a third time
+      with a gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears. Roderick
+      went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
+      coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out. She leaned
+      her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly. She said not a word,
+      she made no attempt to scold; but the desolation of her tears was
+      overwhelming. It lasted some time&mdash;too long for Rowland&rsquo;s courage. He
+      had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful; but the
+      elation that was mentioned a while since had utterly ebbed, and he found
+      his situation intolerable. He walked away&mdash;not, perhaps, on tiptoe,
+      but with a total absence of bravado in his tread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought him the card of a
+      visitor. He read with surprise the name of Mrs. Hudson, and hurried
+      forward to meet her. He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the arm
+      of her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her lips
+      tightly compressed. Her advent puzzled him, and it was not for some time
+      that he began to understand the motive of it. Roderick&rsquo;s countenance threw
+      no light upon it; but Roderick&rsquo;s countenance, full of light as it was, in
+      a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything. He had not been in
+      Rowland&rsquo;s rooms for several weeks, and he immediately began to look at
+      those of his own works that adorned them. He lost himself in silent
+      contemplation. Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself with dignity, and,
+      so far as she might, she meant to be impressive. Her success may be
+      measured by the fact that Rowland&rsquo;s whole attention centred in the fear of
+      seeing her begin to weep. She told him that she had come to him for
+      practical advice; she begged to remind him that she was a stranger in the
+      land. Where were they to go, please? what were they to do? Rowland glanced
+      at Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned and was gazing at his Adam
+      with the intensity with which he might have examined Michael Angelo&rsquo;s
+      Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roderick says he does n&rsquo;t know, he does n&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson said; &ldquo;he
+      leaves it entirely to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Many another man, in Rowland&rsquo;s place, would have greeted this information
+      with an irate and sarcastic laugh, and told his visitors that he thanked
+      them infinitely for their confidence, but that, really, as things stood
+      now, they must settle these matters between themselves; many another man
+      might have so demeaned himself, even if, like Rowland, he had been in love
+      with Mary Garland and pressingly conscious that her destiny was also part
+      of the question. But Rowland swallowed all hilarity and all sarcasm, and
+      let himself seriously consider Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s petition. His wits, however,
+      were but indifferently at his command; they were dulled by his sense of
+      the inexpressible change in Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s attitude. Her visit was
+      evidently intended as a formal reminder of the responsiblities Rowland had
+      worn so lightly. Mrs. Hudson was doubtless too sincerely humble a person
+      to suppose that if he had been recreant to his vows of vigilance and
+      tenderness, her still, small presence would operate as a chastisement. But
+      by some diminutive logical process of her own she had convinced herself
+      that she had been weakly trustful, and that she had suffered Rowland to
+      think too meanly, not only of her understanding, but of her social
+      consequence. A visit in her best gown would have an admonitory effect as
+      regards both of these attributes; it would cancel some favors received,
+      and show him that she was no such fool! These were the reflections of a
+      very shy woman, who, determining for once in her life to hold up her head,
+      was perhaps carrying it a trifle extravagantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know we have very little money to spend,&rdquo; she said, as Rowland
+      remained silent. &ldquo;Roderick tells me that he has debts and nothing at all
+      to pay them with. He says I must write to Mr. Striker to sell my house for
+      what it will bring, and send me out the money. When the money comes I must
+      give it to him. I &lsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know; I never heard of anything so
+      dreadful! My house is all I have. But that is all Roderick will say. We
+      must be very economical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before this speech was finished Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s voice had begun to quaver
+      softly, and her face, which had no capacity for the expression of superior
+      wisdom, to look as humbly appealing as before. Rowland turned to Roderick
+      and spoke like a school-master. &ldquo;Come away from those statues, and sit
+      down here and listen to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick started, but obeyed with the most graceful docility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you propose to your mother to do?&rdquo; Rowland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Propose?&rdquo; said Roderick, absently. &ldquo;Oh, I propose nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone, the glance, the gesture with which this was said were horribly
+      irritating (though obviously without the slightest intention of being so),
+      and for an instant an imprecation rose to Rowland&rsquo;s lips. But he checked
+      it, and he was afterwards glad he had done so. &ldquo;You must do something,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Choose, select, decide!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Rowland, how you talk!&rdquo; Roderick cried. &ldquo;The very point of the
+      matter is that I can&rsquo;t do anything. I will do as I &lsquo;m told, but I don&rsquo;t
+      call that doing. We must leave Rome, I suppose, though I don&rsquo;t see why. We
+      have got no money, and you have to pay money on the railroads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson surreptitiously wrung her hands. &ldquo;Listen to him, please!&rdquo; she
+      cried. &ldquo;Not leave Rome, when we have staid here later than any Christians
+      ever did before! It &lsquo;s this dreadful place that has made us so unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s very true,&rdquo; said Roderick, serenely. &ldquo;If I had not come to Rome,
+      I would n&rsquo;t have risen, and if I had not risen, I should n&rsquo;t have fallen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fallen&mdash;fallen!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson. &ldquo;Just hear him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do anything you say, Rowland,&rdquo; Roderick added. &ldquo;I will do anything
+      you want. I have not been unkind to my mother&mdash;have I, mother? I was
+      unkind yesterday, without meaning it; for after all, all that had to be
+      said. Murder will out, and my low spirits can&rsquo;t be hidden. But we talked
+      it over and made it up, did n&rsquo;t we? It seemed to me we did. Let Rowland
+      decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right thing.&rdquo; And
+      Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the statues, got up again
+      and went back to look at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson fixed her eyes upon the floor in silence. There was not a
+      trace in Roderick&rsquo;s face, or in his voice, of the bitterness of his
+      emotion of the day before, and not a hint of his having the lightest
+      weight upon his conscience. He looked at Rowland with his frank, luminous
+      eye as if there had never been a difference of opinion between them; as if
+      each had ever been for both, unalterably, and both for each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had received a few days before a letter from a lady of his
+      acquaintance, a worthy Scotswoman domiciled in a villa upon one of the
+      olive-covered hills near Florence. She held her apartment in the villa
+      upon a long lease, and she enjoyed for a sum not worth mentioning the
+      possession of an extraordinary number of noble, stone-floored rooms, with
+      ceilings vaulted and frescoed, and barred windows commanding the loveliest
+      view in the world. She was a needy and thrifty spinster, who never
+      hesitated to declare that the lovely view was all very well, but that for
+      her own part she lived in the villa for cheapness, and that if she had a
+      clear three hundred pounds a year she would go and really enjoy life near
+      her sister, a baronet&rsquo;s lady, at Glasgow. She was now proposing to make a
+      visit to that exhilarating city, and she desired to turn an honest penny
+      by sub-letting for a few weeks her historic Italian chambers. The terms on
+      which she occupied them enabled her to ask a rent almost jocosely small,
+      and she begged Rowland to do what she called a little genteel advertising
+      for her. Would he say a good word for her rooms to his numerous friends,
+      as they left Rome? He said a good word for them now to Mrs. Hudson, and
+      told her in dollars and cents how cheap a summer&rsquo;s lodging she might
+      secure. He dwelt upon the fact that she would strike a truce with
+      tables-d&rsquo;hote and have a cook of her own, amenable possibly to instruction
+      in the Northampton mysteries. He had touched a tender chord; Mrs. Hudson
+      became almost cheerful. Her sentiments upon the table-d&rsquo;hote system and
+      upon foreign household habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had
+      space for it, would repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul
+      to the Puritanic canons of cookery quite lightened the burden of her
+      depression. While Rowland set forth his case Roderick was slowly walking
+      round the magnificent Adam, with his hands in his pockets. Rowland waited
+      for him to manifest an interest in their discussion, but the statue seemed
+      to fascinate him and he remained calmly heedless. Rowland was a practical
+      man; he possessed conspicuously what is called the sense of detail. He
+      entered into Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s position minutely, and told her exactly why it
+      seemed good that she should remove immediately to the Florentine villa.
+      She received his advice with great frigidity, looking hard at the floor
+      and sighing, like a person well on her guard against an insidious
+      optimism. But she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received her
+      permission to write to his friend that he had let the rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick assented to this decision without either sighs or smiles. &ldquo;A
+      Florentine villa is a good thing!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am at your service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m sure I hope you &lsquo;ll get better there,&rdquo; moaned his mother, gathering
+      her shawl together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed to Rowland&rsquo;s
+      statues. &ldquo;Better or worse, remember this: I did those things!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, &ldquo;Remember it
+      yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are horribly good!&rdquo; said Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him that he had
+      nothing more to say. But as the others were going, a last light pulsation
+      of the sense of undischarged duty led him to address to Roderick a few
+      words of parting advice. &ldquo;You &lsquo;ll find the Villa Pandolfini very
+      delightful, very comfortable,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You ought to be very contented
+      there. Whether you work or whether you loaf, it &lsquo;s a place for an artist
+      to be happy in. I hope you will work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I may!&rdquo; said Roderick with a magnificent smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we meet again, have something to show me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we meet again? Where the deuce are you going?&rdquo; Roderick demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hardly know; over the Alps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over the Alps! You &lsquo;re going to leave me?&rdquo; Roderick cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had most distinctly meant to leave him, but his resolution
+      immediately wavered. He glanced at Mrs. Hudson and saw that her eyebrows
+      were lifted and her lips parted in soft irony. She seemed to accuse him of
+      a craven shirking of trouble, to demand of him to repair his cruel havoc
+      in her life by a solemn renewal of zeal. But Roderick&rsquo;s expectations were
+      the oddest! Such as they were, Rowland asked himself why he should n&rsquo;t
+      make a bargain with them. &ldquo;You desire me to go with you?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t go, I won&rsquo;t&mdash;that &lsquo;s all! How in the world shall I get
+      through the summer without you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How will you get through it with me? That &lsquo;s the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to say; the future is a dead blank. But without you it &lsquo;s
+      not a blank&mdash;it &lsquo;s certain damnation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy, mercy!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland made an effort to stand firm, and for a moment succeeded. &ldquo;If I go
+      with you, will you try to work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, up to this moment, had been looking as unperturbed as if the
+      deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at
+      these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all
+      his passion returned. &ldquo;Try to work!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Try&mdash;try! work&mdash;work!
+      In God&rsquo;s name don&rsquo;t talk that way, or you &lsquo;ll drive me mad! Do you suppose
+      I &lsquo;m trying not to work? Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun
+      of it? Don&rsquo;t you suppose I would try to work for myself before I tried for
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson, piteously, &ldquo;will you leave me alone with
+      this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland turned to her and informed her, gently, that he would go with her
+      to Florence. After he had so pledged himself he thought not at all of the
+      pain of his position as mediator between the mother&rsquo;s resentful grief and
+      the son&rsquo;s incurable weakness; he drank deep, only, of the satisfaction of
+      not separating from Mary Garland. If the future was a blank to Roderick,
+      it was hardly less so to himself. He had at moments a lively foreboding of
+      impending calamity. He paid it no especial deference, but it made him feel
+      indisposed to take the future into his account. When, on his going to take
+      leave of Madame Grandoni, this lady asked at what time he would come back
+      to Rome, he answered that he was coming back either never or forever. When
+      she asked him what he meant, he said he really could n&rsquo;t tell her, and
+      parted from her with much genuine emotion; the more so, doubtless, that
+      she blessed him in a quite loving, maternal fashion, and told him she
+      honestly believed him to be the best fellow in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Villa Pandolfini stood directly upon a small grass-grown piazza, on
+      the top of a hill which sloped straight from one of the gates of Florence.
+      It offered to the outer world a long, rather low facade, colored a dull,
+      dark yellow, and pierced with windows of various sizes, no one of which,
+      save those on the ground floor, was on the same level with any other.
+      Within, it had a great, cool, gray cortile, with high, light arches around
+      it, heavily-corniced doors, of majestic altitude, opening out of it, and a
+      beautiful mediaeval well on one side of it. Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s rooms opened
+      into a small garden supported on immense substructions, which were planted
+      on the farther side of the hill, as it sloped steeply away. This garden
+      was a charming place. Its south wall was curtained with a dense orange
+      vine, a dozen fig-trees offered you their large-leaved shade, and over the
+      low parapet the soft, grave Tuscan landscape kept you company. The rooms
+      themselves were as high as chapels and as cool as royal sepulchres.
+      Silence, peace, and security seemed to abide in the ancient house and make
+      it an ideal refuge for aching hearts. Mrs. Hudson had a stunted,
+      brown-faced Maddalena, who wore a crimson handkerchief passed over her
+      coarse, black locks and tied under her sharp, pertinacious chin, and a
+      smile which was as brilliant as a prolonged flash of lightning. She smiled
+      at everything in life, especially the things she did n&rsquo;t like and which
+      kept her talent for mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a
+      motion was sufficient to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful
+      she-wolf. This inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her
+      dealings with her melancholy mistress, to whom she had been bequeathed by
+      the late occupant of the apartment, and who, to Rowland&rsquo;s satisfaction,
+      promised to be diverted from her maternal sorrows by the still deeper
+      perplexities of Maddalena&rsquo;s theory of roasting, sweeping, and bed-making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence, whence in the
+      summer mornings he had five minutes&rsquo; walk in the sharp, black,
+      shadow-strip projected by winding, flower-topped walls, to join his
+      friends. The life at the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined
+      itself, was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from
+      exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm. If a sensible shadow rested
+      upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice; it was feigning a
+      repose which it very scantily felt. Roderick had lost no time in giving
+      the full measure of his uncompromising chagrin, and as he was the central
+      figure of the little group, as he held its heart-strings all in his own
+      hand, it reflected faithfully the eclipse of his own genius. No one had
+      ventured upon the cheerful commonplace of saying that the change of air
+      and of scene would restore his spirits; this would have had, under the
+      circumstances, altogether too silly a sound. The change in question had
+      done nothing of the sort, and his companions had, at least, the comfort of
+      their perspicacity. An essential spring had dried up within him, and there
+      was no visible spiritual law for making it flow again. He was rarely
+      violent, he expressed little of the irritation and ennui that he must have
+      constantly felt; it was as if he believed that a spiritual miracle for his
+      redemption was just barely possible, and was therefore worth waiting for.
+      The most that one could do, however, was to wait grimly and doggedly,
+      suppressing an imprecation as, from time to time, one looked at one&rsquo;s
+      watch. An attitude of positive urbanity toward life was not to be
+      expected; it was doing one&rsquo;s duty to hold one&rsquo;s tongue and keep one&rsquo;s
+      hands off one&rsquo;s own windpipe, and other people&rsquo;s. Roderick had long
+      silences, fits of profound lethargy, almost of stupefaction. He used to
+      sit in the garden by the hour, with his head thrown back, his legs
+      outstretched, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fastened upon the
+      blinding summer sky. He would gather a dozen books about him, tumble them
+      out on the ground, take one into his lap, and leave it with the pages
+      unturned. These moods would alternate with hours of extreme restlessness,
+      during which he mysteriously absented himself. He bore the heat of the
+      Italian summer like a salamander, and used to start off at high noon for
+      long walks over the hills. He often went down into Florence, rambled
+      through her close, dim streets, and lounged away mornings in the churches
+      and galleries. On many of these occasions Rowland bore him company, for
+      they were the times when he was most like his former self. Before Michael
+      Angelo&rsquo;s statues and the pictures of the early Tuscans, he quite forgot
+      his own infelicities, and picked up the thread of his old aesthetic
+      loquacity. He had a particular fondness for Andrea del Sarto, and affirmed
+      that if he had been a painter he would have taken the author of the
+      Madonna del Sacco for his model. He found in Florence some of his Roman
+      friends, and went down on certain evenings to meet them. More than once he
+      asked Mary Garland to go with him into town, and showed her the things he
+      most cared for. He had some modeling clay brought up to the villa and
+      deposited in a room suitable for his work; but when this had been done he
+      turned the key in the door and the clay never was touched. His eye was
+      heavy and his hand cold, and his mother put up a secret prayer that he
+      might be induced to see a doctor. But on a certain occasion, when her
+      prayer became articulate, he had a great outburst of anger and begged her
+      to know, once for all, that his health was better than it had ever been.
+      On the whole, and most of the time, he was a sad spectacle; he looked so
+      hopelessly idle. If he was not querulous and bitter, it was because he had
+      taken an extraordinary vow not to be; a vow heroic, for him, a vow which
+      those who knew him well had the tenderness to appreciate. Talking with him
+      was like skating on thin ice, and his companions had a constant mental
+      vision of spots designated &ldquo;dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a difficult time for Rowland; he said to himself that he would
+      endure it to the end, but that it must be his last adventure of the kind.
+      Mrs. Hudson divided her time between looking askance at her son, with her
+      hands tightly clasped about her pocket-handkerchief, as if she were
+      wringing it dry of the last hour&rsquo;s tears, and turning her eyes much more
+      directly upon Rowland, in the mutest, the feeblest, the most intolerable
+      reproachfulness. She never phrased her accusations, but he felt that in
+      the unillumined void of the poor lady&rsquo;s mind they loomed up like
+      vaguely-outlined monsters. Her demeanor caused him the acutest suffering,
+      and if, at the outset of his enterprise, he had seen, how dimly soever,
+      one of those plaintive eye-beams in the opposite scale, the brilliancy of
+      Roderick&rsquo;s promises would have counted for little. They made their way to
+      the softest spot in his conscience and kept it chronically aching. If Mrs.
+      Hudson had been loquacious and vulgar, he would have borne even a less
+      valid persecution with greater fortitude. But somehow, neat and noiseless
+      and dismally lady-like, as she sat there, keeping her grievance green with
+      her soft-dropping tears, her displeasure conveyed an overwhelming
+      imputation of brutality. He felt like a reckless trustee who has
+      speculated with the widow&rsquo;s mite, and is haunted with the reflection of
+      ruin that he sees in her tearful eyes. He did everything conceivable to be
+      polite to Mrs. Hudson, and to treat her with distinguished deference.
+      Perhaps his exasperated nerves made him overshoot the mark, and rendered
+      his civilities a trifle peremptory. She seemed capable of believing that
+      he was trying to make a fool of her; she would have thought him cruelly
+      recreant if he had suddenly departed in desperation, and yet she gave him
+      no visible credit for his constancy. Women are said by some authorities to
+      be cruel; I don&rsquo;t know how true this is, but it may at least be pertinent
+      to remark that Mrs. Hudson was very much of a woman. It often seemed to
+      Rowland that he had too decidedly forfeited his freedom, and that there
+      was something positively grotesque in a man of his age and circumstances
+      living in such a moral bondage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mary Garland had helped him before, and she helped him now&mdash;helped
+      him not less than he had assured himself she would when he found himself
+      drifting to Florence. Yet her help was rendered in the same unconscious,
+      unacknowledged fashion as before; there was no explicit change in their
+      relations. After that distressing scene in Rome which had immediately
+      preceded their departure, it was of course impossible that there should
+      not be on Miss Garland&rsquo;s part some frankness of allusion to Roderick&rsquo;s sad
+      condition. She had been present, the reader will remember, during only
+      half of his unsparing confession, and Rowland had not seen her confronted
+      with any absolute proof of Roderick&rsquo;s passion for Christina Light. But he
+      knew that she knew far too much for her happiness; Roderick had told him,
+      shortly after their settlement at the Villa Pandolfini, that he had had a
+      &ldquo;tremendous talk&rdquo; with his cousin. Rowland asked no questions about it; he
+      preferred not to know what had passed between them. If their interview had
+      been purely painful, he wished to ignore it for Miss Garland&rsquo;s sake; and
+      if it had sown the seeds of reconciliation, he wished to close his eyes to
+      it for his own&mdash;for the sake of that unshaped idea, forever dismissed
+      and yet forever present, which hovered in the background of his
+      consciousness, with a hanging head, as it were, and yet an unshamed
+      glance, and whose lightest motions were an effectual bribe to patience.
+      Was the engagement broken? Rowland wondered, yet without asking. But it
+      hardly mattered, for if, as was more than probable, Miss Garland had
+      peremptorily released her cousin, her own heart had by no means recovered
+      its liberty. It was very certain to Rowland&rsquo;s mind that if she had given
+      him up she had by no means ceased to care for him passionately, and that,
+      to exhaust her charity for his weaknesses, Roderick would have, as the
+      phrase is, a long row to hoe. She spoke of Roderick as she might have done
+      of a person suffering from a serious malady which demanded much
+      tenderness; but if Rowland had found it possible to accuse her of
+      dishonesty he would have said now that she believed appreciably less than
+      she pretended to in her victim&rsquo;s being an involuntary patient. There are
+      women whose love is care-taking and patronizing, and who rather prefer a
+      weak man because he gives them a comfortable sense of strength. It did not
+      in the least please Rowland to believe that Mary Garland was one of these;
+      for he held that such women were only males in petticoats, and he was
+      convinced that Miss Garland&rsquo;s heart was constructed after the most perfect
+      feminine model. That she was a very different woman from Christina Light
+      did not at all prove that she was less a woman, and if the Princess
+      Casamassima had gone up into a high place to publish her disrelish of a
+      man who lacked the virile will, it was very certain that Mary Garland was
+      not a person to put up, at any point, with what might be called the
+      princess&rsquo;s leavings. It was Christina&rsquo;s constant practice to remind you of
+      the complexity of her character, of the subtlety of her mind, of her
+      troublous faculty of seeing everything in a dozen different lights. Mary
+      Garland had never pretended not to be simple; but Rowland had a theory
+      that she had really a more multitudinous sense of human things, a more
+      delicate imagination, and a finer instinct of character. She did you the
+      honors of her mind with a grace far less regal, but was not that faculty
+      of quite as remarkable an adjustment? If in poor Christina&rsquo;s strangely
+      commingled nature there was circle within circle, and depth beneath depth,
+      it was to be believed that Mary Garland, though she did not amuse herself
+      with dropping stones into her soul, and waiting to hear them fall, laid
+      quite as many sources of spiritual life under contribution. She had
+      believed Roderick was a fine fellow when she bade him farewell beneath the
+      Northampton elms, and this belief, to her young, strenuous, concentrated
+      imagination, had meant many things. If it was to grow cold, it would be
+      because disenchantment had become total and won the battle at each
+      successive point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland had even in her face and carriage something of the
+      preoccupied and wearied look of a person who is watching at a sick-bed;
+      Roderick&rsquo;s broken fortunes, his dead ambitions, were a cruel burden to the
+      heart of a girl who had believed that he possessed &ldquo;genius,&rdquo; and supposed
+      that genius was to one&rsquo;s spiritual economy what full pockets were to one&rsquo;s
+      domestic. And yet, with her, Rowland never felt, as with Mrs. Hudson, that
+      undercurrent of reproach and bitterness toward himself, that impertinent
+      implication that he had defrauded her of happiness. Was this justice, in
+      Miss Garland, or was it mercy? The answer would have been difficult, for
+      she had almost let Rowland feel before leaving Rome that she liked him
+      well enough to forgive him an injury. It was partly, Rowland fancied, that
+      there were occasional lapses, deep and sweet, in her sense of injury.
+      When, on arriving at Florence, she saw the place Rowland had brought them
+      to in their trouble, she had given him a look and said a few words to him
+      that had seemed not only a remission of guilt but a positive reward. This
+      happened in the court of the villa&mdash;the large gray quadrangle,
+      overstretched, from edge to edge of the red-tiled roof, by the soft
+      Italian sky. Mary had felt on the spot the sovereign charm of the place;
+      it was reflected in her deeply intelligent glance, and Rowland immediately
+      accused himself of not having done the villa justice. Miss Garland took a
+      mighty fancy to Florence, and used to look down wistfully at the towered
+      city from the windows and garden. Roderick having now no pretext for not
+      being her cicerone, Rowland was no longer at liberty, as he had been in
+      Rome, to propose frequent excursions to her. Roderick&rsquo;s own invitations,
+      however, were not frequent, and Rowland more than once ventured to
+      introduce her to a gallery or a church. These expeditions were not so
+      blissful, to his sense, as the rambles they had taken together in Rome,
+      for his companion only half surrendered herself to her enjoyment, and
+      seemed to have but a divided attention at her command. Often, when she had
+      begun with looking intently at a picture, her silence, after an interval,
+      made him turn and glance at her. He usually found that if she was looking
+      at the picture still, she was not seeing it. Her eyes were fixed, but her
+      thoughts were wandering, and an image more vivid than any that Raphael or
+      Titian had drawn had superposed itself upon the canvas. She asked fewer
+      questions than before, and seemed to have lost heart for consulting
+      guide-books and encyclopaedias. From time to time, however, she uttered a
+      deep, full murmur of gratification. Florence in midsummer was perfectly
+      void of travelers, and the dense little city gave forth its aesthetic
+      aroma with a larger frankness, as the nightingale sings when the listeners
+      have departed. The churches were deliciously cool, but the gray streets
+      were stifling, and the great, dove-tailed polygons of pavement as hot to
+      the tread as molten lava. Rowland, who suffered from intense heat, would
+      have found all this uncomfortable in solitude; but Florence had never
+      charmed him so completely as during these midsummer strolls with his
+      preoccupied companion. One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow
+      to the Academy. Miss Garland kept her appointment, but as soon as she
+      appeared, Rowland saw that something painful had befallen her. She was
+      doing her best to look at her ease, but her face bore the marks of tears.
+      Rowland told her that he was afraid she was ill, and that if she preferred
+      to give up the visit to Florence he would submit with what grace he might.
+      She hesitated a moment, and then said she preferred to adhere to their
+      plan. &ldquo;I am not well,&rdquo; she presently added, &ldquo;but it &lsquo;s a moral malady, and
+      in such cases I consider your company beneficial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I am to be your doctor,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;you must tell me how your
+      illness began.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you very little. It began with Mrs. Hudson being unjust to me,
+      for the first time in her life. And now I am already better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I mention this incident because it confirmed an impression of Rowland&rsquo;s
+      from which he had derived a certain consolation. He knew that Mrs. Hudson
+      considered her son&rsquo;s ill-regulated passion for Christina Light a very
+      regrettable affair, but he suspected that her manifest compassion had been
+      all for Roderick, and not in the least for Mary Garland. She was fond of
+      the young girl, but she had valued her primarily, during the last two
+      years, as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick&rsquo;s shrine. Roderick had
+      honored her by asking her to become his wife, but that poor Mary had any
+      rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was quite incapable of perceiving. Her
+      sentiment on the subject was of course not very vigorously formulated, but
+      she was unprepared to admit that Miss Garland had any ground for
+      complaint. Roderick was very unhappy; that was enough, and Mary&rsquo;s duty was
+      to join her patience and her prayers to those of his doting mother.
+      Roderick might fall in love with whom he pleased; no doubt that women
+      trained in the mysterious Roman arts were only too proud and too happy to
+      make it easy for him; and it was very presuming in poor, plain Mary to
+      feel any personal resentment. Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s philosophy was of too narrow a
+      scope to suggest that a mother may forgive where a mistress cannot, and
+      she thought herself greatly aggrieved that Miss Garland was not so
+      disinterested as herself. She was ready to drop dead in Roderick&rsquo;s
+      service, and she was quite capable of seeing her companion falter and grow
+      faint, without a tremor of compassion. Mary, apparently, had given some
+      intimation of her belief that if constancy is the flower of devotion,
+      reciprocity is the guarantee of constancy, and Mrs. Hudson had rebuked her
+      failing faith and called it cruelty. That Miss Garland had found it hard
+      to reason with Mrs. Hudson, that she suffered deeply from the elder lady&rsquo;s
+      softly bitter imputations, and that, in short, he had companionship in
+      misfortune&mdash;all this made Rowland find a certain luxury in his
+      discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The party at Villa Pandolfini used to sit in the garden in the evenings,
+      which Rowland almost always spent with them. Their entertainment was in
+      the heavily perfumed air, in the dim, far starlight, in the crenelated
+      tower of a neighboring villa, which loomed vaguely above them in the warm
+      darkness, and in such conversation as depressing reflections allowed.
+      Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless ghost, silent
+      for the most part, but making from time to time a brief observation,
+      characterized by the most fantastic cynicism. Roderick&rsquo;s contributions to
+      the conversation were indeed always so fantastic that, though half the
+      time they wearied him unspeakably, Rowland made an effort to treat them
+      humorously. With Rowland alone Roderick talked a great deal more; often
+      about things related to his own work, or about artistic and aesthetic
+      matters in general. He talked as well as ever, or even better; but his
+      talk always ended in a torrent of groans and curses. When this current set
+      in, Rowland straightway turned his back or stopped his ears, and Roderick
+      now witnessed these movements with perfect indifference. When the latter
+      was absent from the star-lit circle in the garden, as often happened,
+      Rowland knew nothing of his whereabouts; he supposed him to be in
+      Florence, but he never learned what he did there. All this was not
+      enlivening, but with an even, muffled tread the days followed each other,
+      and brought the month of August to a close. One particular evening at this
+      time was most enchanting; there was a perfect moon, looking so
+      extraordinarily large that it made everything its light fell upon seem
+      small; the heat was tempered by a soft west wind, and the wind was laden
+      with the odors of the early harvest. The hills, the vale of the Arno, the
+      shrunken river, the domes of Florence, were vaguely effaced by the dense
+      moonshine; they looked as if they were melting out of sight like an
+      exorcised vision. Rowland had found the two ladies alone at the villa, and
+      he had sat with them for an hour. He felt absolutely hushed by the solemn
+      splendor of the scene, but he had risked the remark that, whatever life
+      might yet have in store for either of them, this was a night that they
+      would never forget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a night to remember on one&rsquo;s death-bed!&rdquo; Miss Garland exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mary, how can you!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Hudson, to whom this savored of
+      profanity, and to whose shrinking sense, indeed, the accumulated
+      loveliness of the night seemed to have something shameless and defiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent after this, for some time, but at last Rowland addressed
+      certain idle words to Miss Garland. She made no reply, and he turned to
+      look at her. She was sitting motionless, with her head pressed to Mrs.
+      Hudson&rsquo;s shoulder, and the latter lady was gazing at him through the
+      silvered dusk with a look which gave a sort of spectral solemnity to the
+      sad, weak meaning of her eyes. She had the air, for the moment, of a
+      little old malevolent fairy. Miss Garland, Rowland perceived in an
+      instant, was not absolutely motionless; a tremor passed through her
+      figure. She was weeping, or on the point of weeping, and she could not
+      trust herself to speak. Rowland left his place and wandered to another
+      part of the garden, wondering at the motive of her sudden tears. Of
+      women&rsquo;s sobs in general he had a sovereign dread, but these, somehow, gave
+      him a certain pleasure. When he returned to his place Miss Garland had
+      raised her head and banished her tears. She came away from Mrs. Hudson,
+      and they stood for a short time leaning against the parapet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to you very strange, I suppose,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;that there
+      should be any trouble in such a world as this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to think,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;that if any trouble came to me I would
+      bear it like a stoic. But that was at home, where things don&rsquo;t speak to us
+      of enjoyment as they do here. Here it is such a mixture; one does n&rsquo;t know
+      what to choose, what to believe. Beauty stands there&mdash;beauty such as
+      this night and this place, and all this sad, strange summer, have been so
+      full of&mdash;and it penetrates to one&rsquo;s soul and lodges there, and keeps
+      saying that man was not made to suffer, but to enjoy. This place has
+      undermined my stoicism, but&mdash;shall I tell you? I feel as if I were
+      saying something sinful&mdash;I love it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is sinful, I absolve you,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;in so far as I have
+      power. We are made, I suppose, both to suffer and to enjoy. As you say, it
+      &lsquo;s a mixture. Just now and here, it seems a peculiarly strange one. But we
+      must take things in turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His words had a singular aptness, for he had hardly uttered them when
+      Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood. He stood
+      for a moment gazing hard at the view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a very beautiful night, my son,&rdquo; said his mother, going to him
+      timidly, and touching his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed his hand through his hair and let it stay there, clasping his
+      thick locks. &ldquo;Beautiful?&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;of course it &lsquo;s beautiful! Everything
+      is beautiful; everything is insolent, defiant, atrocious with beauty.
+      Nothing is ugly but me&mdash;me and my poor dead brain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dearest son,&rdquo; pleaded poor Mrs. Hudson, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you feel any
+      better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick made no immediate answer; but at last he spoke in a different
+      voice. &ldquo;I came expressly to tell you that you need n&rsquo;t trouble yourselves
+      any longer to wait for something to turn up. Nothing will turn up! It &lsquo;s
+      all over! I said when I came here I would give it a chance. I have given
+      it a chance. Have n&rsquo;t I, eh? Have n&rsquo;t I, Rowland? It &lsquo;s no use; the thing
+      &lsquo;s a failure! Do with me now what you please. I recommend you to set me up
+      there at the end of the garden and shoot me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel strongly inclined,&rdquo; said Rowland gravely, &ldquo;to go and get my
+      revolver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mercy on us, what language!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; Roderick went on. &ldquo;This would be a lovely night for it, and I
+      should be a lucky fellow to be buried in this garden. But bury me alive,
+      if you prefer. Take me back to Northampton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roderick, will you really come?&rdquo; cried his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I &lsquo;ll go! I might as well be there as anywhere&mdash;reverting to
+      idiocy and living upon alms. I can do nothing with all this; perhaps I
+      should really like Northampton. If I &lsquo;m to vegetate for the rest of my
+      days, I can do it there better than here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come home, come home,&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson said, &ldquo;and we shall all be safe
+      and quiet and happy. My dearest son, come home with your poor mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go, then, and go quickly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson flung herself upon his neck for gratitude. &ldquo;We &lsquo;ll go
+      to-morrow!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;The Lord is very good to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Garland said nothing to this; but she looked at Rowland, and her eyes
+      seemed to contain a kind of alarmed appeal. Rowland noted it with
+      exultation, but even without it he would have broken into an eager
+      protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you serious, Roderick?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serious? of course not! How can a man with a crack in his brain be
+      serious? how can a muddlehead reason? But I &lsquo;m not jesting, either; I can
+      no more make jokes than utter oracles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you willing to go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willing? God forbid! I am simply amenable to force; if my mother chooses
+      to take me, I won&rsquo;t resist. I can&rsquo;t! I have come to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me resist, then,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Go home as you are now? I can&rsquo;t
+      stand by and see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been true that Roderick had lost his sense of humor, but he
+      scratched his head with a gesture that was almost comical in its effect.
+      &ldquo;You are a queer fellow! I should think I would disgust you horribly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay another year,&rdquo; Rowland simply said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doing nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall do something. I am responsible for your doing something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To whom are you responsible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, before replying, glanced at Miss Garland, and his glance made her
+      speak quickly. &ldquo;Not to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I &lsquo;m responsible to myself,&rdquo; Rowland declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor, dear fellow!&rdquo; said Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Mallet, are n&rsquo;t you satisfied?&rdquo; cried Mrs. Hudson, in the tone in
+      which Niobe may have addressed the avenging archers, after she had seen
+      her eldest-born fall. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s out of all nature keeping him here. When we
+      &lsquo;re in a poor way, surely our own dear native land is the place for us. Do
+      leave us to ourselves, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This just failed of being a dismissal in form, and Rowland bowed his head
+      to it. Roderick was silent for some moments; then, suddenly, he covered
+      his face with his two hands. &ldquo;Take me at least out of this terrible
+      Italy,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;where everything mocks and reproaches and torments and
+      eludes me! Take me out of this land of impossible beauty and put me in the
+      midst of ugliness. Set me down where nature is coarse and flat, and men
+      and manners are vulgar. There must be something awfully ugly in Germany.
+      Pack me off there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland answered that if he wished to leave Italy the thing might be
+      arranged; he would think it over and submit a proposal on the morrow. He
+      suggested to Mrs. Hudson, in consequence, that she should spend the autumn
+      in Switzerland, where she would find a fine tonic climate, plenty of fresh
+      milk, and several pensions at three francs and a half a day. Switzerland,
+      of course, was not ugly, but one could not have everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hudson neither thanked him nor assented; but she wept and packed her
+      trunks. Rowland had a theory, after the scene which led to these
+      preparations, that Mary Garland was weary of waiting for Roderick to come
+      to his senses, that the faith which had bravely borne his manhood company
+      hitherto, on the tortuous march he was leading it, had begun to believe it
+      had gone far enough. This theory was not vitiated by something she said to
+      him on the day before that on which Mrs. Hudson had arranged to leave
+      Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin Sarah, the other evening,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;asked you to please leave
+      us. I think she hardly knew what she was saying, and I hope you have not
+      taken offense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By no means; but I honestly believe that my leaving you would contribute
+      greatly to Mrs. Hudson&rsquo;s comfort. I can be your hidden providence, you
+      know; I can watch you at a distance, and come upon the scene at critical
+      moments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland looked for a moment at the ground; and then, with sudden
+      earnestness, &ldquo;I beg you to come with us!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It need hardly be added that after this Rowland went with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. The Princess Casamassima
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn, accessible
+      with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once spent a blissful ten
+      days. He had at that time been trudging, knapsack on back, over half
+      Switzerland, and not being, on his legs, a particularly light weight, it
+      was no shame to him to confess that he was mortally tired. The inn of
+      which I speak presented striking analogies with a cow-stable; but in spite
+      of this circumstance, it was crowded with hungry tourists. It stood in a
+      high, shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine meadows sloping down to it
+      from the base of certain rugged rocks whose outlines were grotesque
+      against the evening sky. Rowland had seen grander places in Switzerland
+      that pleased him less, and whenever afterwards he wished to think of
+      Alpine opportunities at their best, he recalled this grassy concave among
+      the mountain-tops, and the August days he spent there, resting
+      deliciously, at his length, in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder, with the
+      light cool air stirring about his temples, the wafted odors of the pines
+      in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells in his ears, the vast
+      progression of the mountain shadows before his eyes, and a volume of
+      Wordsworth in his pocket. His face, on the Swiss hill-sides, had been
+      scorched to within a shade of the color nowadays called magenta, and his
+      bed was a pallet in a loft, which he shared with a German botanist of
+      colossal stature&mdash;every inch of him quaking at an open window. These
+      had been drawbacks to felicity, but Rowland hardly cared where or how he
+      was lodged, for he spent the livelong day under the sky, on the crest of a
+      slope that looked at the Jungfrau. He remembered all this on leaving
+      Florence with his friends, and he reflected that, as the midseason was
+      over, accommodations would be more ample, and charges more modest. He
+      communicated with his old friend the landlord, and, while September was
+      yet young, his companions established themselves under his guidance in the
+      grassy valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had crossed the Saint Gothard Pass with them, in the same carriage.
+      During the journey from Florence, and especially during this portion of
+      it, the cloud that hung over the little party had been almost dissipated,
+      and they had looked at each other, in the close contiguity of the train
+      and the posting-carriage, without either accusing or consoling glances. It
+      was impossible not to enjoy the magnificent scenery of the Apennines and
+      the Italian Alps, and there was a tacit agreement among the travelers to
+      abstain from sombre allusions. The effect of this delicate compact seemed
+      excellent; it ensured them a week&rsquo;s intellectual sunshine. Roderick sat
+      and gazed out of the window with a fascinated stare, and with a perfect
+      docility of attitude. He concerned himself not a particle about the
+      itinerary, or about any of the wayside arrangements; he took no trouble,
+      and he gave none. He assented to everything that was proposed, talked very
+      little, and led for a week a perfectly contemplative life. His mother
+      rarely removed her eyes from him; and if, a while before, this would have
+      extremely irritated him, he now seemed perfectly unconscious of her
+      observation and profoundly indifferent to anything that might befall him.
+      They spent a couple of days on the Lake of Como, at a hotel with white
+      porticoes smothered in oleander and myrtle, and the terrace-steps leading
+      down to little boats with striped awnings. They agreed it was the earthly
+      paradise, and they passed the mornings strolling through the perfumed
+      alleys of classic villas, and the evenings floating in the moonlight in a
+      circle of outlined mountains, to the music of silver-trickling oars. One
+      day, in the afternoon, the two young men took a long stroll together. They
+      followed the winding footway that led toward Como, close to the lake-side,
+      past the gates of villas and the walls of vineyards, through little
+      hamlets propped on a dozen arches, and bathing their feet and their
+      pendant tatters in the gray-green ripple; past frescoed walls and
+      crumbling campaniles and grassy village piazzas, and the mouth of soft
+      ravines that wound upward, through belts of swinging vine and vaporous
+      olive and splendid chestnut, to high ledges where white chapels gleamed
+      amid the paler boskage, and bare cliff-surfaces, with their sun-cracked
+      lips, drank in the azure light. It all was confoundingly picturesque; it
+      was the Italy that we know from the steel engravings in old keepsakes and
+      annuals, from the vignettes on music-sheets and the drop-curtains at
+      theatres; an Italy that we can never confess to ourselves&mdash;in spite
+      of our own changes and of Italy&rsquo;s&mdash;that we have ceased to believe in.
+      Rowland and Roderick turned aside from the little paved footway that
+      clambered and dipped and wound and doubled beside the lake, and stretched
+      themselves idly beneath a fig-tree, on a grassy promontory. Rowland had
+      never known anything so divinely soothing as the dreamy softness of that
+      early autumn afternoon. The iridescent mountains shut him in; the little
+      waves, beneath him, fretted the white pebbles at the laziest intervals;
+      the festooned vines above him swayed just visibly in the all but
+      motionless air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his hands
+      under his head. &ldquo;This suits me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I could be happy here and
+      forget everything. Why not stay here forever?&rdquo; He kept his position for a
+      long time and seemed lost in his thoughts. Rowland spoke to him, but he
+      made vague answers; at last he closed his eyes. It seemed to Rowland,
+      also, a place to stay in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the
+      disagreeable. Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it in
+      his arms. There had been something passionate in his movement; but Rowland
+      was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back into a
+      sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes. Roderick
+      turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the lake and
+      mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his heart was
+      too full for utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pity me, sir; pity me!&rdquo; he presently cried. &ldquo;Look at this lovely world,
+      and think what it must be to be dead to it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead?&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave, where you lie
+      staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and hearing
+      all nature live and grow above you! That &lsquo;s the way I feel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to hear it,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;Death of that sort is very near to
+      resurrection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s too horrible,&rdquo; Roderick went on; &ldquo;it has all come over me here
+      tremendously! If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears. For
+      one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what you have been; be something better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never be anything again: it &lsquo;s no use talking! But I don&rsquo;t know
+      what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here. Something in
+      my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and desire.
+      I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible! Mind you, I know it, I
+      feel it! Remember that hereafter. Don&rsquo;t say that he was stupefied and
+      senseless; that his perception was dulled and his aspiration dead. Say
+      that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of the beauty and sweetness
+      of life; that he rebelled and protested and shrieked; that he was buried
+      alive, with his eyes open, and his heart beating to madness; that he clung
+      to every blade of grass and every way-side thorn as he passed; that it was
+      the most horrible spectacle you ever witnessed; that it was an outrage, a
+      murder, a massacre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, man, are you insane?&rdquo; Rowland cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never have been saner. I don&rsquo;t want to be bad company, and in this
+      beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break the
+      charm. But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor, to life! I
+      only want to assure you that I know what I lose. I know it in every pulse
+      of my heart! Here, where these things are all loveliest, I take leave of
+      them. Farewell, farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented himself much
+      of the time from the carriage, and rambled far in advance, along the huge
+      zigzags of the road. He displayed an extraordinary activity; his light
+      weight and slender figure made him an excellent pedestrian, and his
+      friends frequently saw him skirting the edge of plunging chasms, loosening
+      the stones on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against the sky, from
+      the top of rocky pinnacles. Mary Garland walked a great deal, but she
+      remained near the carriage to be with Mrs. Hudson. Rowland remained near
+      it to be with Miss Garland. He trudged by her side up that magnificent
+      ascent from Italy, and found himself regretting that the Alps were so low,
+      and that their trudging was not to last a week. She was exhilarated; she
+      liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until within the last few weeks,
+      she had seen nothing greater than Mount Holyoke, and she found that the
+      Alps amply justified their reputation. Rowland knew that she loved nature,
+      but he was struck afresh with the vivacity of her observation of it, and
+      with her knowledge of plants and stones. At that season the wild flowers
+      had mostly departed, but a few of them lingered, and Miss Garland never
+      failed to espy them in their outlying corners. They interested her
+      greatly; she was charmed when they were old friends, and charmed even more
+      when they were new. She displayed a very light foot in going in quest of
+      them, and had soon covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle of
+      strange vegetation. Rowland of course was alert in her service, and he
+      gathered for her several botanical specimens which at first seemed
+      inaccessible. One of these, indeed, had at first appeared easier of
+      capture than his attempt attested, and he had paused a moment at the base
+      of the little peak on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther
+      pursuit. Suddenly, as he stood there, he remembered Roderick&rsquo;s defiance of
+      danger and of Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized with a strong
+      desire to test the courage of his companion. She had just scrambled up a
+      grassy slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach. As
+      he prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing
+      was impossible! Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved,
+      enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes, what
+      became of him. He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he was
+      perfectly indifferent to her suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can get the flower,&rdquo; he called to her. &ldquo;Will you trust me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it; I would rather not have it!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you trust me?&rdquo; he repeated, looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would
+      shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done. &ldquo;I wish it were something
+      better!&rdquo; she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to
+      clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise was
+      difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow
+      foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize. He
+      managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to descend.
+      There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded them all.
+      It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and that was all he
+      had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when he offered Miss
+      Garland the flower, and she was visibly pale. She had watched him without
+      moving. All this had passed without the knowledge of Mrs. Hudson, who was
+      dozing beneath the hood of the carriage. Mary Garland&rsquo;s eyes did not
+      perhaps display that ardent admiration which was formerly conferred by the
+      queen of beauty at a tournament; but they expressed something in which
+      Rowland found his reward. &ldquo;Why did you do that?&rdquo; she asked, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated. He felt that it was physically possible to say, &ldquo;Because I
+      love you!&rdquo; but that it was not morally possible. He lowered his pitch and
+      answered, simply, &ldquo;Because I wanted to do something for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you had fallen,&rdquo; said Miss Garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed I would not fall. And you believed it, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quod erat demonstrandum!&rdquo; cried Rowland. &ldquo;I think you know Latin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When our four friends were established in what I have called their grassy
+      valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both grassy and
+      stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a great many long
+      walks, and, thanks to the lucid mountain air, not a little exhilaration.
+      Mrs. Hudson was obliged to intermit her suspicions of the deleterious
+      atmosphere of the old world, and to acknowledge the edifying purity of the
+      breezes of Engelthal. She was certainly more placid than she had been in
+      Italy; having always lived in the country, she had missed in Rome and
+      Florence that social solitude mitigated by bushes and rocks which is so
+      dear to the true New England temperament. The little unpainted inn at
+      Engelthal, with its plank partitions, its milk-pans standing in the sun,
+      its &ldquo;help,&rdquo; in the form of angular young women of the country-side,
+      reminded her of places of summer sojourn in her native land; and the
+      beautiful historic chambers of the Villa Pandolfini passed from her memory
+      without a regret, and without having in the least modified her ideal of
+      domiciliary grace. Roderick had changed his sky, but he had not changed
+      his mind; his humor was still that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse
+      in that tragic explosion on the Lake of Como. He kept his despair to
+      himself, and he went doggedly about the ordinary business of life; but it
+      was easy to see that his spirit was mortally heavy, and that he lived and
+      moved and talked simply from the force of habit. In that sad half-hour
+      among the Italian olives there had been such a fierce sincerity in his
+      tone, that Rowland began to abdicate the critical attitude. He began to
+      feel that it was essentially vain to appeal to the poor fellow&rsquo;s will;
+      there was no will left; its place was an impotent void. This view of the
+      case indeed was occasionally contravened by certain indications on
+      Roderick&rsquo;s part of the power of resistance to disagreeable obligations:
+      one might still have said, if one had been disposed to be didactic at any
+      hazard, that there was a method in his madness, that his moral energy had
+      its sleeping and its waking hours, and that, in a cause that pleased it,
+      it was capable of rising with the dawn. But on the other hand, pleasure,
+      in this case, was quite at one with effort; evidently the greatest bliss
+      in life, for Roderick, would have been to have a plastic idea. And then,
+      it was impossible not to feel tenderly to a despair which had so ceased to
+      be aggressive&mdash;not to forgive a great deal of apathy to a temper
+      which had so unlearned its irritability. Roderick said frankly that
+      Switzerland made him less miserable than Italy, and the Alps seemed less
+      to mock at his enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in long
+      rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy places,
+      where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself on the
+      never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging away the
+      hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with him; though
+      Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his society.
+      Rowland now made it a rule to treat him like a perfectly sane man, to
+      assume that all things were well with him, and never to allude to the
+      prosperity he had forfeited or to the work he was not doing. He would have
+      still said, had you questioned him, that Roderick&rsquo;s condition was a mood&mdash;certainly
+      a puzzling one. It might last yet for many a weary hour; but it was a long
+      lane that had no turning. Roderick&rsquo;s blues would not last forever.
+      Rowland&rsquo;s interest in Miss Garland&rsquo;s relations with her cousin was still
+      profoundly attentive, and perplexed as he was on all sides, he found
+      nothing transparent here. After their arrival at Engelthal, Roderick
+      appeared to seek the young girl&rsquo;s society more than he had done hitherto,
+      and this revival of ardor could not fail to set his friend a-wondering.
+      They sat together and strolled together, and Miss Garland often read aloud
+      to him. One day, on their coming to dinner, after he had been lying half
+      the morning at her feet, in the shadow of a rock, Rowland asked him what
+      she had been reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Roderick said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t heed the sense.&rdquo; Miss Garland
+      heard this, and Rowland looked at her. She looked at Roderick sharply and
+      with a little blush. &ldquo;I listen to Mary,&rdquo; Roderick continued, &ldquo;for the sake
+      of her voice. It &lsquo;s distractingly sweet!&rdquo; At this Miss Garland&rsquo;s blush
+      deepened, and she looked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination to wander
+      in the direction of certain conjectures which the reader may deem
+      unflattering to Miss Garland&rsquo;s constancy. He had asked himself whether her
+      faith in Roderick had not faltered, and that demand of hers which had
+      brought about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost
+      equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe. Rowland
+      was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk the supposition that
+      Miss Garland had contrasted him with Roderick to his own advantage; but he
+      had a certain consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed itself
+      to fancy, at moments, that it might be not illogically rewarded by the
+      bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm as had crumbled away from her
+      estimate of his companion. If some day she had declared, in a sudden burst
+      of passion, that she was outwearied and sickened, and that she gave up her
+      recreant lover, Rowland&rsquo;s expectation would have gone half-way to meet
+      her. And certainly if her passion had taken this course no generous critic
+      would utterly condemn her. She had been neglected, ignored, forsaken,
+      treated with a contempt which no girl of a fine temper could endure. There
+      were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that of Burd Helen in the ballad,
+      lay in clinging to the man of their love through thick and thin, and in
+      bowing their head to all hard usage. This attitude had often an exquisite
+      beauty of its own, but Rowland deemed that he had solid reason to believe
+      it never could be Mary Garland&rsquo;s. She was not a passive creature; she was
+      not soft and meek and grateful for chance bounties. With all her reserve
+      of manner she was proud and eager; she asked much and she wanted what she
+      asked; she believed in fine things and she never could long persuade
+      herself that fine things missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved.
+      Once Rowland passed an angry day. He had dreamed&mdash;it was the most
+      insubstantial of dreams&mdash;that she had given him the right to believe
+      that she looked to him to transmute her discontent. And yet here she was
+      throwing herself back into Roderick&rsquo;s arms at his lightest overture, and
+      playing with his own half fearful, half shameful hopes! Rowland declared
+      to himself that his position was essentially detestable, and that all the
+      philosophy he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable
+      nor comfortable. He would go away and make an end of it. He did not go
+      away; he simply took a long walk, stayed away from the inn all day, and on
+      his return found Miss Garland sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, communing with himself during the restless ramble in question,
+      had determined that he would at least cease to observe, to heed, or to
+      care for what Miss Garland and Roderick might do or might not do together.
+      Nevertheless, some three days afterward, the opportunity presenting
+      itself, he deliberately broached the subject with Roderick. He knew this
+      was inconsistent and faint-hearted; it was indulgence to the fingers that
+      itched to handle forbidden fruit. But he said to himself that it was
+      really more logical to be inconsistent than the reverse; for they had
+      formerly discussed these mysteries very candidly. Was it not perfectly
+      reasonable that he should wish to know the sequel of the situation which
+      Roderick had then delineated? Roderick had made him promises, and it was
+      to be expected that he should ascertain how the promises had been kept.
+      Rowland could not say to himself that if the promises had been extorted
+      for Mary Garland&rsquo;s sake, his present attention to them was equally
+      disinterested; and so he had to admit that he was indeed faint-hearted. He
+      may perhaps be deemed too narrow a casuist, but we have repeated more than
+      once that he was solidly burdened with a conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine,&rdquo; he said to Roderick, &ldquo;that you are not sorry, at present, to
+      have allowed yourself to be dissuaded from making a final rupture with
+      Miss Garland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick eyed him with the vague and absent look which had lately become
+      habitual to his face, and repeated &ldquo;Dissuaded?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember that, in Rome, you wished to break your engagement,
+      and that I urged you to respect it, though it seemed to hang by so slender
+      a thread? I wished you to see what would come of it? If I am not mistaken,
+      you are reconciled to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;I remember what you said; you made it a kind of
+      personal favor to yourself that I should remain faithful. I consented, but
+      afterwards, when I thought of it, your attitude greatly amused me. Had it
+      ever been seen before?&mdash;a man asking another man to gratify him by
+      not suspending his attentions to a pretty girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was as selfish as anything else,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;One man puts his
+      selfishness into one thing, and one into another. It would have utterly
+      marred my comfort to see Miss Garland in low spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you liked her&mdash;you admired her, eh? So you intimated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admire her profoundly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your originality then&mdash;to do you justice you have a great
+      deal, of a certain sort&mdash;to wish her happiness secured in just that
+      fashion. Many a man would have liked better himself to make the woman he
+      admired happy, and would have welcomed her low spirits as an opening for
+      sympathy. You were awfully queer about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it!&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;The question is, Are you not glad I was queer?
+      Are you not finding that your affection for Miss Garland has a permanent
+      quality which you rather underestimated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to say. When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n&rsquo;t care
+      for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug about it.
+      If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be gained by
+      having a little humbug, I was willing to try it! I don&rsquo;t see that the
+      situation is really changed. Mary Garland is all that she ever was&mdash;more
+      than all. But I don&rsquo;t care for her! I don&rsquo;t care for anything, and I don&rsquo;t
+      find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor. The only
+      difference is that I don&rsquo;t care now, whether I care for her or not. Of
+      course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question for
+      any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume that
+      she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you &lsquo;re in love!&rdquo; said Rowland, not very logically. It must be
+      confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made for the sole purpose
+      of hearing Roderick deny it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it quite failed of its aim. Roderick gave a liberal shrug of his
+      shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head. &ldquo;Call it what you please!
+      I am past caring for names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly
+      disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had
+      argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was again,
+      in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue in
+      Mary&rsquo;s presence, indisposed though he was to admit it. He had said,
+      shortly before, that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a
+      promising beginning. If her voice was sweet it was probable that her
+      glance was not amiss, that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her whole
+      personal presence had learned the art of not being irritating. So Rowland
+      reasoned, and invested Mary Garland with a still finer loveliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions,
+      and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy touches
+      were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply a matter of the
+      conscience. He watched for signs that she rejoiced in Roderick&rsquo;s renewed
+      acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him that she was on her guard
+      against interpreting it too largely. It was now her turn&mdash;he fancied
+      that he sometimes gathered from certain nameless indications of glance and
+      tone and gesture&mdash;it was now her turn to be indifferent, to care for
+      other things. Again and again Rowland asked himself what these things were
+      that Miss Garland might be supposed to care for, to the injury of ideal
+      constancy; and again, having designated them, he divided them into two
+      portions. One was that larger experience, in general, which had come to
+      her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne in upon her
+      imagination, that there were more things one might do with one&rsquo;s life than
+      youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of; the revision of old
+      pledges in the light of new emotions. The other was the experience, in
+      especial, of Rowland&rsquo;s&mdash;what? Here Rowland always paused, in perfect
+      sincerity, to measure afresh his possible claim to the young girl&rsquo;s
+      regard. What might he call it? It had been more than civility and yet it
+      had been less than devotion. It had spoken of a desire to serve, but it
+      had said nothing of a hope of reward. Nevertheless, Rowland&rsquo;s fancy
+      hovered about the idea that it was recompensable, and his reflections
+      ended in a reverie which perhaps did not define it, but at least, on each
+      occasion, added a little to its volume. Since Miss Garland had asked him
+      as a sort of favor to herself to come also to Switzerland, he thought it
+      possible she might let him know whether he seemed to have effectively
+      served her. The days passed without her doing so, and at last Rowland
+      walked away to an isolated eminence some five miles from the inn and
+      murmured to the silent rocks that she was ungrateful. Listening nature
+      seemed not to contradict him, so that, on the morrow, he asked the young
+      girl, with an infinitesimal touch of irony, whether it struck her that his
+      deflection from his Florentine plan had been attended with brilliant
+      results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, we are delighted that you are with us!&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply that she had
+      forgotten that she had solemnly asked him to come. He reminded her of her
+      request, and recalled the place and time. &ldquo;That evening on the terrace,
+      late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed, and Roderick being absent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her. &ldquo;I am
+      afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You
+      wanted very much to do something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted above all things to oblige you, and I made no sacrifice. But if
+      I had made an immense one, it would be more than made up to me by any
+      assurance that I have helped Roderick into a better mood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment, and then, &ldquo;Why do you ask me?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are
+      able to judge quite as well as I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious
+      manner. &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I am afraid I care only in the
+      second place for Roderick&rsquo;s holding up his head. What I care for in the
+      first place is your happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why that should be,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I have certainly done
+      nothing to make you so much my friend. If you were to tell me you intended
+      to leave us to-morrow, I am afraid that I should not venture to ask you to
+      stay. But whether you go or stay, let us not talk of Roderick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;does n&rsquo;t answer my question. Is he better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was careful not to tell her that he intended to leave them. One day,
+      shortly after this, as the two young men sat at the inn-door watching the
+      sunset, which on that evening was very striking and lurid, Rowland made an
+      attempt to sound his companion&rsquo;s present sentiment touching Christina
+      Light. &ldquo;I wonder where she is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and what sort of a life she is
+      leading her prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick at first made no response. He was watching a figure on the summit
+      of some distant rocks, opposite to them. The figure was apparently
+      descending into the valley, and in relief against the crimson screen of
+      the western sky, it looked gigantic. &ldquo;Christina Light?&rdquo; Roderick at last
+      repeated, as if arousing himself from a reverie. &ldquo;Where she is? It &lsquo;s
+      extraordinary how little I care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you, then, completely got over it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while. &ldquo;She &lsquo;s a
+      humbug!&rdquo; he presently exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly!&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;But I have known worse ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She disappointed me!&rdquo; Roderick continued in the same tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she, then, really given you hopes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t recall it!&rdquo; Roderick cried. &ldquo;Why the devil should I think of
+      it? It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years.&rdquo; His friend
+      said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his own accord. &ldquo;I
+      believed there was a future in it all! She pleased me&mdash;pleased me;
+      and when an artist&mdash;such as I was&mdash;is pleased, you know!&rdquo; And he
+      paused again. &ldquo;You never saw her as I did; you never heard her in her
+      great moments. But there is no use talking about that! At first she would
+      n&rsquo;t regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light of me. But at last
+      I forced her to admit I was a great man. Think of that, sir! Christina
+      Light called me a great man. A great man was what she was looking for, and
+      we agreed to find our happiness for life in each other. To please me she
+      promised not to marry till I gave her leave. I was not in a marrying way
+      myself, but it was damnation to think of another man possessing her. To
+      spare my sensibilities, she promised to turn off her prince, and the idea
+      of her doing so made me as happy as to see a perfect statue shaping itself
+      in the block. You have seen how she kept her promise! When I learned it,
+      it was as if the statue had suddenly cracked and turned hideous. She died
+      for me, like that!&rdquo; And he snapped his fingers. &ldquo;Was it wounded vanity,
+      disappointed desire, betrayed confidence? I am sure I don&rsquo;t know; you
+      certainly have some name for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor girl did the best she could,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that was her best, so much the worse for her! I have hardly thought of
+      her these two months, but I have not forgiven her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you may believe that you are avenged. I can&rsquo;t think of her as
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pity her!&rdquo; said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and the
+      two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward along the
+      jagged silhouette of the rocks. &ldquo;Who is this mighty man,&rdquo; cried Roderick
+      at last, &ldquo;and what is he coming down upon us for? We are small people
+      here, and we can&rsquo;t undertake to keep company with giants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till we meet him on our own level,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;and perhaps he
+      will not overtop us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For ten minutes, at least,&rdquo; Roderick rejoined, &ldquo;he will have been a great
+      man!&rdquo; At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon line and became
+      invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly Roderick said, &ldquo;I would like to
+      see her once more&mdash;simply to look at her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not advise it,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was her beauty that did it!&rdquo; Roderick went on. &ldquo;It was all her beauty;
+      in comparison, the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to think of it
+      as my property! And I had made it mine&mdash;no one else had studied it as
+      I had, no one else understood it. What does that stick of a Casamassima
+      know about it at this hour? I should like to see it just once more; it &lsquo;s
+      the only thing in the world of which I can say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not advise it,&rdquo; Rowland repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s right, dear Rowland,&rdquo; said Roderick; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t advise! That &lsquo;s no
+      use now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived a figure
+      approaching them across the open space in front of the house. Suddenly it
+      stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows, and
+      they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was the
+      giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was made
+      apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity&mdash;it was
+      the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried a
+      knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest welcome.
+      He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way of luggage his
+      knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a second shirt, he produced from
+      it a dozen admirable sketches. He had been trudging over half Switzerland
+      and making everywhere the most vivid pictorial notes. They were mostly in
+      a box at Interlaken, and in gratitude for Rowland&rsquo;s appreciation, he
+      presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to the excellent Swiss
+      method, was punctually delivered by post. The nights were cold, and our
+      friends, with three or four other chance sojourners, sat in-doors over a
+      fire of logs. Even with Roderick sitting moodily in the outer shadow they
+      made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned over Singleton&rsquo;s
+      drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner, blushing and grinning,
+      with his feet on the rounds of his chair. He had been pedestrianizing for
+      six weeks, and he was glad to rest awhile at Engelthal. It was an economic
+      repose, however, for he sallied forth every morning, with his sketching
+      tools on his back, in search of material for new studies. Roderick&rsquo;s
+      hilarity, after the first evening, had subsided, and he watched the little
+      painter&rsquo;s serene activity with a gravity that was almost portentous.
+      Singleton, who was not in the secret of his personal misfortunes, still
+      treated him with timid frankness as the rising star of American art.
+      Roderick had said to Rowland, at first, that Singleton reminded him of
+      some curious little insect with a remarkable mechanical instinct in its
+      antennae; but as the days went by it was apparent that the modest
+      landscapist&rsquo;s unflagging industry grew to have an oppressive meaning for
+      him. It pointed a moral, and Roderick used to sit and con the moral as he
+      saw it figured in Singleton&rsquo;s bent back, on the hot hill-sides, protruding
+      from beneath his white umbrella. One day he wandered up a long slope and
+      overtook him as he sat at work; Singleton related the incident afterwards
+      to Rowland, who, after giving him in Rome a hint of Roderick&rsquo;s
+      aberrations, had strictly kept his own counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you always like this?&rdquo; said Roderick, in almost sepulchral accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like this?&rdquo; repeated Singleton, blinking confusedly, with an alarmed
+      conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remind me of a watch that never runs down. If one listens hard one
+      hears you always&mdash;tic-tic, tic-tic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see,&rdquo; said Singleton, beaming ingenuously. &ldquo;I am very equable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very equable, yes. And do you find it pleasant to be equable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton turned and grinned more brightly, while he sucked the water from
+      his camel&rsquo;s-hair brush. Then, with a quickened sense of his indebtedness
+      to a Providence that had endowed him with intrinsic facilities, &ldquo;Oh,
+      delightful!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick stood looking at him a moment. &ldquo;Damnation!&rdquo; he said at last,
+      solemnly, and turned his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, shortly after this, Rowland and Roderick took a long walk.
+      They had walked before in a dozen different directions, but they had not
+      yet crossed a charming little wooded pass, which shut in their valley on
+      one side and descended into the vale of Engelberg. In coming from Lucerne
+      they had approached their inn by this path, and, feeling that they knew
+      it, had hitherto neglected it in favor of untrodden ways. But at last the
+      list of these was exhausted, and Rowland proposed the walk to Engelberg as
+      a novelty. The place is half bleak and half pastoral; a huge white
+      monastery rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley and
+      complicates its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss scenery.
+      Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual appurtenances of a
+      prosperous Swiss resort&mdash;lean brown guides in baggy homespun,
+      lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks in every
+      doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars. Our two friends
+      sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a pint of wine, and then
+      Roderick, who was indefatigable, announced his intention of climbing to a
+      certain rocky pinnacle which overhung the valley, and, according to the
+      testimony of one of the guides, commanded a view of the Lake of Lucerne.
+      To go and come back was only a matter of an hour, but Rowland, with the
+      prospect of his homeward trudge before him, confessed to a preference for
+      lounging on his bench, or at most strolling a trifle farther and taking a
+      look at the monastery. Roderick went off alone, and his companion after a
+      while bent his steps to the monasterial church. It was remarkable, like
+      most of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for a hideous style of
+      devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and musty picturesqueness,
+      and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness for Alpine piety. While he
+      was near the high-altar some people came in at the west door; but he did
+      not notice them, and was presently engaged in deciphering a curious old
+      German epitaph on one of the mural tablets. At last he turned away,
+      wondering whether its syntax or its theology was the more uncomfortable,
+      and, to this infinite surprise, found himself confronted with the Prince
+      and Princess Casamassima.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surprise on Christina&rsquo;s part, for an instant, was equal, and at first
+      she seemed disposed to turn away without letting it give place to a
+      greeting. The prince, however, saluted gravely, and then Christina, in
+      silence, put out her hand. Rowland immediately asked whether they were
+      staying at Engelberg, but Christina only looked at him without speaking.
+      The prince answered his questions, and related that they had been making a
+      month&rsquo;s tour in Switzerland, that at Lucerne his wife had been somewhat
+      obstinately indisposed, and that the physician had recommended a week&rsquo;s
+      trial of the tonic air and goat&rsquo;s milk of Engelberg. The scenery, said the
+      prince, was stupendous, but the life was terribly sad&mdash;and they had
+      three days more! It was a blessing, he urbanely added, to see a good Roman
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina&rsquo;s attitude, her solemn silence and her penetrating gaze seemed
+      to Rowland, at first, to savor of affectation; but he presently perceived
+      that she was profoundly agitated, and that she was afraid of betraying
+      herself. &ldquo;Do let us leave this hideous edifice,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;there are
+      things here that set one&rsquo;s teeth on edge.&rdquo; They moved slowly to the door,
+      and when they stood outside, in the sunny coolness of the valley, she
+      turned to Rowland and said, &ldquo;I am extremely glad to see you.&rdquo; Then she
+      glanced about her and observed, against the wall of the church, an old
+      stone seat. She looked at Prince Casamassima a moment, and he smiled more
+      intensely, Rowland thought, than the occasion demanded. &ldquo;I wish to sit
+      here,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and speak to Mr. Mallet&mdash;alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your pleasure, dear friend,&rdquo; said the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of each was measured, to Rowland&rsquo;s ear; but that of Christina was
+      dry, and that of her husband was splendidly urbane. Rowland remembered
+      that the Cavaliere Giacosa had told him that Mrs. Light&rsquo;s candidate was
+      thoroughly a prince, and our friend wondered how he relished a peremptory
+      accent. Casamassima was an Italian of the undemonstrative type, but
+      Rowland nevertheless divined that, like other princes before him, he had
+      made the acquaintance of the thing called compromise. &ldquo;Shall I come back?&rdquo;
+       he asked with the same smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In half an hour,&rdquo; said Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the clear outer light, Rowland&rsquo;s first impression of her was that she
+      was more beautiful than ever. And yet in three months she could hardly
+      have changed; the change was in Rowland&rsquo;s own vision of her, which that
+      last interview, on the eve of her marriage, had made unprecedentedly
+      tender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How came you here?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Are you staying in this place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am staying at Engelthal, some ten miles away; I walked over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am with Mr. Hudson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he here with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He went half an hour ago to climb a rock for a view.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And his mother and that young girl, where are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They also are at Engelthal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do here?&rdquo; said Rowland, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I count the minutes till my week is up. I hate mountains; they depress me
+      to death. I am sure Miss Garland likes them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very fond of them, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You believe&mdash;don&rsquo;t you know? But I have given up trying to imitate
+      Miss Garland,&rdquo; said Christina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surely need imitate no one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that,&rdquo; she said gravely. &ldquo;So you have walked ten miles this
+      morning? And you are to walk back again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back again to supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Hudson too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Hudson especially. He is a great walker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You men are happy!&rdquo; Christina cried. &ldquo;I believe I should enjoy the
+      mountains if I could do such things. It is sitting still and having them
+      scowl down at you! Prince Casamassina never rides. He only goes on a mule.
+      He was carried up the Faulhorn on a litter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On a litter?&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In one of those machines&mdash;a chaise a porteurs&mdash;like a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland received this information in silence; it was equally unbecoming to
+      either relish or deprecate its irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Mr. Hudson to join you again? Will he come here?&rdquo; Christina asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall soon begin to expect him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall you do when you leave Switzerland?&rdquo; Christina continued.
+      &ldquo;Shall you go back to Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rather doubt it. My plans are very uncertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They depend upon Mr. Hudson, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a great measure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me about him. Is he still in that perverse state of
+      mind that afflicted you so much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland looked at her mistrustfully, without answering. He was indisposed,
+      instinctively, to tell her that Roderick was unhappy; it was possible she
+      might offer to help him back to happiness. She immediately perceived his
+      hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see no reason why we should not be frank,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I should think we
+      were excellently placed for that sort of thing. You remember that formerly
+      I cared very little what I said, don&rsquo;t you? Well, I care absolutely not at
+      all now. I say what I please, I do what I please! How did Mr. Hudson
+      receive the news of my marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very badly,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With rage and reproaches?&rdquo; And as Rowland hesitated again&mdash;&ldquo;With
+      silent contempt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you but little. He spoke to me on the subject, but I stopped
+      him. I told him it was none of his business, or of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was an excellent answer!&rdquo; said Christina, softly. &ldquo;Yet it was a
+      little your business, after those sublime protestations I treated you to.
+      I was really very fine that morning, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do yourself injustice,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I should be at liberty now to
+      believe you were insincere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not? I can&rsquo;t conceive
+      of anything mattering less. I was very fine&mdash;is n&rsquo;t it true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I think of you,&rdquo; said Rowland. And for fear of being forced
+      to betray his suspicion of the cause of her change, he took refuge in a
+      commonplace. &ldquo;Your mother, I hope, is well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother is in the enjoyment of superb health, and may be seen every
+      evening at the Casino, at the Baths of Lucca, confiding to every new-comer
+      that she has married her daughter to a pearl of a prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was anxious for news of Mrs. Light&rsquo;s companion, and the natural
+      course was frankly to inquire about him. &ldquo;And the Cavaliere Giacosa is
+      well?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christina hesitated, but she betrayed no other embarrassment. &ldquo;The
+      Cavaliere has retired to his native city of Ancona, upon a pension, for
+      the rest of his natural life. He is a very good old man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a great regard for him,&rdquo; said Rowland, gravely, at the same time
+      that he privately wondered whether the Cavaliere&rsquo;s pension was paid by
+      Prince Casamassima for services rendered in connection with his marriage.
+      Had the Cavaliere received his commission? &ldquo;And what do you do,&rdquo; Rowland
+      continued, &ldquo;on leaving this place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We go to Italy&mdash;we go to Naples.&rdquo; She rose and stood silent a
+      moment, looking down the valley. The figure of Prince Casamassima appeared
+      in the distance, balancing his white umbrella. As her eyes rested upon it,
+      Rowland imagined that he saw something deeper in the strange expression
+      which had lurked in her face while he talked to her. At first he had been
+      dazzled by her blooming beauty, to which the lapse of weeks had only added
+      splendor; then he had seen a heavier ray in the light of her eye&mdash;a
+      sinister intimation of sadness and bitterness. It was the outward mark of
+      her sacrificed ideal. Her eyes grew cold as she looked at her husband, and
+      when, after a moment, she turned them upon Rowland, they struck him as
+      intensely tragical. He felt a singular mixture of sympathy and dread; he
+      wished to give her a proof of friendship, and yet it seemed to him that
+      she had now turned her face in a direction where friendship was impotent
+      to interpose. She half read his feelings, apparently, and she gave a
+      beautiful, sad smile. &ldquo;I hope we may never meet again!&rdquo; she said. And as
+      Rowland gave her a protesting look&mdash;&ldquo;You have seen me at my best. I
+      wish to tell you solemnly, I was sincere! I know appearances are against
+      me,&rdquo; she went on quickly. &ldquo;There is a great deal I can&rsquo;t tell you. Perhaps
+      you have guessed it; I care very little. You know, at any rate, I did my
+      best. It would n&rsquo;t serve; I was beaten and broken; they were stronger than
+      I. Now it &lsquo;s another affair!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet,&rdquo; said Rowland,
+      vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happiness? I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for bliss
+      ineffable! You remember I told you that I was, in part, the world&rsquo;s and
+      the devil&rsquo;s. Now they have taken me all. It was their choice; may they
+      never repent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall hear of you,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will hear of me. And whatever you do hear, remember this: I was
+      sincere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a good
+      deal of simple compassion as a part of that &ldquo;world&rdquo; against which
+      Christina had launched her mysterious menace. It was obvious that he was a
+      good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be a
+      positively bad husband; but his distinguished inoffensiveness only
+      deepened the infelicity of Christina&rsquo;s situation by depriving her defiant
+      attitude of the sanction of relative justice. So long as she had been free
+      to choose, she had esteemed him: but from the moment she was forced to
+      marry him she had detested him. Rowland read in the young man&rsquo;s elastic
+      Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and as he found there
+      also a record of other curious things&mdash;of pride, of temper, of
+      bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive traditions&mdash;he
+      reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two companions might be
+      sufficiently prolific in incident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to Naples?&rdquo; Rowland said to the prince by way of
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to Paris,&rdquo; Christina interposed, slowly and softly. &ldquo;We are
+      going to London. We are going to Vienna. We are going to St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point
+      of his umbrella. While he engaged Rowland&rsquo;s attention Christina turned
+      away. When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her
+      face; she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes by
+      the angle of the church-wall. In a moment Roderick stepped into sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded, his garments
+      dusty. He looked at Christina from head to foot, and then, slowly, his
+      cheek flushed and his eye expanded. Christina returned his gaze, and for
+      some moments there was a singular silence. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t look well!&rdquo;
+       Christina said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been a
+      statue. &ldquo;You are no less beautiful!&rdquo; he presently cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley;
+      Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima. Christina then put out her hand to
+      Rowland. &ldquo;Farewell,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you are near me in future, don&rsquo;t try to
+      see me!&rdquo; And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, &ldquo;I was sincere!&rdquo; She
+      addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some commonplace about
+      his walk. But he said nothing; he only looked at her. Rowland at first had
+      expected an outbreak of reproach, but it was evident that the danger was
+      every moment diminishing. He was forgetting everything but her beauty, and
+      as she stood there and let him feast upon it, Rowland was sure that she
+      knew it. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say farewell to you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;we shall meet again!&rdquo;
+       And she moved gravely away. Prince Casamassima took leave courteously of
+      Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed a bow of exaggerated civility. Roderick
+      appeared not to see it; he was still watching Christina, as she passed
+      over the grass. His eyes followed her until she reached the door of her
+      inn. Here she stopped and looked back at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. Switzerland
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved a silence which
+      Rowland allowed to make him uneasy. Early on the morrow Roderick, saying
+      nothing of his intentions, started off on a walk; Rowland saw him striding
+      with light steps along the rugged path to Engelberg. He was absent all day
+      and he gave no account of himself on his return. He said he was deadly
+      tired, and he went to bed early. When he had left the room Miss Garland
+      drew near to Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to ask you a question,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What happened to Roderick
+      yesterday at Engelberg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have discovered that something happened?&rdquo; Rowland answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure of it. Was it something painful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how, at the present moment, he judges it. He met the
+      Princess Casamassima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; said Miss Garland, simply, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation had been brief, but, like many small things, it furnished
+      Rowland with food for reflection. When one is looking for symptoms one
+      easily finds them. This was the first time Mary Garland had asked Rowland
+      a question which it was in Roderick&rsquo;s power to answer, the first time she
+      had frankly betrayed Roderick&rsquo;s reticence. Rowland ventured to think it
+      marked an era.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those
+      altitudes, was oppressively heavy. Rowland lounged on the grass a while,
+      near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella, within view of
+      the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky
+      ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau. To-day, however, the white
+      summits were invisible; their heads were muffled in sullen clouds and the
+      valleys beneath them curtained in dun-colored mist. Rowland had a book in
+      his pocket, and he took it out and opened it. But his page remained
+      unturned; his own thoughts were more importunate. His interview with
+      Christina Light had made a great impression upon him, and he was haunted
+      with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness, and of all that was
+      tragic and fatal in her latest transformation. These things were immensely
+      appealing, and Rowland thought with infinite impatience of Roderick&rsquo;s
+      having again encountered them. It required little imagination to apprehend
+      that the young sculptor&rsquo;s condition had also appealed to Christina. His
+      consummate indifference, his supreme defiance, would make him a
+      magnificent trophy, and Christina had announced with sufficient
+      distinctness that she had said good-by to scruples. It was her fancy at
+      present to treat the world as a garden of pleasure, and if, hitherto, she
+      had played with Roderick&rsquo;s passion on its stem, there was little doubt
+      that now she would pluck it with an unfaltering hand and drain it of its
+      acrid sweetness. And why the deuce need Roderick have gone marching back
+      to destruction? Rowland&rsquo;s meditations, even when they began in rancor,
+      often brought him peace; but on this occasion they ushered in a quite
+      peculiar quality of unrest. He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his
+      moral energy; a current that had been flowing for two years with liquid
+      strength seemed at last to pause and evaporate. Rowland looked away at the
+      stagnant vapors on the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol of the
+      dreariness which his own generosity had bequeathed him. At last he had
+      arrived at the uttermost limit of the deference a sane man might pay to
+      other people&rsquo;s folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it; he had been
+      befooled on a gigantic scale. He turned to his book and tried to woo back
+      patience, but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away. He
+      pulled his hat over his eyes, and tried to wonder, dispassionately,
+      whether atmospheric conditions had not something to do with his ill-humor.
+      He remained for some time in this attitude, but was finally aroused from
+      it by a singular sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had
+      approached him. He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the
+      turf. His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt like
+      uttering an uncivil speech. Roderick stood looking at him with an
+      expression of countenance which had of late become rare. There was an
+      unfamiliar spark in his eye and a certain imperious alertness in his
+      carriage. Confirmed habit, with Rowland, came speedily to the front. &ldquo;What
+      is it now?&rdquo; he asked himself, and invited Roderick to sit down. Roderick
+      had evidently something particular to say, and if he remained silent for a
+      time it was not because he was ashamed of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like you to do me a favor,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;Lend me some
+      money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much do you wish?&rdquo; Rowland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say a thousand francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland hesitated a moment. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to be indiscreet, but may I ask
+      what you propose to do with a thousand francs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To go to Interlaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why are you going to Interlaken?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick replied without a shadow of wavering, &ldquo;Because that woman is to
+      be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland burst out laughing, but Roderick remained serenely grave. &ldquo;You
+      have forgiven her, then?&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither do I. I only know that she is incomparably beautiful, and that
+      she has waked me up amazingly. Besides, she asked me to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She asked you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday, in so many words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the jade!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly. I am willing to take her for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why in the name of common sense did you go back to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had just stepped out
+      of her cloud? Why did I look at her? Before I knew where I was, the harm
+      was done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back on the grass and
+      lay for some time staring up at the sky. At last, raising himself, &ldquo;Are
+      you perfectly serious?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deadly serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your idea is to remain at Interlaken some time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indefinitely!&rdquo; said Roderick; and it seemed to his companion that the
+      tone in which he said this made it immensely well worth hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your mother and cousin, meanwhile, are to remain here? It will soon
+      be getting very cold, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does n&rsquo;t seem much like it to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true; but to-day is a day by itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing to prevent their going back to Lucerne. I depend upon
+      your taking charge of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Rowland reclined upon the grass again; and again, after
+      reflection, he faced his friend. &ldquo;How would you express,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;the
+      character of the profit that you expect to derive from your excursion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see no need of expressing it. The proof of the pudding is in the
+      eating! The case is simply this. I desire immensely to be near Christina
+      Light, and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring
+      something, that I propose to drift with the current. As I say, she has
+      waked me up, and it is possible something may come of it. She makes me
+      feel as if I were alive again. This,&rdquo; and he glanced down at the inn, &ldquo;I
+      call death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I am very grateful to hear. You really feel as if you might do
+      something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask too much. I only know that she makes my heart beat, makes me
+      see visions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You feel encouraged?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel excited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are really looking better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to hear it. Now that I have answered your questions, please to
+      give me the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland shook his head. &ldquo;For that purpose, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s impossible. Your plan is rank folly. I can&rsquo;t help you in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick flushed a little, and his eye expanded. &ldquo;I will borrow what money
+      I can, then, from Mary!&rdquo; This was not viciously said; it had simply the
+      ring of passionate resolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly it brought Rowland to terms. He took a bunch of keys from his
+      pocket and tossed it upon the grass. &ldquo;The little brass one opens my
+      dressing-case,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You will find money in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick let the keys lie; something seemed to have struck him; he looked
+      askance at his friend. &ldquo;You are awfully gallant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly are not. Your proposal is an outrage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely. It &lsquo;s a proof the more of my desire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have so much steam on, then, use it for something else. You say
+      you are awake again. I am delighted; only be so in the best sense. Is n&rsquo;t
+      it very plain? If you have the energy to desire, you have also the energy
+      to reason and to judge. If you can care to go, you can also care to stay,
+      and staying being the more profitable course, the inspiration, on that
+      side, for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again, should be
+      greater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick, plainly, did not relish this simple logic, and his eye grew
+      angry as he listened to its echo. &ldquo;Oh, the devil!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland went on. &ldquo;Do you believe that hanging about Christina Light will
+      do you any good? Do you believe it won&rsquo;t? In either case you should keep
+      away from her. If it won&rsquo;t, it &lsquo;s your duty; and if it will, you can get
+      on without it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do me good?&rdquo; cried Roderick. &ldquo;What do I want of &lsquo;good&rsquo;&mdash;what should
+      I do with &lsquo;good&rsquo;? I want what she gives me, call it by what name you will.
+      I want to ask no questions, but to take what comes and let it fill the
+      impossible hours! But I did n&rsquo;t come to discuss the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not the least desire to discuss it,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;I simply
+      protest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick meditated a moment. &ldquo;I have never yet thought twice of accepting
+      a favor of you,&rdquo; he said at last; &ldquo;but this one sticks in my throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a favor; I lend you the money only under compulsion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I will take it only under compulsion!&rdquo; Roderick exclaimed.
+      And he sprang up abruptly and marched away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words were ambiguous; Rowland lay on the grass, wondering what they
+      meant. Half an hour had not elapsed before Roderick reappeared, heated
+      with rapid walking, and wiping his forehead. He flung himself down and
+      looked at his friend with an eye which expressed something purer than
+      bravado and yet baser than conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done my best!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My mother is out of money; she is
+      expecting next week some circular notes from London. She had only ten
+      francs in her pocket. Mary Garland gave me every sou she possessed in the
+      world. It makes exactly thirty-four francs. That &lsquo;s not enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked Miss Garland?&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And told her your purpose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I named no names. But she knew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did she say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a syllable. She simply emptied her purse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms. He felt a movement of
+      irrepressible elation, and he barely stifled a cry of joy. Now, surely,
+      Roderick had shattered the last link in the chain that bound Mary to him,
+      and after this she would be free!... When he turned about again, Roderick
+      was still sitting there, and he had not touched the keys which lay on the
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what is the matter with me,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;but I have an
+      insurmountable aversion to taking your money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter, I suppose, is that you have a grain of wisdom left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it &lsquo;s not that. It &lsquo;s a kind of brute instinct. I find it extremely
+      provoking!&rdquo; He sat there for some time with his head in his hands and his
+      eyes on the ground. His lips were compressed, and he was evidently, in
+      fact, in a state of profound irritation. &ldquo;You have succeeded in making
+      this thing excessively unpleasant!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;but I can&rsquo;t see it in any other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending to be
+      the limit of my action. You can&rsquo;t feel for me nor judge for me, and there
+      are certain things you know nothing about. I have suffered, sir!&rdquo; Roderick
+      went on with increasing emphasis. &ldquo;I have suffered damnable torments. Have
+      I been such a placid, contented, comfortable man this last six months,
+      that when I find a chance to forget my misery, I should take such pains
+      not to profit by it? You ask too much, for a man who himself has no
+      occasion to play the hero. I don&rsquo;t say that invidiously; it &lsquo;s your
+      disposition, and you can&rsquo;t help it. But decidedly, there are certain
+      things you know nothing about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if he had
+      been less intent upon his own eloquence, would probably have perceived
+      that he turned pale. &ldquo;These things&mdash;what are they?&rdquo; Rowland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are women, principally, and what relates to women. Women for you, by
+      what I can make out, mean nothing. You have no imagination&mdash;no
+      sensibility!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s a serious charge,&rdquo; said Rowland, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t make it without proof!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is your proof?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick hesitated a moment. &ldquo;The way you treated Christina Light. I call
+      that grossly obtuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Obtuse?&rdquo; Rowland repeated, frowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good fortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There it is&mdash;it &lsquo;s all news to you! You had pleased her. I don&rsquo;t say
+      she was dying of love for you, but she took a fancy to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will let this pass!&rdquo; said Rowland, after a silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t insist. I have only her own word for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She told you this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You noticed, at least, I suppose, that she was not afraid to speak. I
+      never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious to
+      see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I frankly confess it would have lasted forever. And yet I don&rsquo;t consider
+      that my insensibility is proved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t say that,&rdquo; cried Roderick, &ldquo;or I shall begin to suspect&mdash;what
+      I must do you the justice to say that I never have suspected&mdash;that
+      you are a trifle conceited. Upon my word, when I think of all this, your
+      protest, as you call it, against my following Christina Light seems to me
+      thoroughly offensive. There is something monstrous in a man&rsquo;s pretending
+      to lay down the law to a sort of emotion with which he is quite
+      unacquainted&mdash;in his asking a fellow to give up a lovely woman for
+      conscience&rsquo; sake, when he has never had the impulse to strike a blow for
+      one for passion&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh!&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that &lsquo;s very easy to say,&rdquo; Roderick went on; &ldquo;but you must remember
+      that there are such things as nerves, and senses, and imagination, and a
+      restless demon within that may sleep sometimes for a day, or for six
+      months, but that sooner or later wakes up and thumps at your ribs till you
+      listen to him! If you can&rsquo;t understand it, take it on trust, and let a
+      poor imaginative devil live his life as he can!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick&rsquo;s words seemed at first to Rowland like something heard in a
+      dream; it was impossible they had been actually spoken&mdash;so supreme an
+      expression were they of the insolence of egotism. Reality was never so
+      consistent as that! But Roderick sat there balancing his beautiful head,
+      and the echoes of his strident accent still lingered along the
+      half-muffled mountain-side. Rowland suddenly felt that the cup of his
+      chagrin was full to overflowing, and his long-gathered bitterness surged
+      into the simple, wholesome passion of anger for wasted kindness. But he
+      spoke without violence, and Roderick was probably at first far from
+      measuring the force that lay beneath his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are incredibly ungrateful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are talking arrogant
+      nonsense. What do you know about my sensibilities and my imagination? How
+      do you know whether I have loved or suffered? If I have held my tongue and
+      not troubled you with my complaints, you find it the most natural thing in
+      the world to put an ignoble construction on my silence. I loved quite as
+      well as you; indeed, I think I may say rather better. I have been
+      constant. I have been willing to give more than I received. I have not
+      forsaken one mistress because I thought another more beautiful, nor given
+      up the other and believed all manner of evil about her because I had not
+      my way with her. I have been a good friend to Christina Light, and it
+      seems to me my friendship does her quite as much honor as your love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your love&mdash;your suffering&mdash;your silence&mdash;your friendship!&rdquo;
+       cried Roderick. &ldquo;I declare I don&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say not. You are not used to understanding such things&mdash;you
+      are not used to hearing me talk of my feelings. You are altogether too
+      much taken up with your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always
+      respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose
+      to leave you an open field, don&rsquo;t, by way of thanking me, come and call me
+      an idiot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you claim then that you have made sacrifices?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several! You have never suspected it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed it?&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were the sacrifices of friendship and they were easily made; only I
+      don&rsquo;t enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was, under the circumstances, a sufficiently generous speech; but
+      Roderick was not in the humor to take it generously. &ldquo;Come, be more
+      definite,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity, he should have
+      full justice. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s a perpetual sacrifice,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to live with a
+      perfect egotist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an egotist?&rdquo; cried Roderick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did it never occur to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?&rdquo; He repeated the
+      words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly indignation
+      nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem) a sudden violent curiosity
+      for news about himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are selfish,&rdquo; said Rowland; &ldquo;you think only of yourself and believe
+      only in yourself. You regard other people only as they play into your own
+      hands. You have always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so
+      mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure of your
+      mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be
+      thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse. But if
+      one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and
+      crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes. In this attitude, for a moment, he
+      sat looking coldly at his friend. &ldquo;So I have made you very uncomfortable?&rdquo;
+       he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extremely so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent,
+      cruel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have accused you, mentally, of all these things, with the exception of
+      vanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have often hated me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never. I should have parted company with you before coming to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be hanged!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeatedly. Then I have had patience and forgiven you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgiven me, eh? Suffering all the while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you may call it suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you never tell me all this before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because I
+      preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had, myself, in a
+      measure, launched you in the world and thrown you into temptations; and
+      because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could have
+      made me say these painful things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it; Rowland was
+      puzzled by his expression and manner. They seemed strangely cynical; there
+      was something revolting in his deepening calmness. &ldquo;I must have been
+      hideous,&rdquo; Roderick presently resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not talking for your entertainment,&rdquo; said Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. For my edification!&rdquo; As Roderick said these words there
+      was not a ray of warmth in his brilliant eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have spoken for my own relief,&rdquo; Rowland went on, &ldquo;and so that you need
+      never again go so utterly astray as you have done this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been a terrible mistake, then?&rdquo; What his tone expressed was not
+      willful mockery, but a kind of persistent irresponsibility which Rowland
+      found equally exasperating. He answered nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And all this time,&rdquo; Roderick continued, &ldquo;you have been in love? Tell me
+      the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt an immense desire to give him a visible, palpable pang. &ldquo;Her
+      name is Mary Garland,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently he succeeded. The surprise was great; Roderick colored as he
+      had never done. &ldquo;Mary Garland? Heaven forgive us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland observed the &ldquo;us;&rdquo; Roderick threw himself back on the turf. The
+      latter lay for some time staring at the sky. At last he sprang to his
+      feet, and Rowland rose also, rejoicing keenly, it must be confessed, in
+      his companion&rsquo;s confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For how long has this been?&rdquo; Roderick demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since I first knew her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two years! And you have never told her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have told no one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the first person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you been silent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because of your engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have done your best to keep that up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That &lsquo;s another matter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It &lsquo;s very strange!&rdquo; said Roderick, presently. &ldquo;It &lsquo;s like something in a
+      novel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We need n&rsquo;t expatiate on it,&rdquo; said Rowland. &ldquo;All I wished to do was to
+      rebut your charge that I am an abnormal being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But still Roderick pondered. &ldquo;All these months, while I was going on! I
+      wish you had mentioned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I acted as was necessary, and that &lsquo;s the end of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a very high opinion of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The highest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember now your occasionally expressing it and my being struck with
+      it. But I never dreamed you were in love with her. It &lsquo;s a pity she does
+      n&rsquo;t care for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland had made his point and he had no wish to prolong the conversation;
+      but he had a desire to hear more of this, and he remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hope, I suppose, that some day she may?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should n&rsquo;t have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it. She idolizes me, and if she never were to see me
+      again she would idolize my memory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This might be profound insight, and it might be profound fatuity. Rowland
+      turned away; he could not trust himself to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you horrible.
+      Altogether, I must have appeared simply hideous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really care,&rdquo; Rowland asked, &ldquo;what you appeared?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I have been damnably stupid. Is n&rsquo;t an artist supposed to be a
+      man of perceptions? I am hugely disgusted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said Roderick, &ldquo;though you have suffered, in a degree, I don&rsquo;t
+      believe you have suffered so much as some other men would have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground.
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous,&rdquo; he repeated&mdash;&ldquo;hideous.&rdquo;
+       He turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both silent for some time, and at last Roderick gave a heavy
+      sigh and began to walk away. &ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; Rowland then asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t care! To walk; you have given me something to think of.&rdquo; This
+      seemed a salutary impulse, and yet Rowland felt a nameless perplexity. &ldquo;To
+      have been so stupid damns me more than anything!&rdquo; Roderick went on.
+      &ldquo;Certainly, I can shut up shop now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could
+      almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism
+      still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but
+      never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let him
+      go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became
+      conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse&mdash;a desire to stop
+      him, to have another word with him&mdash;not to lose sight of him. He
+      called him and Roderick turned. &ldquo;I should like to go with you,&rdquo; said
+      Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am fit only to be alone. I am damned!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better not think of it at all,&rdquo; Rowland cried, &ldquo;than think in
+      that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one way. I have been hideous!&rdquo; And he broke off and marched
+      away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick. Rowland watched him
+      and at the end of a moment called to him. Roderick stopped and looked at
+      him in silence, and then abruptly turned, and disappeared below the crest
+      of a hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably. He was half
+      irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having been
+      placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause. Roderick did not
+      come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding away the
+      hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit. Mrs. Hudson
+      appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that Roderick&rsquo;s
+      demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress. Little
+      Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner. Miss Garland,
+      Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance to her
+      kinsman&rsquo;s pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort. The
+      effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill
+      that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon it.
+      They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a headache,&rdquo; she said. And then suddenly, looking about at the
+      menacing sky and motionless air, &ldquo;It &lsquo;s this horrible day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia, but
+      his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon the paper but
+      a single line. &ldquo;I believe there is such a thing as being too reasonable.
+      But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?&rdquo; He had occasion to
+      use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket; they were missing, and he
+      remembered that he had left them lying on the hill-top where he had had
+      his talk with Roderick. He went forth in search of them and found them
+      where he had thrown them. He flung himself down in the same place again;
+      he felt indisposed to walk. He was conscious that his mood had vastly
+      changed since the morning; his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights
+      had been replaced by the familiar, chronic sense of his duties. Only, his
+      duties now seemed impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his
+      arms. He lay so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all
+      was that Roderick had beaten him. At last he was startled by an
+      extraordinary sound; it took him a moment to perceive that it was a
+      portentous growl of thunder. He roused himself and saw that the whole face
+      of the sky had altered. The clouds that had hung motionless all day were
+      moving from their stations, and getting into position, as it were, for a
+      battle. The wind was rising; the sallow vapors were turning dark and
+      consolidating their masses. It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland
+      judged best to observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent. He
+      took his way down to the inn and found Singleton still at his post,
+      profiting by the last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study,
+      and yet at the same time taking rapid notes of the actual condition of the
+      clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to have a most interesting storm,&rdquo; the little painter
+      gleefully cried. &ldquo;I should like awfully to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland adjured him to pack up his tools and decamp, and repaired to the
+      house. The air by this time had become portentously dark, and the thunder
+      was incessant and tremendous; in the midst of it the lightning flashed and
+      vanished, like the treble shrilling upon the bass. The innkeeper and his
+      servants had crowded to the doorway, and were looking at the scene with
+      faces which seemed a proof that it was unprecedented. As Rowland
+      approached, the group divided, to let some one pass from within, and Mrs.
+      Hudson came forth, as white as a corpse and trembling in every limb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy, my boy, where is my boy?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Mr. Mallet, why are you
+      here without him? Bring him to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has no one seen Mr. Hudson?&rdquo; Rowland asked of the others. &ldquo;Has he not
+      returned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each one shook his head and looked grave, and Rowland attempted to
+      reassure Mrs. Hudson by saying that of course he had taken refuge in a
+      chalet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and find him, go and find him!&rdquo; she cried, insanely. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t stand
+      there and talk, or I shall die!&rdquo; It was now as dark as evening, and
+      Rowland could just distinguish the figure of Singleton scampering homeward
+      with his box and easel. &ldquo;And where is Mary?&rdquo; Mrs. Hudson went on; &ldquo;what in
+      mercy&rsquo;s name has become of her? Mr. Mallet, why did you ever bring us
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a prodigious flash of lightning, and the limitless tumult about
+      them turned clearer than midsummer noonday. The brightness lasted long
+      enough to enable Rowland to see a woman&rsquo;s figure on the top of an eminence
+      near the house. It was Mary Garland, questioning the lurid darkness for
+      Roderick. Rowland sprang out to interrupt her vigil, but in a moment he
+      encountered her, retreating. He seized her hand and hurried her to the
+      house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered gallery, Mrs. Hudson
+      fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see nothing,&mdash;nothing?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Tell Mr. Mallet he must
+      go and find him, with some men, some lights, some wrappings. Go, go, go,
+      sir! In mercy, go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was extremely perturbed by the poor lady&rsquo;s vociferous folly, for
+      he deemed her anxiety superfluous. He had offered his suggestion with
+      sincerity; nothing was more probable than that Roderick had found shelter
+      in a herdsman&rsquo;s cabin. These were numerous on the neighboring mountains,
+      and the storm had given fair warning of its approach. Miss Garland stood
+      there very pale, saying nothing, but looking at him. He expected that she
+      would check her cousin&rsquo;s importunity. &ldquo;Could you find him?&rdquo; she suddenly
+      asked. &ldquo;Would it be of use?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question seemed to him a flash intenser than the lightning that was
+      raking the sky before them. It shattered his dream that he weighed in the
+      scale! But before he could answer, the full fury of the storm was upon
+      them; the rain descended in sounding torrents. Every one fell back into
+      the house. There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little
+      uncarpeted parlor, in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt Mary&rsquo;s hand
+      upon his arm. For a moment it had an eloquent pressure; it seemed to
+      retract her senseless challenge, and to say that she believed, for
+      Roderick, what he believed. But nevertheless, thought Rowland, the cry had
+      come, her heart had spoken; her first impulse had been to sacrifice him.
+      He had been uncertain before; here, at least, was the comfort of
+      certainty!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little
+      to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening. There was a noisy crowd
+      about him in the room&mdash;noisy even with the accompaniment of the
+      continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling, and
+      bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the tempest and
+      by vociferating their alarm. In the disorder, it was some time before a
+      lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was swung from the
+      ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson, who was being carried out of
+      the room in a swoon by two stout maid-servants, with Mary Garland forcing
+      a passage. He rendered what help he could, but when they had laid the poor
+      woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you make her worse,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland went to his own chamber. The partitions in Swiss mountain-inns are
+      thin, and from time to time he heard Mrs. Hudson moaning, three rooms off.
+      Considering its great fury, the storm took long to expend itself; it was
+      upwards of three hours before the thunder ceased. But even then the rain
+      continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had come on, was
+      impenetrably black. This lasted till near midnight. Rowland thought of
+      Mary Garland&rsquo;s challenge in the porch, but he thought even more that,
+      although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may offer a
+      convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in
+      the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick&rsquo;s voice. At midnight,
+      through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star, and he immediately went
+      downstairs and out into the gallery. The rain had ceased, the cloud-masses
+      were dissevered here and there, and several stars were visible. In a few
+      minutes he heard a step behind him, and, turning, saw Miss Garland. He
+      asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that she was sleeping, exhausted by
+      her fruitless lamentations. Miss Garland kept scanning the darkness, but
+      she said nothing to cast doubt on Roderick&rsquo;s having found a refuge.
+      Rowland noticed it. &ldquo;This also have I guaranteed!&rdquo; he said to himself.
+      There was something that Mary wished to learn, and a question presently
+      revealed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I saw him at
+      eleven o&rsquo;clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On his way to Interlaken?&rdquo; Rowland said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, under cover of the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had some talk,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;and he seemed, for the day, to have
+      given up Interlaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you dissuade him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly. We discussed another question, which, for the time,
+      superseded his plan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland was silent. Then&mdash;&ldquo;May I ask whether your discussion was
+      violent?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Roderick left you in&mdash;in irritation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I offered him my company on his walk. He declined it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.
+      &ldquo;If he had gone to Engelberg,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;he would have reached the hotel
+      before the storm began.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity. &ldquo;Oh, if you like,&rdquo; he cried,
+      &ldquo;he can start for Interlaken as soon as he comes back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not even notice his wrath. &ldquo;Will he come back early?&rdquo; she went
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will know how anxious we are, and he will start with the first light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland was on the point of declaring that Roderick&rsquo;s readiness to throw
+      himself into the feelings of others made this extremely probable; but he
+      checked himself and said, simply, &ldquo;I expect him at sunrise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Garland bent her eyes once more upon the irresponsive darkness, and
+      then, in silence, went into the house. Rowland, it must be averred, in
+      spite of his resolution not to be nervous, found no sleep that night. When
+      the early dawn began to tremble in the east, he came forth again into the
+      open air. The storm had completely purged the atmosphere, and the day gave
+      promise of cloudless splendor. Rowland watched the early sun-shafts slowly
+      reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick did not come back to
+      breakfast, there were two things to be taken into account. One was the
+      heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides, saturated with the rain; this
+      would make him walk slowly: the other was the fact that, speaking without
+      irony, he was not remarkable for throwing himself into the sentiments of
+      others. Breakfast, at the inn, was early, and by breakfast-time Roderick
+      had not appeared. Then Rowland admitted that he was nervous. Neither Mrs.
+      Hudson nor Miss Garland had left their apartment; Rowland had a mental
+      vision of them sitting there praying and listening; he had no desire to
+      see them more directly. There were a couple of men who hung about the inn
+      as guides for the ascent of the Titlis; Rowland sent each of them forth in
+      a different direction, to ask the news of Roderick at every chalet door
+      within a morning&rsquo;s walk. Then he called Sam Singleton, whose
+      peregrinations had made him an excellent mountaineer, and whose zeal and
+      sympathy were now unbounded, and the two started together on a voyage of
+      research. By the time they had lost sight of the inn, Rowland was obliged
+      to confess that, decidedly, Roderick had had time to come back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wandered about for several hours, but he found only the sunny stillness
+      of the mountain-sides. Before long he parted company with Singleton, who,
+      to his suggestion that separation would multiply their resources, assented
+      with a silent, frightened look which reflected too vividly his own
+      rapidly-dawning thought. The day was magnificent; the sun was everywhere;
+      the storm had lashed the lower slopes into a deeper flush of autumnal
+      color, and the snow-peaks reared themselves against the near horizon in
+      glaring blocks and dazzling spires. Rowland made his way to several
+      chalets, but most of them were empty. He thumped at their low, foul doors
+      with a kind of nervous, savage anger; he challenged the stupid silence to
+      tell him something about his friend. Some of these places had evidently
+      not been open in months. The silence everywhere was horrible; it seemed to
+      mock at his impatience and to be a conscious symbol of calamity. In the
+      midst of it, at the door of one of the chalets, quite alone, sat a hideous
+      cretin, who grinned at Rowland over his goitre when, hardly knowing what
+      he did, he questioned him. The creature&rsquo;s family was scattered on the
+      mountain-sides; he could give Rowland no help to find them. Rowland
+      climbed into many awkward places, and skirted, intently and peeringly,
+      many an ugly chasm and steep-dropping ledge. But the sun, as I have said,
+      was everywhere; it illumined the deep places over which, not knowing where
+      to turn next, he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony
+      Alpine void&mdash;nothing so human even as death. At noon he paused in his
+      quest and sat down on a stone; the conviction was pressing upon him that
+      the worst that was now possible was true. He suspended his search; he was
+      afraid to go on. He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
+      Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had
+      happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten, became
+      vividly present to his mind. He was aroused at last by the sound of a
+      stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain. In a moment, on
+      a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld a figure cautiously
+      descending&mdash;a figure which was not Roderick. It was Singleton, who
+      had seen him and began to beckon to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come down&mdash;come down!&rdquo; cried the painter, steadily making his own
+      way down. Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his
+      foothold and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom
+      of the cliff. This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from
+      the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care
+      sufficiently practicable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you see?&rdquo; cried Rowland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate; then,
+      &ldquo;Come down&mdash;come down!&rdquo; he simply repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rowland&rsquo;s course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
+      precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck. It
+      was a ten minutes&rsquo; headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something that
+      made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below them a
+      vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go, blindly,
+      fiercely. Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine before him,
+      and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland overtook him
+      and his own legs collapsed. The thing that yesterday was his friend lay
+      before him as the chance of the last breath had left it, and out of it
+      Roderick&rsquo;s face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little
+      disfigured. The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes and
+      hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon the
+      strand. An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture, some
+      horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking at him
+      was only a strangely serene expression of life. The eyes were dead, but in
+      a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole face seemed to
+      awake. The rain had washed away all blood; it was as if Violence, having
+      done her work, had stolen away in shame. Roderick&rsquo;s face might have shamed
+      her; it looked admirably handsome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a beautiful man!&rdquo; said Singleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had
+      apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above him,
+      with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were closed,
+      and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish. At last they
+      spoke of carrying him back to the inn. &ldquo;There must be three or four men,&rdquo;
+       Rowland said, &ldquo;and they must be brought here quickly. I have not the least
+      idea where we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are at about three hours&rsquo; walk from home,&rdquo; said Singleton. &ldquo;I will go
+      for help; I can find my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; said Rowland, &ldquo;whom you will have to face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; the excellent fellow answered. &ldquo;There was nothing I could
+      ever do for him in life; I will do what I can now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off, and Rowland stayed there alone. He watched for seven long
+      hours, and his vigil was forever memorable. The most rational of men was
+      for an hour the most passionate. He reviled himself with transcendent
+      bitterness, he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would have
+      lain down there in Roderick&rsquo;s place to unsay the words that had yesterday
+      driven him forth on his lonely ramble. Roderick had been fond of saying
+      that there are such things as necessary follies, and Rowland was now
+      proving it. At last he grew almost used to the dumb exultation of the
+      cliff above him. He saw that Roderick was a mass of hideous injury, and he
+      tried to understand what had happened. Not that it helped him; before that
+      confounding mortality one hypothesis after another faltered and swooned
+      away. Roderick&rsquo;s passionate walk had carried him farther and higher than
+      he knew; he had outstayed, supposably, the first menace of the storm, and
+      perhaps even found a defiant entertainment in watching it. Perhaps he had
+      simply lost himself. The tempest had overtaken him, and when he tried to
+      return, it was too late. He had attempted to descend the cliff in the
+      darkness, he had made the inevitable slip, and whether he had fallen fifty
+      feet or three hundred little mattered. The condition of his body indicated
+      the shorter fall. Now that all was over, Rowland understood how
+      exclusively, for two years, Roderick had filled his life. His occupation
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singleton came back with four men&mdash;one of them the landlord of the
+      inn. They had formed a sort of rude bier of the frame of a chaise a
+      porteurs, and by taking a very round-about course homeward were able to
+      follow a tolerably level path and carry their burden with a certain
+      decency. To Rowland it seemed as if the little procession would never
+      reach the inn; but as they drew near it he would have given his right hand
+      for a longer delay. The people of the inn came forward to meet them, in a
+      little silent, solemn convoy. In the doorway, clinging together, appeared
+      the two bereaved women. Mrs. Hudson tottered forward with outstretched
+      hands and the expression of a blind person; but before she reached her
+      son, Mary Garland had rushed past her, and, in the face of the staring,
+      pitying, awe-stricken crowd, had flung herself, with the magnificent
+      movement of one whose rights were supreme, and with a loud, tremendous
+      cry, upon the senseless vestige of her love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That cry still lives in Rowland&rsquo;s ears. It interposes, persistently,
+      against the reflection that when he sometimes&mdash;very rarely&mdash;sees
+      her, she is unreservedly kind to him; against the memory that during the
+      dreary journey back to America, made of course with his assistance, there
+      was a great frankness in her gratitude, a great gratitude in her
+      frankness. Miss Garland lives with Mrs. Hudson, at Northampton, where
+      Rowland visits his cousin Cecilia more frequently than of old. When he
+      calls upon Miss Garland he never sees Mrs. Hudson. Cecilia, who, having
+      her shrewd impression that he comes to see Miss Garland as much as to see
+      herself, does not feel obliged to seem unduly flattered, calls him,
+      whenever he reappears, the most restless of mortals. But he always says to
+      her in answer, &ldquo;No, I assure you I am the most patient!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</html>
diff --git a/176.txt b/176.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/176.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14270 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Roderick Hudson
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #176]
+[Last updated: August 15, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODERICK HUDSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+RODERICK HUDSON
+
+by Henry James
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.    Rowland
+     II.   Roderick
+     III.  Rome
+     IV.   Experience
+     V.    Christina
+     VI.   Frascati
+     VII.  St. Cecilia's
+     VIII. Provocation
+     IX.   Mary Garland
+     X.    The Cavaliere
+     XI.   Mrs. Hudson
+     XII.  The Princess Casamassima
+     XIII. Switzerland
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. Rowland
+
+Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first
+of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he
+determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of
+his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell
+might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently
+preferred by this lady. It was not that the young man disliked her; on
+the contrary, he regarded her with a tender admiration, and he had not
+forgotten how, when his cousin had brought her home on her marriage, he
+had seemed to feel the upward sweep of the empty bough from which the
+golden fruit had been plucked, and had then and there accepted the
+prospect of bachelorhood. The truth was, that, as it will be part of
+the entertainment of this narrative to exhibit, Rowland Mallet had an
+uncomfortably sensitive conscience, and that, in spite of the seeming
+paradox, his visits to Cecilia were rare because she and her misfortunes
+were often uppermost in it. Her misfortunes were three in number: first,
+she had lost her husband; second, she had lost her money (or the
+greater part of it); and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts.
+Mallet's compassion was really wasted, because Cecilia was a very clever
+woman, and a most skillful counter-plotter to adversity. She had made
+herself a charming home, her economies were not obtrusive, and there
+was always a cheerful flutter in the folds of her crape. It was the
+consciousness of all this that puzzled Mallet whenever he felt tempted
+to put in his oar. He had money and he had time, but he never could
+decide just how to place these gifts gracefully at Cecilia's service.
+He no longer felt like marrying her: in these eight years that fancy had
+died a natural death. And yet her extreme cleverness seemed somehow to
+make charity difficult and patronage impossible. He would rather chop
+off his hand than offer her a check, a piece of useful furniture, or
+a black silk dress; and yet there was some sadness in seeing such a
+bright, proud woman living in such a small, dull way. Cecilia had,
+moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty
+feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a lurking
+scratch in it. Rowland remembered that, for him, she was all smiles, and
+suspected, awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of
+the irony of things. And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his
+opportunities, what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of
+his uselessness. Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was
+personally giving her little girl the education of a princess.
+
+This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way
+of activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe
+and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the
+early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination
+of floral perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half
+hostess, doing the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening,
+was a phenomenon to which the young man's imagination was able to do
+ample justice. Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was
+almost joyous. She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was
+a private reason for it--a reason quite distinct from her pleasure in
+receiving her honored kinsman. The next day he flattered himself he was
+on the way to discover it.
+
+For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch, while
+Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying
+her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia
+insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself.
+
+"What is it you mean to do in Europe?" she asked, lightly, giving a
+turn to the frill of her sleeve--just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to
+bring out all the latent difficulties of the question.
+
+"Why, very much what I do here," he answered. "No great harm."
+
+"Is it true," Cecilia asked, "that here you do no great harm? Is not a
+man like you doing harm when he is not doing positive good?"
+
+"Your compliment is ambiguous," said Rowland.
+
+"No," answered the widow, "you know what I think of you. You have a
+particular aptitude for beneficence. You have it in the first place in
+your character. You are a benevolent person. Ask Bessie if you don't
+hold her more gently and comfortably than any of her other admirers."
+
+"He holds me more comfortably than Mr. Hudson," Bessie declared,
+roundly.
+
+Rowland, not knowing Mr. Hudson, could but half appreciate the eulogy,
+and Cecilia went on to develop her idea. "Your circumstances, in
+the second place, suggest the idea of social usefulness. You are
+intelligent, you are well-informed, and your charity, if one may call it
+charity, would be discriminating. You are rich and unoccupied, so that
+it might be abundant. Therefore, I say, you are a person to do something
+on a large scale. Bestir yourself, dear Rowland, or we may be taught to
+think that virtue herself is setting a bad example."
+
+"Heaven forbid," cried Rowland, "that I should set the examples of
+virtue! I am quite willing to follow them, however, and if I don't
+do something on the grand scale, it is that my genius is altogether
+imitative, and that I have not recently encountered any very striking
+models of grandeur. Pray, what shall I do? Found an orphan asylum, or
+build a dormitory for Harvard College? I am not rich enough to do either
+in an ideally handsome way, and I confess that, yet awhile, I feel
+too young to strike my grand coup. I am holding myself ready for
+inspiration. I am waiting till something takes my fancy irresistibly. If
+inspiration comes at forty, it will be a hundred pities to have tied up
+my money-bag at thirty."
+
+"Well, I give you till forty," said Cecilia. "It 's only a word to
+the wise, a notification that you are expected not to run your course
+without having done something handsome for your fellow-men."
+
+Nine o'clock sounded, and Bessie, with each stroke, courted a closer
+embrace. But a single winged word from her mother overleaped her
+successive intrenchments. She turned and kissed her cousin, and
+deposited an irrepressible tear on his moustache. Then she went and
+said her prayers to her mother: it was evident she was being admirably
+brought up. Rowland, with the permission of his hostess, lighted a cigar
+and puffed it awhile in silence. Cecilia's interest in his career seemed
+very agreeable. That Mallet was without vanity I by no means intend to
+affirm; but there had been times when, seeing him accept, hardly less
+deferentially, advice even more peremptory than the widow's, you
+might have asked yourself what had become of his vanity. Now, in the
+sweet-smelling starlight, he felt gently wooed to egotism. There was a
+project connected with his going abroad which it was on his tongue's end
+to communicate. It had no relation to hospitals or dormitories, and yet
+it would have sounded very generous. But it was not because it would
+have sounded generous that poor Mallet at last puffed it away in
+the fumes of his cigar. Useful though it might be, it expressed most
+imperfectly the young man's own personal conception of usefulness. He
+was extremely fond of all the arts, and he had an almost passionate
+enjoyment of pictures. He had seen many, and he judged them sagaciously.
+It had occurred to him some time before that it would be the work of a
+good citizen to go abroad and with all expedition and secrecy purchase
+certain valuable specimens of the Dutch and Italian schools as to which
+he had received private proposals, and then present his treasures out of
+hand to an American city, not unknown to aesthetic fame, in which at
+that time there prevailed a good deal of fruitless aspiration toward an
+art-museum. He had seen himself in imagination, more than once, in
+some mouldy old saloon of a Florentine palace, turning toward the deep
+embrasure of the window some scarcely-faded Ghirlandaio or Botticelli,
+while a host in reduced circumstances pointed out the lovely drawing
+of a hand. But he imparted none of these visions to Cecilia, and he
+suddenly swept them away with the declaration that he was of course an
+idle, useless creature, and that he would probably be even more so in
+Europe than at home. "The only thing is," he said, "that there I shall
+seem to be doing something. I shall be better entertained, and shall be
+therefore, I suppose, in a better humor with life. You may say that that
+is just the humor a useless man should keep out of. He should cultivate
+discontentment. I did a good many things when I was in Europe before,
+but I did not spend a winter in Rome. Every one assures me that this is
+a peculiar refinement of bliss; most people talk about Rome in the same
+way. It is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing: a passive
+life in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality of one's impressions,
+takes on a very respectable likeness to activity. It is still
+lotus-eating, only you sit down at table, and the lotuses are served up
+on rococo china. It 's all very well, but I have a distinct prevision of
+this--that if Roman life does n't do something substantial to make you
+happier, it increases tenfold your liability to moral misery. It seems
+to me a rash thing for a sensitive soul deliberately to cultivate its
+sensibilities by rambling too often among the ruins of the Palatine, or
+riding too often in the shadow of the aqueducts. In such recreations the
+chords of feeling grow tense, and after-life, to spare your intellectual
+nerves, must play upon them with a touch as dainty as the tread of
+Mignon when she danced her egg-dance."
+
+"I should have said, my dear Rowland," said Cecilia, with a laugh, "that
+your nerves were tough, that your eggs were hard!"
+
+"That being stupid, you mean, I might be happy? Upon my word I am not.
+I am clever enough to want more than I 've got. I am tired of myself, my
+own thoughts, my own affairs, my own eternal company. True happiness,
+we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not
+only to get out--you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some
+absorbing errand. Unfortunately, I 've got no errand, and nobody will
+trust me with one. I want to care for something, or for some one. And I
+want to care with a certain ardor; even, if you can believe it, with
+a certain passion. I can't just now feel ardent and passionate about a
+hospital or a dormitory. Do you know I sometimes think that I 'm a man
+of genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of
+expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend
+my days groping for the latch of a closed door."
+
+"What an immense number of words," said Cecilia after a pause, "to say
+you want to fall in love! I 've no doubt you have as good a genius for
+that as any one, if you would only trust it."
+
+"Of course I 've thought of that, and I assure you I hold myself ready.
+But, evidently, I 'm not inflammable. Is there in Northampton some
+perfect epitome of the graces?"
+
+"Of the graces?" said Cecilia, raising her eyebrows and suppressing too
+distinct a consciousness of being herself a rosy embodiment of several.
+"The household virtues are better represented. There are some excellent
+girls, and there are two or three very pretty ones. I will have them
+here, one by one, to tea, if you like."
+
+"I should particularly like it; especially as I should give you a chance
+to see, by the profundity of my attention, that if I am not happy, it 's
+not for want of taking pains."
+
+Cecilia was silent a moment; and then, "On the whole," she resumed, "I
+don't think there are any worth asking. There are none so very pretty,
+none so very pleasing."
+
+"Are you very sure?" asked the young man, rising and throwing away his
+cigar-end.
+
+"Upon my word," cried Cecilia, "one would suppose I wished to keep
+you for myself. Of course I am sure! But as the penalty of your
+insinuations, I shall invite the plainest and prosiest damsel that can
+be found, and leave you alone with her."
+
+Rowland smiled. "Even against her," he said, "I should be sorry to
+conclude until I had given her my respectful attention."
+
+This little profession of ideal chivalry (which closed the conversation)
+was not quite so fanciful on Mallet's lips as it would have been on
+those of many another man; as a rapid glance at his antecedents may help
+to make the reader perceive. His life had been a singular mixture of the
+rough and the smooth. He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had
+been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life
+than of its privileges and pleasures. His progenitors had submitted in
+the matter of dogmatic theology to the relaxing influences of recent
+years; but if Rowland's youthful consciousness was not chilled by the
+menace of long punishment for brief transgression, he had at least been
+made to feel that there ran through all things a strain of right and of
+wrong, as different, after all, in their complexions, as the texture, to
+the spiritual sense, of Sundays and week-days. His father was a chip of
+the primal Puritan block, a man with an icy smile and a stony frown. He
+had always bestowed on his son, on principle, more frowns than smiles,
+and if the lad had not been turned to stone himself, it was because
+nature had blessed him, inwardly, with a well of vivifying waters. Mrs.
+Mallet had been a Miss Rowland, the daughter of a retired sea-captain,
+once famous on the ships that sailed from Salem and Newburyport. He
+had brought to port many a cargo which crowned the edifice of fortunes
+already almost colossal, but he had also done a little sagacious trading
+on his own account, and he was able to retire, prematurely for so
+sea-worthy a maritime organism, upon a pension of his own providing. He
+was to be seen for a year on the Salem wharves, smoking the best tobacco
+and eying the seaward horizon with an inveteracy which superficial
+minds interpreted as a sign of repentance. At last, one evening, he
+disappeared beneath it, as he had often done before; this time,
+however, not as a commissioned navigator, but simply as an amateur of an
+observing turn likely to prove oppressive to the officer in command of
+the vessel. Five months later his place at home knew him again, and made
+the acquaintance also of a handsome, blonde young woman, of redundant
+contours, speaking a foreign tongue. The foreign tongue proved, after
+much conflicting research, to be the idiom of Amsterdam, and the young
+woman, which was stranger still, to be Captain Rowland's wife. Why
+he had gone forth so suddenly across the seas to marry her, what had
+happened between them before, and whether--though it was of questionable
+propriety for a good citizen to espouse a young person of mysterious
+origin, who did her hair in fantastically elaborate plaits, and in whose
+appearance "figure" enjoyed such striking predominance--he would
+not have had a heavy weight on his conscience if he had remained an
+irresponsible bachelor; these questions and many others, bearing with
+varying degrees of immediacy on the subject, were much propounded but
+scantily answered, and this history need not be charged with resolving
+them. Mrs. Rowland, for so handsome a woman, proved a tranquil neighbor
+and an excellent housewife. Her extremely fresh complexion, however, was
+always suffused with an air of apathetic homesickness, and she played
+her part in American society chiefly by having the little squares of
+brick pavement in front of her dwelling scoured and polished as nearly
+as possible into the likeness of Dutch tiles. Rowland Mallet remembered
+having seen her, as a child--an immensely stout, white-faced lady,
+wearing a high cap of very stiff tulle, speaking English with a
+formidable accent, and suffering from dropsy. Captain Rowland was a
+little bronzed and wizened man, with eccentric opinions. He advocated
+the creation of a public promenade along the sea, with arbors and little
+green tables for the consumption of beer, and a platform, surrounded by
+Chinese lanterns, for dancing. He especially desired the town library
+to be opened on Sundays, though, as he never entered it on week-days,
+it was easy to turn the proposition into ridicule. If, therefore, Mrs.
+Mallet was a woman of an exquisite moral tone, it was not that she had
+inherited her temper from an ancestry with a turn for casuistry.
+Jonas Mallet, at the time of his marriage, was conducting with silent
+shrewdness a small, unpromising business. Both his shrewdness and his
+silence increased with his years, and at the close of his life he was an
+extremely well-dressed, well-brushed gentleman, with a frigid gray eye,
+who said little to anybody, but of whom everybody said that he had
+a very handsome fortune. He was not a sentimental father, and the
+roughness I just now spoke of in Rowland's life dated from his early
+boyhood. Mr. Mallet, whenever he looked at his son, felt extreme
+compunction at having made a fortune. He remembered that the fruit had
+not dropped ripe from the tree into his own mouth, and determined it
+should be no fault of his if the boy was corrupted by luxury. Rowland,
+therefore, except for a good deal of expensive instruction in foreign
+tongues and abstruse sciences, received the education of a poor man's
+son. His fare was plain, his temper familiar with the discipline of
+patched trousers, and his habits marked by an exaggerated simplicity
+which it really cost a good deal of money to preserve unbroken. He was
+kept in the country for months together, in the midst of servants who
+had strict injunctions to see that he suffered no serious harm, but
+were as strictly forbidden to wait upon him. As no school could be found
+conducted on principles sufficiently rigorous, he was attended at home
+by a master who set a high price on the understanding that he was to
+illustrate the beauty of abstinence not only by precept but by example.
+Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly, during his
+younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy who had inherited
+nothing whatever that was to make life easy. He was passive,
+pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of
+trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of
+the fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his
+measurement around the waist, when he was about ten years old, quite
+alarmingly large. This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he
+became afterwards a fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was never
+accused of anything worse than a tendency to corpulence. He emerged from
+childhood a simple, wholesome, round-eyed lad, with no suspicion that a
+less roundabout course might have been taken to make him happy, but with
+a vague sense that his young experience was not a fair sample of human
+freedom, and that he was to make a great many discoveries. When he was
+about fifteen, he achieved a momentous one. He ascertained that his
+mother was a saint. She had always been a very distinct presence in his
+life, but so ineffably gentle a one that his sense was fully opened to
+it only by the danger of losing her. She had an illness which for many
+months was liable at any moment to terminate fatally, and during her
+long-arrested convalescence she removed the mask which she had worn for
+years by her husband's order. Rowland spent his days at her side and
+felt before long as if he had made a new friend. All his impressions at
+this period were commented and interpreted at leisure in the future, and
+it was only then that he understood that his mother had been for fifteen
+years a perfectly unhappy woman. Her marriage had been an immitigable
+error which she had spent her life in trying to look straight in the
+face. She found nothing to oppose to her husband's will of steel but the
+appearance of absolute compliance; her spirit sank, and she lived for
+a while in a sort of helpless moral torpor. But at last, as her child
+emerged from babyhood, she began to feel a certain charm in patience, to
+discover the uses of ingenuity, and to learn that, somehow or other, one
+can always arrange one's life. She cultivated from this time forward a
+little private plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded precinct
+that, before her death, she gave her son the key. Rowland's allowance at
+college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and as soon as
+he graduated, he was taken into his father's counting-house, to do small
+drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living
+as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office.
+Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was
+known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his
+son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local
+charities. Rowland's third was an easy competence, and he never felt
+a moment's jealousy of his fellow-pensioners; but when one of the
+establishments which had figured most advantageously in his father's
+will bethought itself to affirm the existence of a later instrument, in
+which it had been still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a
+sudden passionate need to repel the claim by process of law. There was a
+lively tussle, but he gained his case; immediately after which he made,
+in another quarter, a donation of the contested sum. He cared nothing
+for the money, but he had felt an angry desire to protest against a
+destiny which seemed determined to be exclusively salutary. It seemed to
+him that he would bear a little spoiling. And yet he treated himself
+to a very modest quantity, and submitted without reserve to the great
+national discipline which began in 1861. When the Civil War broke out he
+immediately obtained a commission, and did his duty for three long years
+as a citizen soldier. His duty was obscure, but he never lost a certain
+private satisfaction in remembering that on two or three occasions
+it had been performed with something of an ideal precision. He had
+disentangled himself from business, and after the war he felt a profound
+disinclination to tie the knot again. He had no desire to make money,
+he had money enough; and although he knew, and was frequently reminded,
+that a young man is the better for a fixed occupation, he could discover
+no moral advantage in driving a lucrative trade. Yet few young men of
+means and leisure ever made less of a parade of idleness, and indeed
+idleness in any degree could hardly be laid at the door of a young
+man who took life in the serious, attentive, reasoning fashion of
+our friend. It often seemed to Mallet that he wholly lacked the prime
+requisite of a graceful flaneur--the simple, sensuous, confident relish
+of pleasure. He had frequent fits of extreme melancholy, in which he
+declared that he was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. He was
+neither an irresponsibly contemplative nature nor a sturdily practical
+one, and he was forever looking in vain for the uses of the things
+that please and the charm of the things that sustain. He was an awkward
+mixture of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity,
+and yet he would have made a most ineffective reformer and a very
+indifferent artist. It seemed to him that the glow of happiness must be
+found either in action, of some immensely solid kind, on behalf of
+an idea, or in producing a masterpiece in one of the arts. Oftenest,
+perhaps, he wished he were a vigorous young man of genius, without a
+penny. As it was, he could only buy pictures, and not paint them; and
+in the way of action, he had to content himself with making a rule to
+render scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples of it in others. On
+the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty. With his blooming complexion
+and his serene gray eye, he felt the friction of existence more than was
+suspected; but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he assumed
+that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no excuse
+for taking an ill-natured view of life, and he undertook constantly to
+believe that all women were fair, all men were brave, and the world was
+a delightful place of sojourn, until the contrary had been distinctly
+proved.
+
+Cecilia's blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to
+repose and a cigar, that she reproached him the next morning with
+indifference to her little parlor, not less, in its way, a monument to
+her ingenious taste. "And by the way," she added as he followed her in,
+"if I refused last night to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show
+you a pretty boy."
+
+She threw open a window and pointed to a statuette which occupied the
+place of honor among the ornaments of the room. Rowland looked at it a
+moment and then turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. She
+gave him a rapid glance, perceived that her statuette was of altogether
+exceptional merit, and then smiled, knowingly, as if this had long been
+an agreeable certainty.
+
+"Who did it? where did you get it?" Rowland demanded.
+
+"Oh," said Cecilia, adjusting the light, "it 's a little thing of Mr.
+Hudson's."
+
+"And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland. But he was absorbed;
+he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less
+than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The
+attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet,
+with his legs a little apart; his back was slightly hollowed, his head
+thrown back, and both hands raised to support the rustic cup. There was
+a loosened fillet of wild flowers about his head, and his eyes, under
+their drooped lids, looked straight into the cup. On the base was
+scratched the Greek word Dhipsa, Thirst. The figure might have
+been some beautiful youth of ancient fable,--Hylas or Narcissus, Paris
+or Endymion. Its beauty was the beauty of natural movement; nothing had
+been sought to be represented but the perfection of an attitude. This
+had been most attentively studied, and it was exquisitely rendered.
+Rowland demanded more light, dropped his head on this side and that,
+uttered vague exclamations. He said to himself, as he had said more than
+once in the Louvre and the Vatican, "We ugly mortals, what beautiful
+creatures we are!" Nothing, in a long time, had given him so much
+pleasure. "Hudson--Hudson," he asked again; "who is Hudson?"
+
+"A young man of this place," said Cecilia.
+
+"A young man? How old?"
+
+"I suppose he is three or four and twenty."
+
+"Of this place, you say--of Northampton, Massachusetts?"
+
+"He lives here, but he comes from Virginia."
+
+"Is he a sculptor by profession?"
+
+"He 's a law-student."
+
+Rowland burst out laughing. "He has found something in Blackstone that I
+never did. He makes statues then simply for his pleasure?"
+
+Cecilia, with a smile, gave a little toss of her head. "For mine!"
+
+"I congratulate you," said Rowland. "I wonder whether he could be
+induced to do anything for me?"
+
+"This was a matter of friendship. I saw the figure when he had modeled
+it in clay, and of course greatly admired it. He said nothing at the
+time, but a week ago, on my birthday, he arrived in a buggy, with
+this. He had had it cast at the foundry at Chicopee; I believe it 's a
+beautiful piece of bronze. He begged me to accept."
+
+"Upon my word," said Mallet, "he does things handsomely!" And he fell to
+admiring the statue again.
+
+"So then," said Cecilia, "it 's very remarkable?"
+
+"Why, my dear cousin," Rowland answered, "Mr. Hudson, of Virginia, is
+an extraordinary--" Then suddenly stopping: "Is he a great friend of
+yours?" he asked.
+
+"A great friend?" and Cecilia hesitated. "I regard him as a child!"
+
+"Well," said Rowland, "he 's a very clever child. Tell me something
+about him: I should like to see him."
+
+Cecilia was obliged to go to her daughter's music-lesson, but she
+assured Rowland that she would arrange for him a meeting with the young
+sculptor. He was a frequent visitor, and as he had not called for some
+days it was likely he would come that evening. Rowland, left alone,
+examined the statuette at his leisure, and returned more than once
+during the day to take another look at it. He discovered its weak
+points, but it wore well. It had the stamp of genius. Rowland envied the
+happy youth who, in a New England village, without aid or encouragement,
+without models or resources, had found it so easy to produce a lovely
+work.
+
+In the evening, as he was smoking his cigar on the veranda, a light,
+quick step pressed the gravel of the garden path, and in a moment a
+young man made his bow to Cecilia. It was rather a nod than a bow, and
+indicated either that he was an old friend, or that he was scantily
+versed in the usual social forms. Cecilia, who was sitting near the
+steps, pointed to a neighboring chair, but the young man seated himself
+abruptly on the floor at her feet, began to fan himself vigorously with
+his hat, and broke out into a lively objurgation upon the hot weather.
+"I 'm dripping wet!" he said, without ceremony.
+
+"You walk too fast," said Cecilia. "You do everything too fast."
+
+"I know it, I know it!" he cried, passing his hand through his abundant
+dark hair and making it stand out in a picturesque shock. "I can't
+be slow if I try. There 's something inside of me that drives me. A
+restless fiend!"
+
+Cecilia gave a light laugh, and Rowland leaned forward in his hammock.
+He had placed himself in it at Bessie's request, and was playing that he
+was her baby and that she was rocking him to sleep. She sat beside him,
+swinging the hammock to and fro, and singing a lullaby. When he raised
+himself she pushed him back and said that the baby must finish its nap.
+"But I want to see the gentleman with the fiend inside of him," said
+Rowland.
+
+"What is a fiend?" Bessie demanded. "It 's only Mr. Hudson."
+
+"Very well, I want to see him."
+
+"Oh, never mind him!" said Bessie, with the brevity of contempt.
+
+"You speak as if you did n't like him."
+
+"I don't!" Bessie affirmed, and put Rowland to bed again.
+
+The hammock was swung at the end of the veranda, in the thickest shade
+of the vines, and this fragment of dialogue had passed unnoticed.
+Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself
+with listening to Mr. Hudson's voice. It was a soft and not altogether
+masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat
+plaintive and pettish key. The young man's mood seemed fretful; he
+complained of the heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having
+gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found the
+person he was in search of had left Northampton an hour before.
+
+"Won't you have a cup of tea?" Cecilia asked. "Perhaps that will restore
+your equanimity."
+
+"Aye, by keeping me awake all night!" said Hudson. "At the best, it 's
+hard enough to go down to the office. With my nerves set on edge by a
+sleepless night, I should perforce stay at home and be brutal to my poor
+mother."
+
+"Your mother is well, I hope."
+
+"Oh, she 's as usual."
+
+"And Miss Garland?"
+
+"She 's as usual, too. Every one, everything, is as usual. Nothing ever
+happens, in this benighted town."
+
+"I beg your pardon; things do happen, sometimes," said Cecilia. "Here
+is a dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to congratulate you on your
+statuette." And she called to Rowland to come and be introduced to
+Mr. Hudson. The young man sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland, coming
+forward to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected
+from the parlor window. Something seemed to shine out of Hudson's face
+as a warning against a "compliment" of the idle, unpondered sort.
+
+"Your statuette seems to me very good," Rowland said gravely. "It has
+given me extreme pleasure."
+
+"And my cousin knows what is good," said Cecilia. "He 's a connoisseur."
+
+Hudson smiled and stared. "A connoisseur?" he cried, laughing. "He 's
+the first I 've ever seen! Let me see what they look like;" and he drew
+Rowland nearer to the light. "Have they all such good heads as that? I
+should like to model yours."
+
+"Pray do," said Cecilia. "It will keep him a while. He is running off to
+Europe."
+
+"Ah, to Europe!" Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence, as they sat
+down. "Happy man!"
+
+But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random, for he
+perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk.
+Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and
+intelligent face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive
+vivacity, but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome.
+The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile
+played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of
+the young man's whole structure was an excessive want of breadth. The
+forehead, though it was high and rounded, was narrow; the jaw and
+the shoulders were narrow; and the result was an air of insufficient
+physical substance. But Mallet afterwards learned that this fair, slim
+youth could draw indefinitely upon a mysterious fund of nervous
+force, which outlasted and outwearied the endurance of many a sturdier
+temperament. And certainly there was life enough in his eye to furnish
+an immortality! It was a generous dark gray eye, in which there came
+and went a sort of kindling glow, which would have made a ruder visage
+striking, and which gave at times to Hudson's harmonious face an
+altogether extraordinary beauty. There was to Rowland's sympathetic
+sense a slightly pitiful disparity between the young sculptor's delicate
+countenance and the shabby gentility of his costume. He was dressed for
+a visit--a visit to a pretty woman. He was clad from head to foot in a
+white linen suit, which had never been remarkable for the felicity of
+its cut, and had now quite lost that crispness which garments of this
+complexion can as ill spare as the back-scene of a theatre the radiance
+of the footlights. He wore a vivid blue cravat, passed through a ring
+altogether too splendid to be valuable; he pulled and twisted, as he
+sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves; he emphasized his conversation with
+great dashes and flourishes of a light, silver-tipped walking-stick,
+and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched
+sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or
+Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very picturesque, in
+spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he sat nursing it
+and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly
+be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant
+accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This was visible in
+his talk, which abounded in the florid and sonorous. He liked words with
+color in them.
+
+Rowland, who was but a moderate talker, sat by in silence, while
+Cecilia, who had told him that she desired his opinion upon her friend,
+used a good deal of characteristic finesse in leading the young man to
+expose himself. She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for
+an hour with a volubility in which boyish unconsciousness and manly
+shrewdness were singularly combined. He gave his opinion on twenty
+topics, he opened up an endless budget of local gossip, he described
+his repulsive routine at the office of Messrs. Striker and Spooner,
+counselors at law, and he gave with great felicity and gusto an account
+of the annual boat-race between Harvard and Yale, which he had lately
+witnessed at Worcester. He had looked at the straining oarsmen and the
+swaying crowd with the eye of the sculptor. Rowland was a good deal
+amused and not a little interested. Whenever Hudson uttered some
+peculiarly striking piece of youthful grandiloquence, Cecilia broke into
+a long, light, familiar laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" the young man then demanded. "Have I said
+anything so ridiculous?"
+
+"Go on, go on," Cecilia replied. "You are too delicious! Show Mr. Mallet
+how Mr. Striker read the Declaration of Independence."
+
+Hudson, like most men with a turn for the plastic arts, was an excellent
+mimic, and he represented with a great deal of humor the accent and
+attitude of a pompous country lawyer sustaining the burden of this
+customary episode of our national festival. The sonorous twang, the
+see-saw gestures, the odd pronunciation, were vividly depicted. But
+Cecilia's manner, and the young man's quick response, ruffled a little
+poor Rowland's paternal conscience. He wondered whether his cousin was
+not sacrificing the faculty of reverence in her clever protege to
+her need for amusement. Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland's
+compliment on his statuette until he rose to go. Rowland wondered
+whether he had forgotten it, and supposed that the oversight was a sign
+of the natural self-sufficiency of genius. But Hudson stood a moment
+before he said good night, twirled his sombrero, and hesitated for the
+first time. He gave Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then, with
+a wonderfully frank, appealing smile: "You really meant," he
+asked, "what you said a while ago about that thing of mine? It is
+good--essentially good?"
+
+"I really meant it," said Rowland, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder.
+"It is very good indeed. It is, as you say, essentially good. That is
+the beauty of it."
+
+Hudson's eyes glowed and expanded; he looked at Rowland for some time in
+silence. "I have a notion you really know," he said at last. "But if you
+don't, it does n't much matter."
+
+"My cousin asked me to-day," said Cecilia, "whether I supposed you knew
+yourself how good it is."
+
+Hudson stared, blushing a little. "Perhaps not!" he cried.
+
+"Very likely," said Mallet. "I read in a book the other day that
+great talent in action--in fact the book said genius--is a kind of
+somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not
+wake him up, lest he should lose his balance."
+
+"Oh, when he 's back in bed again!" Hudson answered with a laugh. "Yes,
+call it a dream. It was a very happy one!"
+
+"Tell me this," said Rowland. "Did you mean anything by your young
+Water-drinker? Does he represent an idea? Is he a symbol?"
+
+Hudson raised his eyebrows and gently scratched his head. "Why, he 's
+youth, you know; he 's innocence, he 's health, he 's strength, he 's
+curiosity. Yes, he 's a good many things."
+
+"And is the cup also a symbol?"
+
+"The cup is knowledge, pleasure, experience. Anything of that kind!"
+
+"Well, he 's guzzling in earnest," said Rowland.
+
+Hudson gave a vigorous nod. "Aye, poor fellow, he 's thirsty!" And on
+this he cried good night, and bounded down the garden path.
+
+"Well, what do you make of him?" asked Cecilia, returning a short
+time afterwards from a visit of investigation as to the sufficiency of
+Bessie's bedclothes.
+
+"I confess I like him," said Rowland. "He 's very immature,--but there
+'s stuff in him."
+
+"He 's a strange being," said Cecilia, musingly.
+
+"Who are his people? what has been his education?" Rowland asked.
+
+"He has had no education, beyond what he has picked up, with little
+trouble, for himself. His mother is a widow, of a Massachusetts country
+family, a little timid, tremulous woman, who is always on pins and
+needles about her son. She had some property herself, and married a
+Virginian gentleman of good estates. He turned out, I believe, a very
+licentious personage, and made great havoc in their fortune. Everything,
+or almost everything, melted away, including Mr. Hudson himself. This
+is literally true, for he drank himself to death. Ten years ago his wife
+was left a widow, with scanty means and a couple of growing boys.
+She paid her husband's debts as best she could, and came to establish
+herself here, where by the death of a charitable relative she had
+inherited an old-fashioned ruinous house. Roderick, our friend, was her
+pride and joy, but Stephen, the elder, was her comfort and support.
+I remember him, later; he was an ugly, sturdy, practical lad, very
+different from his brother, and in his way, I imagine, a very fine
+fellow. When the war broke out he found that the New England blood ran
+thicker in his veins than the Virginian, and immediately obtained
+a commission. He fell in some Western battle and left his mother
+inconsolable. Roderick, however, has given her plenty to think about,
+and she has induced him, by some mysterious art, to abide, nominally at
+least, in a profession that he abhors, and for which he is about as fit,
+I should say, as I am to drive a locomotive. He grew up a la grace de
+Dieu, and was horribly spoiled. Three or four years ago he graduated at
+a small college in this neighborhood, where I am afraid he had given a
+good deal more attention to novels and billiards than to mathematics and
+Greek. Since then he has been reading law, at the rate of a page a day.
+If he is ever admitted to practice I 'm afraid my friendship won't avail
+to make me give him my business. Good, bad, or indifferent, the boy is
+essentially an artist--an artist to his fingers' ends."
+
+"Why, then," asked Rowland, "does n't he deliberately take up the
+chisel?"
+
+"For several reasons. In the first place, I don't think he more than
+half suspects his talent. The flame is smouldering, but it is never
+fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to
+help him to self-knowledge. He 's hopelessly discontented, but he
+does n't know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one
+day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists
+exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people without their
+clothes on. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality,
+and for a young man of a passionate disposition she considers the law a
+much safer investment. Her father was a judge, she has two brothers at
+the bar, and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in the
+same line. She wishes the tradition to be perpetuated. I 'm pretty sure
+the law won't make Roderick's fortune, and I 'm afraid it will, in the
+long run, spoil his temper."
+
+"What sort of a temper is it?"
+
+"One to be trusted, on the whole. It is quick, but it is generous. I
+have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o'clock in the evening,
+and soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It 's a very entertaining
+temper to observe. I, fortunately, can do so dispassionately, for I 'm
+the only person in the place he has not quarreled with."
+
+"Has he then no society? Who is Miss Garland, whom you asked about?"
+
+"A young girl staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin; a good
+plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor's eye. Roderick has
+a goodly share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic
+temperament. He will have nothing to do with the small towns-people; he
+says they 're 'ignoble.' He cannot endure his mother's friends--the
+old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to
+death. So he comes and lounges here and rails at everything and every
+one."
+
+This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later, and
+confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland's part. He
+was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly, and
+asked Rowland a number of rather naif questions about the condition of
+the fine arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, when he had gone, said
+that this was the wholesome effect of Rowland's praise of his statuette.
+Roderick was acutely sensitive, and Rowland's tranquil commendation had
+stilled his restless pulses. He was ruminating the full-flavored verdict
+of culture. Rowland felt an irresistible kindness for him, a mingled
+sense of his personal charm and his artistic capacity. He had an
+indefinable attraction--the something divine of unspotted, exuberant,
+confident youth. The next day was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they
+should take a long walk and that Roderick should show him the country.
+The young man assented gleefully, and in the morning, as Rowland at the
+garden gate was giving his hostess Godspeed on her way to church, he
+came striding along the grassy margin of the road and out-whistling the
+music of the church bells. It was one of those lovely days of August
+when you feel the complete exuberance of summer just warned and checked
+by autumn. "Remember the day, and take care you rob no orchards," said
+Cecilia, as they separated.
+
+The young men walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale, through
+woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy elevation
+studded with mossy rocks and red cedars. Just beneath them, in a great
+shining curve, flowed the goodly Connecticut. They flung themselves
+on the grass and tossed stones into the river; they talked like old
+friends. Rowland lit a cigar, and Roderick refused one with a grimace
+of extravagant disgust. He thought them vile things; he did n't see how
+decent people could tolerate them. Rowland was amused, and wondered what
+it was that made this ill-mannered speech seem perfectly inoffensive
+on Roderick's lips. He belonged to the race of mortals, to be pitied
+or envied according as we view the matter, who are not held to a strict
+account for their aggressions. Looking at him as he lay stretched in the
+shade, Rowland vaguely likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless,
+bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the
+tremulous delicacy of its structure, and be graceful even when they
+were most inconvenient. Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke,
+listened to the gurgle of the river, and sniffed the balsam of the
+pines. A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits, and brought
+the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river meadows. He
+sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading
+view. It seemed to him beautiful, and suddenly a strange feeling of
+prospective regret took possession of him. Something seemed to tell
+him that later, in a foreign land, he would remember it lovingly and
+penitently.
+
+"It 's a wretched business," he said, "this practical quarrel of ours
+with our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it. Is
+one's only safety then in flight? This is an American day, an American
+landscape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and
+some day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy, I shall accuse
+myself of having slighted them."
+
+Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that America was
+good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an
+honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it along. He had
+evidently thought nothing whatever about it, and was launching his
+doctrine on the inspiration of the moment. The doctrine expanded with
+the occasion, and he declared that he was above all an advocate for
+American art. He did n't see why we should n't produce the greatest
+works in the world. We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the
+biggest conceptions. The biggest conceptions of course would bring forth
+in time the biggest performances. We had only to be true to ourselves,
+to pitch in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our
+eyes upon our National Individuality. "I declare," he cried, "there 's
+a career for a man, and I 've twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to
+embrace it--to be the consummate, typical, original, national American
+artist! It 's inspiring!"
+
+Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice
+better than his theory, and that a saner impulse than this had inspired
+his little Water-drinker. Roderick took no offense, and three minutes
+afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme, but half heeded
+by his companion, who had returned to his cogitations. At last Rowland
+delivered himself of the upshot of these. "How would you like," he
+suddenly demanded, "to go to Rome?"
+
+Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our
+National Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it
+reasonably well. "And I should like, by the same token," he added,
+"to go to Athens, to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of
+Benares, where there is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall."
+
+"Nay," said Rowland soberly, "if you were to go to Rome, you should
+settle down and work. Athens might help you, but for the present I
+should n't recommend Benares."
+
+"It will be time to arrange details when I pack my trunk," said Hudson.
+
+"If you mean to turn sculptor, the sooner you pack your trunk the
+better."
+
+"Oh, but I 'm a practical man! What is the smallest sum per annum, on
+which one can keep alive the sacred fire in Rome?"
+
+"What is the largest sum at your disposal?"
+
+Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then
+announced with mock pomposity: "Three hundred dollars!"
+
+"The money question could be arranged," said Rowland. "There are ways of
+raising money."
+
+"I should like to know a few! I never yet discovered one."
+
+"One consists," said Rowland, "in having a friend with a good deal more
+than he wants, and not being too proud to accept a part of it."
+
+Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed. "Do you mean--do you
+mean?".... he stammered. He was greatly excited.
+
+Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet. "In
+three words, if you are to be a sculptor, you ought to go to Rome and
+study the antique. To go to Rome you need money. I 'm fond of fine
+statues, but unfortunately I can't make them myself. I have to order
+them. I order a dozen from you, to be executed at your convenience. To
+help you, I pay you in advance."
+
+Roderick pushed off his hat and wiped his forehead, still gazing at his
+companion. "You believe in me!" he cried at last.
+
+"Allow me to explain," said Rowland. "I believe in you, if you are
+prepared to work and to wait, and to struggle, and to exercise a great
+many virtues. And then, I 'm afraid to say it, lest I should disturb
+you more than I should help you. You must decide for yourself. I simply
+offer you an opportunity."
+
+Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative. "You have not seen my
+other things," he said suddenly. "Come and look at them."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes, we 'll walk home. We 'll settle the question."
+
+He passed his hand through Rowland's arm and they retraced their steps.
+They reached the town and made their way along a broad country street,
+dusky with the shade of magnificent elms. Rowland felt his companion's
+arm trembling in his own. They stopped at a large white house, flanked
+with melancholy hemlocks, and passed through a little front garden,
+paved with moss-coated bricks and ornamented with parterres bordered
+with high box hedges. The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but
+it had seen its best days, and evidently sheltered a shrunken household.
+Mrs. Hudson, Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden of a
+morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal
+horticulture. Roderick's studio was behind, in the basement; a large,
+empty room, with the paper peeling off the walls. This represented, in
+the fashion of fifty years ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes
+of a hideous pattern, and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away
+in great scraps, in moments of aesthetic exasperation. On a board in
+a corner was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall,
+stood some dozen medallions, busts, and figures, in various stages of
+completion. To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on
+the end of a long packing-box, which served as a pedestal. He did so
+silently, making no explanations, and looking at them himself with a
+strange air of quickened curiosity. Most of the things were portraits;
+and the three at which he looked longest were finished busts. One was a
+colossal head of a negro, tossed back, defiant, with distended nostrils;
+one was the portrait of a young man whom Rowland immediately perceived,
+by the resemblance, to be his deceased brother; the last represented a
+gentleman with a pointed nose, a long, shaved upper lip, and a tuft on
+the end of his chin. This was a face peculiarly unadapted to sculpture;
+but as a piece of modeling it was the best, and it was admirable. It
+reminded Rowland in its homely veracity, its artless artfulness, of
+the works of the early Italian Renaissance. On the pedestal was cut
+the name--Barnaby Striker, Esq. Rowland remembered that this was the
+appellation of the legal luminary from whom his companion had undertaken
+to borrow a reflected ray, and although in the bust there was naught
+flagrantly set down in malice, it betrayed, comically to one who could
+relish the secret, that the features of the original had often been
+scanned with an irritated eye. Besides these there were several rough
+studies of the nude, and two or three figures of a fanciful kind. The
+most noticeable (and it had singular beauty) was a small modeled design
+for a sepulchral monument; that, evidently, of Stephen Hudson. The young
+soldier lay sleeping eternally, with his hand on his sword, like an old
+crusader in a Gothic cathedral.
+
+Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgment.
+"Upon my word," cried Hudson at last, "they seem to me very good."
+
+And in truth, as Rowland looked, he saw they were good. They were
+youthful, awkward, and ignorant; the effort, often, was more apparent
+than the success. But the effort was signally powerful and intelligent;
+it seemed to Rowland that it needed only to let itself go to compass
+great things. Here and there, too, success, when grasped, had something
+masterly. Rowland turned to his companion, who stood with his hands in
+his pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance.
+The light of admiration was in Rowland's eyes, and it speedily kindled a
+wonderful illumination on Hudson's handsome brow. Rowland said at last,
+gravely, "You have only to work!"
+
+"I think I know what that means," Roderick answered. He turned away,
+threw himself on a rickety chair, and sat for some moments with his
+elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "Work--work?" he said at
+last, looking up, "ah, if I could only begin!" He glanced round the
+room a moment and his eye encountered on the mantel-shelf the vivid
+physiognomy of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished, and he stared at
+it with an air of concentrated enmity. "I want to begin," he cried, "and
+I can't make a better beginning than this! Good-by, Mr. Striker!" He
+strode across the room, seized a mallet that lay at hand, and before
+Rowland could interfere, in the interest of art if not of morals, dealt
+a merciless blow upon Mr. Striker's skull. The bust cracked into a
+dozen pieces, which toppled with a great crash upon the floor. Rowland
+relished neither the destruction of the image nor his companion's look
+in working it, but as he was about to express his displeasure the door
+opened and gave passage to a young girl. She came in with a rapid step
+and startled face, as if she had been summoned by the noise. Seeing the
+heap of shattered clay and the mallet in Roderick's hand, she gave a
+cry of horror. Her voice died away when she perceived that Rowland was a
+stranger, but she murmured reproachfully, "Why, Roderick, what have you
+done?"
+
+Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments. "I 've driven
+the money-changers out of the temple!" he cried.
+
+The traces retained shape enough to be recognized, and she gave a little
+moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young man's allegory, but
+yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must be an evil
+one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive
+that Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with
+a sharp, frank mistrust, and turned away through the open door. Rowland
+looked after her with extraordinary interest.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. Roderick
+
+Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend.
+Roderick was in a state of extreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by
+a certain amount of righteous wrath. He had had a domestic struggle, but
+he had remained master of the situation. He had shaken the dust of Mr.
+Striker's office from his feet.
+
+"I had it out last night with my mother," he said. "I dreaded the scene,
+for she takes things terribly hard. She does n't scold nor storm, and
+she does n't argue nor insist. She sits with her eyes full of tears
+that never fall, and looks at me, when I displease her, as if I were
+a perfect monster of depravity. And the trouble is that I was born to
+displease her. She does n't trust me; she never has and she never will.
+I don't know what I have done to set her against me, but ever since I
+can remember I have been looked at with tears. The trouble is," he went
+on, giving a twist to his moustache, "I 've been too absurdly docile.
+I 've been sprawling all my days by the maternal fireside, and my dear
+mother has grown used to bullying me. I 've made myself cheap! If I 'm
+not in my bed by eleven o'clock, the girl is sent out to explore with
+a lantern. When I think of it, I fairly despise my amiability. It 's
+rather a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner! I
+should like for six months to lead Mrs. Hudson the life some fellows
+lead their mothers!"
+
+"Allow me to believe," said Rowland, "that you would like nothing of
+the sort. If you have been a good boy, don't spoil it by pretending you
+don't like it. You have been very happy, I suspect, in spite of your
+virtues, and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too
+well. I have not had the pleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay
+you a wager that that is the trouble. She is passionately fond of you,
+and her hopes, like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears."
+Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful
+young fellow must be loved by his female relatives.
+
+Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, "I do her justice," he
+cried. "May she never do me less!" Then after a moment's hesitation, "I
+'ll tell you the perfect truth," he went on. "I have to fill a double
+place. I have to be my brother as well as myself. It 's a good deal to
+ask of a man, especially when he has so little talent as I for being
+what he is not. When we were both young together I was the curled
+darling. I had the silver mug and the biggest piece of pudding, and I
+stayed in-doors to be kissed by the ladies while he made mud-pies in the
+garden and was never missed, of course. Really, he was worth fifty of
+me! When he was brought home from Vicksburg with a piece of shell in
+his skull, my poor mother began to think she had n't loved him enough. I
+remember, as she hung round my neck sobbing, before his coffin, she told
+me that I must be to her everything that he would have been. I swore in
+tears and in perfect good faith that I would, but naturally I have
+not kept my promise. I have been utterly different. I have been idle,
+restless, egotistical, discontented. I have done no harm, I believe, but
+I have done no good. My brother, if he had lived, would have made
+fifty thousand dollars and put gas and water into the house. My mother,
+brooding night and day on her bereavement, has come to fix her ideal in
+offices of that sort. Judged by that standard I 'm nowhere!"
+
+Rowland was at loss how to receive this account of his friend's domestic
+circumstances; it was plaintive, and yet the manner seemed to him
+over-trenchant. "You must lose no time in making a masterpiece," he
+answered; "then with the proceeds you can give her gas from golden
+burners."
+
+"So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or
+in proceeds. She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her
+a snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the
+law, like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I 'm in sight. 'It
+'s a more regular occupation!' that 's all I can get out of her. A
+more regular damnation! Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such
+wicked men? I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n't
+confute her with an example. She had the advantage of me, because she
+formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in
+black lace mittens (you may see it on the parlor table), who used to
+drink raw brandy and beat his wife. I promised her that, whatever I
+might do to my wife, I would never beat my mother, and that as for
+brandy, raw or diluted, I detested it. She sat silently crying for an
+hour, during which I expended treasures of eloquence. It 's a good thing
+to have to reckon up one's intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my
+cause, I was most agreeably impressed with the elevated character of
+my own. I kissed her solemnly at last, and told her that I had said
+everything and that she must make the best of it. This morning she has
+dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is n't a cheerful house. I long to
+be out of it!"
+
+"I 'm extremely sorry," said Rowland, "to have been the prime cause of
+so much suffering. I owe your mother some amends; will it be possible
+for me to see her?"
+
+"If you 'll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the
+truth she 'll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an
+agent of the foul fiend. She does n't see why you should have come
+here and set me by the ears: you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and
+desolate doting mothers. I leave it to you, personally, to answer these
+charges. You see, what she can't forgive--what she 'll not really ever
+forgive--is your taking me off to Rome. Rome is an evil word, in my
+mother's vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, as you 'd say 'damnation.'
+Northampton is in the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying
+dusk, into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate. And there
+was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository of every virtue,
+Mr. Striker's office!"
+
+"And does Mr. Striker know of your decision?" asked Rowland.
+
+"To a certainty! Mr. Striker, you must know, is not simply a
+good-natured attorney, who lets me dog's-ear his law-books. He's a
+particular friend and general adviser. He looks after my mother's
+property and kindly consents to regard me as part of it. Our opinions
+have always been painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his
+zealous attempts to unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part
+before. He never understood me, and it was useless to try to make him.
+We speak a different language--we 're made of a different clay. I had a
+fit of rage yesterday when I smashed his bust, at the thought of all the
+bad blood he had stirred up in me; it did me good, and it 's all over
+now. I don't hate him any more; I 'm rather sorry for him. See how you
+'ve improved me! I must have seemed to him wilfully, wickedly stupid,
+and I 'm sure he only tolerated me on account of his great regard for my
+mother. This morning I grasped the bull by the horns. I took an armful
+of law-books that have been gathering the dust in my room for the last
+year and a half, and presented myself at the office. 'Allow me to put
+these back in their places,' I said. 'I shall never have need for
+them more--never more, never more, never more!' 'So you 've learned
+everything they contain?' asked Striker, leering over his spectacles.
+'Better late than never.' 'I 've learned nothing that you can teach me,'
+I cried. 'But I shall tax your patience no longer. I 'm going to be a
+sculptor. I 'm going to Rome. I won't bid you good-by just yet; I shall
+see you again. But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four
+detested walls--to this living tomb! I did n't know till now how I hated
+it! My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have not
+made of me!'"
+
+"I 'm glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again," Rowland answered,
+correcting a primary inclination to smile. "You certainly owe him a
+respectful farewell, even if he has not understood you. I confess you
+rather puzzle me. There is another person," he presently added, "whose
+opinion as to your new career I should like to know. What does Miss
+Garland think?"
+
+Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush. Then, with a conscious
+smile, "What makes you suppose she thinks anything?" he asked.
+
+"Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as
+a very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions."
+
+The smile on Roderick's mobile face passed rapidly into a frown. "Oh,
+she thinks what I think!" he answered.
+
+Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as
+harmonious a shape as possible to his companion's scheme. "I have
+launched you, as I may say," he said, "and I feel as if I ought to see
+you into port. I am older than you and know the world better, and
+it seems well that we should voyage a while together. It 's on my
+conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you through the
+Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay. I sail on the fifth
+of September; can you make your preparations to start with me?"
+
+Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in
+his friend's wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges. "I have no
+preparations to make," he said with a smile, raising his arms and
+letting them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition. "What I
+am to take with me I carry here!" and he tapped his forehead.
+
+"Happy man!" murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light
+stowage, in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and
+of the heavy one in deposit at his banker's, of bags and boxes.
+
+When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia. She
+was sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low
+chintz-covered chair. He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with
+her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder. At
+last he told her of Roderick's decision and of his own influence in
+it. Cecilia, besides an extreme surprise, exhibited a certain fine
+displeasure at his not having asked her advice.
+
+"What would you have said, if I had?" he demanded.
+
+"I would have said in the first place, 'Oh for pity's sake don't carry
+off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!' I would have said
+in the second place, 'Nonsense! the boy is doing very well. Let well
+alone!'"
+
+"That in the first five minutes. What would you have said later?"
+
+"That for a man who is generally averse to meddling, you were suddenly
+rather officious."
+
+Rowland's countenance fell. He frowned in silence. Cecilia looked at him
+askance; gradually the spark of irritation faded from her eye.
+
+"Excuse my sharpness," she resumed at last. "But I am literally in
+despair at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the
+past year, have kept me alive. They have given a silver tip to leaden
+days. I don't say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he
+is of a different one. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly
+is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work and
+women must weep!"
+
+"Decidedly not!" said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis. He had
+suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia had treated
+herself to a private social luxury; he had then discovered that she
+found it in Hudson's lounging visits and boyish chatter, and he had felt
+himself wondering at last whether, judiciously viewed, her gain in the
+matter was not the young man's loss. It was evident that Cecilia was not
+judicious, and that her good sense, habitually rigid under the demands
+of domestic economy, indulged itself with a certain agreeable laxity on
+this particular point. She liked her young friend just as he was; she
+humored him, flattered him, laughed at him, caressed him--did
+everything but advise him. It was a flirtation without the benefits of
+a flirtation. She was too old to let him fall in love with her, which
+might have done him good; and her inclination was to keep him young, so
+that the nonsense he talked might never transgress a certain line. It
+was quite conceivable that poor Cecilia should relish a pastime; but if
+one had philanthropically embraced the idea that something considerable
+might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her
+friendship was not what might be called tonic. So Rowland reflected, in
+the glow of his new-born sympathy. There was a later time when he would
+have been grateful if Hudson's susceptibility to the relaxing influence
+of lovely women might have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as
+he rendered the excellent Cecilia.
+
+"I only desire to remind you," she pursued, "that you are likely to have
+your hands full."
+
+"I 've thought of that, and I rather like the idea; liking, as I do, the
+man. I told you the other day, you know, that I longed to have something
+on my hands. When it first occurred to me that I might start our
+young friend on the path of glory, I felt as if I had an unimpeachable
+inspiration. Then I remembered there were dangers and difficulties,
+and asked myself whether I had a right to step in between him and his
+obscurity. My sense of his really having the divine flame answered the
+question. He is made to do the things that humanity is the happier for!
+I can't do such things myself, but when I see a young man of genius
+standing helpless and hopeless for want of capital, I feel--and it 's
+no affectation of humility, I assure you--as if it would give at least a
+reflected usefulness to my own life to offer him his opportunity."
+
+"In the name of humanity, I suppose, I ought to thank you. But I want,
+first of all, to be happy myself. You guarantee us at any rate, I hope,
+the masterpieces."
+
+"A masterpiece a year," said Rowland smiling, "for the next quarter of a
+century."
+
+"It seems to me that we have a right to ask more: to demand that you
+guarantee us not only the development of the artist, but the security of
+the man."
+
+Rowland became grave again. "His security?"
+
+"His moral, his sentimental security. Here, you see, it 's perfect. We
+are all under a tacit compact to preserve it. Perhaps you believe in
+the necessary turbulence of genius, and you intend to enjoin upon your
+protege the importance of cultivating his passions."
+
+"On the contrary, I believe that a man of genius owes as much deference
+to his passions as any other man, but not a particle more, and I confess
+I have a strong conviction that the artist is better for leading a quiet
+life. That is what I shall preach to my protege, as you call him, by
+example as well as by precept. You evidently believe," he added in a
+moment, "that he will lead me a dance."
+
+"Nay, I prophesy nothing. I only think that circumstances, with our
+young man, have a great influence; as is proved by the fact that
+although he has been fuming and fretting here for the last five years,
+he has nevertheless managed to make the best of it, and found it easy,
+on the whole, to vegetate. Transplanted to Rome, I fancy he 'll put
+forth a denser leafage. I should like vastly to see the change. You must
+write me about it, from stage to stage. I hope with all my heart that
+the fruit will be proportionate to the foliage. Don't think me a bird of
+ill omen; only remember that you will be held to a strict account."
+
+"A man should make the most of himself, and be helped if he needs help,"
+Rowland answered, after a long pause. "Of course when a body begins to
+expand, there comes in the possibility of bursting; but I nevertheless
+approve of a certain tension of one's being. It 's what a man is meant
+for. And then I believe in the essential salubrity of genius--true
+genius."
+
+"Very good," said Cecilia, with an air of resignation which made
+Rowland, for the moment, seem to himself culpably eager. "We 'll drink
+then to-day at dinner to the health of our friend."
+
+* * *
+
+Having it much at heart to convince Mrs. Hudson of the purity of his
+intentions, Rowland waited upon her that evening. He was ushered into a
+large parlor, which, by the light of a couple of candles, he perceived
+to be very meagrely furnished and very tenderly and sparingly used. The
+windows were open to the air of the summer night, and a circle of three
+persons was temporarily awed into silence by his appearance. One
+of these was Mrs. Hudson, who was sitting at one of the windows,
+empty-handed save for the pocket-handkerchief in her lap, which was held
+with an air of familiarity with its sadder uses. Near her, on the sofa,
+half sitting, half lounging, in the attitude of a visitor outstaying
+ceremony, with one long leg flung over the other and a large foot in a
+clumsy boot swinging to and fro continually, was a lean, sandy-haired
+gentleman whom Rowland recognized as the original of the portrait of Mr.
+Barnaby Striker. At the table, near the candles, busy with a substantial
+piece of needle-work, sat the young girl of whom he had had a moment's
+quickened glimpse in Roderick's studio, and whom he had learned to
+be Miss Garland, his companion's kinswoman. This young lady's limpid,
+penetrating gaze was the most effective greeting he received. Mrs.
+Hudson rose with a soft, vague sound of distress, and stood looking at
+him shrinkingly and waveringly, as if she were sorely tempted to
+retreat through the open window. Mr. Striker swung his long leg a trifle
+defiantly. No one, evidently, was used to offering hollow welcomes or
+telling polite fibs. Rowland introduced himself; he had come, he might
+say, upon business.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Hudson tremulously; "I know--my son has told me. I
+suppose it is better I should see you. Perhaps you will take a seat."
+
+With this invitation Rowland prepared to comply, and, turning, grasped
+the first chair that offered itself.
+
+"Not that one," said a full, grave voice; whereupon he perceived that a
+quantity of sewing-silk had been suspended and entangled over the back,
+preparatory to being wound on reels. He felt the least bit irritated at
+the curtness of the warning, coming as it did from a young woman whose
+countenance he had mentally pronounced interesting, and with regard to
+whom he was conscious of the germ of the inevitable desire to produce a
+responsive interest. And then he thought it would break the ice to say
+something playfully urbane.
+
+"Oh, you should let me take the chair," he answered, "and have the
+pleasure of holding the skeins myself!"
+
+For all reply to this sally he received a stare of undisguised amazement
+from Miss Garland, who then looked across at Mrs. Hudson with a glance
+which plainly said: "You see he 's quite the insidious personage we
+feared." The elder lady, however, sat with her eyes fixed on the ground
+and her two hands tightly clasped. But touching her Rowland felt much
+more compassion than resentment; her attitude was not coldness, it was
+a kind of dread, almost a terror. She was a small, eager woman, with a
+pale, troubled face, which added to her apparent age. After looking at
+her for some minutes Rowland saw that she was still young, and that she
+must have been a very girlish bride. She had been a pretty one, too,
+though she probably had looked terribly frightened at the altar. She
+was very delicately made, and Roderick had come honestly by his physical
+slimness and elegance. She wore no cap, and her flaxen hair, which was
+of extraordinary fineness, was smoothed and confined with Puritanic
+precision. She was excessively shy, and evidently very humble-minded; it
+was singular to see a woman to whom the experience of life had conveyed
+so little reassurance as to her own resources or the chances of things
+turning out well. Rowland began immediately to like her, and to feel
+impatient to persuade her that there was no harm in him, and that,
+twenty to one, her son would make her a well-pleased woman yet. He
+foresaw that she would be easy to persuade, and that a benevolent
+conversational tone would probably make her pass, fluttering, from
+distrust into an oppressive extreme of confidence. But he had an
+indefinable sense that the person who was testing that strong young
+eyesight of hers in the dim candle-light was less readily beguiled
+from her mysterious feminine preconceptions. Miss Garland, according
+to Cecilia's judgment, as Rowland remembered, had not a countenance to
+inspire a sculptor; but it seemed to Rowland that her countenance might
+fairly inspire a man who was far from being a sculptor. She was not
+pretty, as the eye of habit judges prettiness, but when you made the
+observation you somehow failed to set it down against her, for you had
+already passed from measuring contours to tracing meanings. In Mary
+Garland's face there were many possible ones, and they gave you the more
+to think about that it was not--like Roderick Hudson's, for instance--a
+quick and mobile face, over which expression flickered like a candle in
+a wind. They followed each other slowly, distinctly, gravely, sincerely,
+and you might almost have fancied that, as they came and went, they gave
+her a sort of pain. She was tall and slender, and had an air of maidenly
+strength and decision. She had a broad forehead and dark eyebrows, a
+trifle thicker than those of classic beauties; her gray eye was clear
+but not brilliant, and her features were perfectly irregular. Her mouth
+was large, fortunately for the principal grace of her physiognomy was
+her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent amplitude. Rowland,
+indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something assured him that her
+rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart. She wore a scanty white dress,
+and had a nameless rustic air which would have led one to speak of her
+less as a young lady than as a young woman. She was evidently a girl
+of a great personal force, but she lacked pliancy. She was hemming
+a kitchen towel with the aid of a large steel thimble. She bent her
+serious eyes at last on her work again, and let Rowland explain himself.
+
+"I have become suddenly so very intimate with your son," he said at
+last, addressing himself to Mrs. Hudson, "that it seems just I should
+make your acquaintance."
+
+"Very just," murmured the poor lady, and after a moment's hesitation was
+on the point of adding something more; but Mr. Striker here interposed,
+after a prefatory clearance of the throat.
+
+"I should like to take the liberty," he said, "of addressing you a
+simple question. For how long a period of time have you been acquainted
+with our young friend?" He continued to kick the air, but his head was
+thrown back and his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, as if in aversion
+to the spectacle of Rowland's inevitable confusion.
+
+"A very short time, I confess. Hardly three days."
+
+"And yet you call yourself intimate, eh? I have been seeing Mr. Roderick
+daily these three years, and yet it was only this morning that I felt as
+if I had at last the right to say that I knew him. We had a few moments'
+conversation in my office which supplied the missing links in the
+evidence. So that now I do venture to say I 'm acquainted with Mr.
+Roderick! But wait three years, sir, like me!" and Mr. Striker laughed,
+with a closed mouth and a noiseless shake of all his long person.
+
+Mrs. Hudson smiled confusedly, at hazard; Miss Garland kept her eyes on
+her stitches. But it seemed to Rowland that the latter colored a little.
+"Oh, in three years, of course," he said, "we shall know each other
+better. Before many years are over, madam," he pursued, "I expect the
+world to know him. I expect him to be a great man!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious device
+for increasing her distress by the assistance of irony. Then reassured,
+little by little, by Rowland's benevolent visage, she gave him an
+appealing glance and a timorous "Really?"
+
+But before Rowland could respond, Mr. Striker again intervened. "Do
+I fully apprehend your expression?" he asked. "Our young friend is to
+become a great man?"
+
+"A great artist, I hope," said Rowland.
+
+"This is a new and interesting view," said Mr. Striker, with an
+assumption of judicial calmness. "We have had hopes for Mr. Roderick,
+but I confess, if I have rightly understood them, they stopped short of
+greatness. We should n't have taken the responsibility of claiming
+it for him. What do you say, ladies? We all feel about him here--his
+mother, Miss Garland, and myself--as if his merits were rather in the
+line of the"--and Mr. Striker waved his hand with a series of fantastic
+flourishes in the air--"of the light ornamental!" Mr. Striker bore his
+recalcitrant pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both to be
+fair and to respect the susceptibilities of his companions. But he was
+unversed in the mysterious processes of feminine emotion. Ten minutes
+before, there had been a general harmony of sombre views; but on hearing
+Roderick's limitations thus distinctly formulated to a stranger, the two
+ladies mutely protested. Mrs. Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and
+Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with
+a short, cold glance.
+
+"I 'm afraid, Mrs. Hudson," Rowland pursued, evading the discussion
+of Roderick's possible greatness, "that you don't at all thank me for
+stirring up your son's ambition on a line which leads him so far from
+home. I suspect I have made you my enemy."
+
+Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully
+perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being
+impolite. "My cousin is no one's enemy," Miss Garland hereupon declared,
+gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made
+Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.
+
+"Does she leave that to you?" Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.
+
+"We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments," said Mr. Striker;
+"Miss Garland perhaps most of all. Miss Garland," and Mr. Striker
+waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been
+regrettably omitted, "is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter
+of a minister, the sister of a minister." Rowland bowed deferentially,
+and the young girl went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently,
+either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts.
+Mr. Striker continued: "Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated
+to converse with you freely. She will allow me to address you a few
+questions. Would you kindly inform her, as exactly as possible, just
+what you propose to do with her son?"
+
+The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland's face and seemed
+to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would
+have expressed it less defiantly. But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker's
+many-wrinkled light blue eye, shrewd at once and good-natured, that
+he had no intention of defiance, and that he was simply pompous and
+conceited and sarcastically compassionate of any view of things in which
+Roderick Hudson was regarded in a serious light.
+
+"Do, my dear madam?" demanded Rowland. "I don't propose to do anything.
+He must do for himself. I simply offer him the chance. He 's to study,
+to work--hard, I hope."
+
+"Not too hard, please," murmured Mrs. Hudson, pleadingly, wheeling about
+from recent visions of dangerous leisure. "He 's not very strong, and I
+'m afraid the climate of Europe is very relaxing."
+
+"Ah, study?" repeated Mr. Striker. "To what line of study is he to
+direct his attention?" Then suddenly, with an impulse of disinterested
+curiosity on his own account, "How do you study sculpture, anyhow?"
+
+"By looking at models and imitating them."
+
+"At models, eh? To what kind of models do you refer?"
+
+"To the antique, in the first place."
+
+"Ah, the antique," repeated Mr. Striker, with a jocose intonation. "Do
+you hear, madam? Roderick is going off to Europe to learn to imitate the
+antique."
+
+"I suppose it 's all right," said Mrs. Hudson, twisting herself in a
+sort of delicate anguish.
+
+"An antique, as I understand it," the lawyer continued, "is an image of
+a pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no
+nose, and no clothing. A precious model, certainly!"
+
+"That 's a very good description of many," said Rowland, with a laugh.
+
+"Mercy! Truly?" asked Mrs. Hudson, borrowing courage from his urbanity.
+
+"But a sculptor's studies, you intimate, are not confined to the
+antique," Mr. Striker resumed. "After he has been looking three or four
+years at the objects I describe"--
+
+"He studies the living model," said Rowland.
+
+"Does it take three or four years?" asked Mrs. Hudson, imploringly.
+
+"That depends upon the artist's aptitude. After twenty years a real
+artist is still studying."
+
+"Oh, my poor boy!" moaned Mrs. Hudson, finding the prospect, under every
+light, still terrible.
+
+"Now this study of the living model," Mr. Striker pursued. "Inform Mrs.
+Hudson about that."
+
+"Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Hudson, shrinkingly.
+
+"That too," said Rowland, "is one of the reasons for studying in Rome.
+It 's a handsome race, you know, and you find very well-made people."
+
+"I suppose they 're no better made than a good tough Yankee," objected
+Mr. Striker, transposing his interminable legs. "The same God made us."
+
+"Surely," sighed Mrs. Hudson, but with a questioning glance at her
+visitor which showed that she had already begun to concede much weight
+to his opinion. Rowland hastened to express his assent to Mr. Striker's
+proposition.
+
+Miss Garland looked up, and, after a moment's hesitation: "Are the Roman
+women very beautiful?" she asked.
+
+Rowland too, in answering, hesitated; he was looking straight at the
+young girl. "On the whole, I prefer ours," he said.
+
+She had dropped her work in her lap; her hands were crossed upon it, her
+head thrown a little back. She had evidently expected a more impersonal
+answer, and she was dissatisfied. For an instant she seemed inclined to
+make a rejoinder, but she slowly picked up her work in silence and drew
+her stitches again.
+
+Rowland had for the second time the feeling that she judged him to be
+a person of a disagreeably sophisticated tone. He noticed too that the
+kitchen towel she was hemming was terribly coarse. And yet his answer
+had a resonant inward echo, and he repeated to himself, "Yes, on the
+whole, I prefer ours."
+
+"Well, these models," began Mr. Striker. "You put them into an attitude,
+I suppose."
+
+"An attitude, exactly."
+
+"And then you sit down and look at them."
+
+"You must not sit too long. You must go at your clay and try to build up
+something that looks like them."
+
+"Well, there you are with your model in an attitude on one side,
+yourself, in an attitude too, I suppose, on the other, and your pile of
+clay in the middle, building up, as you say. So you pass the morning.
+After that I hope you go out and take a walk, and rest from your
+exertions."
+
+"Unquestionably. But to a sculptor who loves his work there is no time
+lost. Everything he looks at teaches or suggests something."
+
+"That 's a tempting doctrine to young men with a taste for sitting by
+the hour with the page unturned, watching the flies buzz, or the frost
+melt on the window-pane. Our young friend, in this way, must have laid
+up stores of information which I never suspected!"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland, with an unresentful smile, "he will prove
+some day the completer artist for some of those lazy reveries."
+
+This theory was apparently very grateful to Mrs. Hudson, who had never
+had the case put for her son with such ingenious hopefulness, and found
+herself disrelishing the singular situation of seeming to side against
+her own flesh and blood with a lawyer whose conversational tone betrayed
+the habit of cross-questioning.
+
+"My son, then," she ventured to ask, "my son has great--what you would
+call great powers?"
+
+"To my sense, very great powers."
+
+Poor Mrs. Hudson actually smiled, broadly, gleefully, and glanced at
+Miss Garland, as if to invite her to do likewise. But the young girl's
+face remained serious, like the eastern sky when the opposite sunset is
+too feeble to make it glow. "Do you really know?" she asked, looking at
+Rowland.
+
+"One cannot know in such a matter save after proof, and proof takes
+time. But one can believe."
+
+"And you believe?"
+
+"I believe."
+
+But even then Miss Garland vouchsafed no smile. Her face became graver
+than ever.
+
+"Well, well," said Mrs. Hudson, "we must hope that it is all for the
+best."
+
+Mr. Striker eyed his old friend for a moment with a look of some
+displeasure; he saw that this was but a cunning feminine imitation of
+resignation, and that, through some untraceable process of transition,
+she was now taking more comfort in the opinions of this insinuating
+stranger than in his own tough dogmas. He rose to his feet,
+without pulling down his waistcoat, but with a wrinkled grin at the
+inconsistency of women. "Well, sir, Mr. Roderick's powers are nothing to
+me," he said, "nor no use he makes of them. Good or bad, he 's no son
+of mine. But, in a friendly way, I 'm glad to hear so fine an account
+of him. I 'm glad, madam, you 're so satisfied with the prospect.
+Affection, sir, you see, must have its guarantees!" He paused a moment,
+stroking his beard, with his head inclined and one eye half-closed,
+looking at Rowland. The look was grotesque, but it was significant, and
+it puzzled Rowland more than it amused him. "I suppose you 're a very
+brilliant young man," he went on, "very enlightened, very cultivated,
+quite up to the mark in the fine arts and all that sort of thing. I 'm a
+plain, practical old boy, content to follow an honorable profession in a
+free country. I did n't go off to the Old World to learn my business; no
+one took me by the hand; I had to grease my wheels myself, and, such as
+I am, I 'm a self-made man, every inch of me! Well, if our young friend
+is booked for fame and fortune, I don't suppose his going to Rome will
+stop him. But, mind you, it won't help him such a long way, either. If
+you have undertaken to put him through, there 's a thing or two you 'd
+better remember. The crop we gather depends upon the seed we sow. He may
+be the biggest genius of the age: his potatoes won't come up without his
+hoeing them. If he takes things so almighty easy as--well, as one or two
+young fellows of genius I 've had under my eye--his produce will never
+gain the prize. Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch
+by inch, and does n't believe that we 'll wake up to find our work done
+because we 've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is
+devilish hard to do! If your young protajay finds things easy and has
+a good time and says he likes the life, it 's a sign that--as I may
+say--you had better step round to the office and look at the books. That
+'s all I desire to remark. No offense intended. I hope you 'll have a
+first-rate time."
+
+Rowland could honestly reply that this seemed pregnant sense, and he
+offered Mr. Striker a friendly hand-shake as the latter withdrew. But
+Mr. Striker's rather grim view of matters cast a momentary shadow on his
+companions, and Mrs. Hudson seemed to feel that it necessitated between
+them some little friendly agreement not to be overawed.
+
+Rowland sat for some time longer, partly because he wished to please the
+two women and partly because he was strangely pleased himself. There
+was something touching in their unworldly fears and diffident hopes,
+something almost terrible in the way poor little Mrs. Hudson seemed
+to flutter and quiver with intense maternal passion. She put forth one
+timid conversational venture after another, and asked Rowland a number
+of questions about himself, his age, his family, his occupations, his
+tastes, his religious opinions. Rowland had an odd feeling at last that
+she had begun to consider him very exemplary, and that she might
+make, later, some perturbing discovery. He tried, therefore, to invent
+something that would prepare her to find him fallible. But he could
+think of nothing. It only seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly
+mistrusted him, and that he must leave her to render him the service,
+after he had gone, of making him the object of a little firm derogation.
+Mrs. Hudson talked with low-voiced eagerness about her son.
+
+"He 's very lovable, sir, I assure you. When you come to know him you
+'ll find him very lovable. He 's a little spoiled, of course; he has
+always done with me as he pleased; but he 's a good boy, I 'm sure he 's
+a good boy. And every one thinks him very attractive: I 'm sure he 'd be
+noticed, anywhere. Don't you think he 's very handsome, sir? He features
+his poor father. I had another--perhaps you 've been told. He was
+killed." And the poor little lady bravely smiled, for fear of doing
+worse. "He was a very fine boy, but very different from Roderick.
+Roderick is a little strange; he has never been an easy boy. Sometimes
+I feel like the goose--was n't it a goose, dear?" and startled by the
+audacity of her comparison she appealed to Miss Garland--"the goose, or
+the hen, who hatched a swan's egg. I have never been able to give him
+what he needs. I have always thought that in more--in more brilliant
+circumstances he might find his place and be happy. But at the same time
+I was afraid of the world for him; it was so large and dangerous and
+dreadful. No doubt I know very little about it. I never suspected, I
+confess, that it contained persons of such liberality as yours."
+
+Rowland replied that, evidently, she had done the world but scanty
+justice. "No," objected Miss Garland, after a pause, "it is like
+something in a fairy tale."
+
+"What, pray?"
+
+"Your coming here all unknown, so rich and so polite, and carrying off
+my cousin in a golden cloud."
+
+If this was badinage Miss Garland had the best of it, for Rowland almost
+fell a-musing silently over the question whether there was a possibility
+of irony in that transparent gaze. Before he withdrew, Mrs. Hudson made
+him tell her again that Roderick's powers were extraordinary. He had
+inspired her with a clinging, caressing faith in his wisdom. "He will
+really do great things," she asked, "the very greatest?"
+
+"I see no reason in his talent itself why he should not."
+
+"Well, we 'll think of that as we sit here alone," she rejoined. "Mary
+and I will sit here and talk about it. So I give him up," she went on,
+as he was going. "I 'm sure you 'll be the best of friends to him,
+but if you should ever forget him, or grow tired of him, or lose your
+interest in him, and he should come to any harm or any trouble, please,
+sir, remember"--And she paused, with a tremulous voice.
+
+"Remember, my dear madam?"
+
+"That he is all I have--that he is everything--and that it would be very
+terrible."
+
+"In so far as I can help him, he shall succeed," was all Rowland could
+say. He turned to Miss Garland, to bid her good night, and she rose and
+put out her hand. She was very straightforward, but he could see that if
+she was too modest to be bold, she was much too simple to be shy. "Have
+you no charge to lay upon me?" he asked--to ask her something.
+
+She looked at him a moment and then, although she was not shy, she
+blushed. "Make him do his best," she said.
+
+Rowland noted the soft intensity with which the words were uttered. "Do
+you take a great interest in him?" he demanded.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then, if he will not do his best for you, he will not do it for me."
+She turned away with another blush, and Rowland took his leave.
+
+He walked homeward, thinking of many things. The great Northampton
+elms interarched far above in the darkness, but the moon had risen and
+through scattered apertures was hanging the dusky vault with silver
+lamps. There seemed to Rowland something intensely serious in the scene
+in which he had just taken part. He had laughed and talked and braved it
+out in self-defense; but when he reflected that he was really meddling
+with the simple stillness of this little New England home, and that he
+had ventured to disturb so much living security in the interest of a
+far-away, fantastic hypothesis, he paused, amazed at his temerity. It
+was true, as Cecilia had said, that for an unofficious man it was a
+singular position. There stirred in his mind an odd feeling of annoyance
+with Roderick for having thus peremptorily enlisted his sympathies. As
+he looked up and down the long vista, and saw the clear white houses
+glancing here and there in the broken moonshine, he could almost have
+believed that the happiest lot for any man was to make the most of life
+in some such tranquil spot as that. Here were kindness, comfort, safety,
+the warning voice of duty, the perfect hush of temptation. And as
+Rowland looked along the arch of silvered shadow and out into the lucid
+air of the American night, which seemed so doubly vast, somehow, and
+strange and nocturnal, he felt like declaring that here was beauty
+too--beauty sufficient for an artist not to starve upon it. As he stood,
+lost in the darkness, he presently heard a rapid tread on the other side
+of the road, accompanied by a loud, jubilant whistle, and in a moment
+a figure emerged into an open gap of moonshine. He had no difficulty
+in recognizing Hudson, who was presumably returning from a visit to
+Cecilia. Roderick stopped suddenly and stared up at the moon, with his
+face vividly illumined. He broke out into a snatch of song:--
+
+"The splendor falls on castle walls
+And snowy summits old in story!"
+
+And with a great, musical roll of his voice he went swinging off into
+the darkness again, as if his thoughts had lent him wings. He was
+dreaming of the inspiration of foreign lands,--of castled crags and
+historic landscapes. What a pity, after all, thought Rowland, as he went
+his own way, that he should n't have a taste of it!
+
+It had been a very just remark of Cecilia's that Roderick would change
+with a change in his circumstances. Rowland had telegraphed to New York
+for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came
+Hudson's spirits rose to incalculable heights. He was radiant with
+good-humor, and his kindly jollity seemed the pledge of a brilliant
+future. He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old
+grievances, and seemed every way reconciled to a world in which he was
+going to count as an active force. He was inexhaustibly loquacious and
+fantastic, and as Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that
+it was only to be feared he was going to start not for Europe but for
+heaven. He took long walks with Rowland, who felt more and more the
+fascination of what he would have called his giftedness. Rowland
+returned several times to Mrs. Hudson's, and found the two ladies doing
+their best to be happy in their companion's happiness. Miss Garland, he
+thought, was succeeding better than her demeanor on his first visit had
+promised. He tried to have some especial talk with her, but her extreme
+reserve forced him to content himself with such response to his rather
+urgent overtures as might be extracted from a keenly attentive smile.
+It must be confessed, however, that if the response was vague, the
+satisfaction was great, and that Rowland, after his second visit, kept
+seeing a lurking reflection of this smile in the most unexpected places.
+It seemed strange that she should please him so well at so slender
+a cost, but please him she did, prodigiously, and his pleasure had
+a quality altogether new to him. It made him restless, and a trifle
+melancholy; he walked about absently, wondering and wishing. He
+wondered, among other things, why fate should have condemned him to
+make the acquaintance of a girl whom he would make a sacrifice to know
+better, just as he was leaving the country for years. It seemed to him
+that he was turning his back on a chance of happiness--happiness of a
+sort of which the slenderest germ should be cultivated. He asked himself
+whether, feeling as he did, if he had only himself to please, he would
+give up his journey and--wait. He had Roderick to please now, for whom
+disappointment would be cruel; but he said to himself that certainly, if
+there were no Roderick in the case, the ship should sail without him.
+He asked Hudson several questions about his cousin, but Roderick,
+confidential on most points, seemed to have reasons of his own for
+being reticent on this one. His measured answers quickened Rowland's
+curiosity, for Miss Garland, with her own irritating half-suggestions,
+had only to be a subject of guarded allusion in others to become
+intolerably interesting. He learned from Roderick that she was the
+daughter of a country minister, a far-away cousin of his mother,
+settled in another part of the State; that she was one of a half-a-dozen
+daughters, that the family was very poor, and that she had come a couple
+of months before to pay his mother a long visit. "It is to be a very
+long one now," he said, "for it is settled that she is to remain while I
+am away."
+
+The fermentation of contentment in Roderick's soul reached its climax a
+few days before the young men were to make their farewells. He had been
+sitting with his friends on Cecilia's veranda, but for half an hour past
+he had said nothing. Lounging back against a vine-wreathed column and
+gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling softly to himself with that
+indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, and which
+in him had a sort of pleading grace. At last, springing up: "I want to
+strike out, hard!" he exclaimed. "I want to do something violent, to let
+off steam!"
+
+"I 'll tell you what to do, this lovely weather," said Cecilia. "Give a
+picnic. It can be as violent as you please, and it will have the merit
+of leading off our emotion into a safe channel, as well as yours."
+
+Roderick laughed uproariously at Cecilia's very practical remedy for his
+sentimental need, but a couple of days later, nevertheless, the picnic
+was given. It was to be a family party, but Roderick, in his magnanimous
+geniality, insisted on inviting Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland
+mentally applauded. "And we 'll have Mrs. Striker, too," he said, "if
+she 'll come, to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we
+'ll have Miss Striker--the divine Petronilla!" The young lady thus
+denominated formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland, and Cecilia, the
+feminine half of the company. Mr. Striker presented himself, sacrificing
+a morning's work, with a magnanimity greater even than Roderick's, and
+foreign support was further secured in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the
+young Orthodox minister. Roderick had chosen the feasting-place; he
+knew it well and had passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his
+length on the grass and gazing at the blue undulations of the horizon.
+It was a meadow on the edge of a wood, with mossy rocks protruding
+through the grass and a little lake on the other side. It was a
+cloudless August day; Rowland always remembered it, and the scene, and
+everything that was said and done, with extraordinary distinctness.
+Roderick surpassed himself in friendly jollity, and at one moment, when
+exhilaration was at the highest, was seen in Mr. Striker's high white
+hat, drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup to Mr. Striker's health.
+Miss Striker had her father's pale blue eye; she was dressed as if she
+were going to sit for her photograph, and remained for a long time with
+Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake. Mrs. Hudson sat
+all day with a little meek, apprehensive smile. She was afraid of an
+"accident," though unless Miss Striker (who indeed was a little of
+a romp) should push Roderick into the lake, it was hard to see what
+accident could occur. Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and uncrumpled
+at the end of the festival as at the beginning. Mr. Whitefoot, who but
+a twelvemonth later became a convert to episcopacy and was already
+cultivating a certain conversational sonority, devoted himself to
+Cecilia. He had a little book in his pocket, out of which he read to
+her at intervals, lying stretched at her feet, and it was a lasting joke
+with Cecilia, afterwards, that she would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot's
+little book had been. Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland,
+while the feasting went forward on the grass. She wore a so-called gypsy
+hat--a little straw hat, tied down over her ears, so as to cast her
+eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it. When the company
+dispersed, after lunch, he proposed to her to take a stroll in the
+wood. She hesitated a moment and looked toward Mrs. Hudson, as if for
+permission to leave her. But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker,
+who sat gossiping to her with relaxed magniloquence, his waistcoat
+unbuttoned and his hat on his nose.
+
+"You can give your cousin your society at any time," said Rowland. "But
+me, perhaps, you 'll never see again."
+
+"Why then should we wish to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?"
+she asked, with homely logic. But by this time she had consented, and
+they were treading the fallen pine-needles.
+
+"Oh, one must take all one can get," said Rowland. "If we can be friends
+for half an hour, it 's so much gained."
+
+"Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?"
+
+"'Never' is a good deal to say. But I go to Europe for a long stay."
+
+"Do you prefer it so much to your own country?"
+
+"I will not say that. But I have the misfortune to be a rather idle man,
+and in Europe the burden of idleness is less heavy than here."
+
+She was silent for a few minutes; then at last, "In that, then, we are
+better than Europe," she said. To a certain point Rowland agreed with
+her, but he demurred, to make her say more.
+
+"Would n't it be better," she asked, "to work to get reconciled to
+America, than to go to Europe to get reconciled to idleness?"
+
+"Doubtless; but you know work is hard to find."
+
+"I come from a little place where every one has plenty," said Miss
+Garland. "We all work; every one I know works. And really," she added
+presently, "I look at you with curiosity; you are the first unoccupied
+man I ever saw."
+
+"Don't look at me too hard," said Rowland, smiling. "I shall sink into
+the earth. What is the name of your little place?"
+
+"West Nazareth," said Miss Garland, with her usual sobriety. "It is not
+so very little, though it 's smaller than Northampton."
+
+"I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth," Rowland said.
+
+"You would not like it," Miss Garland declared reflectively. "Though
+there are far finer woods there than this. We have miles and miles of
+woods."
+
+"I might chop down trees," said Rowland. "That is, if you allow it."
+
+"Allow it? Why, where should we get our firewood?" Then, noticing that
+he had spoken jestingly, she glanced at him askance, though with no
+visible diminution of her gravity. "Don't you know how to do anything?
+Have you no profession?"
+
+Rowland shook his head. "Absolutely none."
+
+"What do you do all day?"
+
+"Nothing worth relating. That 's why I am going to Europe. There, at
+least, if I do nothing, I shall see a great deal; and if I 'm not a
+producer, I shall at any rate be an observer."
+
+"Can't we observe everywhere?"
+
+"Certainly; and I really think that in that way I make the most of my
+opportunities. Though I confess," he continued, "that I often remember
+there are things to be seen here to which I probably have n't done
+justice. I should like, for instance, to see West Nazareth."
+
+She looked round at him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she exactly
+supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not
+necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior
+motive. In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives. The girl
+beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that her charm
+was essentially her own and not reflected from social circumstance,
+he wished to give himself the satisfaction of contrasting her with the
+meagre influences of her education. Miss Garland's second movement was
+to take him at his word. "Since you are free to do as you please, why
+don't you go there?"
+
+"I am not free to do as I please now. I have offered your cousin to bear
+him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm, and I cannot
+retract."
+
+"Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?"
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment. "I think I may almost say so."
+
+Miss Garland walked along in silence. "Do you mean to do a great deal
+for him?" she asked at last.
+
+"What I can. But my power of helping him is very small beside his power
+of helping himself."
+
+For a moment she was silent again. "You are very generous," she said,
+almost solemnly.
+
+"No, I am simply very shrewd. Roderick will repay me. It 's an
+investment. At first, I think," he added shortly afterwards, "you would
+not have paid me that compliment. You distrusted me."
+
+She made no attempt to deny it. "I did n't see why you should wish to
+make Roderick discontented. I thought you were rather frivolous."
+
+"You did me injustice. I don't think I 'm that."
+
+"It was because you are unlike other men--those, at least, whom I have
+seen."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why, as you describe yourself. You have no duties, no profession, no
+home. You live for your pleasure."
+
+"That 's all very true. And yet I maintain I 'm not frivolous."
+
+"I hope not," said Miss Garland, simply. They had reached a point where
+the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks which lost
+themselves in a verdurous tangle. Miss Garland seemed to think that the
+difficulty of choice between them was a reason for giving them up and
+turning back. Rowland thought otherwise, and detected agreeable grounds
+for preference in the left-hand path. As a compromise, they sat down on
+a fallen log. Looking about him, Rowland espied a curious wild shrub,
+with a spotted crimson leaf; he went and plucked a spray of it and
+brought it to Miss Garland. He had never observed it before, but she
+immediately called it by its name. She expressed surprise at his not
+knowing it; it was extremely common. He presently brought her a specimen
+of another delicate plant, with a little blue-streaked flower. "I
+suppose that 's common, too," he said, "but I have never seen it--or
+noticed it, at least." She answered that this one was rare, and
+meditated a moment before she could remember its name. At last she
+recalled it, and expressed surprise at his having found the plant in the
+woods; she supposed it grew only in open marshes. Rowland complimented
+her on her fund of useful information.
+
+"It 's not especially useful," she answered; "but I like to know the
+names of plants as I do those of my acquaintances. When we walk in the
+woods at home--which we do so much--it seems as unnatural not to know
+what to call the flowers as it would be to see some one in the town with
+whom we were not on speaking terms."
+
+"Apropos of frivolity," Rowland said, "I 'm sure you have very little
+of it, unless at West Nazareth it is considered frivolous to walk in the
+woods and nod to the nodding flowers. Do kindly tell me a little about
+yourself." And to compel her to begin, "I know you come of a race of
+theologians," he went on.
+
+"No," she replied, deliberating; "they are not theologians, though they
+are ministers. We don't take a very firm stand upon doctrine; we are
+practical, rather. We write sermons and preach them, but we do a great
+deal of hard work beside."
+
+"And of this hard work what has your share been?"
+
+"The hardest part: doing nothing."
+
+"What do you call nothing?"
+
+"I taught school a while: I must make the most of that. But I confess I
+did n't like it. Otherwise, I have only done little things at home, as
+they turned up."
+
+"What kind of things?"
+
+"Oh, every kind. If you had seen my home, you would understand."
+
+Rowland would have liked to make her specify; but he felt a more urgent
+need to respect her simplicity than he had ever felt to defer to the
+complex circumstance of certain other women. "To be happy, I imagine,"
+he contented himself with saying, "you need to be occupied. You need to
+have something to expend yourself upon."
+
+"That is not so true as it once was; now that I am older, I am sure I am
+less impatient of leisure. Certainly, these two months that I have been
+with Mrs. Hudson, I have had a terrible amount of it. And yet I have
+liked it! And now that I am probably to be with her all the while that
+her son is away, I look forward to more with a resignation that I don't
+quite know what to make of."
+
+"It is settled, then, that you are to remain with your cousin?"
+
+"It depends upon their writing from home that I may stay. But that is
+probable. Only I must not forget," she said, rising, "that the ground
+for my doing so is that she be not left alone."
+
+"I am glad to know," said Rowland, "that I shall probably often hear
+about you. I assure you I shall often think about you!" These words were
+half impulsive, half deliberate. They were the simple truth, and he had
+asked himself why he should not tell her the truth. And yet they were
+not all of it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she
+received this. She received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without
+a shadow of coquetry, of any apparent thought of listening to it
+gracefully, but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation, which
+seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step. Evidently, if
+Rowland was to take pleasure in hearing about her, it would have to be a
+highly disinterested pleasure. She answered nothing, and Rowland too,
+as he walked beside her, was silent; but as he looked along the
+shadow-woven wood-path, what he was really facing was a level three
+years of disinterestedness. He ushered them in by talking composed
+civility until he had brought Miss Garland back to her companions.
+
+He saw her but once again. He was obliged to be in New York a couple of
+days before sailing, and it was arranged that Roderick should overtake
+him at the last moment. The evening before he left Northampton he went
+to say farewell to Mrs. Hudson. The ceremony was brief. Rowland soon
+perceived that the poor little lady was in the melting mood, and, as he
+dreaded her tears, he compressed a multitude of solemn promises into a
+silent hand-shake and took his leave. Miss Garland, she had told him,
+was in the back-garden with Roderick: he might go out to them. He did
+so, and as he drew near he heard Roderick's high-pitched voice ringing
+behind the shrubbery. In a moment, emerging, he found Miss Garland
+leaning against a tree, with her cousin before her talking with great
+emphasis. He asked pardon for interrupting them, and said he wished only
+to bid her good-by. She gave him her hand and he made her his bow in
+silence. "Don't forget," he said to Roderick, as he turned away. "And
+don't, in this company, repent of your bargain."
+
+"I shall not let him," said Miss Garland, with something very like
+gayety. "I shall see that he is punctual. He must go! I owe you an
+apology for having doubted that he ought to." And in spite of the dusk
+Rowland could see that she had an even finer smile than he had supposed.
+
+Roderick was punctual, eagerly punctual, and they went. Rowland for
+several days was occupied with material cares, and lost sight of his
+sentimental perplexities. But they only slumbered, and they were
+sharply awakened. The weather was fine, and the two young men always sat
+together upon deck late into the evening. One night, toward the last,
+they were at the stern of the great ship, watching her grind the solid
+blackness of the ocean into phosphorescent foam. They talked on these
+occasions of everything conceivable, and had the air of having no
+secrets from each other. But it was on Roderick's conscience that this
+air belied him, and he was too frank by nature, moreover, for permanent
+reticence on any point.
+
+"I must tell you something," he said at last. "I should like you to know
+it, and you will be so glad to know it. Besides, it 's only a question
+of time; three months hence, probably, you would have guessed it. I am
+engaged to Mary Garland."
+
+Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm, it seemed to him that the
+ship gave a great dizzying lurch. But in a moment he contrived to
+answer coherently: "Engaged to Miss Garland! I never supposed--I never
+imagined"--
+
+"That I was in love with her?" Roderick interrupted. "Neither did I,
+until this last fortnight. But you came and put me into such ridiculous
+good-humor that I felt an extraordinary desire to tell some woman that I
+adored her. Miss Garland is a magnificent girl; you know her too little
+to do her justice. I have been quietly learning to know her, these
+past three months, and have been falling in love with her without
+being conscious of it. It appeared, when I spoke to her, that she had
+a kindness for me. So the thing was settled. I must of course make some
+money before we can marry. It 's rather droll, certainly, to engage
+one's self to a girl whom one is going to leave the next day, for years.
+We shall be condemned, for some time to come, to do a terrible deal
+of abstract thinking about each other. But I wanted her blessing on my
+career and I could not help asking for it. Unless a man is unnaturally
+selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure
+I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that fine
+creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news of my greatness. If ever I
+am a dull companion and over-addicted to moping, remember in justice
+to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart is five thousand miles
+away."
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a sort of feeling that fortune had
+played him an elaborately-devised trick. It had lured him out into
+mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a
+singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him
+a thumping blow in mid-chest. "Yes," he said, after an attempt at the
+usual formal congratulation, "you certainly ought to do better--with
+Miss Garland waiting for you at Northampton."
+
+Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was eloquent and rung a hundred
+changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man. Then at last,
+suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that he must go to bed.
+Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late, between sea and sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. Rome
+
+One warm, still day, late in the Roman autumn, our two young men were
+sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed pines of the Villa Ludovisi.
+They had been spending an hour in the mouldy little garden-house, where
+the colossal mask of the famous Juno looks out with blank eyes from that
+dusky corner which must seem to her the last possible stage of a lapse
+from Olympus. Then they had wandered out into the gardens, and
+were lounging away the morning under the spell of their magical
+picturesqueness. Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that,
+after the Juno, it was a profanation to look at anything but sky and
+trees. There was a fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had
+seen it on his former visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects.
+But Roderick, though he had never seen it, declared that it could n't
+be worth a fig, and that he did n't care to look at ugly things. He
+remained stretched on his overcoat, which he had spread on the grass,
+while Rowland went off envying the intellectual comfort of genius, which
+can arrive at serene conclusions without disagreeable processes. When
+the latter came back, his friend was sitting with his elbows on his
+knees and his head in his hands. Rowland, in the geniality of a mood
+attuned to the mellow charm of a Roman villa, found a good word to say
+for the Guercino; but he chiefly talked of the view from the little
+belvedere on the roof of the casino, and how it looked like the prospect
+from a castle turret in a fairy tale.
+
+"Very likely," said Roderick, throwing himself back with a yawn. "But I
+must let it pass. I have seen enough for the present; I have reached the
+top of the hill. I have an indigestion of impressions; I must work them
+off before I go in for any more. I don't want to look at any more of
+other people's works, for a month--not even at Nature's own. I want to
+look at Roderick Hudson's. The result of it all is that I 'm not afraid.
+I can but try, as well as the rest of them! The fellow who did that
+gazing goddess yonder only made an experiment. The other day, when I
+was looking at Michael Angelo's Moses, I was seized with a kind
+of defiance--a reaction against all this mere passive enjoyment of
+grandeur. It was a rousing great success, certainly, that rose there
+before me, but somehow it was not an inscrutable mystery, and it seemed
+to me, not perhaps that I should some day do as well, but that at least
+I might!"
+
+"As you say, you can but try," said Rowland. "Success is only passionate
+effort."
+
+"Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely.
+It came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since
+I left Northampton. I can't believe it!"
+
+"It certainly seems more."
+
+"It seems like ten years. What an exquisite ass I was!"
+
+"Do you feel so wise now?"
+
+"Verily! Don't I look so? Surely I have n't the same face. Have n't I a
+different eye, a different expression, a different voice?"
+
+"I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition. But it 's very
+likely. You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized. I
+dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland would think so."
+
+"That 's not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted."
+
+Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened
+narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations.
+
+"Are you very sure?" he replied.
+
+"Why, she 's a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance
+that I had become a cynical sybarite." Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian
+watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third
+finger of his left hand.
+
+"Will you think I take a liberty," asked Rowland, "if I say you judge
+her superficially?"
+
+"For heaven's sake," cried Roderick, laughing, "don't tell me she 's
+not a moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her, and with rigid
+virtue in her person."
+
+"She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one. That 's more
+than a difference in degree; it 's a difference in kind. I don't know
+whether I ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely. There is
+nothing narrow about her but her experience; everything else is large.
+My impression of her is of a person of great capacity, as yet wholly
+unmeasured and untested. Some day or other, I 'm sure, she will judge
+fairly and wisely of everything."
+
+"Stay a bit!" cried Roderick; "you 're a better Catholic than the Pope.
+I shall be content if she judges fairly of me--of my merits, that is.
+The rest she must not judge at all. She 's a grimly devoted little
+creature; may she always remain so! Changed as I am, I adore her none
+the less. What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions," he went
+on, after a long pause, "all the material of thought that life pours
+into us at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these?
+There are twenty moments a week--a day, for that matter, some days--that
+seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate, that appear to
+form an intellectual era. But others come treading on their heels and
+sweeping them along, and they all melt like water into water and settle
+the question of precedence among themselves. The curious thing is that
+the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all
+one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different
+corners of a room, and take boarders."
+
+"I fancy it is our peculiar good luck that we don't see the limits of
+our minds," said Rowland. "We are young, compared with what we may one
+day be. That belongs to youth; it is perhaps the best part of it. They
+say that old people do find themselves at last face to face with a solid
+blank wall, and stand thumping against it in vain. It resounds, it seems
+to have something beyond it, but it won't move! That 's only a reason
+for living with open doors as long as we can!"
+
+"Open doors?" murmured Roderick. "Yes, let us close no doors that open
+upon Rome. For this, for the mind, is eternal summer! But though my
+doors may stand open to-day," he presently added, "I shall see no
+visitors. I want to pause and breathe; I want to dream of a statue.
+I have been working hard for three months; I have earned a right to a
+reverie."
+
+Rowland, on his side, was not without provision for reflection, and
+they lingered on in broken, desultory talk. Rowland felt the need for
+intellectual rest, for a truce to present care for churches, statues,
+and pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as
+he had really been living Roderick's intellectual life the past three
+months, as well as his own. As he looked back on these full-flavored
+weeks, he drew a long breath of satisfaction, almost of relief.
+Roderick, thus far, had justified his confidence and flattered his
+perspicacity; he was rapidly unfolding into an ideal brilliancy. He was
+changed even more than he himself suspected; he had stepped, without
+faltering, into his birthright, and was spending money, intellectually,
+as lavishly as a young heir who has just won an obstructive lawsuit.
+Roderick's glance and voice were the same, doubtless, as when they
+enlivened the summer dusk on Cecilia's veranda, but in his person,
+generally, there was an indefinable expression of experience rapidly
+and easily assimilated. Rowland had been struck at the outset with the
+instinctive quickness of his observation and his free appropriation of
+whatever might serve his purpose. He had not been, for instance, half
+an hour on English soil before he perceived that he was dressed like
+a rustic, and he had immediately reformed his toilet with the most
+unerring tact. His appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for
+everything characteristically foreign, as it presented itself, he had an
+extravagant greeting; but in half an hour the novelty had faded, he had
+guessed the secret, he had plucked out the heart of the mystery and was
+clamoring for a keener sensation. At the end of a month, he presented,
+mentally, a puzzling spectacle to his companion. He had caught,
+instinctively, the key-note of the old world. He observed and enjoyed,
+he criticised and rhapsodized, but though all things interested him and
+many delighted him, none surprised him; he had divined their logic
+and measured their proportions, and referred them infallibly to their
+categories. Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution
+on the general spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments felt
+vaguely uneasy for the future; the boy was living too fast, he would
+have said, and giving alarming pledges to ennui in his later years. But
+we must live as our pulses are timed, and Roderick's struck the hour
+very often. He was, by imagination, though he never became in manner, a
+natural man of the world; he had intuitively, as an artist, what one may
+call the historic consciousness. He had a relish for social subtleties
+and mysteries, and, in perception, when occasion offered him an inch he
+never failed to take an ell. A single glimpse of a social situation of
+the elder type enabled him to construct the whole, with all its complex
+chiaroscuro, and Rowland more than once assured him that he made him
+believe in the metempsychosis, and that he must have lived in European
+society, in the last century, as a gentleman in a cocked hat and
+brocaded waistcoat. Hudson asked Rowland questions which poor Rowland
+was quite unable to answer, and of which he was equally unable to
+conceive where he had picked up the data. Roderick ended by answering
+them himself, tolerably to his satisfaction, and in a short time he
+had almost turned the tables and become in their walks and talks the
+accredited source of information. Rowland told him that when he turned
+sculptor a capital novelist was spoiled, and that to match his eye for
+social detail one would have to go to Honore de Balzac. In all this
+Rowland took a generous pleasure; he felt an especial kindness for his
+comrade's radiant youthfulness of temperament. He was so much younger
+than he himself had ever been! And surely youth and genius, hand in
+hand, were the most beautiful sight in the world. Roderick added to this
+the charm of his more immediately personal qualities. The vivacity of
+his perceptions, the audacity of his imagination, the picturesqueness
+of his phrase when he was pleased,--and even more when he was
+displeased,--his abounding good-humor, his candor, his unclouded
+frankness, his unfailing impulse to share every emotion and impression
+with his friend; all this made comradeship a pure felicity, and
+interfused with a deeper amenity their long evening talks at cafe doors
+in Italian towns.
+
+They had gone almost immediately to Paris, and had spent their days at
+the Louvre and their evenings at the theatre. Roderick was divided in
+mind as to whether Titian or Mademoiselle Delaporte was the greater
+artist. They had come down through France to Genoa and Milan, had spent
+a fortnight in Venice and another in Florence, and had now been a month
+in Rome. Roderick had said that he meant to spend three months in simply
+looking, absorbing, and reflecting, without putting pencil to paper. He
+looked indefatigably, and certainly saw great things--things greater,
+doubtless, at times, than the intentions of the artist. And yet he made
+few false steps and wasted little time in theories of what he ought to
+like and to dislike. He judged instinctively and passionately, but
+never vulgarly. At Venice, for a couple of days, he had half a fit of
+melancholy over the pretended discovery that he had missed his way, and
+that the only proper vestment of plastic conceptions was the coloring
+of Titian and Paul Veronese. Then one morning the two young men had
+themselves rowed out to Torcello, and Roderick lay back for a couple
+of hours watching a brown-breasted gondolier making superb muscular
+movements, in high relief, against the sky of the Adriatic, and at the
+end jerked himself up with a violence that nearly swamped the gondola,
+and declared that the only thing worth living for was to make a colossal
+bronze and set it aloft in the light of a public square. In Rome his
+first care was for the Vatican; he went there again and again. But the
+old imperial and papal city altogether delighted him; only there he
+really found what he had been looking for from the first--the complete
+antipodes of Northampton. And indeed Rome is the natural home of those
+spirits with which we just now claimed fellowship for Roderick--the
+spirits with a deep relish for the artificial element in life and
+the infinite superpositions of history. It is the immemorial city of
+convention. The stagnant Roman air is charged with convention; it colors
+the yellow light and deepens the chilly shadows. And in that still
+recent day the most impressive convention in all history was visible to
+men's eyes, in the Roman streets, erect in a gilded coach drawn by four
+black horses. Roderick's first fortnight was a high aesthetic revel.
+He declared that Rome made him feel and understand more things than
+he could express: he was sure that life must have there, for all one's
+senses, an incomparable fineness; that more interesting things must
+happen to one than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that
+he meant to live freely and largely, and be as interested as occasion
+demanded. Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of
+dissipation, because, in the first place, there was in all dissipation,
+refine it as one might, a grossness which would disqualify it for
+Roderick's favor, and because, in the second, the young sculptor was
+a man to regard all things in the light of his art, to hand over his
+passions to his genius to be dealt with, and to find that he could live
+largely enough without exceeding the circle of wholesome curiosity.
+Rowland took immense satisfaction in his companion's deep impatience to
+make something of all his impressions. Some of these indeed found their
+way into a channel which did not lead to statues, but it was none the
+less a safe one. He wrote frequent long letters to Miss Garland; when
+Rowland went with him to post them he thought wistfully of the
+fortune of the great loosely-written missives, which cost Roderick
+unconscionable sums in postage. He received punctual answers of a more
+frugal form, written in a clear, minute hand, on paper vexatiously thin.
+If Rowland was present when they came, he turned away and thought of
+other things--or tried to. These were the only moments when his
+sympathy halted, and they were brief. For the rest he let the days go by
+unprotestingly, and enjoyed Roderick's serene efflorescence as he would
+have done a beautiful summer sunrise. Rome, for the past month, had been
+delicious. The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and sunny
+leisure seemed to brood over the city.
+
+Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento
+of the great Juno. Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel, and the
+young men, looking up, saw three persons advancing. One was a woman
+of middle age, with a rather grand air and a great many furbelows. She
+looked very hard at our friends as she passed, and glanced back over her
+shoulder, as if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed
+her. She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she
+must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in
+a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly
+buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a
+pair of soiled light gloves. He was a grotesque-looking personage,
+and might have passed for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by
+adversity to playing cicerone to foreigners of distinction. He had a
+little black eye which glittered like a diamond and rolled about like a
+ball of quicksilver, and a white moustache, cut short and stiff, like a
+worn-out brush. He was smiling with extreme urbanity, and talking in a
+low, mellifluous voice to the lady, who evidently was not listening
+to him. At a considerable distance behind this couple strolled a young
+girl, apparently of about twenty. She was tall and slender, and dressed
+with extreme elegance; she led by a cord a large poodle of the most
+fantastic aspect. He was combed and decked like a ram for sacrifice; his
+trunk and haunches were of the most transparent pink, his fleecy head
+and shoulders as white as jeweler's cotton, and his tail and ears
+ornamented with long blue ribbons. He stepped along stiffly and solemnly
+beside his mistress, with an air of conscious elegance. There was
+something at first slightly ridiculous in the sight of a young lady
+gravely appended to an animal of these incongruous attributes, and
+Roderick, with his customary frankness, greeted the spectacle with a
+confident smile. The young girl perceived it and turned her face full
+upon him, with a gaze intended apparently to enforce greater deference.
+It was not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled,
+submissive admiration; Roderick's smile fell dead, and he sat eagerly
+staring. A pair of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass of dusky hair
+over a low forehead, a blooming oval of perfect purity, a flexible
+lip, just touched with disdain, the step and carriage of a tired
+princess--these were the general features of his vision. The young lady
+was walking slowly and letting her long dress rustle over the gravel;
+the young men had time to see her distinctly before she averted her
+face and went her way. She left a vague, sweet perfume behind her as she
+passed.
+
+"Immortal powers!" cried Roderick, "what a vision! In the name of
+transcendent perfection, who is she?" He sprang up and stood looking
+after her until she rounded a turn in the avenue. "What a movement, what
+a manner, what a poise of the head! I wonder if she would sit to me."
+
+"You had better go and ask her," said Rowland, laughing. "She is
+certainly most beautiful."
+
+"Beautiful? She 's beauty itself--she 's a revelation. I don't believe
+she is living--she 's a phantasm, a vapor, an illusion!"
+
+"The poodle," said Rowland, "is certainly alive."
+
+"Nay, he too may be a grotesque phantom, like the black dog in Faust."
+
+"I hope at least that the young lady has nothing in common with
+Mephistopheles. She looked dangerous."
+
+"If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton," said Roderick,
+"she is the incarnation of evil. The mamma and the queer old gentleman,
+moreover, are a pledge of her reality. Who are they all?"
+
+"The Prince and Princess Ludovisi and the principessina," suggested
+Rowland.
+
+"There are no such people," said Roderick. "Besides, the little old man
+is not the papa." Rowland smiled, wondering how he had ascertained
+these facts, and the young sculptor went on. "The old man is a Roman, a
+hanger-on of the mamma, a useful personage who now and then gets asked
+to dinner. The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country; I
+won't say which."
+
+"Perhaps from the State of Maine," said Rowland.
+
+"No, she 's not an American, I 'll lay a wager on that. She 's a
+daughter of this elder world. We shall see her again, I pray my stars;
+but if we don't, I shall have done something I never expected to--I
+shall have had a glimpse of ideal beauty." He sat down again and went
+on with his sketch of the Juno, scrawled away for ten minutes, and then
+handed the result in silence to Rowland. Rowland uttered an exclamation
+of surprise and applause. The drawing represented the Juno as to the
+position of the head, the brow, and the broad fillet across the hair;
+but the eyes, the mouth, the physiognomy were a vivid portrait of
+the young girl with the poodle. "I have been wanting a subject," said
+Roderick: "there 's one made to my hand! And now for work!"
+
+They saw no more of the young girl, though Roderick looked hopefully,
+for some days, into the carriages on the Pincian. She had evidently been
+but passing through Rome; Naples or Florence now happily possessed her,
+and she was guiding her fleecy companion through the Villa Reale or the
+Boboli Gardens with the same superb defiance of irony. Roderick went to
+work and spent a month shut up in his studio; he had an idea, and he was
+not to rest till he had embodied it. He had established himself in
+the basement of a huge, dusky, dilapidated old house, in that long,
+tortuous, and preeminently Roman street which leads from the Corso to
+the Bridge of St. Angelo. The black archway which admitted you might
+have served as the portal of the Augean stables, but you emerged
+presently upon a mouldy little court, of which the fourth side was
+formed by a narrow terrace, overhanging the Tiber. Here, along the
+parapet, were stationed half a dozen shapeless fragments of sculpture,
+with a couple of meagre orange-trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an
+oleander that never flowered. The unclean, historic river swept beneath;
+behind were dusky, reeking walls, spotted here and there with hanging
+rags and flower-pots in windows; opposite, at a distance, were the bare
+brown banks of the stream, the huge rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with
+its seraphic statue, the dome of St. Peter's, and the broad-topped pines
+of the Villa Doria. The place was crumbling and shabby and melancholy,
+but the river was delightful, the rent was a trifle, and everything was
+picturesque. Roderick was in the best humor with his quarters from the
+first, and was certain that the working mood there would be intenser
+in an hour than in twenty years of Northampton. His studio was a huge,
+empty room with a vaulted ceiling, covered with vague, dark traces of an
+old fresco, which Rowland, when he spent an hour with his friend, used
+to stare at vainly for some surviving coherence of floating draperies
+and clasping arms. Roderick had lodged himself economically in the same
+quarter. He occupied a fifth floor on the Ripetta, but he was only at
+home to sleep, for when he was not at work he was either lounging in
+Rowland's more luxurious rooms or strolling through streets and churches
+and gardens.
+
+Rowland had found a convenient corner in a stately old palace not far
+from the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home to which books and
+pictures and prints and odds and ends of curious furniture gave an air
+of leisurely permanence. He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half
+his afternoons ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers,
+and often made his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart of
+impecunious Roman households, which had been prevailed upon to
+listen--with closed doors and an impenetrably wary smile--to proposals
+for an hereditary "antique." In the evening, often, under the lamp,
+amid dropped curtains and the scattered gleam of firelight upon polished
+carvings and mellow paintings, the two friends sat with their heads
+together, criticising intaglios and etchings, water-color drawings and
+illuminated missals. Roderick's quick appreciation of every form of
+artistic beauty reminded his companion of the flexible temperament of
+those Italian artists of the sixteenth century who were indifferently
+painters and sculptors, sonneteers and engravers. At times when he saw
+how the young sculptor's day passed in a single sustained pulsation,
+while his own was broken into a dozen conscious devices for disposing of
+the hours, and intermingled with sighs, half suppressed, some of them,
+for conscience' sake, over what he failed of in action and missed in
+possession--he felt a pang of something akin to envy. But Rowland had
+two substantial aids for giving patience the air of contentment: he
+was an inquisitive reader and a passionate rider. He plunged into bulky
+German octavos on Italian history, and he spent long afternoons in
+the saddle, ranging over the grassy desolation of the Campagna. As the
+season went on and the social groups began to constitute themselves, he
+found that he knew a great many people and that he had easy opportunity
+for knowing others. He enjoyed a quiet corner of a drawing-room beside
+an agreeable woman, and although the machinery of what calls itself
+society seemed to him to have many superfluous wheels, he accepted
+invitations and made visits punctiliously, from the conviction that
+the only way not to be overcome by the ridiculous side of most of such
+observances is to take them with exaggerated gravity. He introduced
+Roderick right and left, and suffered him to make his way himself--an
+enterprise for which Roderick very soon displayed an all-sufficient
+capacity. Wherever he went he made, not exactly what is called a
+favorable impression, but what, from a practical point of view, is
+better--a puzzling one. He took to evening parties as a duck to water,
+and before the winter was half over was the most freely and frequently
+discussed young man in the heterogeneous foreign colony. Rowland's
+theory of his own duty was to let him run his course and play his
+cards, only holding himself ready to point out shoals and pitfalls,
+and administer a friendly propulsion through tight places. Roderick's
+manners on the precincts of the Pincian were quite the same as his
+manners on Cecilia's veranda: that is, they were no manners at all. But
+it remained as true as before that it would have been impossible, on the
+whole, to violate ceremony with less of lasting offense. He interrupted,
+he contradicted, he spoke to people he had never seen, and left his
+social creditors without the smallest conversational interest on their
+loans; he lounged and yawned, he talked loud when he should have
+talked low, and low when he should have talked loud. Many people, in
+consequence, thought him insufferably conceited, and declared that he
+ought to wait till he had something to show for his powers, before he
+assumed the airs of a spoiled celebrity. But to Rowland and to most
+friendly observers this judgment was quite beside the mark, and the
+young man's undiluted naturalness was its own justification. He
+was impulsive, spontaneous, sincere; there were so many people at
+dinner-tables and in studios who were not, that it seemed worth while
+to allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action. If Roderick
+took the words out of your mouth when you were just prepared to deliver
+them with the most effective accent, he did it with a perfect good
+conscience and with no pretension of a better right to being heard, but
+simply because he was full to overflowing of his own momentary thought
+and it sprang from his lips without asking leave. There were persons who
+waited on your periods much more deferentially, who were a hundred
+times more capable than Roderick of a reflective impertinence. Roderick
+received from various sources, chiefly feminine, enough finely-adjusted
+advice to have established him in life as an embodiment of the
+proprieties, and he received it, as he afterwards listened to criticisms
+on his statues, with unfaltering candor and good-humor. Here and there,
+doubtless, as he went, he took in a reef in his sail; but he was too
+adventurous a spirit to be successfully tamed, and he remained at
+most points the florid, rather strident young Virginian whose serene
+inflexibility had been the despair of Mr. Striker. All this was what
+friendly commentators (still chiefly feminine) alluded to when they
+spoke of his delightful freshness, and critics of harsher sensibilities
+(of the other sex) when they denounced his damned impertinence. His
+appearance enforced these impressions--his handsome face, his radiant,
+unaverted eyes, his childish, unmodulated voice. Afterwards, when those
+who loved him were in tears, there was something in all this unspotted
+comeliness that seemed to lend a mockery to the causes of their sorrow.
+
+Certainly, among the young men of genius who, for so many ages, have
+gone up to Rome to test their powers, none ever made a fairer beginning
+than Roderick. He rode his two horses at once with extraordinary good
+fortune; he established the happiest modus vivendi betwixt work and
+play. He wrestled all day with a mountain of clay in his studio, and
+chattered half the night away in Roman drawing-rooms. It all seemed part
+of a kind of divine facility. He was passionately interested, he was
+feeling his powers; now that they had thoroughly kindled in the glowing
+aesthetic atmosphere of Rome, the ardent young fellow should be pardoned
+for believing that he never was to see the end of them. He enjoyed
+immeasurably, after the chronic obstruction of home, the downright
+act of production. He kept models in his studio till they dropped with
+fatigue; he drew, on other days, at the Capitol and the Vatican, till
+his own head swam with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the
+cold. He had promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called
+an "Adam," and was pushing it rapidly toward completion. There were
+naturally a great many wiseheads who smiled at his precipitancy, and
+cited him as one more example of Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to
+the great army of those who wish to dance before they can walk. They
+were right, but Roderick was right too, for the success of his statue
+was not to have been foreseen; it partook, really, of the miraculous. He
+never surpassed it afterwards, and a good judge here and there has been
+known to pronounce it the finest piece of sculpture of our modern
+era. To Rowland it seemed to justify superbly his highest hopes of his
+friend, and he said to himself that if he had invested his happiness
+in fostering a genius, he ought now to be in possession of a boundless
+complacency. There was something especially confident and masterly in
+the artist's negligence of all such small picturesque accessories
+as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar apprehension. If it
+represented the father of the human race and the primal embodiment of
+human sensation, it did so in virtue of its look of balanced physical
+perfection, and deeply, eagerly sentient vitality. Rowland, in fraternal
+zeal, traveled up to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most
+magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it came down to
+Rome, the two young men had a "celebration." They drove out to Albano,
+breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn, and
+lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo. Roderick's
+head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with infinite
+spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their
+pedestals before him. He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in
+the streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw
+just missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his
+mind as a kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until, in some
+form or other, he had taken up the glove and set his lance in rest.
+
+The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it. Of the
+criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record;
+over many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month, and
+certain of the formulas of the connoisseurs, restrictive or indulgent,
+furnished Roderick with a permanent supply of humorous catch-words. But
+people enough spoke flattering good-sense to make Roderick feel as if
+he were already half famous. The statue passed formally into Rowland's
+possession, and was paid for as if an illustrious name had been chiseled
+on the pedestal. Poor Roderick owed every franc of the money. It was not
+for this, however, but because he was so gloriously in the mood, that,
+denying himself all breathing-time, on the same day he had given the
+last touch to the Adam, he began to shape the rough contour of an Eve.
+This went forward with equal rapidity and success. Roderick lost his
+temper, time and again, with his models, who offered but a gross,
+degenerate image of his splendid ideal; but his ideal, as he assured
+Rowland, became gradually such a fixed, vivid presence, that he had only
+to shut his eyes to behold a creature far more to his purpose than
+the poor girl who stood posturing at forty sous an hour. The Eve was
+finished in a month, and the feat was extraordinary, as well as the
+statue, which represented an admirably beautiful woman. When the spring
+began to muffle the rugged old city with its clambering festoons, it
+seemed to him that he had done a handsome winter's work and had fairly
+earned a holiday. He took a liberal one, and lounged away the lovely
+Roman May, doing nothing. He looked very contented; with himself,
+perhaps, at times, a trifle too obviously. But who could have said
+without good reason? He was "flushed with triumph;" this classic
+phrase portrayed him, to Rowland's sense. He would lose himself in long
+reveries, and emerge from them with a quickened smile and a heightened
+color. Rowland grudged him none of his smiles, and took an extreme
+satisfaction in his two statues. He had the Adam and the Eve transported
+to his own apartment, and one warm evening in May he gave a little
+dinner in honor of the artist. It was small, but Rowland had meant it
+should be very agreeably composed. He thought over his friends and chose
+four. They were all persons with whom he lived in a certain intimacy.
+
+One of them was an American sculptor of French extraction, or remotely,
+perhaps, of Italian, for he rejoiced in the somewhat fervid name of
+Gloriani. He was a man of forty, he had been living for years in Paris
+and in Rome, and he now drove a very pretty trade in sculpture of the
+ornamental and fantastic sort. In his youth he had had money; but he
+had spent it recklessly, much of it scandalously, and at twenty-six
+had found himself obliged to make capital of his talent. This was quite
+inimitable, and fifteen years of indefatigable exercise had brought
+it to perfection. Rowland admitted its power, though it gave him very
+little pleasure; what he relished in the man was the extraordinary
+vivacity and frankness, not to call it the impudence, of his ideas. He
+had a definite, practical scheme of art, and he knew at least what he
+meant. In this sense he was solid and complete. There were so many of
+the aesthetic fraternity who were floundering in unknown seas, without
+a notion of which way their noses were turned, that Gloriani, conscious
+and compact, unlimitedly intelligent and consummately clever, dogmatic
+only as to his own duties, and at once gracefully deferential and
+profoundly indifferent to those of others, had for Rowland a certain
+intellectual refreshment quite independent of the character of his
+works. These were considered by most people to belong to a very corrupt,
+and by many to a positively indecent school. Others thought them
+tremendously knowing, and paid enormous prices for them; and indeed, to
+be able to point to one of Gloriani's figures in a shady corner of your
+library was tolerable proof that you were not a fool. Corrupt things
+they certainly were; in the line of sculpture they were quite the latest
+fruit of time. It was the artist's opinion that there is no essential
+difference between beauty and ugliness; that they overlap and
+intermingle in a quite inextricable manner; that there is no saying
+where one begins and the other ends; that hideousness grimaces at you
+suddenly from out of the very bosom of loveliness, and beauty blooms
+before your eyes in the lap of vileness; that it is a waste of wit to
+nurse metaphysical distinctions, and a sadly meagre entertainment to
+caress imaginary lines; that the thing to aim at is the expressive, and
+the way to reach it is by ingenuity; that for this purpose everything
+may serve, and that a consummate work is a sort of hotch-potch of the
+pure and the impure, the graceful and the grotesque. Its prime duty is
+to amuse, to puzzle, to fascinate, to savor of a complex imagination.
+Gloriani's statues were florid and meretricious; they looked like
+magnified goldsmith's work. They were extremely elegant, but they had no
+charm for Rowland. He never bought one, but Gloriani was such an
+honest fellow, and withal was so deluged with orders, that this made
+no difference in their friendship. The artist might have passed for a
+Frenchman. He was a great talker, and a very picturesque one; he was
+almost bald; he had a small, bright eye, a broken nose, and a moustache
+with waxed ends. When sometimes he received you at his lodging, he
+introduced you to a lady with a plain face whom he called Madame
+Gloriani--which she was not.
+
+Rowland's second guest was also an artist, but of a very different type.
+His friends called him Sam Singleton; he was an American, and he had
+been in Rome a couple of years. He painted small landscapes, chiefly in
+water-colors: Rowland had seen one of them in a shop window, had liked
+it extremely, and, ascertaining his address, had gone to see him and
+found him established in a very humble studio near the Piazza Barberini,
+where, apparently, fame and fortune had not yet found him out. Rowland
+took a fancy to him and bought several of his pictures; Singleton made
+few speeches, but was grateful. Rowland heard afterwards that when he
+first came to Rome he painted worthless daubs and gave no promise
+of talent. Improvement had come, however, hand in hand with patient
+industry, and his talent, though of a slender and delicate order, was
+now incontestable. It was as yet but scantily recognized, and he had
+hard work to live. Rowland hung his little water-colors on the parlor
+wall, and found that, as he lived with them, he grew very fond of
+them. Singleton was a diminutive, dwarfish personage; he looked like
+a precocious child. He had a high, protuberant forehead, a transparent
+brown eye, a perpetual smile, an extraordinary expression of modesty and
+patience. He listened much more willingly than he talked, with a little
+fixed, grateful grin; he blushed when he spoke, and always offered his
+ideas in a sidelong fashion, as if the presumption were against them.
+His modesty set them off, and they were eminently to the point. He was
+so perfect an example of the little noiseless, laborious artist whom
+chance, in the person of a moneyed patron, has never taken by the hand,
+that Rowland would have liked to befriend him by stealth. Singleton had
+expressed a fervent admiration for Roderick's productions, but had
+not yet met the young master. Roderick was lounging against the
+chimney-piece when he came in, and Rowland presently introduced him. The
+little water-colorist stood with folded hands, blushing, smiling, and
+looking up at him as if Roderick were himself a statue on a pedestal.
+Singleton began to murmur something about his pleasure, his admiration;
+the desire to make his compliment smoothly gave him a kind of grotesque
+formalism. Roderick looked down at him surprised, and suddenly burst
+into a laugh. Singleton paused a moment and then, with an intenser
+smile, went on: "Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all the same!"
+
+Rowland's two other guests were ladies, and one of them, Miss Blanchard,
+belonged also to the artistic fraternity. She was an American, she
+was young, she was pretty, and she had made her way to Rome alone and
+unaided. She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed
+old serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly neighbor in the
+person of a certain Madame Grandoni, who in various social emergencies
+lent her a protecting wing, and had come with her to Rowland's dinner.
+Miss Blanchard had a little money, but she was not above selling her
+pictures. These represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses,
+with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and
+a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it. She did backs
+very well, but she was a little weak in faces. Flowers, however, were
+her speciality, and though her touch was a little old-fashioned and
+finical, she painted them with remarkable skill. Her pictures were
+chiefly bought by the English. Rowland had made her acquaintance early
+in the winter, and as she kept a saddle horse and rode a great deal,
+he had asked permission to be her cavalier. In this way they had become
+almost intimate. Miss Blanchard's name was Augusta; she was slender,
+pale, and elegant looking; she had a very pretty head and brilliant
+auburn hair, which she braided with classical simplicity. She talked in
+a sweet, soft voice, used language at times a trifle superfine, and made
+literary allusions. These had often a patriotic strain, and Rowland had
+more than once been irritated by her quotations from Mrs. Sigourney in
+the cork-woods of Monte Mario, and from Mr. Willis among the ruins of
+Veii. Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her, and was half
+surprised, at times, to find himself treating it as a matter of serious
+moment whether he liked her or not. He admired her, and indeed there
+was something admirable in her combination of beauty and talent, of
+isolation and tranquil self-support. He used sometimes to go into the
+little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and
+find her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement,
+profiled against the deep blue Roman sky. She received him with a
+meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint on a church
+window, receiving the daylight in all her being. The breath of reproach
+passed her by with folded wings. And yet Rowland wondered why he did not
+like her better. If he failed, the reason was not far to seek. There was
+another woman whom he liked better, an image in his heart which refused
+to yield precedence.
+
+On that evening to which allusion has been made, when Rowland was left
+alone between the starlight and the waves with the sudden knowledge
+that Mary Garland was to become another man's wife, he had made, after a
+while, the simple resolution to forget her. And every day since, like a
+famous philosopher who wished to abbreviate his mourning for a faithful
+servant, he had said to himself in substance--"Remember to forget Mary
+Garland." Sometimes it seemed as if he were succeeding; then, suddenly,
+when he was least expecting it, he would find her name, inaudibly, on
+his lips, and seem to see her eyes meeting his eyes. All this made him
+uncomfortable, and seemed to portend a possible discord. Discord was not
+to his taste; he shrank from imperious passions, and the idea of finding
+himself jealous of an unsuspecting friend was absolutely repulsive. More
+than ever, then, the path of duty was to forget Mary Garland, and he
+cultivated oblivion, as we may say, in the person of Miss Blanchard. Her
+fine temper, he said to himself, was a trifle cold and conscious, her
+purity prudish, perhaps, her culture pedantic. But since he was obliged
+to give up hopes of Mary Garland, Providence owed him a compensation,
+and he had fits of angry sadness in which it seemed to him that to
+attest his right to sentimental satisfaction he would be capable of
+falling in love with a woman he absolutely detested, if she were the
+best that came in his way. And what was the use, after all, of bothering
+about a possible which was only, perhaps, a dream? Even if Mary Garland
+had been free, what right had he to assume that he would have pleased
+her? The actual was good enough. Miss Blanchard had beautiful hair, and
+if she was a trifle old-maidish, there is nothing like matrimony for
+curing old-maidishness.
+
+Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland's rides
+an alliance which might have been called defensive on the part of the
+former and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard, was an excessively ugly
+old lady, highly esteemed in Roman society for her homely benevolence
+and her shrewd and humorous good sense. She had been the widow of a
+German archaeologist, who had come to Rome in the early ages as an
+attache of the Prussian legation on the Capitoline. Her good sense had
+been wanting on but a single occasion, that of her second marriage. This
+occasion was certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent,
+are not test cases. A couple of years after her first husband's death,
+she had accepted the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten
+years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The
+marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of
+using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction. He had
+finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped,
+had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title. He was
+believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small black spot
+in Madame Grandoni's life, and for ten years she had not mentioned
+his name. She wore a light flaxen wig, which was never very artfully
+adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no secret of it. She
+used to say, "I was not always so ugly as this; as a young girl I had
+beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig." She had worn
+from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white crape shawl
+embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an
+interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were
+easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer
+to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years' observation of Roman society had
+sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes,
+but she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic
+sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular
+favor. Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing
+him to get married. She never saw him without whispering to him that
+Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
+
+It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss
+Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind
+the central bouquet at his circular dinner-table. The dinner was very
+prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast.
+He had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this
+occasion he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory.
+He drank freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with
+his hands in his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence.
+Singleton sat gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person
+were talking. Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident
+disposition to draw Roderick out. Rowland was rather regretful, for
+he knew that theory was not his friend's strong point, and that it was
+never fair to take his measure from his talk.
+
+"As you have begun with Adam and Eve," said Gloriani, "I suppose you are
+going straight through the Bible." He was one of the persons who thought
+Roderick delightfully fresh.
+
+"I may make a David," said Roderick, "but I shall not try any more of
+the Old Testament people. I don't like the Jews; I don't like pendulous
+noses. David, the boy David, is rather an exception; you can think of
+him and treat him as a young Greek. Standing forth there on the plain
+of battle between the contending armies, rushing forward to let fly his
+stone, he looks like a beautiful runner at the Olympic games. After that
+I shall skip to the New Testament. I mean to make a Christ."
+
+"You 'll put nothing of the Olympic games into him, I hope," said
+Gloriani.
+
+"Oh, I shall make him very different from the Christ of tradition;
+more--more"--and Roderick paused a moment to think. This was the first
+that Rowland had heard of his Christ.
+
+"More rationalistic, I suppose," suggested Miss Blanchard.
+
+"More idealistic!" cried Roderick. "The perfection of form, you know, to
+symbolize the perfection of spirit."
+
+"For a companion piece," said Miss Blanchard, "you ought to make a
+Judas."
+
+"Never! I mean never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made
+anything ugly, and I 'm a Hellenist; I 'm not a Hebraist! I have been
+thinking lately of making a Cain, but I should never dream of making
+him ugly. He should be a very handsome fellow, and he should lift up the
+murderous club with the beautiful movement of the fighters in the Greek
+friezes who are chopping at their enemies."
+
+"There 's no use trying to be a Greek," said Gloriani. "If Phidias were
+to come back, he would recommend you to give it up. I am half Italian
+and half French, and, as a whole, a Yankee. What sort of a Greek should
+I make? I think the Judas is a capital idea for a statue. Much obliged
+to you, madame, for the suggestion. What an insidious little scoundrel
+one might make of him, sitting there nursing his money-bag and his
+treachery! There can be a great deal of expression in a pendulous nose,
+my dear sir, especially when it is cast in green bronze."
+
+"Very likely," said Roderick. "But it is not the sort of expression I
+care for. I care only for perfect beauty. There it is, if you want to
+know it! That 's as good a profession of faith as another. In future, so
+far as my things are not positively beautiful, you may set them down as
+failures. For me, it 's either that or nothing. It 's against the taste
+of the day, I know; we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty
+in the large, ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles,
+staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted. But I
+don't hesitate to proclaim it--I mean to lift them again! I mean to go
+in for big things; that 's my notion of my art. I mean to do things
+that will be simple and vast and infinite. You 'll see if they won't be
+infinite! Excuse me if I brag a little; all those Italian fellows in the
+Renaissance used to brag. There was a sensation once common, I am sure,
+in the human breast--a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble
+image newly created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity.
+When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses unveiled in
+the temples of the AEgean, don't you suppose there was a passionate
+beating of hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror? I mean to bring it
+back; I mean to thrill the world again! I mean to produce a Juno that
+will make you tremble, a Venus that will make you swoon!"
+
+"So that when we come and see you," said Madame Grandoni, "we must be
+sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few soft sofas
+conveniently placed."
+
+"Phidias and Praxiteles," Miss Blanchard remarked, "had the advantage
+of believing in their goddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that
+the pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo
+and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome
+where we sit talking nineteenth century English."
+
+"Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!" cried Madame Grandoni. "Mr.
+Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno--that 's you and
+I--arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver,
+too."
+
+"But, my dear fellow," objected Gloriani, "you don't mean to say you
+are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and
+Hebes."
+
+"It won't matter what you call them," said Roderick. "They shall be
+simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they
+shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That 's all
+the Greek divinities were."
+
+"That 's rather abstract, you know," said Miss Blanchard.
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Gloriani, "you 're delightfully young."
+
+"I hope you 'll not grow any older," said Singleton, with a flush of
+sympathy across his large white forehead. "You can do it if you try."
+
+"Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,"
+Roderick went on. "I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I
+mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I
+mean to make a magnificent statue of America!"
+
+"America--the Mountains--the Moon!" said Gloriani. "You 'll find it
+rather hard, I 'm afraid, to compress such subjects into classic forms."
+
+"Oh, there 's a way," cried Roderick, "and I shall think it out. My
+figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous
+deal."
+
+"I 'm sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo," said Madame
+Grandoni. "Perhaps you don't approve of him."
+
+"Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!" said Roderick, with sublimity. There
+was a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done some fine things.
+
+Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small portfolio of
+prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick's little statue of
+the youth drinking. It pleased him to see his friend sitting there
+in radiant ardor, defending idealism against so knowing an apostle of
+corruption as Gloriani, and he wished to help the elder artist to be
+confuted. He silently handed him the photograph.
+
+"Bless me!" cried Gloriani, "did he do this?"
+
+"Ages ago," said Roderick.
+
+Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.
+
+"It 's deucedly pretty," he said at last. "But, my dear young friend,
+you can't keep this up."
+
+"I shall do better," said Roderick.
+
+"You will do worse! You will become weak. You will have to take to
+violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This sort
+of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his
+trousers. He may stand on tiptoe, but he can't do more. Here you stand
+on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can't fly; there 's no use
+trying."
+
+"My 'America' shall answer you!" said Roderick, shaking toward him a
+tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.
+
+Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little
+murmur of delight.
+
+"Was this done in America?" he asked.
+
+"In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts," Roderick
+answered.
+
+"Dear old white wooden houses!" said Miss Blanchard.
+
+"If you could do as well as this there," said Singleton, blushing and
+smiling, "one might say that really you had only to lose by coming to
+Rome."
+
+"Mallet is to blame for that," said Roderick. "But I am willing to risk
+the loss."
+
+The photograph had been passed to Madame Grandoni. "It reminds me," she
+said, "of the things a young man used to do whom I knew years ago, when
+I first came to Rome. He was a German, a pupil of Overbeck and a votary
+of spiritual art. He used to wear a black velvet tunic and a very low
+shirt collar; he had a neck like a sickly crane, and let his hair grow
+down to his shoulders. His name was Herr Schafgans. He never painted
+anything so profane as a man taking a drink, but his figures were all
+of the simple and slender and angular pattern, and nothing if not
+innocent--like this one of yours. He would not have agreed with Gloriani
+any more than you. He used to come and see me very often, and in those
+days I thought his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of
+genius. His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions; he
+lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody's
+hair in a little bag round his neck. If he was not a Beato Angelico, it
+was not his own fault. I hope with all my heart that Mr. Hudson will do
+the fine things he talks about, but he must bear in mind the history of
+dear Mr. Schafgans as a warning against high-flown pretensions. One fine
+day this poor young man fell in love with a Roman model, though she
+had never sat to him, I believe, for she was a buxom, bold-faced,
+high-colored creature, and he painted none but pale, sickly women. He
+offered to marry her, and she looked at him from head to foot, gave a
+shrug, and consented. But he was ashamed to set up his menage in Rome.
+They went to Naples, and there, a couple of years afterwards, I saw him.
+The poor fellow was ruined. His wife used to beat him, and he had taken
+to drinking. He wore a ragged black coat, and he had a blotchy, red
+face. Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go and fetch
+the dirty linen. His talent had gone heaven knows where! He was getting
+his living by painting views of Vesuvius in eruption on the little boxes
+they sell at Sorrento."
+
+"Moral: don't fall in love with a buxom Roman model," said Roderick. "I
+'m much obliged to you for your story, but I don't mean to fall in love
+with any one."
+
+Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was looking
+at it curiously. "It 's a happy bit of youth," he said. "But you can't
+keep it up--you can't keep it up!"
+
+The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner, in the
+drawing-room. Rowland left them to have it out in a corner, where
+Roderick's Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight, in vague white
+beauty, like the guardian angel of the young idealist. Singleton was
+listening to Madame Grandoni, and Rowland took his place on the sofa,
+near Miss Blanchard. They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk.
+Every now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them. Miss Blanchard
+at last asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick: who he was,
+where he came from, whether it was true, as she had heard, that Rowland
+had discovered him and brought him out at his own expense. Rowland
+answered her questions; to the last he gave a vague affirmative.
+Finally, after a pause, looking at him, "You 're very generous," Miss
+Blanchard said. The declaration was made with a certain richness of
+tone, but it brought to Rowland's sense neither delight nor confusion.
+He had heard the words before; he suddenly remembered the grave
+sincerity with which Miss Garland had uttered them as he strolled with
+her in the woods the day of Roderick's picnic. They had pleased him
+then; now he asked Miss Blanchard whether she would have some tea.
+
+When the two ladies withdrew, he attended them to their carriage. Coming
+back to the drawing-room, he paused outside the open door; he was
+struck by the group formed by the three men. They were standing before
+Roderick's statue of Eve, and the young sculptor had lifted up the lamp
+and was showing different parts of it to his companions. He was talking
+ardently, and the lamplight covered his head and face. Rowland stood
+looking on, for the group struck him with its picturesque symbolism.
+Roderick, bearing the lamp and glowing in its radiant circle, seemed
+the beautiful image of a genius which combined sincerity with power.
+Gloriani, with his head on one side, pulling his long moustache and
+looking keenly from half-closed eyes at the lighted marble, represented
+art with a worldly motive, skill unleavened by faith, the mere base
+maximum of cleverness. Poor little Singleton, on the other side, with
+his hands behind him, his head thrown back, and his eyes following
+devoutly the course of Roderick's elucidation, might pass for an
+embodiment of aspiring candor, with feeble wings to rise on. In all
+this, Roderick's was certainly the beau role.
+
+Gloriani turned to Rowland as he came up, and pointed back with his
+thumb to the statue, with a smile half sardonic, half good-natured. "A
+pretty thing--a devilish pretty thing," he said. "It 's as fresh as the
+foam in the milk-pail. He can do it once, he can do it twice, he can do
+it at a stretch half a dozen times. But--but--"
+
+He was returning to his former refrain, but Rowland intercepted him.
+"Oh, he will keep it up," he said, smiling, "I will answer for him."
+
+Gloriani was not encouraging, but Roderick had listened smiling. He
+was floating unperturbed on the tide of his deep self-confidence. Now,
+suddenly, however, he turned with a flash of irritation in his eye, and
+demanded in a ringing voice, "In a word, then, you prophesy that I am to
+fail?"
+
+Gloriani answered imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder. "My
+dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day
+every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay,
+with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain
+for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn
+to do without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your
+studio, don't waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on
+suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how to console
+yourself."
+
+"If I break down," said Roderick, passionately, "I shall stay down.
+If the Muse deserts me, she shall at least have her infidelity on her
+conscience."
+
+"You have no business," Rowland said to Gloriani, "to talk lightly of
+the Muse in this company. Mr. Singleton, too, has received pledges from
+her which place her constancy beyond suspicion." And he pointed out on
+the wall, near by, two small landscapes by the modest water-colorist.
+
+The sculptor examined them with deference, and Singleton himself began
+to laugh nervously; he was trembling with hope that the great
+Gloriani would be pleased. "Yes, these are fresh too," Gloriani said;
+"extraordinarily fresh! How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-six, sir," said Singleton.
+
+"For twenty-six they are famously fresh. They must have taken you a long
+time; you work slowly."
+
+"Yes, unfortunately, I work very slowly. One of them took me six weeks,
+the other two months."
+
+"Upon my word! The Muse pays you long visits." And Gloriani turned
+and looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors.
+Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard. "Oh, you!"
+said the sculptor; "you 'll keep it up!"
+
+A week after his dinner-party, Rowland went into Roderick's studio and
+found him sitting before an unfinished piece of work, with a hanging
+head and a heavy eye. He could have fancied that the fatal hour foretold
+by Gloriani had struck. Roderick rose with a sombre yawn and flung down
+his tools. "It 's no use," he said, "I give it up!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I have struck a shallow! I have been sailing bravely, but for the last
+day or two my keel has been crunching the bottom."
+
+"A difficult place?" Rowland asked, with a sympathetic inflection,
+looking vaguely at the roughly modeled figure.
+
+"Oh, it 's not the poor clay!" Roderick answered. "The difficult place
+is here!" And he struck a blow on his heart. "I don't know what 's the
+matter with me. Nothing comes; all of a sudden I hate things. My old
+things look ugly; everything looks stupid."
+
+Rowland was perplexed. He was in the situation of a man who has been
+riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop, and of a sudden feels
+him stumble and balk. As yet, he reflected, he had seen nothing but the
+sunshine of genius; he had forgotten that it has its storms. Of course
+it had! And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which would
+float them both safely through the worst weather. "Why, you 're tired!"
+he said. "Of course you 're tired. You have a right to be!"
+
+"Do you think I have a right to be?" Roderick asked, looking at him.
+
+"Unquestionably, after all you have done."
+
+"Well, then, right or wrong, I am tired. I certainly have done a fair
+winter's work. I want a change."
+
+Rowland declared that it was certainly high time they should be leaving
+Rome. They would go north and travel. They would go to Switzerland, to
+Germany, to Holland, to England. Roderick assented, his eye brightened,
+and Rowland talked of a dozen things they might do. Roderick walked up
+and down; he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring
+out. He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered, and at last asked him
+what was on his mind. Roderick stopped before him, frowning a little.
+
+"I have such unbounded faith in your good-will," he said, "that I
+believe nothing I can say would offend you."
+
+"Try it," said Rowland.
+
+"Well, then, I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone.
+I need n't say I prefer your society to that of any man living. For the
+last six months it has been everything to me. But I have a perpetual
+feeling that you are expecting something of me, that you are measuring
+my doings by a terrifically high standard. You are watching me; I don't
+want to be watched. I want to go my own way; to work when I choose and
+to loaf when I choose. It is not that I don't know what I owe you; it
+is not that we are not friends. It is simply that I want a taste of
+absolutely unrestricted freedom. Therefore, I say, let us separate."
+
+Rowland shook him by the hand. "Willingly. Do as you desire, I shall
+miss you, and I venture to believe you 'll pass some lonely hours. But I
+have only one request to make: that if you get into trouble of any kind
+whatever, you will immediately let me know."
+
+They began their journey, however, together, and crossed the Alps
+side by side, muffled in one rug, on the top of the St. Gothard coach.
+Rowland was going to England to pay some promised visits; his companion
+had no plan save to ramble through Switzerland and Germany as fancy
+guided him. He had money, now, that would outlast the summer; when
+it was spent he would come back to Rome and make another statue. At
+a little mountain village by the way, Roderick declared that he would
+stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in
+the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two
+young men walked along the village street, picking their way between
+dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of
+the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them,
+and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt an almost overmastering
+reluctance.
+
+"Say the word," he exclaimed, "and I will stop too."
+
+Roderick frowned. "Ah, you don't trust me; you don't think I 'm able
+to take care of myself. That proves that I was right in feeling as if I
+were watched!"
+
+"Watched, my dear fellow!" said Rowland. "I hope you may never have
+anything worse to complain of than being watched in the spirit in which
+I watch you. But I will spare you even that. Good-by!" Standing in his
+place, as the coach rolled away, he looked back at his friend lingering
+by the roadside. A great snow-mountain, behind Roderick, was beginning
+to turn pink in the sunset. The young man waved his hat, still looking
+grave. Rowland settled himself in his place, reflecting after all that
+this was a salubrious beginning of independence. He was among forests
+and glaciers, leaning on the pure bosom of nature. And then--and
+then--was it not in itself a guarantee against folly to be engaged to
+Mary Garland?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. Experience
+
+Rowland passed the summer in England, staying with several old friends
+and two or three new ones. On his arrival, he felt it on his conscience
+to write to Mrs. Hudson and inform her that her son had relieved him of
+his tutelage. He felt that she considered him an incorruptible Mentor,
+following Roderick like a shadow, and he wished to let her know the
+truth. But he made the truth very comfortable, and gave a succinct
+statement of the young man's brilliant beginnings. He owed it to
+himself, he said, to remind her that he had not judged lightly, and that
+Roderick's present achievements were more profitable than his inglorious
+drudgery at Messrs. Striker & Spooner's. He was now taking a well-earned
+holiday and proposing to see a little of the world. He would work none
+the worse for this; every artist needed to knock about and look at
+things for himself. They had parted company for a couple of months, for
+Roderick was now a great man and beyond the need of going about with a
+keeper. But they were to meet again in Rome in the autumn, and then he
+should be able to send her more good news. Meanwhile, he was very happy
+in what Roderick had already done--especially happy in the happiness it
+must have brought to her. He ventured to ask to be kindly commended to
+Miss Garland.
+
+His letter was promptly answered--to his surprise in Miss Garland's own
+hand. The same mail brought also an epistle from Cecilia. The latter was
+voluminous, and we must content ourselves with giving an extract.
+
+"Your letter was filled with an echo of that brilliant Roman world,
+which made me almost ill with envy. For a week after I got it I thought
+Northampton really unpardonably tame. But I am drifting back again to my
+old deeps of resignation, and I rush to the window, when any one passes,
+with all my old gratitude for small favors. So Roderick Hudson is
+already a great man, and you turn out to be a great prophet? My
+compliments to both of you; I never heard of anything working so
+smoothly. And he takes it all very quietly, and does n't lose his
+balance nor let it turn his head? You judged him, then, in a day better
+than I had done in six months, for I really did not expect that he would
+settle down into such a jog-trot of prosperity. I believed he would do
+fine things, but I was sure he would intersperse them with a good many
+follies, and that his beautiful statues would spring up out of the midst
+of a straggling plantation of wild oats. But from what you tell me, Mr.
+Striker may now go hang himself..... There is one thing, however, to say
+as a friend, in the way of warning. That candid soul can keep a secret,
+and he may have private designs on your equanimity which you don't begin
+to suspect. What do you think of his being engaged to Miss Garland? The
+two ladies had given no hint of it all winter, but a fortnight ago, when
+those big photographs of his statues arrived, they first pinned them up
+on the wall, and then trotted out into the town, made a dozen calls, and
+announced the news. Mrs. Hudson did, at least; Miss Garland, I suppose,
+sat at home writing letters. To me, I confess, the thing was a perfect
+surprise. I had not a suspicion that all the while he was coming so
+regularly to make himself agreeable on my veranda, he was quietly
+preferring his cousin to any one else. Not, indeed, that he was ever at
+particular pains to make himself agreeable! I suppose he has picked up
+a few graces in Rome. But he must not acquire too many: if he is too
+polite when he comes back, Miss Garland will count him as one of the
+lost. She will be a very good wife for a man of genius, and such a one
+as they are often shrewd enough to take. She 'll darn his stockings and
+keep his accounts, and sit at home and trim the lamp and keep up
+the fire while he studies the Beautiful in pretty neighbors at
+dinner-parties. The two ladies are evidently very happy, and, to do them
+justice, very humbly grateful to you. Mrs. Hudson never speaks of you
+without tears in her eyes, and I am sure she considers you a specially
+patented agent of Providence. Verily, it 's a good thing for a woman to
+be in love: Miss Garland has grown almost pretty. I met her the other
+night at a tea-party; she had a white rose in her hair, and sang a
+sentimental ballad in a fine contralto voice."
+
+Miss Garland's letter was so much shorter that we may give it entire:--
+
+My dear Sir,--Mrs. Hudson, as I suppose you know, has been for some time
+unable to use her eyes. She requests me, therefore, to answer your favor
+of the 22d of June. She thanks you extremely for writing, and wishes me
+to say that she considers herself in every way under great obligations
+to you. Your account of her son's progress and the high estimation in
+which he is held has made her very happy, and she earnestly prays that
+all may continue well with him. He sent us, a short time ago, several
+large photographs of his two statues, taken from different points of
+view. We know little about such things, but they seem to us wonderfully
+beautiful. We sent them to Boston to be handsomely framed, and the man,
+on returning them, wrote us that he had exhibited them for a week in
+his store, and that they had attracted great attention. The frames are
+magnificent, and the pictures now hang in a row on the parlor wall.
+Our only quarrel with them is that they make the old papering and the
+engravings look dreadfully shabby. Mr. Striker stood and looked at them
+the other day full five minutes, and said, at last, that if Roderick's
+head was running on such things it was no wonder he could not learn to
+draw up a deed. We lead here so quiet and monotonous a life that I
+am afraid I can tell you nothing that will interest you. Mrs. Hudson
+requests me to say that the little more or less that may happen to us is
+of small account, as we live in our thoughts and our thoughts are fixed
+on her dear son. She thanks Heaven he has so good a friend. Mrs. Hudson
+says that this is too short a letter, but I can say nothing more.
+
+Yours most respectfully,
+
+Mary Garland.
+
+It is a question whether the reader will know why, but this letter
+gave Rowland extraordinary pleasure. He liked its very brevity and
+meagreness, and there seemed to him an exquisite modesty in its saying
+nothing from the young girl herself. He delighted in the formal address
+and conclusion; they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular
+gesture in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The
+letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost
+rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had personally given
+him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life
+concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion
+to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women
+seemed to Rowland's fancy to follow each other like the tick-tick of a
+great time-piece, marking off the hours which separated them from the
+supreme felicity of clasping the far-away son and lover to lips sealed
+with the excess of joy. He hoped that Roderick, now that he had shaken
+off the oppression of his own importunate faith, was not losing a
+tolerant temper for the silent prayers of the two women at Northampton.
+
+He was left to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick's actual moods
+and occupations. He knew he was no letter-writer, and that, in the young
+sculptor's own phrase, he had at any time rather build a monument than
+write a note. But when a month had passed without news of him, he began
+to be half anxious and half angry, and wrote him three lines, in the
+care of a Continental banker, begging him at least to give some sign of
+whether he was alive or dead. A week afterwards came an answer--brief,
+and dated Baden-Baden. "I know I have been a great brute," Roderick
+wrote, "not to have sent you a word before; but really I don't know what
+has got into me. I have lately learned terribly well how to be idle. I
+am afraid to think how long it is since I wrote to my mother or to Mary.
+Heaven help them--poor, patient, trustful creatures! I don't know how to
+tell you what I am doing. It seems all amusing enough while I do it, but
+it would make a poor show in a narrative intended for your formidable
+eyes. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he
+grabbed me by the arm and brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a
+day in the Alps, drinking milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep,
+and thinking it was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never
+do, that the Alps were 'd----d rot,' that Baden-Baden was the place, and
+that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him. It is a
+wonderful place, certainly, though, thank the Lord, Baxter departed last
+week, blaspheming horribly at trente et quarante. But you know all about
+it and what one does--what one is liable to do. I have succumbed, in a
+measure, to the liabilities, and I wish I had some one here to give me a
+thundering good blowing up. Not you, dear friend; you would draw it too
+mild; you have too much of the milk of human kindness. I have fits of
+horrible homesickness for my studio, and I shall be devoutly grateful
+when the summer is over and I can go back and swing a chisel. I feel as
+if nothing but the chisel would satisfy me; as if I could rush in a rage
+at a block of unshaped marble. There are a lot of the Roman people here,
+English and American; I live in the midst of them and talk nonsense from
+morning till night. There is also some one else; and to her I don't talk
+sense, nor, thank heaven, mean what I say. I confess, I need a month's
+work to recover my self-respect."
+
+These lines brought Rowland no small perturbation; the more, that what
+they seemed to point to surprised him. During the nine months of their
+companionship Roderick had shown so little taste for dissipation that
+Rowland had come to think of it as a canceled danger, and it greatly
+perplexed him to learn that his friend had apparently proved so pliant
+to opportunity. But Roderick's allusions were ambiguous, and it was
+possible they might simply mean that he was out of patience with a
+frivolous way of life and fretting wholesomely over his absent work.
+It was a very good thing, certainly, that idleness should prove, on
+experiment, to sit heavily on his conscience. Nevertheless, the letter
+needed, to Rowland's mind, a key: the key arrived a week later. "In
+common charity," Roderick wrote, "lend me a hundred pounds! I have
+gambled away my last franc--I have made a mountain of debts. Send me the
+money first; lecture me afterwards!" Rowland sent the money by return of
+mail; then he proceeded, not to lecture, but to think. He hung his head;
+he was acutely disappointed. He had no right to be, he assured himself;
+but so it was. Roderick was young, impulsive, unpracticed in stoicism;
+it was a hundred to one that he was to pay the usual vulgar tribute
+to folly. But his friend had regarded it as securely gained to his own
+belief in virtue that he was not as other foolish youths are, and that
+he would have been capable of looking at folly in the face and passing
+on his way. Rowland for a while felt a sore sense of wrath. What right
+had a man who was engaged to that fine girl in Northampton to behave
+as if his consciousness were a common blank, to be overlaid with coarse
+sensations? Yes, distinctly, he was disappointed. He had accompanied his
+missive with an urgent recommendation to leave Baden-Baden immediately,
+and an offer to meet Roderick at any point he would name. The answer
+came promptly; it ran as follows: "Send me another fifty pounds! I have
+been back to the tables. I will leave as soon as the money comes, and
+meet you at Geneva. There I will tell you everything."
+
+There is an ancient terrace at Geneva, planted with trees and studded
+with benches, overlooked by gravely aristocratic old dwellings and
+overlooking the distant Alps. A great many generations have made it a
+lounging-place, a great many friends and lovers strolled there, a great
+many confidential talks and momentous interviews gone forward. Here, one
+morning, sitting on one of the battered green benches, Roderick, as he
+had promised, told his friend everything. He had arrived late the
+night before; he looked tired, and yet flushed and excited. He made no
+professions of penitence, but he practiced an unmitigated frankness,
+and his self-reprobation might be taken for granted. He implied in every
+phrase that he had done with it all, and that he was counting the hours
+till he could get back to work. We shall not rehearse his confession in
+detail; its main outline will be sufficient. He had fallen in with some
+very idle people, and had discovered that a little example and a little
+practice were capable of producing on his own part a considerable relish
+for their diversions. What could he do? He never read, and he had no
+studio; in one way or another he had to pass the time. He passed it in
+dangling about several very pretty women in wonderful Paris toilets,
+and reflected that it was always something gained for a sculptor to sit
+under a tree, looking at his leisure into a charming face and saying
+things that made it smile and play its muscles and part its lips and
+show its teeth. Attached to these ladies were certain gentlemen who
+walked about in clouds of perfume, rose at midday, and supped at
+midnight. Roderick had found himself in the mood for thinking them very
+amusing fellows. He was surprised at his own taste, but he let it take
+its course. It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who
+expect you to present them with expensive bouquets, to ride with them in
+the Black Forest on well-looking horses, to come into their opera-boxes
+on nights when Patti sang and prices were consequent, to propose little
+light suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or drives by
+moonlight to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed, trinketed
+and gloved,--that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a
+privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached. But the tables made
+such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables. Roderick
+tried them and found that at first they smoothed his path delightfully.
+This simplification of matters, however, was only momentary, for he soon
+perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it in fact, exposed
+a good-looking young man to peculiar liabilities. At this point of his
+friend's narrative, Rowland was reminded of Madame de Cruchecassee in
+The Newcomes, and though he had listened in tranquil silence to the rest
+of it, he found it hard not to say that all this had been, under
+the circumstances, a very bad business. Roderick admitted it with
+bitterness, and then told how much--measured simply financially--it had
+cost him. His luck had changed; the tables had ceased to back him, and
+he had found himself up to his knees in debt. Every penny had gone
+of the solid sum which had seemed a large equivalent of those shining
+statues in Rome. He had been an ass, but it was not irreparable; he
+could make another statue in a couple of months.
+
+Rowland frowned. "For heaven's sake," he said, "don't play such
+dangerous games with your facility. If you have got facility, revere
+it, respect it, adore it, treasure it--don't speculate on it." And he
+wondered what his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done
+if there had been no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand.
+But he did not formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency
+seemed not to have presented itself to Roderick's imagination. The young
+sculptor reverted to his late adventures again in the evening, and this
+time talked of them more objectively, as the phrase is; more as if they
+had been the adventures of another person. He related half a dozen droll
+things that had happened to him, and, as if his responsibility had been
+disengaged by all this free discussion, he laughed extravagantly at the
+memory of them. Rowland sat perfectly grave, on principle. Then Roderick
+began to talk of half a dozen statues that he had in his head, and
+set forth his design, with his usual vividness. Suddenly, as it was
+relevant, he declared that his Baden doings had not been altogether
+fruitless, for that the lady who had reminded Rowland of Madame de
+Cruchecassee was tremendously statuesque. Rowland at last said that it
+all might pass if he felt that he was really the wiser for it. "By the
+wiser," he added, "I mean the stronger in purpose, in will."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about will!" Roderick answered, throwing back his head
+and looking at the stars. This conversation also took place in the open
+air, on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has
+a monument. "The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can
+answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it 's strong? There are
+all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one's
+will and one's inclinations. People talk as if the two things were
+essentially distinct; on different sides of one's organism, like the
+heart and the liver. Mine, I know, are much nearer together. It all
+depends upon circumstances. I believe there is a certain group of
+circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to
+snap like a dry twig."
+
+"My dear boy," said Rowland, "don't talk about the will being
+'destined.' The will is destiny itself. That 's the way to look at it."
+
+"Look at it, my dear Rowland," Roderick answered, "as you find
+most comfortable. One conviction I have gathered from my summer's
+experience," he went on--"it 's as well to look it frankly in the
+face--is that I possess an almost unlimited susceptibility to the
+influence of a beautiful woman."
+
+Rowland stared, then strolled away, softly whistling to himself. He
+was unwilling to admit even to himself that this speech had really the
+sinister meaning it seemed to have. In a few days the two young men made
+their way back to Italy, and lingered a while in Florence before
+going on to Rome. In Florence Roderick seemed to have won back his old
+innocence and his preference for the pleasures of study over any others.
+Rowland began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream, or at
+the worst as a mere sporadic piece of disorder, without roots in his
+companion's character. They passed a fortnight looking at pictures
+and exploring for out the way bits of fresco and carving, and Roderick
+recovered all his earlier fervor of appreciation and comment. In Rome he
+went eagerly to work again, and finished in a month two or three small
+things he had left standing on his departure. He talked the most joyous
+nonsense about finding himself back in his old quarters. On the first
+Sunday afternoon following their return, on their going together to
+Saint Peter's, he delivered himself of a lyrical greeting to the great
+church and to the city in general, in a tone of voice so irrepressibly
+elevated that it rang through the nave in rather a scandalous fashion,
+and almost arrested a procession of canons who were marching across to
+the choir. He began to model a new statue--a female figure, of which he
+had said nothing to Rowland. It represented a woman, leaning lazily back
+in her chair, with her head drooping as if she were listening, a vague
+smile on her lips, and a pair of remarkably beautiful arms folded in her
+lap. With rather less softness of contour, it would have resembled the
+noble statue of Agrippina in the Capitol. Rowland looked at it and was
+not sure he liked it. "Who is it? what does it mean?" he asked.
+
+"Anything you please!" said Roderick, with a certain petulance. "I call
+it A Reminiscence."
+
+Rowland then remembered that one of the Baden ladies had been
+"statuesque," and asked no more questions. This, after all, was a way of
+profiting by experience. A few days later he took his first ride of
+the season on the Campagna, and as, on his homeward way, he was passing
+across the long shadow of a ruined tower, he perceived a small figure
+at a short distance, bent over a sketch-book. As he drew near, he
+recognized his friend Singleton. The honest little painter's face was
+scorched to flame-color by the light of southern suns, and borrowed an
+even deeper crimson from his gleeful greeting of his most appreciative
+patron. He was making a careful and charming little sketch. On Rowland's
+asking him how he had spent his summer, he gave an account of his
+wanderings which made poor Mallet sigh with a sense of more contrasts
+than one. He had not been out of Italy, but he had been delving deep
+into the picturesque heart of the lovely land, and gathering a wonderful
+store of subjects. He had rambled about among the unvisited villages of
+the Apennines, pencil in hand and knapsack on back, sleeping on straw
+and eating black bread and beans, but feasting on local color, rioting,
+as it were, on chiaroscuro, and laying up a treasure of pictorial
+observations. He took a devout satisfaction in his hard-earned wisdom
+and his happy frugality. Rowland went the next day, by appointment,
+to look at his sketches, and spent a whole morning turning them over.
+Singleton talked more than he had ever done before, explained them all,
+and told some quaintly humorous anecdote about the production of each.
+
+"Dear me, how I have chattered!" he said at last. "I am afraid you had
+rather have looked at the things in peace and quiet. I did n't know I
+could talk so much. But somehow, I feel very happy; I feel as if I had
+improved."
+
+"That you have," said Rowland. "I doubt whether an artist ever passed a
+more profitable three months. You must feel much more sure of yourself."
+
+Singleton looked for a long time with great intentness at a knot in the
+floor. "Yes," he said at last, in a fluttered tone, "I feel much more
+sure of myself. I have got more facility!" And he lowered his voice as
+if he were communicating a secret which it took some courage to impart.
+"I hardly like to say it, for fear I should after all be mistaken. But
+since it strikes you, perhaps it 's true. It 's a great happiness; I
+would not exchange it for a great deal of money."
+
+"Yes, I suppose it 's a great happiness," said Rowland. "I shall really
+think of you as living here in a state of scandalous bliss. I don't
+believe it 's good for an artist to be in such brutally high spirits."
+
+Singleton stared for a moment, as if he thought Rowland was in earnest;
+then suddenly fathoming the kindly jest, he walked about the room,
+scratching his head and laughing intensely to himself. "And Mr. Hudson?"
+he said, as Rowland was going; "I hope he is well and happy."
+
+"He is very well," said Rowland. "He is back at work again."
+
+"Ah, there 's a man," cried Singleton, "who has taken his start once
+for all, and does n't need to stop and ask himself in fear and trembling
+every month or two whether he is advancing or not. When he stops, it 's
+to rest! And where did he spend his summer?"
+
+"The greater part of it at Baden-Baden."
+
+"Ah, that 's in the Black Forest," cried Singleton, with profound
+simplicity. "They say you can make capital studies of trees there."
+
+"No doubt," said Rowland, with a smile, laying an almost paternal
+hand on the little painter's yellow head. "Unfortunately trees are not
+Roderick's line. Nevertheless, he tells me that at Baden he made some
+studies. Come when you can, by the way," he added after a moment,
+"to his studio, and tell me what you think of something he has lately
+begun." Singleton declared that he would come delightedly, and Rowland
+left him to his work.
+
+He met a number of his last winter's friends again, and called upon
+Madame Grandoni, upon Miss Blanchard, and upon Gloriani, shortly after
+their return. The ladies gave an excellent account of themselves.
+Madame Grandoni had been taking sea-baths at Rimini, and Miss Blanchard
+painting wild flowers in the Tyrol. Her complexion was somewhat browned,
+which was very becoming, and her flowers were uncommonly pretty.
+Gloriani had been in Paris and had come away in high good-humor, finding
+no one there, in the artist-world, cleverer than himself. He came in a
+few days to Roderick's studio, one afternoon when Rowland was present.
+He examined the new statue with great deference, said it was very
+promising, and abstained, considerately, from irritating prophecies. But
+Rowland fancied he observed certain signs of inward jubilation on the
+clever sculptor's part, and walked away with him to learn his private
+opinion.
+
+"Certainly; I liked it as well as I said," Gloriani declared in answer
+to Rowland's anxious query; "or rather I liked it a great deal better. I
+did n't say how much, for fear of making your friend angry. But one can
+leave him alone now, for he 's coming round. I told you he could n't
+keep up the transcendental style, and he has already broken down. Don't
+you see it yourself, man?"
+
+"I don't particularly like this new statue," said Rowland.
+
+"That 's because you 're a purist. It 's deuced clever, it 's deuced
+knowing, it 's deuced pretty, but it is n't the topping high art of
+three months ago. He has taken his turn sooner than I supposed. What has
+happened to him? Has he been disappointed in love? But that 's none of
+my business. I congratulate him on having become a practical man."
+
+Roderick, however, was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken
+it into his head to believe. He was discontented with his work, he
+applied himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did n't
+know what was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods. "Is
+this of necessity what a fellow must come to"--he asked of Rowland, with
+a sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which seemed to imply that his
+companion had undertaken to insure him against perplexities and was not
+fulfilling his contract--"this damnable uncertainty when he goes to bed
+at night as to whether he is going to wake up in a working humor or in a
+swearing humor? Have we only a season, over before we know it, in which
+we can call our faculties our own? Six months ago I could stand up to my
+work like a man, day after day, and never dream of asking myself whether
+I felt like it. But now, some mornings, it 's the very devil to get
+going. My statue looks so bad when I come into the studio that I have
+twenty minds to smash it on the spot, and I lose three or four hours in
+sitting there, moping and getting used to it."
+
+Rowland said that he supposed that this sort of thing was the lot of
+every artist and that the only remedy was plenty of courage and faith.
+And he reminded him of Gloriani's having forewarned him against these
+sterile moods the year before.
+
+"Gloriani 's an ass!" said Roderick, almost fiercely. He hired a horse
+and began to ride with Rowland on the Campagna. This delicious amusement
+restored him in a measure to cheerfulness, but seemed to Rowland on the
+whole not to stimulate his industry. Their rides were always very
+long, and Roderick insisted on making them longer by dismounting in
+picturesque spots and stretching himself in the sun among a heap of
+overtangled stones. He let the scorching Roman luminary beat down upon
+him with an equanimity which Rowland found it hard to emulate. But in
+this situation Roderick talked so much amusing nonsense that, for the
+sake of his company, Rowland consented to be uncomfortable, and often
+forgot that, though in these diversions the days passed quickly, they
+brought forth neither high art nor low. And yet it was perhaps by their
+help, after all, that Roderick secured several mornings of ardent work
+on his new figure, and brought it to rapid completion. One afternoon,
+when it was finished, Rowland went to look at it, and Roderick asked him
+for his opinion.
+
+"What do you think yourself?" Rowland demanded, not from pusillanimity,
+but from real uncertainty.
+
+"I think it is curiously bad," Roderick answered. "It was bad from the
+first; it has fundamental vices. I have shuffled them in a measure out
+of sight, but I have not corrected them. I can't--I can't--I can't!" he
+cried passionately. "They stare me in the face--they are all I see!"
+
+Rowland offered several criticisms of detail, and suggested certain
+practicable changes. But Roderick differed with him on each of these
+points; the thing had faults enough, but they were not those faults.
+Rowland, unruffled, concluded by saying that whatever its faults might
+be, he had an idea people in general would like it.
+
+"I wish to heaven some person in particular would buy it, and take it
+off my hands and out of my sight!" Roderick cried. "What am I to do
+now?" he went on. "I have n't an idea. I think of subjects, but they
+remain mere lifeless names. They are mere words--they are not images.
+What am I to do?"
+
+Rowland was a trifle annoyed. "Be a man," he was on the point of saying,
+"and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous
+voice." But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the
+studio a loud, peremptory ring at the outer door.
+
+Roderick broke into a laugh. "Talk of the devil," he said, "and you see
+his horns! If that 's not a customer, it ought to be."
+
+The door of the studio was promptly flung open, and a lady advanced to
+the threshold--an imposing, voluminous person, who quite filled up the
+doorway. Rowland immediately felt that he had seen her before, but he
+recognized her only when she moved forward and disclosed an attendant in
+the person of a little bright-eyed, elderly gentleman, with a bristling
+white moustache. Then he remembered that just a year before he and his
+companion had seen in the Ludovisi gardens a wonderfully beautiful girl,
+strolling in the train of this conspicuous couple. He looked for her
+now, and in a moment she appeared, following her companions with the
+same nonchalant step as before, and leading her great snow-white poodle,
+decorated with motley ribbons. The elder lady offered the two young
+men a sufficiently gracious salute; the little old gentleman bowed and
+smiled with extreme alertness. The young girl, without casting a glance
+either at Roderick or at Rowland, looked about for a chair, and, on
+perceiving one, sank into it listlessly, pulled her poodle towards her,
+and began to rearrange his top-knot. Rowland saw that, even with her
+eyes dropped, her beauty was still dazzling.
+
+"I trust we are at liberty to enter," said the elder lady, with majesty.
+"We were told that Mr. Hudson had no fixed day, and that we might come
+at any time. Let us not disturb you."
+
+Roderick, as one of the lesser lights of the Roman art-world, had not
+hitherto been subject to incursions from inquisitive tourists, and,
+having no regular reception day, was not versed in the usual formulas of
+welcome. He said nothing, and Rowland, looking at him, saw that he was
+looking amazedly at the young girl and was apparently unconscious of
+everything else. "By Jove!" he cried precipitately, "it 's that goddess
+of the Villa Ludovisi!" Rowland in some confusion, did the honors as he
+could, but the little old gentleman begged him with the most obsequious
+of smiles to give himself no trouble. "I have been in many a studio!" he
+said, with his finger on his nose and a strong Italian accent.
+
+"We are going about everywhere," said his companion. "I am passionately
+fond of art!"
+
+Rowland smiled sympathetically, and let them turn to Roderick's statue.
+He glanced again at the young sculptor, to invite him to bestir himself,
+but Roderick was still gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful young mistress
+of the poodle, who by this time had looked up and was gazing straight at
+him. There was nothing bold in her look; it expressed a kind of languid,
+imperturbable indifference. Her beauty was extraordinary; it grew and
+grew as the young man observed her. In such a face the maidenly custom
+of averted eyes and ready blushes would have seemed an anomaly; nature
+had produced it for man's delight and meant that it should surrender
+itself freely and coldly to admiration. It was not immediately apparent,
+however, that the young lady found an answering entertainment in the
+physiognomy of her host; she turned her head after a moment and looked
+idly round the room, and at last let her eyes rest on the statue of the
+woman seated. It being left to Rowland to stimulate conversation, he
+began by complimenting her on the beauty of her dog.
+
+"Yes, he 's very handsome," she murmured. "He 's a Florentine. The dogs
+in Florence are handsomer than the people." And on Rowland's caressing
+him: "His name is Stenterello," she added. "Stenterello, give your hand
+to the gentleman." This order was given in Italian. "Say buon giorno a
+lei."
+
+Stenterello thrust out his paw and gave four short, shrill barks; upon
+which the elder lady turned round and raised her forefinger.
+
+"My dear, my dear, remember where you are! Excuse my foolish child," she
+added, turning to Roderick with an agreeable smile. "She can think of
+nothing but her poodle."
+
+"I am teaching him to talk for me," the young girl went on, without
+heeding her mother; "to say little things in society. It will save me
+a great deal of trouble. Stenterello, love, give a pretty smile and say
+tanti complimenti!" The poodle wagged his white pate--it looked like
+one of those little pads in swan's-down, for applying powder to the
+face--and repeated the barking process.
+
+"He is a wonderful beast," said Rowland.
+
+"He is not a beast," said the young girl. "A beast is something black
+and dirty--something you can't touch."
+
+"He is a very valuable dog," the elder lady explained. "He was presented
+to my daughter by a Florentine nobleman."
+
+"It is not for that I care about him. It is for himself. He is better
+than the prince."
+
+"My dear, my dear!" repeated the mother in deprecating accents, but with
+a significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak his attention to
+the glory of possessing a daughter who could deal in that fashion with
+the aristocracy.
+
+Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed before
+them, a year previous, in the Villa Ludovisi, Roderick and he had
+exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality.
+Roderick had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland
+now needed no telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a
+fellow-countrywoman. She was a person of what is called a great deal
+of presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there, of
+once brilliant beauty. Her daughter had come lawfully by her loveliness,
+but Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was silly and
+that the daughter was not. The mother had a very silly mouth--a mouth,
+Rowland suspected, capable of expressing an inordinate degree of
+unreason. The young girl, in spite of her childish satisfaction in her
+poodle, was not a person of feeble understanding. Rowland received an
+impression that, for reasons of her own, she was playing a part. What
+was the part and what were her reasons? She was interesting; Rowland
+wondered what were her domestic secrets. If her mother was a daughter
+of the great Republic, it was to be supposed that the young girl was a
+flower of the American soil; but her beauty had a robustness and tone
+uncommon in the somewhat facile loveliness of our western maidenhood.
+She spoke with a vague foreign accent, as if she had spent her life in
+strange countries. The little Italian apparently divined Rowland's mute
+imaginings, for he presently stepped forward, with a bow like a master
+of ceremonies. "I have not done my duty," he said, "in not announcing
+these ladies. Mrs. Light, Miss Light!"
+
+Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick
+was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality. He altered
+the light, pulled forward two or three figures, and made an apology
+for not having more to show. "I don't pretend to have anything of an
+exhibition--I am only a novice."
+
+"Indeed?--a novice! For a novice this is very well," Mrs. Light
+declared. "Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this."
+
+The Cavaliere smiled rapturously. "It is stupendous!" he murmured. "And
+we have been to all the studios."
+
+"Not to all--heaven forbid!" cried Mrs. Light. "But to a number that I
+have had pointed out by artistic friends. I delight in studios: they are
+the temples of the beautiful here below. And if you are a novice, Mr.
+Hudson," she went on, "you have already great admirers. Half a dozen
+people have told us that yours were among the things to see." This
+gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across to
+the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light. "Ah, he
+'s gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that
+has had his head turned," Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to
+a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of
+their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate. "The artists are
+all crazy about her. When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the
+pictures. And when she goes into a ball-room what do the other women
+say? Eh, Cavaliere?"
+
+"She is very beautiful," Rowland said, gravely.
+
+Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little
+at everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random
+murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot. She
+looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as
+a feature of Roderick's establishment. It was the gaze, Rowland felt,
+which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has
+always at her command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy.
+Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory. "Are you also an
+artist?" she inquired with an almost caressing inflection. It was clear
+that what she meant was something of this kind: "Be so good as to assure
+me without delay that you are really the young man of substance and
+amiability that you appear."
+
+But Rowland answered simply the formal question--not the latent one.
+"Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson."
+
+Mrs. Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking
+the Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that
+she could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble.
+Rowland hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of
+Roderick's renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several of
+his friend's works and that she was welcome to come and see them at his
+rooms. She bade the Cavaliere make a note of his address. "Ah, you 're
+a patron of the arts," she said. "That 's what I should like to be if
+I had a little money. I delight in beauty in every form. But all these
+people ask such monstrous prices. One must be a millionaire, to think
+of such things, eh? Twenty years ago my husband had my portrait painted,
+here in Rome, by Papucci, who was the great man in those days. I was in
+a ball dress, with all my jewels, my neck and arms, and all that. The
+man got six hundred francs, and thought he was very well treated. Those
+were the days when a family could live like princes in Italy for five
+thousand scudi a year. The Cavaliere once upon a time was a great
+dandy--don't blush, Cavaliere; any one can see that, just as any one can
+see that I was once a pretty woman! Get him to tell you what he made a
+figure upon. The railroads have brought in the vulgarians. That 's what
+I call it now--the invasion of the vulgarians! What are poor we to do?"
+
+Rowland had begun to murmur some remedial proposition, when he was
+interrupted by the voice of Miss Light calling across the room, "Mamma!"
+
+"My own love?"
+
+"This gentleman wishes to model my bust. Please speak to him."
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little chuckle. "Already?" he cried.
+
+Rowland looked round, equally surprised at the promptitude of the
+proposal. Roderick stood planted before the young girl with his arms
+folded, looking at her as he would have done at the Medicean Venus. He
+never paid compliments, and Rowland, though he had not heard him speak,
+could imagine the startling distinctness with which he made his request.
+
+"He saw me a year ago," the young girl went on, "and he has been
+thinking of me ever since." Her tone, in speaking, was peculiar; it had
+a kind of studied inexpressiveness, which was yet not the vulgar device
+of a drawl.
+
+"I must make your daughter's bust--that 's all, madame!" cried Roderick,
+with warmth.
+
+"I had rather you made the poodle's," said the young girl. "Is it very
+tiresome? I have spent half my life sitting for my photograph, in every
+conceivable attitude and with every conceivable coiffure. I think I have
+posed enough."
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Light, "it may be one's duty to pose. But as
+to my daughter's sitting to you, sir--to a young sculptor whom we don't
+know--it is a matter that needs reflection. It is not a favor that 's to
+be had for the mere asking."
+
+"If I don't make her from life," said Roderick, with energy, "I will
+make her from memory, and if the thing 's to be done, you had better
+have it done as well as possible."
+
+"Mamma hesitates," said Miss Light, "because she does n't know whether
+you mean she shall pay you for the bust. I can assure you that she will
+not pay you a sou."
+
+"My darling, you forget yourself," said Mrs. Light, with an attempt at
+majestic severity. "Of course," she added, in a moment, with a change of
+note, "the bust would be my own property."
+
+"Of course!" cried Roderick, impatiently.
+
+"Dearest mother," interposed the young girl, "how can you carry a
+marble bust about the world with you? Is it not enough to drag the poor
+original?"
+
+"My dear, you 're nonsensical!" cried Mrs. Light, almost angrily.
+
+"You can always sell it," said the young girl, with the same artful
+artlessness.
+
+Mrs. Light turned to Rowland, who pitied her, flushed and irritated.
+"She is very wicked to-day!"
+
+The Cavaliere grinned in silence and walked away on tiptoe, with his hat
+to his lips, as if to leave the field clear for action. Rowland, on the
+contrary, wished to avert the coming storm. "You had better not refuse,"
+he said to Miss Light, "until you have seen Mr. Hudson's things in the
+marble. Your mother is to come and look at some that I possess."
+
+"Thank you; I have no doubt you will see us. I dare say Mr. Hudson is
+very clever; but I don't care for modern sculpture. I can't look at it!"
+
+"You shall care for my bust, I promise you!" cried Roderick, with a
+laugh.
+
+"To satisfy Miss Light," said the Cavaliere, "one of the old Greeks
+ought to come to life."
+
+"It would be worth his while," said Roderick, paying, to Rowland's
+knowledge, his first compliment.
+
+"I might sit to Phidias, if he would promise to be very amusing and make
+me laugh. What do you say, Stenterello? would you sit to Phidias?"
+
+"We must talk of this some other time," said Mrs. Light. "We are in
+Rome for the winter. Many thanks. Cavaliere, call the carriage." The
+Cavaliere led the way out, backing like a silver-stick, and Miss Light,
+following her mother, nodded, without looking at them, to each of the
+young men.
+
+"Immortal powers, what a head!" cried Roderick, when they had gone.
+"There 's my fortune!"
+
+"She is certainly very beautiful," said Rowland. "But I 'm sorry you
+have undertaken her bust."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"I suspect it will bring trouble with it."
+
+"What kind of trouble?"
+
+"I hardly know. They are queer people. The mamma, I suspect, is the
+least bit of an adventuress. Heaven knows what the daughter is."
+
+"She 's a goddess!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Just so. She is all the more dangerous."
+
+"Dangerous? What will she do to me? She does n't bite, I imagine."
+
+"It remains to be seen. There are two kinds of women--you ought to
+know it by this time--the safe and the unsafe. Miss Light, if I am not
+mistaken, is one of the unsafe. A word to the wise!"
+
+"Much obliged!" said Roderick, and he began to whistle a triumphant air,
+in honor, apparently, of the advent of his beautiful model.
+
+In calling this young lady and her mamma "queer people," Rowland but
+roughly expressed his sentiment. They were so marked a variation from
+the monotonous troop of his fellow-country people that he felt much
+curiosity as to the sources of the change, especially since he doubted
+greatly whether, on the whole, it elevated the type. For a week he
+saw the two ladies driving daily in a well-appointed landau, with the
+Cavaliere and the poodle in the front seat. From Mrs. Light he received
+a gracious salute, tempered by her native majesty; but the young girl,
+looking straight before her, seemed profoundly indifferent to observers.
+Her extraordinary beauty, however, had already made observers numerous
+and given the habitues of the Pincian plenty to talk about. The echoes
+of their commentary reached Rowland's ears; but he had little taste
+for random gossip, and desired a distinctly veracious informant. He had
+found one in the person of Madame Grandoni, for whom Mrs. Light and her
+beautiful daughter were a pair of old friends.
+
+"I have known the mamma for twenty years," said this judicious critic,
+"and if you ask any of the people who have been living here as long
+as I, you will find they remember her well. I have held the beautiful
+Christina on my knee when she was a little wizened baby with a very red
+face and no promise of beauty but those magnificent eyes. Ten years ago
+Mrs. Light disappeared, and has not since been seen in Rome, except for
+a few days last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples.
+Then it was you met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens. When I first
+knew her she was the unmarried but very marriageable daughter of an old
+American painter of very bad landscapes, which people used to buy from
+charity and use for fire-boards. His name was Savage; it used to make
+every one laugh, he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman.
+He had married a horrible wife, an Englishwoman who had been on the
+stage. It was said she used to beat poor Savage with his mahl-stick and
+when the domestic finances were low to lock him up in his studio and
+tell him he should n't come out until he had painted half a dozen of
+his daubs. She had a good deal of showy beauty. She would then go
+forth, and, her beauty helping, she would make certain people take the
+pictures. It helped her at last to make an English lord run away with
+her. At the time I speak of she had quite disappeared. Mrs. Light
+was then a very handsome girl, though by no means so handsome as
+her daughter has now become. Mr. Light was an American consul, newly
+appointed at one of the Adriatic ports. He was a mild, fair-whiskered
+young man, with some little property, and my impression is that he had
+got into bad company at home, and that his family procured him his place
+to keep him out of harm's way. He came up to Rome on a holiday, fell
+in love with Miss Savage, and married her on the spot. He had not been
+married three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever
+knew how. The young widow came back to Rome, to her father, and here
+shortly afterwards, in the shadow of Saint Peter's, her little girl was
+born. It might have been supposed that Mrs. Light would marry again,
+and I know she had opportunities. But she overreached herself. She
+would take nothing less than a title and a fortune, and they were not
+forthcoming. She was admired and very fond of admiration; very vain,
+very worldly, very silly. She remained a pretty widow, with a surprising
+variety of bonnets and a dozen men always in her train. Giacosa dates
+from this period. He calls himself a Roman, but I have an impression he
+came up from Ancona with her. He was l'ami de la maison. He used to hold
+her bouquets, clean her gloves (I was told), run her errands, get her
+opera-boxes, and fight her battles with the shopkeepers. For this he
+needed courage, for she was smothered in debt. She at last left Rome
+to escape her creditors. Many of them must remember her still, but she
+seems now to have money to satisfy them. She left her poor old father
+here alone--helpless, infirm and unable to work. A subscription was
+shortly afterwards taken up among the foreigners, and he was sent
+back to America, where, as I afterwards heard, he died in some sort of
+asylum. From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely of Mrs.
+Light as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places. Once
+came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage in England;
+then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left
+her to keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained
+creature. She pretends to be a great lady, but I consider that
+old Filomena, my washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one. But
+certainly, after all, she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on
+a lawsuit about some property, with her husband's family, and went to
+America to attend to it. She came back triumphant, with a long purse.
+She reappeared in Italy, and established herself for a while in Venice.
+Then she came to Florence, where she spent a couple of years and where
+I saw her. Last year she passed down to Naples, which I should have said
+was just the place for her, and this winter she has laid siege to Rome.
+She seems very prosperous. She has taken a floor in the Palazzo F----,
+she keeps her carriage, and Christina and she, between them, must have
+a pretty milliner's bill. Giacosa has turned up again, looking as if he
+had been kept on ice at Ancona, for her return."
+
+"What sort of education," Rowland asked, "do you imagine the mother's
+adventures to have been for the daughter?"
+
+"A strange school! But Mrs. Light told me, in Florence, that she had
+given her child the education of a princess. In other words, I suppose,
+she speaks three or four languages, and has read several hundred French
+novels. Christina, I suspect, is very clever. When I saw her, I was
+amazed at her beauty, and, certainly, if there is any truth in faces,
+she ought to have the soul of an angel. Perhaps she has. I don't judge
+her; she 's an extraordinary young person. She has been told twenty
+times a day by her mother, since she was five years old, that she is a
+beauty of beauties, that her face is her fortune, and that, if she plays
+her cards, she may marry a duke. If she has not been fatally corrupted,
+she is a very superior girl. My own impression is that she is a mixture
+of good and bad, of ambition and indifference. Mrs. Light, having failed
+to make her own fortune in matrimony, has transferred her hopes to her
+daughter, and nursed them till they have become a kind of monomania. She
+has a hobby, which she rides in secret; but some day she will let you
+see it. I 'm sure that if you go in some evening unannounced, you will
+find her scanning the tea-leaves in her cup, or telling her daughter's
+fortune with a greasy pack of cards, preserved for the purpose. She
+promises her a prince--a reigning prince. But if Mrs. Light is silly,
+she is shrewd, too, and, lest considerations of state should deny
+her prince the luxury of a love-match, she keeps on hand a few common
+mortals. At the worst she would take a duke, an English lord, or even a
+young American with a proper number of millions. The poor woman must be
+rather uncomfortable. She is always building castles and knocking them
+down again--always casting her nets and pulling them in. If her
+daughter were less of a beauty, her transparent ambition would be very
+ridiculous; but there is something in the girl, as one looks at her,
+that seems to make it very possible she is marked out for one of those
+wonderful romantic fortunes that history now and then relates. 'Who,
+after all, was the Empress of the French?' Mrs. Light is forever saying.
+'And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!'"
+
+"And what does Christina say?"
+
+"She makes no scruple, as you know, of saying that her mother is a fool.
+What she thinks, heaven knows. I suspect that, practically, she does not
+commit herself. She is excessively proud, and thinks herself good enough
+to occupy the highest station in the world; but she knows that her
+mother talks nonsense, and that even a beautiful girl may look awkward
+in making unsuccessful advances. So she remains superbly indifferent,
+and lets her mother take the risks. If the prince is secured, so much
+the better; if he is not, she need never confess to herself that even a
+prince has slighted her."
+
+"Your report is as solid," Rowland said to Madame Grandoni, thanking
+her, "as if it had been prepared for the Academy of Sciences;" and he
+congratulated himself on having listened to it when, a couple of days
+later, Mrs. Light and her daughter, attended by the Cavaliere and the
+poodle, came to his rooms to look at Roderick's statues. It was more
+comfortable to know just with whom he was dealing.
+
+Mrs. Light was prodigiously gracious, and showered down compliments not
+only on the statues, but on all his possessions. "Upon my word," she
+said, "you men know how to make yourselves comfortable. If one of us
+poor women had half as many easy-chairs and knick-knacks, we should be
+famously abused. It 's really selfish to be living all alone in such a
+place as this. Cavaliere, how should you like this suite of rooms and a
+fortune to fill them with pictures and statues? Christina, love, look at
+that mosaic table. Mr. Mallet, I could almost beg it from you. Yes,
+that Eve is certainly very fine. We need n't be ashamed of such a
+great-grandmother as that. If she was really such a beautiful woman,
+it accounts for the good looks of some of us. Where is Mr. What
+'s-his-name, the young sculptor? Why is n't he here to be complimented?"
+
+Christina had remained but for a moment in the chair which Rowland had
+placed for her, had given but a cursory glance at the statues, and
+then, leaving her place, had begun to wander round the room--looking at
+herself in the mirror, touching the ornaments and curiosities, glancing
+at the books and prints. Rowland's sitting-room was encumbered with
+bric-a-brac, and she found plenty of occupation. Rowland presently
+joined her, and pointed out some of the objects he most valued.
+
+"It 's an odd jumble," she said frankly. "Some things are very
+pretty--some are very ugly. But I like ugly things, when they have a
+certain look. Prettiness is terribly vulgar nowadays, and it is not
+every one that knows just the sort of ugliness that has chic. But chic
+is getting dreadfully common too. There 's a hint of it even in Madame
+Baldi's bonnets. I like looking at people's things," she added in a
+moment, turning to Rowland and resting her eyes on him. "It helps you to
+find out their characters."
+
+"Am I to suppose," asked Rowland, smiling, "that you have arrived at any
+conclusions as to mine?"
+
+"I am rather muddled; you have too many things; one seems to contradict
+another. You are very artistic and yet you are very prosaic; you have
+what is called a 'catholic' taste and yet you are full of obstinate
+little prejudices and habits of thought, which, if I knew you, I should
+find very tiresome. I don't think I like you."
+
+"You make a great mistake," laughed Rowland; "I assure you I am very
+amiable."
+
+"Yes, I am probably wrong, and if I knew you, I should find out I was
+wrong, and that would irritate me and make me dislike you more. So you
+see we are necessary enemies."
+
+"No, I don't dislike you."
+
+"Worse and worse; for you certainly will not like me."
+
+"You are very discouraging."
+
+"I am fond of facing the truth, though some day you will deny that.
+Where is that queer friend of yours?"
+
+"You mean Mr. Hudson. He is represented by these beautiful works."
+
+Miss Light looked for some moments at Roderick's statues. "Yes," she
+said, "they are not so silly as most of the things we have seen. They
+have no chic, and yet they are beautiful."
+
+"You describe them perfectly," said Rowland. "They are beautiful, and
+yet they have no chic. That 's it!"
+
+"If he will promise to put none into my bust, I have a mind to let him
+make it. A request made in those terms deserves to be granted."
+
+"In what terms?"
+
+"Did n't you hear him? 'Mademoiselle, you almost satisfy my conception
+of the beautiful. I must model your bust.' That almost should be
+rewarded. He is like me; he likes to face the truth. I think we should
+get on together."
+
+The Cavaliere approached Rowland, to express the pleasure he had derived
+from his beautiful "collection." His smile was exquisitely bland, his
+accent appealing, caressing, insinuating. But he gave Rowland an odd
+sense of looking at a little waxen image, adjusted to perform certain
+gestures and emit certain sounds. It had once contained a soul, but the
+soul had leaked out. Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there are more
+profitless things than mere sound and gesture, in a consummate Italian.
+And the Cavaliere, too, had soul enough left to desire to speak a few
+words on his own account, and call Rowland's attention to the fact that
+he was not, after all, a hired cicerone, but an ancient Roman gentleman.
+Rowland felt sorry for him; he hardly knew why. He assured him in a
+friendly fashion that he must come again; that his house was always at
+his service. The Cavaliere bowed down to the ground. "You do me too much
+honor," he murmured. "If you will allow me--it is not impossible!"
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had prepared to depart. "If you are not afraid to
+come and see two quiet little women, we shall be most happy!" she said.
+"We have no statues nor pictures--we have nothing but each other. Eh,
+darling?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Christina.
+
+"Oh, and the Cavaliere," added her mother.
+
+"The poodle, please!" cried the young girl.
+
+Rowland glanced at the Cavaliere; he was smiling more blandly than ever.
+
+A few days later Rowland presented himself, as civility demanded, at
+Mrs. Light's door. He found her living in one of the stately houses of
+the Via dell' Angelo Custode, and, rather to his surprise, was told she
+was at home. He passed through half a dozen rooms and was ushered
+into an immense saloon, at one end of which sat the mistress of the
+establishment, with a piece of embroidery. She received him very
+graciously, and then, pointing mysteriously to a large screen which was
+unfolded across the embrasure of one of the deep windows, "I am keeping
+guard!" she said. Rowland looked interrogative; whereupon she beckoned
+him forward and motioned him to look behind the screen. He obeyed, and
+for some moments stood gazing. Roderick, with his back turned, stood
+before an extemporized pedestal, ardently shaping a formless mass
+of clay. Before him sat Christina Light, in a white dress, with her
+shoulders bare, her magnificent hair twisted into a classic coil, and
+her head admirably poised. Meeting Rowland's gaze, she smiled a little,
+only with her deep gray eyes, without moving. She looked divinely
+beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. Christina
+
+The brilliant Roman winter came round again, and Rowland enjoyed it,
+in a certain way, more deeply than before. He grew at last to feel that
+sense of equal possession, of intellectual nearness, which it belongs
+to the peculiar magic of the ancient city to infuse into minds of a
+cast that she never would have produced. He became passionately,
+unreasoningly fond of all Roman sights and sensations, and to breathe
+the Roman atmosphere began to seem a needful condition of being. He
+could not have defined and explained the nature of his great love, nor
+have made up the sum of it by the addition of his calculable pleasures.
+It was a large, vague, idle, half-profitless emotion, of which perhaps
+the most pertinent thing that may be said is that it enforced a sort of
+oppressive reconciliation to the present, the actual, the sensuous--to
+life on the terms that there offered themselves. It was perhaps for this
+very reason that, in spite of the charm which Rome flings over
+one's mood, there ran through Rowland's meditations an undertone of
+melancholy, natural enough in a mind which finds its horizon insidiously
+limited to the finite, even in very picturesque forms. Whether it is one
+that tacitly concedes to the Roman Church the monopoly of a guarantee
+of immortality, so that if one is indisposed to bargain with her for
+the precious gift, one must do without it altogether; or whether in an
+atmosphere so heavily weighted with echoes and memories one grows
+to believe that there is nothing in one's consciousness that is not
+foredoomed to moulder and crumble and become dust for the feet, and
+possible malaria for the lungs, of future generations--the fact at least
+remains that one parts half-willingly with one's hopes in Rome, and
+misses them only under some very exceptional stress of circumstance. For
+this reason one may perhaps say that there is no other place in which
+one's daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and none, at the same
+time, in which acute attacks of depression are more intolerable. Rowland
+found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision that to live in Rome
+was an education to one's senses and one's imagination, but he sometimes
+wondered whether this was not a questionable gain in case of one's not
+being prepared to live wholly by one's imagination and one's senses. The
+tranquil profundity of his daily satisfaction seemed sometimes to
+turn, by a mysterious inward impulse, and face itself with questioning,
+admonishing, threatening eyes. "But afterwards...?" it seemed to
+ask, with a long reverberation; and he could give no answer but a shy
+affirmation that there was no such thing as afterwards, and a hope,
+divided against itself, that his actual way of life would last forever.
+He often felt heavy-hearted; he was sombre without knowing why; there
+were no visible clouds in his heaven, but there were cloud-shadows on
+his mood. Shadows projected, they often were, without his knowing it, by
+an undue apprehension that things after all might not go so ideally
+well with Roderick. When he understood his anxiety it vexed him, and he
+rebuked himself for taking things unmanfully hard. If Roderick chose
+to follow a crooked path, it was no fault of his; he had given him, he
+would continue to give him, all that he had offered him--friendship,
+sympathy, advice. He had not undertaken to provide him with unflagging
+strength of purpose, nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.
+
+If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil,
+Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local
+influence. More than once he declared to his companion that he meant
+to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter's, and that he cared
+little if he never again drew breath in American air. "For a man of my
+temperament, Rome is the only possible place," he said; "it 's better to
+recognize the fact early than late. So I shall never go home unless I am
+absolutely forced."
+
+"What is your idea of 'force'?" asked Rowland, smiling. "It seems to me
+you have an excellent reason for going home some day or other."
+
+"Ah, you mean my engagement?" Roderick answered with unaverted eyes.
+"Yes, I am distinctly engaged, in Northampton, and impatiently waited
+for!" And he gave a little sympathetic sigh. "To reconcile Northampton
+and Rome is rather a problem. Mary had better come out here. Even at the
+worst I have no intention of giving up Rome within six or eight years,
+and an engagement of that duration would be rather absurd."
+
+"Miss Garland could hardly leave your mother," Rowland observed.
+
+"Oh, of course my mother should come. I think I will suggest it in my
+next letter. It will take her a year or two to make up her mind to it,
+but if she consents it will brighten her up. It 's too small a life,
+over there, even for a timid old lady. It is hard to imagine," he added,
+"any change in Mary being a change for the better; but I should like her
+to take a look at the world and have her notions stretched a little. One
+is never so good, I suppose, but that one can improve a little."
+
+"If you wish your mother and Miss Garland to come," Rowland suggested,
+"you had better go home and bring them."
+
+"Oh, I can't think of leaving Europe, for many a day," Roderick
+answered. "At present it would quite break the charm. I am just
+beginning to profit, to get used to things and take them naturally. I am
+sure the sight of Northampton Main Street would permanently upset me."
+
+It was reassuring to hear that Roderick, in his own view, was but
+"just beginning" to spread his wings, and Rowland, if he had had
+any forebodings, might have suffered them to be modified by this
+declaration. This was the first time since their meeting at Geneva that
+Roderick had mentioned Miss Garland's name, but the ice being broken, he
+indulged for some time afterward in frequent allusions to his
+betrothed, which always had an accent of scrupulous, of almost studied,
+consideration. An uninitiated observer, hearing him, would have imagined
+her to be a person of a certain age--possibly an affectionate maiden
+aunt--who had once done him a kindness which he highly appreciated:
+perhaps presented him with a check for a thousand dollars. Rowland noted
+the difference between his present frankness and his reticence during
+the first six months of his engagement, and sometimes wondered whether
+it was not rather an anomaly that he should expatiate more largely as
+the happy event receded. He had wondered over the whole matter, first
+and last, in a great many different ways, and looked at it in all
+possible lights. There was something terribly hard to explain in the
+fact of his having fallen in love with his cousin. She was not, as
+Rowland conceived her, the sort of girl he would have been likely to
+fancy, and the operation of sentiment, in all cases so mysterious, was
+particularly so in this one. Just why it was that Roderick should not
+logically have fancied Miss Garland, his companion would have been at
+loss to say, but I think the conviction had its roots in an unformulated
+comparison between himself and the accepted suitor. Roderick and he were
+as different as two men could be, and yet Roderick had taken it into his
+head to fall in love with a woman for whom he himself had been keeping
+in reserve, for years, a profoundly characteristic passion. That if he
+chose to conceive a great notion of the merits of Roderick's mistress,
+the irregularity here was hardly Roderick's, was a view of the case
+to which poor Rowland did scanty justice. There were women, he said
+to himself, whom it was every one's business to fall in love with a
+little--women beautiful, brilliant, artful, easily fascinating. Miss
+Light, for instance, was one of these; every man who spoke to her did
+so, if not in the language, at least with something of the agitation,
+the divine tremor, of a lover. There were other women--they might have
+great beauty, they might have small; perhaps they were generally to
+be classified as plain--whose triumphs in this line were rare, but
+immutably permanent. Such a one preeminently, was Mary Garland. Upon
+the doctrine of probabilities, it was unlikely that she had had an equal
+charm for each of them, and was it not possible, therefore, that the
+charm for Roderick had been simply the charm imagined, unquestioningly
+accepted: the general charm of youth, sympathy, kindness--of the present
+feminine, in short--enhanced indeed by several fine facial traits?
+The charm in this case for Rowland was--the charm!--the mysterious,
+individual, essential woman. There was an element in the charm, as his
+companion saw it, which Rowland was obliged to recognize, but which
+he forbore to ponder; the rather important attraction, namely, of
+reciprocity. As to Miss Garland being in love with Roderick and becoming
+charming thereby, this was a point with which his imagination ventured
+to take no liberties; partly because it would have been indelicate,
+and partly because it would have been vain. He contented himself with
+feeling that the young girl was still as vivid an image in his memory as
+she had been five days after he left her, and with drifting nearer and
+nearer to the impression that at just that crisis any other girl would
+have answered Roderick's sentimental needs as well. Any other girl
+indeed would do so still! Roderick had confessed as much to him at
+Geneva, in saying that he had been taking at Baden the measure of his
+susceptibility to female beauty.
+
+His extraordinary success in modeling the bust of the beautiful Miss
+Light was pertinent evidence of this amiable quality. She sat to him,
+repeatedly, for a fortnight, and the work was rapidly finished. On one
+of the last days Roderick asked Rowland to come and give his opinion as
+to what was still wanting; for the sittings had continued to take place
+in Mrs. Light's apartment, the studio being pronounced too damp for
+the fair model. When Rowland presented himself, Christina, still in
+her white dress, with her shoulders bare, was standing before a mirror,
+readjusting her hair, the arrangement of which, on this occasion, had
+apparently not met the young sculptor's approval. He stood beside her,
+directing the operation with a peremptoriness of tone which seemed
+to Rowland to denote a considerable advance in intimacy. As Rowland
+entered, Christina was losing patience. "Do it yourself, then!" she
+cried, and with a rapid movement unloosed the great coil of her tresses
+and let them fall over her shoulders.
+
+They were magnificent, and with her perfect face dividing their rippling
+flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to
+martyrdom. Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her
+own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as
+the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was
+not a superficial one.
+
+"Hudson 's a sculptor," said Rowland, with warmth. "But if I were only a
+painter!"
+
+"Thank Heaven you are not!" said Christina. "I am having quite enough of
+this minute inspection of my charms."
+
+"My dear young man, hands off!" cried Mrs. Light, coming forward and
+seizing her daughter's hair. "Christina, love, I am surprised."
+
+"Is it indelicate?" Christina asked. "I beg Mr. Mallet's pardon." Mrs.
+Light gathered up the dusky locks and let them fall through her fingers,
+glancing at her visitor with a significant smile. Rowland had never
+been in the East, but if he had attempted to make a sketch of an old
+slave-merchant, calling attention to the "points" of a Circassian
+beauty, he would have depicted such a smile as Mrs. Light's. "Mamma 's
+not really shocked," added Christina in a moment, as if she had guessed
+her mother's by-play. "She is only afraid that Mr. Hudson might have
+injured my hair, and that, per consequenza, I should sell for less."
+
+"You unnatural child!" cried mamma. "You deserve that I should make a
+fright of you!" And with half a dozen skillful passes she twisted the
+tresses into a single picturesque braid, placed high on the head, as a
+kind of coronal.
+
+"What does your mother do when she wants to do you justice?" Rowland
+asked, observing the admirable line of the young girl's neck.
+
+"I do her justice when I say she says very improper things. What is one
+to do with such a thorn in the flesh?" Mrs. Light demanded.
+
+"Think of it at your leisure, Mr. Mallet," said Christina, "and when you
+'ve discovered something, let us hear. But I must tell you that I shall
+not willingly believe in any remedy of yours, for you have something in
+your physiognomy that particularly provokes me to make the remarks that
+my mother so sincerely deplores. I noticed it the first time I saw you.
+I think it 's because your face is so broad. For some reason or other,
+broad faces exasperate me; they fill me with a kind of rabbia. Last
+summer, at Carlsbad, there was an Austrian count, with enormous estates
+and some great office at court. He was very attentive--seriously so; he
+was really very far gone. Cela ne tenait qu' a moi! But I could n't; he
+was impossible! He must have measured, from ear to ear, at least a yard
+and a half. And he was blond, too, which made it worse--as blond as
+Stenterello; pure fleece! So I said to him frankly, 'Many thanks, Herr
+Graf; your uniform is magnificent, but your face is too fat.'"
+
+"I am afraid that mine also," said Rowland, with a smile, "seems just
+now to have assumed an unpardonable latitude."
+
+"Oh, I take it you know very well that we are looking for a husband,
+and that none but tremendous swells need apply. Surely, before these
+gentlemen, mamma, I may speak freely; they are disinterested. Mr. Mallet
+won't do, because, though he 's rich, he 's not rich enough. Mamma made
+that discovery the day after we went to see you, moved to it by the
+promising look of your furniture. I hope she was right, eh? Unless you
+have millions, you know, you have no chance."
+
+"I feel like a beggar," said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, after mature
+reflection, that on the whole you have enough. Mr. Hudson, of course, is
+nowhere; he has nothing but his genius and his beaux yeux."
+
+Roderick had stood looking at Christina intently while she delivered
+herself, softly and slowly, of this surprising nonsense. When she had
+finished, she turned and looked at him; their eyes met, and he blushed
+a little. "Let me model you, and he who can may marry you!" he said,
+abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Light, while her daughter talked, had been adding a few touches to
+her coiffure. "She is not so silly as you might suppose," she said to
+Rowland, with dignity. "If you will give me your arm, we will go and
+look at the bust."
+
+"Does that represent a silly girl?" Christina demanded, when they stood
+before it.
+
+Rowland transferred his glance several times from the portrait to the
+original. "It represents a young lady," he said, "whom I should not
+pretend to judge off-hand."
+
+"She may be a fool, but you are not sure. Many thanks! You have seen me
+half a dozen times. You are either very slow or I am very deep."
+
+"I am certainly slow," said Rowland. "I don't expect to make up my mind
+about you within six months."
+
+"I give you six months if you will promise then a perfectly frank
+opinion. Mind, I shall not forget; I shall insist upon it."
+
+"Well, though I am slow, I am tolerably brave," said Rowland. "We shall
+see."
+
+Christina looked at the bust with a sigh. "I am afraid, after all," she
+said, "that there 's very little wisdom in it save what the artist has
+put there. Mr. Hudson looked particularly wise while he was working; he
+scowled and growled, but he never opened his mouth. It is very kind of
+him not to have represented me gaping."
+
+"If I had talked a lot of stuff to you," said Roderick, roundly, "the
+thing would not have been a tenth so good."
+
+"Is it good, after all? Mr. Mallet is a famous connoisseur; has he not
+come here to pronounce?"
+
+The bust was in fact a very happy performance, and Roderick had risen to
+the level of his subject. It was thoroughly a portrait, and not a vague
+fantasy executed on a graceful theme, as the busts of pretty women, in
+modern sculpture, are apt to be. The resemblance was deep and vivid;
+there was extreme fidelity of detail and yet a noble simplicity.
+One could say of the head that, without idealization, it was a
+representation of ideal beauty. Rowland, however, as we know, was not
+fond of exploding into superlatives, and, after examining the piece,
+contented himself with suggesting two or three alterations of detail.
+
+"Nay, how can you be so cruel?" demanded Mrs. Light, with soft
+reproachfulness. "It is surely a wonderful thing!"
+
+"Rowland knows it 's a wonderful thing," said Roderick, smiling. "I can
+tell that by his face. The other day I finished something he thought
+bad, and he looked very differently from this."
+
+"How did Mr. Mallet look?" asked Christina.
+
+"My dear Rowland," said Roderick, "I am speaking of my seated woman. You
+looked as if you had on a pair of tight boots."
+
+"Ah, my child, you 'll not understand that!" cried Mrs. Light. "You
+never yet had a pair that were small enough."
+
+"It 's a pity, Mr. Hudson," said Christina, gravely, "that you could
+not have introduced my feet into the bust. But we can hang a pair of
+slippers round the neck!"
+
+"I nevertheless like your statues, Roderick," Rowland rejoined, "better
+than your jokes. This is admirable. Miss Light, you may be proud!"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Mallet, for the permission," rejoined the young girl.
+
+"I am dying to see it in the marble, with a red velvet screen behind
+it," said Mrs. Light.
+
+"Placed there under the Sassoferrato!" Christina went on. "I hope you
+keep well in mind, Mr. Hudson, that you have not a grain of property in
+your work, and that if mamma chooses, she may have it photographed and
+the copies sold in the Piazza di Spagna, at five francs apiece, without
+your having a sou of the profits."
+
+"Amen!" said Roderick. "It was so nominated in the bond. My profits are
+here!" and he tapped his forehead.
+
+"It would be prettier if you said here!" And Christina touched her
+heart.
+
+"My precious child, how you do run on!" murmured Mrs. Light.
+
+"It is Mr. Mallet," the young girl answered. "I can't talk a word of
+sense so long as he is in the room. I don't say that to make you go,"
+she added, "I say it simply to justify myself."
+
+Rowland bowed in silence. Roderick declared that he must get at work and
+requested Christina to take her usual position, and Mrs. Light proposed
+to her visitor that they should adjourn to her boudoir. This was a
+small room, hardly more spacious than an alcove, opening out of the
+drawing-room and having no other issue. Here, as they entered, on a
+divan near the door, Rowland perceived the Cavaliere Giacosa, with his
+arms folded, his head dropped upon his breast, and his eyes closed.
+
+"Sleeping at his post!" said Rowland with a kindly laugh.
+
+"That 's a punishable offense," rejoined Mrs. Light, sharply. She was on
+the point of calling him, in the same tone, when he suddenly opened his
+eyes, stared a moment, and then rose with a smile and a bow.
+
+"Excuse me, dear lady," he said, "I was overcome by the--the great
+heat."
+
+"Nonsense, Cavaliere!" cried the lady, "you know we are perishing here
+with the cold! You had better go and cool yourself in one of the other
+rooms."
+
+"I obey, dear lady," said the Cavaliere; and with another smile and bow
+to Rowland he departed, walking very discreetly on his toes. Rowland
+out-stayed him but a short time, for he was not fond of Mrs. Light,
+and he found nothing very inspiring in her frank intimation that if he
+chose, he might become a favorite. He was disgusted with himself for
+pleasing her; he confounded his fatal urbanity. In the court-yard of the
+palace he overtook the Cavaliere, who had stopped at the porter's lodge
+to say a word to his little girl. She was a young lady of very tender
+years and she wore a very dirty pinafore. He had taken her up in his
+arms and was singing an infantine rhyme to her, and she was staring at
+him with big, soft Roman eyes. On seeing Rowland he put her down with
+a kiss, and stepped forward with a conscious grin, an unresentful
+admission that he was sensitive both to chubbiness and ridicule.
+Rowland began to pity him again; he had taken his dismissal from the
+drawing-room so meekly.
+
+"You don't keep your promise," said Rowland, "to come and see me. Don't
+forget it. I want you to tell me about Rome thirty years ago."
+
+"Thirty years ago? Ah, dear sir, Rome is Rome still; a place where
+strange things happen! But happy things too, since I have your renewed
+permission to call. You do me too much honor. Is it in the morning or in
+the evening that I should least intrude?"
+
+"Take your own time, Cavaliere; only come, sometime. I depend upon you,"
+said Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere thanked him with an humble obeisance. To the Cavaliere,
+too, he felt that he was, in Roman phrase, sympathetic, but the idea of
+pleasing this extremely reduced gentleman was not disagreeable to him.
+
+Miss Light's bust stood for a while on exhibition in Roderick's studio,
+and half the foreign colony came to see it. With the completion of his
+work, however, Roderick's visits at the Palazzo F---- by no means came
+to an end. He spent half his time in Mrs. Light's drawing-room, and
+began to be talked about as "attentive" to Christina. The success of the
+bust restored his equanimity, and in the garrulity of his good-humor he
+suffered Rowland to see that she was just now the object uppermost in
+his thoughts. Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener
+than speaker; partly because Roderick's own tone was so resonant and
+exultant, and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for
+having called her unsafe, he was too perplexed to defend himself.
+The impression remained that she was unsafe; that she was a complex,
+willful, passionate creature, who might easily engulf a too confiding
+spirit in the eddies of her capricious temper. And yet he strongly felt
+her charm; the eddies had a strange fascination! Roderick, in the glow
+of that renewed admiration provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal,
+was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her
+beauty.
+
+"I had no idea of it," he said, "till I began to look at her with an eye
+to reproducing line for line and curve for curve. Her face is the most
+exquisite piece of modeling that ever came from creative hands. Not
+a line without meaning, not a hair's breadth that is not admirably
+finished. And then her mouth! It 's as if a pair of lips had been shaped
+to utter pure truth without doing it dishonor!" Later, after he had been
+working for a week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain,
+she would still be the most fascinating of women. "I 've quite forgotten
+her beauty," he said, "or rather I have ceased to perceive it as
+something distinct and defined, something independent of the rest of
+her. She is all one, and all consummately interesting!"
+
+"What does she do--what does she say, that is so remarkable?" Rowland
+had asked.
+
+"Say? Sometimes nothing--sometimes everything. She is never the same.
+Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word, without a
+smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore. She hardly looks
+at me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work. On other
+days she laughs and chatters and asks endless questions, and pours out
+the most irresistible nonsense. She is a creature of moods; you can't
+count upon her; she keeps observation on the stretch. And then, bless
+you, she has seen such a lot! Her talk is full of the oddest allusions!"
+
+"It is altogether a very singular type of young lady," said Rowland,
+after the visit which I have related at length. "It may be a charm, but
+it is certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the
+charm of shrinking innocence and soft docility. Our American girls
+are accused of being more knowing than any others, and Miss Light is
+nominally an American. But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make
+her what she is. The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a
+product of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong."
+
+"Ah, she has an atmosphere," said Roderick, in the tone of high
+appreciation.
+
+"Young unmarried women," Rowland answered, "should be careful not to
+have too much!"
+
+"Ah, you don't forgive her," cried his companion, "for hitting you so
+hard! A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
+notice of him."
+
+"A man is never flattered at a woman's not liking him."
+
+"Are you sure she does n't like you? That 's to the credit of your
+humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade
+himself that he was in favor."
+
+"He would have also," said Rowland, laughing, "to be a fellow of
+remarkable ingenuity!" He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick
+reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he
+was not engaged to than of the girl he was. But it amounted almost to
+arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland to pretend to know how often
+Roderick thought of Miss Garland. He wondered gloomily, at any rate,
+whether for men of his companion's large, easy power, there was not
+a larger moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who,
+yielding Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was),
+had no reason to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their
+accounts. Was it not a part of the eternal fitness of things that
+Roderick, while rhapsodizing about Miss Light, should have it at his
+command to look at you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded
+blue, and to shake off your musty imputations by a toss of his
+picturesque brown locks? Or had he, in fact, no conscience to speak of?
+Happy fellow, either way!
+
+Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick on
+his model and what he had made of her. "Devilish pretty, through and
+through!" he said as he looked at the bust. "Capital handling of the
+neck and throat; lovely work on the nose. You 're a detestably lucky
+fellow, my boy! But you ought not to have squandered such material on a
+simple bust; you should have made a great imaginative figure. If I could
+only have got hold of her, I would have put her into a statue in spite
+of herself. What a pity she is not a ragged Trasteverine, whom we might
+have for a franc an hour! I have been carrying about in my head for
+years a delicious design for a fantastic figure, but it has always
+stayed there for want of a tolerable model. I have seen intimations of
+the type, but Miss Light is the perfection of it. As soon as I saw her I
+said to myself, 'By Jove, there 's my statue in the flesh!'"
+
+"What is your subject?" asked Roderick.
+
+"Don't take it ill," said Gloriani. "You know I 'm the very deuce for
+observation. She would make a magnificent Herodias!"
+
+If Roderick had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know he thought
+Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom), he might have been
+soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton, who came and sat for an
+hour in a sort of mental prostration before both bust and artist.
+But Roderick's attitude before his patient little devotee was one
+of undisguised though friendly amusement; and, indeed, judged from a
+strictly plastic point of view, the poor fellow's diminutive stature,
+his enormous mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently
+ridiculous. "Nay, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton
+afterwards, on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of
+his own paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's
+talent. "You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be
+contented with what you are and paint me another picture."
+
+"Oh, I don't envy Hudson anything he possesses," Singleton said,
+"because to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness.
+'Complete,' that 's what he is; while we little clevernesses are like
+half-ripened plums, only good eating on the side that has had a glimpse
+of the sun. Nature has made him so, and fortune confesses to it! He is
+the handsomest fellow in Rome, he has the most genius, and, as a matter
+of course, the most beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to be
+his model. If that is not completeness, where shall we find it?"
+
+One morning, going into Roderick's studio, Rowland found the young
+sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard--if this is not too flattering a
+description of his gracefully passive tolerance of her presence. He had
+never liked her and never climbed into her sky-studio to observe her
+wonderful manipulation of petals. He had once quoted Tennyson against
+her:--
+
+"And is there any moral shut
+Within the bosom of the rose?"
+
+"In all Miss Blanchard's roses you may be sure there is a moral," he had
+said. "You can see it sticking out its head, and, if you go to smell the
+flower, it scratches your nose." But on this occasion she had come
+with a propitiatory gift--introducing her friend Mr. Leavenworth. Mr.
+Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully
+brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored face, which seemed,
+somehow, to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of
+superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth, white forehead) it bore
+a certain resemblance to a large parlor with a very florid carpet, but
+no pictures on the walls. He held his head high, talked sonorously, and
+told Roderick, within five minutes, that he was a widower, traveling
+to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the
+proprietorship of large mines of borax in Pennsylvania. Roderick
+supposed at first that, in his character of depressed widower, he had
+come to order a tombstone; but observing then the extreme blandness
+of his address to Miss Blanchard, he credited him with a judicious
+prevision that by the time the tombstone was completed, a monument
+of his inconsolability might have become an anachronism. But Mr.
+Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
+
+"You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent," he said. "I
+am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make
+a rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me
+into mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded
+by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.
+I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you
+think you could do something for my library? It is to be filled
+with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this
+style,"--pointing to one of Roderick's statues,--"standing out against
+the morocco and gilt, would have a noble effect. The subject I have
+already fixed upon. I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.
+Do you think, now," asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, "you could
+rise to the conception?"
+
+"A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind," remarked Miss
+Blanchard.
+
+Roderick looked at her a moment, and then--"The simplest thing I
+could do," he said, "would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss
+Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for
+the allegory."
+
+Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there
+was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of
+Roderick's genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to
+Miss Blanchard's beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental,
+more impersonal. "If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of
+Miss Blanchard," he added, "I should prefer to have it in no factitious
+disguise!"
+
+Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were
+discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. "Who is
+your friend?" he asked.
+
+"A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune--which is
+magnificent. One of nature's gentlemen!"
+
+This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss
+Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had
+an opinion on the young girl's beauty, and, in her own fashion, she
+expressed it epigrammatically. "She looks half like a Madonna and half
+like a ballerina," she said.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young
+sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron's
+conception. "His conception be hanged!" Roderick exclaimed, after he had
+departed. "His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear
+and a photographic album in her hand. I shall have to conceive, myself.
+For the money, I ought to be able to!"
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society.
+"Heaven knows how!" Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned
+to her several evidences of the lady's prosperity. "In such a case
+there is nothing like audacity. A month ago she knew no one but her
+washerwoman, and now I am told that the cards of Roman princesses are to
+be seen on her table. She is evidently determined to play a great
+part, and she has the wit to perceive that, to make remunerative
+acquaintances, you must seem yourself to be worth knowing. You must
+have striking rooms and a confusing variety of dresses, and give good
+dinners, and so forth. She is spending a lot of money, and you 'll see
+that in two or three weeks she will take upon herself to open the season
+by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it is Christina's beauty that
+floats her. People go to see her because they are curious."
+
+"And they go again because they are charmed," said Rowland. "Miss
+Christina is a very remarkable young lady."
+
+"Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day.
+She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply
+interesting. I think she 's an actress, but she believes in her part
+while she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to
+believe that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are
+sitting, and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my
+eyes. She cried, herself, profusely, and as naturally as possible. She
+said she was weary of life and that she knew no one but me she could
+speak frankly to. She must speak, or she would go mad. She sobbed as if
+her heart would break. I assure you it 's well for you susceptible young
+men that you don't see her when she sobs. She said, in so many words,
+that her mother was an immoral woman. Heaven knows what she meant. She
+meant, I suppose, that she makes debts that she knows she can't pay. She
+said the life they led was horrible; that it was monstrous a poor girl
+should be dragged about the world to be sold to the highest bidder. She
+was meant for better things; she could be perfectly happy in poverty. It
+was not money she wanted. I might not believe her, but she really cared
+for serious things. Sometimes she thought of taking poison!"
+
+"What did you say to that?"
+
+"I recommended her," said Madame Grandoni, "to come and see me
+instead. I would help her about as much, and I was, on the whole, less
+unpleasant. Of course I could help her only by letting her talk herself
+out and kissing her and patting her beautiful hands and telling her to
+be patient and she would be happy yet. About once in two months I expect
+her to reappear, on the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my
+existence. I believe I melted down to the point of telling her that
+I would find some good, quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she
+declared, almost with fury, that she was sick unto death of husbands,
+and begged I would never again mention the word. And, in fact, it was a
+rash offer; for I am sure that there is not a man of the kind that might
+really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle.
+Looked at in that way she is certainly very much to be pitied, and
+indeed, altogether, though I don't think she either means all she says
+or, by a great deal, says all that she means. I feel very sorry for
+her."
+
+Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments,
+and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendrissement. He
+imagined more than once that there had been a passionate scene between
+them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found
+effective. But Christina's face told no tales, and she moved about,
+beautiful and silent, looking absently over people's heads, barely
+heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the
+soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body
+of a goddess. "Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is
+twenty," observers asked, "to have left all her illusions behind?" And
+the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she
+was intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was
+not conceded were free to reflect that she was "not at all liked."
+
+It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this
+conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and, in especial,
+with the spectacle of Roderick's inveterate devotion. All Rome might
+behold that he, at least, "liked" Christina Light. Wherever she
+appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was
+perpetually at her side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of
+a disconnected talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face,
+profoundly immaterial to the young lady. People in general smiled at the
+radiant good faith of the handsome young sculptor, and asked each other
+whether he really supposed that beauties of that quality were meant to
+wed with poor artists. But although Christina's deportment, as I have
+said, was one of superb inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from
+Roderick no suspicion that he suffered from snubbing, and he was
+therefore surprised at an incident which befell one evening at a large
+musical party. Roderick, as usual, was in the field, and, on the ladies
+taking the chairs which had been arranged for them, he immediately
+placed himself beside Christina. As most of the gentlemen were standing,
+his position made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at Ophelia's feet, at the
+play. Rowland was leaning, somewhat apart, against the chimney-piece.
+There was a long, solemn pause before the music began, and in the midst
+of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole length of the
+immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped before him. She
+was neither pale nor flushed; she had a soft smile.
+
+"Will you do me a favor?" she asked.
+
+"A thousand!"
+
+"Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson
+that he is not in a New England village--that it is not the custom in
+Rome to address one's conversation exclusively, night after night, to
+the same poor girl, and that"....
+
+The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice. She made a
+gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm and led her back
+to her seat.
+
+The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, who burst into joyous
+laughter. "She 's a delightfully strange girl!" he cried. "She must do
+everything that comes into her head!"
+
+"Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?"
+
+"On the contrary, she has often said to me, 'Mind you now, I forbid you
+to leave me. Here comes that tiresome So-and-so.' She cares as little
+about the custom as I do. What could be a better proof than her walking
+up to you, with five hundred people looking at her? Is that the custom
+for young girls in Rome?"
+
+"Why, then, should she take such a step?"
+
+"Because, as she sat there, it came into her head. That 's reason enough
+for her. I have imagined she wishes me well, as they say here--though
+she has never distinguished me in such a way as that!"
+
+Madame Grandoni had foretold the truth; Mrs. Light, a couple of weeks
+later, convoked all Roman society to a brilliant ball. Rowland went
+late, and found the staircase so encumbered with flower-pots and
+servants that he was a long time making his way into the presence of the
+hostess. At last he approached her, as she stood making courtesies at
+the door, with her daughter by her side. Some of Mrs. Light's courtesies
+were very low, for she had the happiness of receiving a number of the
+social potentates of the Roman world. She was rosy with triumph, to say
+nothing of a less metaphysical cause, and was evidently vastly contented
+with herself, with her company, and with the general promise of destiny.
+Her daughter was less overtly jubilant, and distributed her greetings
+with impartial frigidity. She had never been so beautiful. Dressed
+simply in vaporous white, relieved with half a dozen white roses, the
+perfection of her features and of her person and the mysterious depth of
+her expression seemed to glow with the white light of a splendid pearl.
+She recognized no one individually, and made her courtesy slowly,
+gravely, with her eyes on the ground. Rowland fancied that, as he stood
+before her, her obeisance was slightly exaggerated, as with an intention
+of irony; but he smiled philosophically to himself, and reflected, as
+he passed into the room, that, if she disliked him, he had nothing
+to reproach himself with. He walked about, had a few words with Miss
+Blanchard, who, with a fillet of cameos in her hair, was leaning on the
+arm of Mr. Leavenworth, and at last came upon the Cavaliere Giacosa,
+modestly stationed in a corner. The little gentleman's coat-lappet was
+decorated with an enormous bouquet and his neck encased in a voluminous
+white handkerchief of the fashion of thirty years ago. His arms were
+folded, and he was surveying the scene with contracted eyelids, through
+which you saw the glitter of his intensely dark, vivacious pupil.
+He immediately embarked on an elaborate apology for not having yet
+manifested, as he felt it, his sense of the honor Rowland had done him.
+
+"I am always on service with these ladies, you see," he explained, "and
+that is a duty to which one would not willingly be faithless for an
+instant."
+
+"Evidently," said Rowland, "you are a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light,
+in her situation, is very happy in having you."
+
+"We are old friends," said the Cavaliere, gravely. "Old friends. I knew
+the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest woman in Rome--or
+rather in Ancona, which is even better. The beautiful Christina, now, is
+perhaps the most beautiful young girl in Europe!"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland.
+
+"Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to
+touch the piano keys." And at these faded memories, the Cavaliere's eyes
+glittered more brightly. Rowland half expected him to proceed, with a
+little flash of long-repressed passion, "And now--and now, sir, they
+treat me as you observed the other day!" But the Cavaliere only looked
+out at him keenly from among his wrinkles, and seemed to say, with all
+the vividness of the Italian glance, "Oh, I say nothing more. I am not
+so shallow as to complain!"
+
+Evidently the Cavaliere was not shallow, and Rowland repeated
+respectfully, "You are a devoted friend."
+
+"That 's very true. I am a devoted friend. A man may do himself justice,
+after twenty years!"
+
+Rowland, after a pause, made some remark about the beauty of the ball.
+It was very brilliant.
+
+"Stupendous!" said the Cavaliere, solemnly. "It is a great day. We have
+four Roman princes, to say nothing of others." And he counted them over
+on his fingers and held up his hand triumphantly. "And there she stands,
+the girl to whom I--I, Giuseppe Giacosa--taught her alphabet and her
+piano-scales; there she stands in her incomparable beauty, and Roman
+princes come and bow to her. Here, in his corner, her old master permits
+himself to be proud."
+
+"It is very friendly of him," said Rowland, smiling.
+
+The Cavaliere contracted his lids a little more and gave another keen
+glance. "It is very natural, signore. The Christina is a good girl; she
+remembers my little services. But here comes," he added in a moment,
+"the young Prince of the Fine Arts. I am sure he has bowed lowest of
+all."
+
+Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room and
+casting about him his usual luminous, unshrinking looks. He presently
+joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere, and immediately
+demanded of Rowland, "Have you seen her?"
+
+"I have seen Miss Light," said Rowland. "She 's magnificent."
+
+"I 'm half crazy!" cried Roderick; so loud that several persons turned
+round.
+
+Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid his hand on his arm. Roderick
+was trembling. "If you will go away," Rowland said instantly, "I will go
+with you."
+
+"Go away?" cried Roderick, almost angrily. "I intend to dance with her!"
+
+The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently laid his hand
+on his other arm. "Softly, softly, dear young man," he said. "Let me
+speak to you as a friend."
+
+"Oh, speak even as an enemy and I shall not mind it," Roderick answered,
+frowning.
+
+"Be very reasonable, then, and go away."
+
+"Why the deuce should I go away?"
+
+"Because you are in love," said the Cavaliere.
+
+"I might as well be in love here as in the streets."
+
+"Carry your love as far as possible from Christina. She will not listen
+to you--she can't."
+
+"She 'can't'?" demanded Roderick. "She is not a person of whom you may
+say that. She can if she will; she does as she chooses."
+
+"Up to a certain point. It would take too long to explain; I only beg
+you to believe that if you continue to love Miss Light you will be
+very unhappy. Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune?
+Otherwise you can never have her."
+
+And the Cavaliere folded his arms again, like a man who has done his
+duty. Roderick wiped his forehead and looked askance at Rowland; he
+seemed to be guessing his thoughts and they made him blush a little. But
+he smiled blandly, and addressing the Cavaliere, "I 'm much obliged to
+you for the information," he said. "Now that I have obtained it, let
+me tell you that I am no more in love with Miss Light than you are. Mr.
+Mallet knows that. I admire her--yes, profoundly. But that 's no one's
+business but my own, and though I have, as you say, neither a princely
+title nor a princely fortune, I mean to suffer neither those advantages
+nor those who possess them to diminish my right."
+
+"If you are not in love, my dear young man," said the Cavaliere, with
+his hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, "so much the better. But
+let me entreat you, as an affectionate friend, to keep a watch on your
+emotions. You are young, you are handsome, you have a brilliant genius
+and a generous heart, but--I may say it almost with authority--Christina
+is not for you!"
+
+Whether Roderick was in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently
+seemed to him an obtrusive negation of an inspiring possibility. "You
+speak as if she had made her choice!" he cried. "Without pretending to
+confidential information on the subject, I am sure she has not."
+
+"No, but she must make it soon," said the Cavaliere. And raising his
+forefinger, he laid it against his under lip. "She must choose a name
+and a fortune--and she will!"
+
+"She will do exactly as her inclination prompts! She will marry the man
+who pleases her, if he has n't a dollar! I know her better than you."
+
+The Cavaliere turned a little paler than usual, and smiled more
+urbanely. "No, no, my dear young man, you do not know her better than
+I. You have not watched her, day by day, for twenty years. I too have
+admired her. She is a good girl; she has never said an unkind word
+to me; the blessed Virgin be thanked! But she must have a brilliant
+destiny; it has been marked out for her, and she will submit. You had
+better believe me; it may save you much suffering."
+
+"We shall see!" said Roderick, with an excited laugh.
+
+"Certainly we shall see. But I retire from the discussion," the
+Cavaliere added. "I have no wish to provoke you to attempt to prove to
+me that I am wrong. You are already excited."
+
+"No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance the
+cotillon with Miss Light."
+
+"The cotillon? has she promised?"
+
+Roderick patted the air with a grand confidence. "You 'll see!" His
+gesture might almost have been taken to mean that the state of his
+relations with Miss Light was such that they quite dispensed with vain
+formalities.
+
+The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug. "You make a great many
+mourners!"
+
+"He has made one already!" Rowland murmured to himself. This was
+evidently not the first time that reference had been made between
+Roderick and the Cavaliere to the young man's possible passion, and
+Roderick had failed to consider it the simplest and most natural course
+to say in three words to the vigilant little gentleman that there was
+no cause for alarm--his affections were preoccupied. Rowland hoped,
+silently, with some dryness, that his motives were of a finer kind
+than they seemed to be. He turned away; it was irritating to look at
+Roderick's radiant, unscrupulous eagerness. The tide was setting toward
+the supper-room and he drifted with it to the door. The crowd at this
+point was dense, and he was obliged to wait for some minutes before he
+could advance. At last he felt his neighbors dividing behind him, and
+turning he saw Christina pressing her way forward alone. She was looking
+at no one, and, save for the fact of her being alone, you would not have
+supposed she was in her mother's house. As she recognized Rowland she
+beckoned to him, took his arm, and motioned him to lead her into the
+supper-room. She said nothing until he had forced a passage and they
+stood somewhat isolated.
+
+"Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find," she then
+said, "and then go and get me a piece of bread."
+
+"Nothing more? There seems to be everything conceivable."
+
+"A simple roll. Nothing more, on your peril. Only bring something for
+yourself."
+
+It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window (embrasures in Roman
+palaces are deep) was a retreat sufficiently obscure for Miss Light to
+execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity.
+A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he
+presented it, he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at loss to
+understand why she should have selected for the honor of a tete-a-tete
+an individual for whom she had so little taste.
+
+"Ah yes, I dislike you," said Christina. "To tell the truth, I had
+forgotten it. There are so many people here whom I dislike more, that
+when I espied you just now, you seemed like an intimate friend. But I
+have not come into this corner to talk nonsense," she went on. "You must
+not think I always do, eh?"
+
+"I have never heard you do anything else," said Rowland, deliberately,
+having decided that he owed her no compliments.
+
+"Very good. I like your frankness. It 's quite true. You see, I am a
+strange girl. To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical. Don't flatter
+yourself you have said anything very clever if you ever take it into
+your head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is, I
+can't help it. I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess
+to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly
+more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. If a person
+wished to do me a favor I would say to him, 'I beg you, with tears in my
+eyes, to interest me. Be strong, be positive, be imperious, if you
+will; only be something,--something that, in looking at, I can forget my
+detestable self!' Perhaps that is nonsense too. If it is, I can't help
+it. I can only apologize for the nonsense I know to be such and that I
+talk--oh, for more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I
+were to try, you would understand me."
+
+"I am afraid I should never understand," said Rowland, "why a person
+should willingly talk nonsense."
+
+"That proves how little you know about women. But I like your frankness.
+When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea
+you were more formal,--how do you say it?--more guinde. I am very
+capricious. To-night I like you better."
+
+"Oh, I am not guinde," said Rowland, gravely.
+
+"I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so. Now I have an idea that you
+would make a useful friend--an intimate friend--a friend to whom one
+could tell everything. For such a friend, what would n't I give!"
+
+Rowland looked at her in some perplexity. Was this touching sincerity,
+or unfathomable coquetry? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but
+then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle. "I hesitate
+to recommend myself out and out for the office," he said, "but I believe
+that if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do, I
+should not be found wanting."
+
+"Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge
+one not by isolated acts, but by one's whole conduct. I care for your
+opinion--I don't know why."
+
+"Nor do I, I confess," said Rowland with a laugh.
+
+"What do you think of this affair?" she continued, without heeding his
+laugh.
+
+"Of your ball? Why, it 's a very grand affair."
+
+"It 's horrible--that 's what it is! It 's a mere rabble! There are
+people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma
+went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one
+they knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she is satisfied! It
+is not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying. I have
+twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma go
+through with it as she can. By the way," she added in a moment, without
+a visible reason for the transition, "can you tell me something to
+read?"
+
+Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.
+
+"Can you recommend me some books?" she repeated. "I know you are a great
+reader. I have no one else to ask. We can buy no books. We can make
+debts for jewelry and bonnets and five-button gloves, but we can't spend
+a sou for ideas. And yet, though you may not believe it, I like ideas
+quite as well."
+
+"I shall be most happy to lend you some books," Rowland said. "I will
+pick some out to-morrow and send them to you."
+
+"No novels, please! I am tired of novels. I can imagine better stories
+for myself than any I read. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing
+nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts."
+
+"You shall be served. Your taste agrees with my own."
+
+She was silent a moment, looking at him. Then suddenly--"Tell me
+something about Mr. Hudson," she demanded. "You are great friends!"
+
+"Oh yes," said Rowland; "we are great friends."
+
+"Tell me about him. Come, begin!"
+
+"Where shall I begin? You know him for yourself."
+
+"No, I don't know him; I don't find him so easy to know. Since he has
+finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly, he has become a
+great talker. He says very fine things; but does he mean all he says?"
+
+"Few of us do that."
+
+"You do, I imagine. You ought to know, for he tells me you discovered
+him." Rowland was silent, and Christina continued, "Do you consider him
+very clever?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"His talent is really something out of the common way?"
+
+"So it seems to me."
+
+"In short, he 's a man of genius?"
+
+"Yes, call it genius."
+
+"And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him by the
+hand and set him on his feet in Rome?"
+
+"Is that the popular legend?" asked Rowland.
+
+"Oh, you need n't be modest. There was no great merit in it; there
+would have been none at least on my part in the same circumstances.
+Real geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in the
+wilderness, I would have brought him out into the market-place to see
+how he would behave. It would be excessively amusing. You must find it
+so to watch Mr. Hudson, eh? Tell me this: do you think he is going to be
+a great man--become famous, have his life written, and all that?"
+
+"I don't prophesy, but I have good hopes."
+
+Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a
+moment absently, turning it so as to see--or almost to see--the dimple
+in her elbow. This was apparently a frequent gesture with her; Rowland
+had already observed it. It was as coolly and naturally done as if she
+had been in her room alone. "So he 's a man of genius," she suddenly
+resumed. "Don't you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have a
+man of genius perpetually hanging about? He is the first I ever saw,
+but I should have known he was not a common mortal. There is something
+strange about him. To begin with, he has no manners. You may say that it
+'s not for me to blame him, for I have none myself. That 's very true,
+but the difference is that I can have them when I wish to (and very
+charming ones too; I 'll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will
+never have them. And yet, somehow, one sees he 's a gentleman. He seems
+to have something urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and
+defiant. You see it in his eyes. They are the finest, by the way, I ever
+saw. When a person has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad
+manners. I suppose that is what they call the sacred fire."
+
+Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would have
+another roll. She merely shook her head and went on:--
+
+"Tell me how you found him. Where was he--how was he?"
+
+"He was in a place called Northampton. Did you ever hear of it? He was
+studying law--but not learning it."
+
+"It appears it was something horrible, eh?"
+
+"Something horrible?"
+
+"This little village. No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no life."
+
+"You have received a false impression. Northampton is not as gay as
+Rome, but Roderick had some charming friends."
+
+"Tell me about them. Who were they?"
+
+"Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance: a
+delightful woman."
+
+"Young--pretty?"
+
+"Yes, a good deal of both. And very clever."
+
+"Did he make love to her?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Well, who else?"
+
+"He lived with his mother. She is the best of women."
+
+"Ah yes, I know all that one's mother is. But she does not count as
+society. And who else?"
+
+Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina's insistence was
+the result of a general interest in Roderick's antecedents or of a
+particular suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little
+askance, waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his
+engagement to the Cavaliere, it was probable that with this beautiful
+girl he had not been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it
+was public; that other girl was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland felt
+a kind of dumb anger rising in his heart. He deliberated a moment
+intently.
+
+"What are you frowning at?" Christina asked.
+
+"There was another person," he answered, "the most important of all: the
+young girl to whom he is engaged."
+
+Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows. "Ah, Mr. Hudson is
+engaged?" she said, very simply. "Is she pretty?"
+
+"She is not called a beauty," said Rowland. He meant to practice great
+brevity, but in a moment he added, "I have seen beauties, however, who
+pleased me less."
+
+"Ah, she pleases you, too? Why don't they marry?"
+
+"Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry."
+
+Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her
+elbow. "Ah, he 's engaged?" she repeated in the same tone. "He never
+told me."
+
+Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them were
+beginning to return to the dancing-room, and immediately afterwards
+he saw Roderick making his way toward themselves. Roderick presented
+himself before Miss Light.
+
+"I don't claim that you have promised me the cotillon," he said, "but I
+consider that you have given me hopes which warrant the confidence that
+you will dance with me."
+
+Christina looked at him a moment. "Certainly I have made no promises,"
+she said. "It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should
+keep myself free and let it depend on circumstances."
+
+"I beseech you to dance with me!" said Roderick, with vehemence.
+
+Christina rose and began to laugh. "You say that very well, but the
+Italians do it better."
+
+This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof. Mrs. Light hastily
+approached, leading, rather than led by, a tall, slim young man, of an
+unmistakably Southern physiognomy. "My precious love," she cried, "what
+a place to hide in! We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I
+have chosen a cavalier for you, and chosen well!"
+
+The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, joined his two
+hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile, "May I venture to hope, dear
+signorina, for the honor of your hand?"
+
+"Of course you may!" said Mrs. Light. "The honor is for us."
+
+Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a
+courtesy as profound as his own bow. "You are very kind, but you are too
+late. I have just accepted!"
+
+"Ah, my own darling!" murmured--almost moaned--Mrs. Light.
+
+Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance--a glance brilliant on
+both sides. She passed her hand into his arm; he tossed his clustering
+locks and led her away.
+
+A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she had
+rejected leaning against a doorway. He was ugly, but what is called
+distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye, a sallow complexion, a
+long, thin neck; his hair was cropped en brosse. He looked very young,
+yet extremely bored. He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an
+imperceptible moustache. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by,
+and, having joined him, asked him the young man's name.
+
+"Oh," said the Cavaliere, "he 's a pezzo grosso! A Neapolitan. Prince
+Casamassima."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. Frascati
+
+One day, on entering Roderick's lodging (not the modest rooms on the
+Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous apartment
+on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table addressed to himself.
+It was from Roderick, and consisted of but three lines: "I am gone to
+Frascati--for meditation. If I am not at home on Friday, you had
+better join me." On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to
+Frascati. Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending his
+days, according to his own account, lying under the trees of the Villa
+Mondragone, reading Ariosto. He was in a sombre mood; "meditation"
+seemed not to have been fruitful. Nothing especially pertinent to our
+narrative had passed between the two young men since Mrs. Light's ball,
+save a few words bearing on an incident of that entertainment. Rowland
+informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his
+engagement. "I don't know whether you 'll thank me," he had said, "but
+it 's my duty to let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done
+so."
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly
+rising. "Why should n't I thank you?" he asked. "I am not ashamed of my
+engagement."
+
+"As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason
+for not having it known."
+
+"A man does n't gossip about such a matter with strangers," Roderick
+rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice.
+
+"With strangers--no!" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+Roderick continued his work; but after a moment, turning round with a
+frown: "If you supposed I had a reason for being silent, pray why should
+you have spoken?"
+
+"I did not speak idly, my dear Roderick. I weighed the matter before I
+spoke, and promised myself to let you know immediately afterwards. It
+seemed to me that Miss Light had better know that your affections are
+pledged."
+
+"The Cavaliere has put it into your head, then, that I am making love to
+her?"
+
+"No; in that case I would not have spoken to her first."
+
+"Do you mean, then, that she is making love to me?"
+
+"This is what I mean," said Rowland, after a pause. "That girl finds you
+interesting, and is pleased, even though she may play indifference,
+at your finding her so. I said to myself that it might save her some
+sentimental disappointment to know without delay that you are not at
+liberty to become indefinitely interested in other women."
+
+"You seem to have taken the measure of my liberty with extraordinary
+minuteness!" cried Roderick.
+
+"You must do me justice. I am the cause of your separation from Miss
+Garland, the cause of your being exposed to temptations which she hardly
+even suspects. How could I ever face her," Rowland demanded, with much
+warmth of tone, "if at the end of it all she should be unhappy?"
+
+"I had no idea that Miss Garland had made such an impression on you.
+You are too zealous; I take it she did n't charge you to look after her
+interests."
+
+"If anything happens to you, I am accountable. You must understand
+that."
+
+"That 's a view of the situation I can't accept; in your own interest,
+no less than in mine. It can only make us both very uncomfortable. I
+know all I owe you; I feel it; you know that! But I am not a small boy
+nor an outer barbarian any longer, and, whatever I do, I do with my eyes
+open. When I do well, the merit 's mine; if I do ill, the fault 's mine!
+The idea that I make you nervous is detestable. Dedicate your nerves
+to some better cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a
+quarrel, we shall settle it between ourselves."
+
+Rowland had found himself wondering, shortly before, whether possibly
+his brilliant young friend was without a conscience; now it dimly
+occurred to him that he was without a heart. Rowland, as we have already
+intimated, was a man with a moral passion, and no small part of it had
+gone forth into his relations with Roderick. There had been, from the
+first, no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had
+implicitly offered everything that belongs to friendship, and Roderick
+had, apparently, as deliberately accepted it. Rowland, indeed, had taken
+an exquisite satisfaction in his companion's deep, inexpressive assent
+to his interest in him. "Here is an uncommonly fine thing," he said to
+himself: "a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship does
+the thing that love alone generally has the credit of--knocks the bottom
+out of pride!" His reflective judgment of Roderick, as time went on, had
+indulged in a great many irrepressible vagaries; but his affection,
+his sense of something in his companion's whole personality that
+overmastered his heart and beguiled his imagination, had never for an
+instant faltered. He listened to Roderick's last words, and then he
+smiled as he rarely smiled--with bitterness.
+
+"I don't at all like your telling me I am too zealous," he said. "If I
+had not been zealous, I should never have cared a fig for you."
+
+Roderick flushed deeply, and thrust his modeling tool up to the handle
+into the clay. "Say it outright! You have been a great fool to believe
+in me."
+
+"I desire to say nothing of the kind, and you don't honestly believe I
+do!" said Rowland. "It seems to me I am really very good-natured even to
+reply to such nonsense."
+
+Roderick sat down, crossed his arms, and fixed his eyes on the floor.
+Rowland looked at him for some moments; it seemed to him that he
+had never so clearly read his companion's strangely commingled
+character--his strength and his weakness, his picturesque personal
+attractiveness and his urgent egoism, his exalted ardor and his puerile
+petulance. It would have made him almost sick, however, to think that,
+on the whole, Roderick was not a generous fellow, and he was so far from
+having ceased to believe in him that he felt just now, more than ever,
+that all this was but the painful complexity of genius. Rowland, who
+had not a grain of genius either to make one say he was an interested
+reasoner, or to enable one to feel that he could afford a dangerous
+theory or two, adhered to his conviction of the essential salubrity of
+genius. Suddenly he felt an irresistible compassion for his companion;
+it seemed to him that his beautiful faculty of production was a
+double-edged instrument, susceptible of being dealt in back-handed blows
+at its possessor. Genius was priceless, inspired, divine; but it was
+also, at its hours, capricious, sinister, cruel; and men of genius,
+accordingly, were alternately very enviable and very helpless. It was
+not the first time he had had a sense of Roderick's standing helpless in
+the grasp of his temperament. It had shaken him, as yet, but with a half
+good-humored wantonness; but, henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle
+him more roughly. These were not times, therefore, for a friend to have
+a short patience.
+
+"When you err, you say, the fault 's your own," he said at last. "It is
+because your faults are your own that I care about them."
+
+Rowland's voice, when he spoke with feeling, had an extraordinary
+amenity. Roderick sat staring a moment longer at the floor, then he
+sprang up and laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.
+"You are the best man in the world," he said, "and I am a vile brute.
+Only," he added in a moment, "you don't understand me!" And he looked
+at him with eyes of such radiant lucidity that one might have said (and
+Rowland did almost say so, himself) that it was the fault of one's own
+grossness if one failed to read to the bottom of that beautiful soul.
+
+Rowland smiled sadly. "What is it now? Explain."
+
+"Oh, I can't explain!" cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his
+work. "I have only one way of expressing my deepest feelings--it 's
+this!" And he swung his tool. He stood looking at the half-wrought clay
+for a moment, and then flung the instrument down. "And even this half
+the time plays me false!"
+
+Rowland felt that his irritation had not subsided, and he himself had no
+taste for saying disagreeable things. Nevertheless he saw no sufficient
+reason to forbear uttering the words he had had on his conscience from
+the beginning. "We must do what we can and be thankful," he said. "And
+let me assure you of this--that it won't help you to become entangled
+with Miss Light."
+
+Roderick pressed his hand to his forehead with vehemence and then shook
+it in the air, despairingly; a gesture that had become frequent with him
+since he had been in Italy. "No, no, it 's no use; you don't understand
+me! But I don't blame you. You can't!"
+
+"You think it will help you, then?" said Rowland, wondering.
+
+"I think that when you expect a man to produce beautiful and wonderful
+works of art, you ought to allow him a certain freedom of action, you
+ought to give him a long rope, you ought to let him follow his fancy and
+look for his material wherever he thinks he may find it! A mother can't
+nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist can't bring
+his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You
+demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the
+imagination. In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in
+life we must be mere machines. It won't do. When you have got an artist
+to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don't
+say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with; I
+don't say they satisfy themselves any better than other people. I only
+say that if you want them to produce, you must let them conceive. If
+you want a bird to sing, you must not cover up its cage. Shoot them, the
+poor devils, drown them, exterminate them, if you will, in the interest
+of public morality; it may be morality would gain--I dare say it would!
+But if you suffer them to live, let them live on their own terms and
+according to their own inexorable needs!"
+
+Rowland burst out laughing. "I have no wish whatever either to shoot you
+or to drown you!" he said. "Why launch such a tirade against a warning
+offered you altogether in the interest of your freest development?
+Do you really mean that you have an inexorable need of embarking on a
+flirtation with Miss Light?--a flirtation as to the felicity of which
+there may be differences of opinion, but which cannot at best, under the
+circumstances, be called innocent. Your last summer's adventures were
+more so! As for the terms on which you are to live, I had an idea you
+had arranged them otherwise!"
+
+"I have arranged nothing--thank God! I don't pretend to arrange. I
+am young and ardent and inquisitive, and I admire Miss Light. That 's
+enough. I shall go as far as admiration leads me. I am not afraid. Your
+genuine artist may be sometimes half a madman, but he 's not a coward!"
+
+"Suppose that in your speculation you should come to grief, not only
+sentimentally but artistically?"
+
+"Come what come will! If I 'm to fizzle out, the sooner I know it the
+better. Sometimes I half suspect it. But let me at least go out and
+reconnoitre for the enemy, and not sit here waiting for him, cudgeling
+my brains for ideas that won't come!"
+
+Do what he would, Rowland could not think of Roderick's theory of
+unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case under
+discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion. But he saw it was
+vain to combat longer, for inclination was powerfully on Roderick's
+side. He laid his hand on Roderick's shoulder, looked at him a moment
+with troubled eyes, then shook his head mournfully and turned away.
+
+"I can't work any more," said Roderick. "You have upset me! I 'll go
+and stroll on the Pincian." And he tossed aside his working-jacket and
+prepared himself for the street. As he was arranging his cravat before
+the glass, something occurred to him which made him thoughtful. He
+stopped a few moments afterward, as they were going out, with his hand
+on the door-knob. "You did, from your own point of view, an indiscreet
+thing," he said, "to tell Miss Light of my engagement."
+
+Rowland looked at him with a glance which was partly an interrogation,
+but partly, also, an admission.
+
+"If she 's the coquette you say," Roderick added, "you have given her a
+reason the more."
+
+"And that 's the girl you propose to devote yourself to?" cried Rowland.
+
+"Oh, I don't say it, mind! I only say that she 's the most interesting
+creature in the world! The next time you mean to render me a service,
+pray give me notice beforehand!"
+
+It was perfectly characteristic of Roderick that, a fortnight later, he
+should have let his friend know that he depended upon him for society
+at Frascati, as freely as if no irritating topic had ever been discussed
+between them. Rowland thought him generous, and he had at any rate a
+liberal faculty of forgetting that he had given you any reason to be
+displeased with him. It was equally characteristic of Rowland that he
+complied with his friend's summons without a moment's hesitation. His
+cousin Cecilia had once told him that he was the dupe of his intense
+benevolence. She put the case with too little favor, or too much, as the
+reader chooses; it is certain, at least, that he had a constitutional
+tendency towards magnanimous interpretations. Nothing happened, however,
+to suggest to him that he was deluded in thinking that Roderick's
+secondary impulses were wiser than his primary ones, and that the
+rounded total of his nature had a harmony perfectly attuned to the most
+amiable of its brilliant parts. Roderick's humor, for the time, was
+pitched in a minor key; he was lazy, listless, and melancholy, but he
+had never been more friendly and kindly and appealingly submissive.
+Winter had begun, by the calendar, but the weather was divinely mild,
+and the two young men took long slow strolls on the hills and lounged
+away the mornings in the villas. The villas at Frascati are delicious
+places, and replete with romantic suggestiveness. Roderick, as he
+had said, was meditating, and if a masterpiece was to come of his
+meditations, Rowland was perfectly willing to bear him company and coax
+along the process. But Roderick let him know from the first that he was
+in a miserably sterile mood, and, cudgel his brains as he would, could
+think of nothing that would serve for the statue he was to make for Mr.
+Leavenworth.
+
+"It is worse out here than in Rome," he said, "for here I am face to
+face with the dead blank of my mind! There I could n't think of anything
+either, but there I found things to make me forget that I needed to."
+This was as frank an allusion to Christina Light as could have been
+expected under the circumstances; it seemed, indeed, to Rowland
+surprisingly frank, and a pregnant example of his companion's often
+strangely irresponsible way of looking at harmful facts. Roderick
+was silent sometimes for hours, with a puzzled look on his face and
+a constant fold between his even eyebrows; at other times he talked
+unceasingly, with a slow, idle, half-nonsensical drawl. Rowland was half
+a dozen times on the point of asking him what was the matter with him;
+he was afraid he was going to be ill. Roderick had taken a great fancy
+to the Villa Mondragone, and used to declaim fantastic compliments to it
+as they strolled in the winter sunshine on the great terrace which looks
+toward Tivoli and the iridescent Sabine mountains. He carried his volume
+of Ariosto in his pocket, and took it out every now and then and spouted
+half a dozen stanzas to his companion. He was, as a general thing, very
+little of a reader; but at intervals he would take a fancy to one of the
+classics and peruse it for a month in disjointed scraps. He had picked
+up Italian without study, and had a wonderfully sympathetic accent,
+though in reading aloud he ruined the sense of half the lines he
+rolled off so sonorously. Rowland, who pronounced badly but understood
+everything, once said to him that Ariosto was not the poet for a man of
+his craft; a sculptor should make a companion of Dante. So he lent him
+the Inferno, which he had brought with him, and advised him to look into
+it. Roderick took it with some eagerness; perhaps it would brighten
+his wits. He returned it the next day with disgust; he had found it
+intolerably depressing.
+
+"A sculptor should model as Dante writes--you 're right there," he said.
+"But when his genius is in eclipse, Dante is a dreadfully smoky lamp.
+By what perversity of fate," he went on, "has it come about that I am a
+sculptor at all? A sculptor is such a confoundedly special genius; there
+are so few subjects he can treat, so few things in life that bear upon
+his work, so few moods in which he himself is inclined to it." (It
+may be noted that Rowland had heard him a dozen times affirm the flat
+reverse of all this.) "If I had only been a painter--a little quiet,
+docile, matter-of-fact painter, like our friend Singleton--I should
+only have to open my Ariosto here to find a subject, to find color and
+attitudes, stuffs and composition; I should only have to look up from
+the page at that mouldy old fountain against the blue sky, at that
+cypress alley wandering away like a procession of priests in couples,
+at the crags and hollows of the Sabine hills, to find myself grasping
+my brush. Best of all would be to be Ariosto himself, or one of his
+brotherhood. Then everything in nature would give you a hint, and every
+form of beauty be part of your stock. You would n't have to look at
+things only to say,--with tears of rage half the time,--'Oh, yes, it
+'s wonderfully pretty, but what the deuce can I do with it?' But a
+sculptor, now! That 's a pretty trade for a fellow who has got his
+living to make and yet is so damnably constituted that he can't work to
+order, and considers that, aesthetically, clock ornaments don't pay! You
+can't model the serge-coated cypresses, nor those mouldering old Tritons
+and all the sunny sadness of that dried-up fountain; you can't put the
+light into marble--the lovely, caressing, consenting Italian light that
+you get so much of for nothing. Say that a dozen times in his life a man
+has a complete sculpturesque vision--a vision in which the imagination
+recognizes a subject and the subject kindles the imagination. It is a
+remunerative rate of work, and the intervals are comfortable!"
+
+One morning, as the two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed
+grass at the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa Mondragone,
+Roderick delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious speculations as to
+the possible mischances of one's genius. "What if the watch should run
+down," he asked, "and you should lose the key? What if you should wake
+up some morning and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped?
+Such things have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have
+had to grin and bear it. The whole matter of genius is a mystery. It
+bloweth where it listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism. If it
+gets out of order we can't mend it; if it breaks down altogether we
+can't set it going again. We must let it choose its own pace, and hold
+our breath lest it should lose its balance. It 's dealt out in different
+doses, in big cups and little, and when you have consumed your portion
+it 's as naif to ask for more as it was for Oliver Twist to ask for more
+porridge. Lucky for you if you 've got one of the big cups; we drink
+them down in the dark, and we can't tell their size until we tip them
+up and hear the last gurgle. Those of some men last for life; those of
+others for a couple of years. Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably?"
+he went on. "Nothing is more common than for an artist who has set out
+on his journey on a high-stepping horse to find himself all of a sudden
+dismounted and invited to go his way on foot. You can number them by the
+thousand--the people of two or three successes; the poor fellows whose
+candle burnt out in a night. Some of them groped their way along without
+it, some of them gave themselves up for blind and sat down by the
+wayside to beg. Who shall say that I 'm not one of these? Who shall
+assure me that my credit is for an unlimited sum? Nothing proves it,
+and I never claimed it; or if I did, I did so in the mere boyish joy of
+shaking off the dust of Northampton. If you believed so, my dear fellow,
+you did so at your own risk! What am I, what are the best of us, but
+an experiment? Do I succeed--do I fail? It does n't depend on me. I 'm
+prepared for failure. It won't be a disappointment, simply because I
+shan't survive it. The end of my work shall be the end of my life. When
+I have played my last card, I shall cease to care for the game. I 'm not
+making vulgar threats of suicide; for destiny, I trust, won't add
+insult to injury by putting me to that abominable trouble. But I have a
+conviction that if the hour strikes here," and he tapped his forehead,
+"I shall disappear, dissolve, be carried off in a cloud! For the past
+ten days I have had the vision of some such fate perpetually swimming
+before my eyes. My mind is like a dead calm in the tropics, and my
+imagination as motionless as the phantom ship in the Ancient Mariner!"
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak, as he often had occasion to listen to
+Roderick's heated monologues, with a number of mental restrictions. Both
+in gravity and in gayety he said more than he meant, and you did him
+simple justice if you privately concluded that neither the glow of
+purpose nor the chill of despair was of so intense a character as his
+florid diction implied. The moods of an artist, his exaltations
+and depressions, Rowland had often said to himself, were like the
+pen-flourishes a writing-master makes in the air when he begins to set
+his copy. He may bespatter you with ink, he may hit you in the eye, but
+he writes a magnificent hand. It was nevertheless true that at present
+poor Roderick gave unprecedented tokens of moral stagnation, and as for
+genius being held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was
+at a loss to see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him.
+He sighed to himself, and wished that his companion had a trifle more
+of little Sam Singleton's evenness of impulse. But then, was Singleton
+a man of genius? He answered that such reflections seemed to him
+unprofitable, not to say morbid; that the proof of the pudding was
+in the eating; that he did n't know about bringing a genius that had
+palpably spent its last breath back to life again, but that he was
+satisfied that vigorous effort was a cure for a great many ills that
+seemed far gone. "Don't heed your mood," he said, "and don't believe
+there is any calm so dead that your own lungs can't ruffle it with a
+breeze. If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work
+and you will feel like it."
+
+"Set to work and produce abortions!" cried Roderick with ire. "Preach
+that to others. Production with me must be either pleasure or nothing.
+As I said just now, I must either stay in the saddle or not go at all.
+I won't do second-rate work; I can't if I would. I have no cleverness,
+apart from inspiration. I am not a Gloriani! You are right," he added
+after a while; "this is unprofitable talk, and it makes my head ache. I
+shall take a nap and see if I can dream of a bright idea or two."
+
+He turned his face upward to the parasol of the great pine, closed his
+eyes, and in a short time forgot his sombre fancies. January though it
+was, the mild stillness seemed to vibrate with faint midsummer sounds.
+Rowland sat listening to them and wishing that, for the sake of his own
+felicity, Roderick's temper were graced with a certain absent ductility.
+He was brilliant, but was he, like many brilliant things, brittle?
+Suddenly, to his musing sense, the soft atmospheric hum was overscored
+with distincter sounds. He heard voices beyond a mass of shrubbery, at
+the turn of a neighboring path. In a moment one of them began to seem
+familiar, and an instant later a large white poodle emerged into view.
+He was slowly followed by his mistress. Miss Light paused a moment on
+seeing Rowland and his companion; but, though the former perceived that
+he was recognized, she made no bow. Presently she walked directly toward
+him. He rose and was on the point of waking Roderick, but she laid
+her finger on her lips and motioned him to forbear. She stood a moment
+looking at Roderick's handsome slumber.
+
+"What delicious oblivion!" she said. "Happy man! Stenterello"--and she
+pointed to his face--"wake him up!"
+
+The poodle extended a long pink tongue and began to lick Roderick's
+cheek.
+
+"Why," asked Rowland, "if he is happy?"
+
+"Oh, I want companions in misery! Besides, I want to show off my dog."
+Roderick roused himself, sat up, and stared. By this time Mrs. Light had
+approached, walking with a gentleman on each side of her. One of these
+was the Cavaliere Giacosa; the other was Prince Casamassima. "I should
+have liked to lie down on the grass and go to sleep," Christina added.
+"But it would have been unheard of."
+
+"Oh, not quite," said the Prince, in English, with a tone of great
+precision. "There was already a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!"
+
+"Charming!" cried Mrs. Light. "Do you hear that, my dear?"
+
+"When the prince says a brilliant thing, it would be a pity to lose it,"
+said the young girl. "Your servant, sir!" And she smiled at him with a
+grace that might have reassured him, if he had thought her compliment
+ambiguous.
+
+Roderick meanwhile had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to
+exclaim on the oddity of their meeting and to explain that the day was
+so lovely that she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the
+country. And who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr.
+Hudson sleeping under a tree!
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon; I was not sleeping," said Rowland.
+
+"Don't you know that Mr. Mallet is Mr. Hudson's sheep-dog?" asked
+Christina. "He was mounting guard to keep away the wolves."
+
+"To indifferent purpose, madame!" said Rowland, indicating the young
+girl.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time?" Christina demanded of Roderick.
+"I never yet happened to learn what men were doing when they supposed
+women were not watching them but it was something vastly below their
+reputation."
+
+"When, pray," said Roderick, smoothing his ruffled locks, "are women not
+watching them?"
+
+"We shall give you something better to do, at any rate. How long have
+you been here? It 's an age since I have seen you. We consider you
+domiciled here, and expect you to play host and entertain us."
+
+Roderick said that he could offer them nothing but to show them the
+great terrace, with its view; and ten minutes later the group was
+assembled there. Mrs. Light was extravagant in her satisfaction;
+Christina looked away at the Sabine mountains, in silence. The prince
+stood by, frowning at the rapture of the elder lady.
+
+"This is nothing," he said at last. "My word of honor. Have you seen the
+terrace at San Gaetano?"
+
+"Ah, that terrace," murmured Mrs. Light, amorously. "I suppose it is
+magnificent!"
+
+"It is four hundred feet long, and paved with marble. And the view is
+a thousand times more beautiful than this. You see, far away, the blue,
+blue sea and the little smoke of Vesuvio!"
+
+"Christina, love," cried Mrs. Light forthwith, "the prince has a terrace
+four hundred feet long, all paved with marble!"
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little cough and began to wipe his eye-glass.
+
+"Stupendous!" said Christina. "To go from one end to the other, the
+prince must have out his golden carriage." This was apparently an
+allusion to one of the other items of the young man's grandeur.
+
+"You always laugh at me," said the prince. "I know no more what to say!"
+
+She looked at him with a sad smile and shook her head. "No, no, dear
+prince, I don't laugh at you. Heaven forbid! You are much too serious an
+affair. I assure you I feel your importance. What did you inform us was
+the value of the hereditary diamonds of the Princess Casamassima?"
+
+"Ah, you are laughing at me yet!" said the poor young man, standing
+rigid and pale.
+
+"It does n't matter," Christina went on. "We have a note of it; mamma
+writes all those things down in a little book!"
+
+"If you are laughed at, dear prince, at least it 's in company," said
+Mrs. Light, caressingly; and she took his arm, as if to resist his
+possible displacement under the shock of her daughter's sarcasm. But the
+prince looked heavy-eyed toward Rowland and Roderick, to whom the
+young girl was turning, as if he had much rather his lot were cast with
+theirs.
+
+"Is the villa inhabited?" Christina asked, pointing to the vast
+melancholy structure which rises above the terrace.
+
+"Not privately," said Roderick. "It is occupied by a Jesuits' college,
+for little boys."
+
+"Can women go in?"
+
+"I am afraid not." And Roderick began to laugh. "Fancy the poor little
+devils looking up from their Latin declensions and seeing Miss Light
+standing there!"
+
+"I should like to see the poor little devils, with their rosy cheeks and
+their long black gowns, and when they were pretty, I should n't scruple
+to kiss them. But if I can't have that amusement I must have some other.
+We must not stand planted on this enchanting terrace as if we were
+stakes driven into the earth. We must dance, we must feast, we must do
+something picturesque. Mamma has arranged, I believe, that we are to go
+back to Frascati to lunch at the inn. I decree that we lunch here and
+send the Cavaliere to the inn to get the provisions! He can take the
+carriage, which is waiting below."
+
+Miss Light carried out this undertaking with unfaltering ardor. The
+Cavaliere was summoned, and he stook to receive her commands hat in
+hand, with his eyes cast down, as if she had been a princess addressing
+her major-domo. She, however, laid her hand with friendly grace upon his
+button-hole, and called him a dear, good old Cavaliere, for being always
+so willing. Her spirits had risen with the occasion, and she talked
+irresistible nonsense. "Bring the best they have," she said, "no matter
+if it ruins us! And if the best is very bad, it will be all the
+more amusing. I shall enjoy seeing Mr. Mallet try to swallow it for
+propriety's sake! Mr. Hudson will say out like a man that it 's horrible
+stuff, and that he 'll be choked first! Be sure you bring a dish of
+maccaroni; the prince must have the diet of the Neapolitan nobility. But
+I leave all that to you, my poor, dear Cavaliere; you know what 's good!
+Only be sure, above all, you bring a guitar. Mr. Mallet will play us
+a tune, I 'll dance with Mr. Hudson, and mamma will pair off with the
+prince, of whom she is so fond!"
+
+And as she concluded her recommendations, she patted her bland old
+servitor caressingly on the shoulder. He looked askance at Rowland; his
+little black eye glittered; it seemed to say, "Did n't I tell you she
+was a good girl!"
+
+The Cavaliere returned with zealous speed, accompanied by one of the
+servants of the inn, laden with a basket containing the materials of a
+rustic luncheon. The porter of the villa was easily induced to furnish
+a table and half a dozen chairs, and the repast, when set forth, was
+pronounced a perfect success; not so good as to fail of the proper
+picturesqueness, nor yet so bad as to defeat the proper function of
+repasts. Christina continued to display the most charming animation,
+and compelled Rowland to reflect privately that, think what one might
+of her, the harmonious gayety of a beautiful girl was the most beautiful
+sight in nature. Her good-humor was contagious. Roderick, who an hour
+before had been descanting on madness and suicide, commingled his
+laughter with hers in ardent devotion; Prince Casamassima stroked
+his young moustache and found a fine, cool smile for everything; his
+neighbor, Mrs. Light, who had Rowland on the other side, made the
+friendliest confidences to each of the young men, and the Cavaliere
+contributed to the general hilarity by the solemnity of his attention
+to his plate. As for Rowland, the spirit of kindly mirth prompted him to
+propose the health of this useful old gentleman, as the effective author
+of their pleasure. A moment later he wished he had held his tongue, for
+although the toast was drunk with demonstrative good-will, the Cavaliere
+received it with various small signs of eager self-effacement which
+suggested to Rowland that his diminished gentility but half relished
+honors which had a flavor of patronage. To perform punctiliously his
+mysterious duties toward the two ladies, and to elude or to baffle
+observation on his own merits--this seemed the Cavaliere's modest
+programme. Rowland perceived that Mrs. Light, who was not always
+remarkable for tact, seemed to have divined his humor on this point.
+She touched her glass to her lips, but offered him no compliment and
+immediately gave another direction to the conversation. He had brought
+no guitar, so that when the feast was over there was nothing to hold the
+little group together. Christina wandered away with Roderick to another
+part of the terrace; the prince, whose smile had vanished, sat gnawing
+the head of his cane, near Mrs. Light, and Rowland strolled apart
+with the Cavaliere, to whom he wished to address a friendly word in
+compensation for the discomfort he had inflicted on his modesty. The
+Cavaliere was a mine of information upon all Roman places and people;
+he told Rowland a number of curious anecdotes about the old Villa
+Mondragone. "If history could always be taught in this fashion!" thought
+Rowland. "It 's the ideal--strolling up and down on the very spot
+commemorated, hearing sympathetic anecdotes from deeply indigenous
+lips." At last, as they passed, Rowland observed the mournful
+physiognomy of Prince Casamassima, and, glancing toward the other end of
+the terrace, saw that Roderick and Christina had disappeared from view.
+The young man was sitting upright, in an attitude, apparently habitual,
+of ceremonious rigidity; but his lower jaw had fallen and was propped
+up with his cane, and his dull dark eye was fixed upon the angle of the
+villa which had just eclipsed Miss Light and her companion. His features
+were grotesque and his expression vacuous; but there was a lurking
+delicacy in his face which seemed to tell you that nature had been
+making Casamassimas for a great many centuries, and, though she adapted
+her mould to circumstances, had learned to mix her material to an
+extraordinary fineness and to perform the whole operation with extreme
+smoothness. The prince was stupid, Rowland suspected, but he imagined
+he was amiable, and he saw that at any rate he had the great quality
+of regarding himself in a thoroughly serious light. Rowland touched his
+companion's arm and pointed to the melancholy nobleman.
+
+"Why in the world does he not go after her and insist on being noticed!"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh, he 's very proud!" said the Cavaliere.
+
+"That 's all very well, but a gentleman who cultivates a passion for
+that young lady must be prepared to make sacrifices."
+
+"He thinks he has already made a great many. He comes of a very great
+family--a race of princes who for six hundred years have married none
+but the daughters of princes. But he is seriously in love, and he would
+marry her to-morrow."
+
+"And she will not have him?"
+
+"Ah, she is very proud, too!" The Cavaliere was silent a moment, as if
+he were measuring the propriety of frankness. He seemed to have formed
+a high opinion of Rowland's discretion, for he presently continued:
+"It would be a great match, for she brings him neither a name nor a
+fortune--nothing but her beauty. But the signorina will receive no
+favors; I know her well! She would rather have her beauty blasted than
+seem to care about the marriage, and if she ever accepts the prince it
+will be only after he has implored her on his knees!"
+
+"But she does care about it," said Rowland, "and to bring him to his
+knees she is working upon his jealousy by pretending to be interested in
+my friend Hudson. If you said more, you would say that, eh?"
+
+The Cavaliere's shrewdness exchanged a glance with Rowland's. "By no
+means. Miss Light is a singular girl; she has many romantic ideas.
+She would be quite capable of interesting herself seriously in an
+interesting young man, like your friend, and doing her utmost to
+discourage a splendid suitor, like the prince. She would act sincerely
+and she would go very far. But it would be unfortunate for the young
+man," he added, after a pause, "for at the last she would retreat!"
+
+"A singular girl, indeed!"
+
+"She would accept the more brilliant parti. I can answer for it."
+
+"And what would be her motive?"
+
+"She would be forced. There would be circumstances.... I can't tell you
+more."
+
+"But this implies that the rejected suitor would also come back. He
+might grow tired of waiting."
+
+"Oh, this one is good! Look at him now." Rowland looked, and saw that
+the prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was marching restlessly
+to and fro between the villa and the parapet of the terrace. Every now
+and then he looked at his watch. "In this country, you know," said the
+Cavaliere, "a young lady never goes walking alone with a handsome young
+man. It seems to him very strange."
+
+"It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must be very
+much in love."
+
+"Oh, he will overlook it. He is far gone."
+
+"Who is this exemplary lover, then; what is he?"
+
+"A Neapolitan; one of the oldest houses in Italy. He is a prince in your
+English sense of the word, for he has a princely fortune. He is very
+young; he is only just of age; he saw the signorina last winter
+in Naples. He fell in love with her from the first, but his family
+interfered, and an old uncle, an ecclesiastic, Monsignor B----, hurried
+up to Naples, seized him, and locked him up. Meantime he has passed his
+majority, and he can dispose of himself. His relations are moving heaven
+and earth to prevent his marrying Miss Light, and they have sent us
+word that he forfeits his property if he takes his wife out of a certain
+line. I have investigated the question minutely, and I find this is but
+a fiction to frighten us. He is perfectly free; but the estates are
+such that it is no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands. For
+Italy, it is an extraordinary case of unincumbered property. The prince
+has been an orphan from his third year; he has therefore had a long
+minority and made no inroads upon his fortune. Besides, he is very
+prudent and orderly; I am only afraid that some day he will pull the
+purse-strings too tight. All these years his affairs have been in the
+hands of Monsignor B----, who has managed them to perfection--paid off
+mortagages, planted forests, opened up mines. It is now a magnificent
+fortune; such a fortune as, with his name, would justify the young man
+in pretending to any alliance whatsoever. And he lays it all at the feet
+of that young girl who is wandering in yonder boschetto with a penniless
+artist."
+
+"He is certainly a phoenix of princes! The signora must be in a state of
+bliss."
+
+The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave. "The signora has a high esteem
+for his character."
+
+"His character, by the way," rejoined Rowland, with a smile; "what sort
+of a character is it?"
+
+"Eh, Prince Casamassima is a veritable prince! He is a very good young
+man. He is not brilliant, nor witty, but he 'll not let himself be made
+a fool of. He 's very grave and very devout--though he does propose to
+marry a Protestant. He will handle that point after marriage. He 's as
+you see him there: a young man without many ideas, but with a very firm
+grasp of a single one--the conviction that Prince Casamassima is a very
+great person, that he greatly honors any young lady by asking for her
+hand, and that things are going very strangely when the young lady
+turns her back upon him. The poor young man, I am sure, is profoundly
+perplexed. But I whisper to him every day, 'Pazienza, Signor Principe!'"
+
+"So you firmly believe," said Rowland, in conclusion, "that Miss Light
+will accept him just in time not to lose him!"
+
+"I count upon it. She would make too perfect a princess to miss her
+destiny."
+
+"And you hold that nevertheless, in the mean while, in listening to,
+say, my friend Hudson, she will have been acting in good faith?"
+
+The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable
+smile. "Eh, dear signore, the Christina is very romantic!"
+
+"So much so, you intimate, that she will eventually retract, in
+consequence not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward
+pressure?"
+
+"If everything else fails, there is that resource. But it is mysterious,
+as you say, and you need n't try to guess it. You will never know."
+
+"The poor signorina, then, will suffer!"
+
+"Not too much, I hope."
+
+"And the poor young man! You maintain that there is nothing but
+disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses his heart to
+her!"
+
+The Cavaliere hesitated. "He had better," he said in a moment, "go and
+pursue his studies in Florence. There are very fine antiques in the
+Uffizi!"
+
+Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, to whom her restless protege had
+not yet returned. "That 's right," she said; "sit down here; I have
+something serious to say to you. I am going to talk to you as a friend.
+I want your assistance. In fact, I demand it; it 's your duty to render
+it. Look at that unhappy young man."
+
+"Yes," said Rowland, "he seems unhappy."
+
+"He is just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy and
+owns one of the greatest properties, and he is pining away with love for
+my daughter."
+
+"So the Cavaliere tells me."
+
+"The Cavaliere should n't gossip," said Mrs. Light dryly. "Such
+information should come from me. The prince is pining, as I say; he 's
+consumed, he 's devoured. It 's a real Italian passion; I know what that
+means!" And the lady gave a speaking glance, which seemed to coquet
+for a moment with retrospect. "Meanwhile, if you please, my daughter is
+hiding in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson. I could cry with
+rage."
+
+"If things are so bad as that," said Rowland, "it seems to me that you
+ought to find nothing easier than to dispatch the Cavaliere to bring the
+guilty couple back."
+
+"Never in the world! My hands are tied. Do you know what Christina
+would do? She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business--Heaven
+forgive her!--and send me word that, if she had a mind to, she would
+walk in the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and
+delivering such a message as that before the prince! Think of a girl
+wantonly making light of such a chance as hers! He would marry her
+to-morrow, at six o'clock in the morning!"
+
+"It is certainly very sad," said Rowland.
+
+"That costs you little to say. If you had left your precious young
+meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a
+world of distress!"
+
+"Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland. "You came and
+disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio."
+
+"In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him."
+
+"I have done my best."
+
+"I wish, then, you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me
+a favor. Take him to travel. Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo. Then, when
+Christina is Princess Casamassima," Mrs. Light added in a moment, "he
+may come back if he chooses."
+
+"Does she really care for him?" Rowland asked, abruptly.
+
+"She thinks she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs
+follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of
+them don't last long; but this one may last long enough to give the
+prince a chill. If that were to happen, I don't know what I should do! I
+should be the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after
+all I 've suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years
+blighted by a caprice. For I can assure you, sir," Mrs. Light went on,
+"that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the
+credit is mine."
+
+Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious. He saw that the lady's
+irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and
+he assumed designedly the attitude of a zealous auditor. She began
+to retail her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her
+disappointments, in the cause of her daughter's matrimonial fortunes. It
+was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince continued
+to pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking
+the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses. Mrs. Light
+evidently, at an early period, had gathered her maternal hopes into
+a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and
+treated like a sort of fetish. They had been her religion; she had none
+other, and she performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the
+light of day. The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated,
+so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so
+dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by
+this time much of its early freshness, and seemed a rather battered
+and disfeatured divinity. But it was still brought forth in moments of
+trouble to have its tinseled petticoat twisted about and be set up
+on its altar. Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had a genuine maternal
+conscience; she considered that she had been performing a sacred duty in
+bringing up Christina to set her cap for a prince, and when the future
+looked dark, she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never
+have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person. This conscience
+upside down presented to Rowland's fancy a real physical image; he was
+on the point, half a dozen times, of bursting out laughing.
+
+"I don't know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs. Light,
+"and I don't care! I have had one for the last fifteen years. People
+have laughed at it, but they have n't laughed me out of it. It has been
+everything to me. I could n't have lived without it. One must believe in
+something! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old.
+I remember the day and the place, as if it were yesterday. She was a
+very ugly baby; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at
+her, and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her. She had an
+Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow
+up pretty. I could n't believe her; I used to contradict her, and we
+were forever squabbling. I was just a little silly in those days--surely
+I may say it now--and I was very fond of being amused. If my daughter
+was ugly, it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of
+amusement. People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl;
+if it was so, I 've made up for it since. One day I went to drive on the
+Pincio in very low spirits. A trusted friend had greatly disappointed
+me. While I was there he passed me in a carriage, driving with a
+horrible woman who had made trouble between us. I got out of my carriage
+to walk about, and at last sat down on a bench. I can show you the spot
+at this hour. While I sat there a child came wandering along the path--a
+little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed in crimson and
+orange. She stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her
+queer little dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one
+of these contadine. At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself,
+'Bless me, what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a
+magnificent head of hair! If my poor Christina were only like that!' The
+child turned away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me.
+All of a sudden I gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms,
+and covered it with kisses. It was Christina, my own precious child, so
+disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in
+making for her, that her own mother had not recognized her. She knew me,
+but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked
+so angry. Of course my face was sad. I rushed with my child to the
+carriage, drove home post-haste, pulled off her rags, and, as I may say,
+wrapped her in cotton. I had been blind, I had been insane; she was
+a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a
+priceless treasure! Every day, after that, the certainty grew. From that
+time I lived only for my daughter. I watched her, I caressed her from
+morning till night, I worshipped her. I went to see doctors about her,
+I took every sort of advice. I was determined she should be perfection.
+The things that have been done for that girl, sir--you would n't believe
+them; they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told
+that she must have a bath every morning of molten pearls, I would have
+found means to give it to her. She never raised a finger for herself,
+she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked upon velvet. She never
+was out of my sight, and from that day to this I have never said a sharp
+word to her. By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an
+angel, and so noticed wherever we went that I had to make her wear a
+veil, like a woman of twenty. Her hair reached down to her feet; her
+hands were the hands of a princess. Then I saw that she was as clever
+as she was beautiful, and that she had only to play her cards. She had
+masters, professors, every educational advantage. They told me she was
+a little prodigy. She speaks French, Italian, German, better than
+most natives. She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her
+fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise! I traveled
+all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel. The director of the
+opera in Paris saw her dance at a child's party at Spa, and offered
+me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her
+educated for the ballet. I said, 'No, I thank you, sir; she is meant
+to be something finer than a princesse de theatre.' I had a passionate
+belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be
+a princess out and out. It has never left me till this hour, and I can
+assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments. Financial,
+some of them; I don't mind confessing it! I have raised money on that
+girl's face! I 've taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil,
+and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe! She, of course,
+was too young to understand me. And yet, as a child, you would have said
+she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she had the
+manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess. She would have
+nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of
+her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
+At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent
+for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played
+at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I
+have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a
+sign--a symbol--a portent. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n't
+such things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and
+does n't history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish
+girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!... The
+Empress certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray? I
+'ve dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month. I won't tell you
+I have been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers;
+you 'll call me an old imbecile. Imbecile if you please! I have refused
+magnificent offers because I believed that somehow or other--if wars and
+revolutions were needed to bring it about--we should have nothing less
+than that. There might be another coup d'etat somewhere, and another
+brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife! At last, however,"
+Mrs. Light proceeded with incomparable gravity, "since the overturning
+of the poor king of Naples and that charming queen, and the expulsion
+of all those dear little old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the
+dreadful radical talk that is going on all over the world, it has come
+to seem to me that with Christina in such a position I should be really
+very nervous. Even in such a position she would hold her head very high,
+and if anything should happen to her, she would make no concessions
+to the popular fury. The best thing, if one is prudent, seems to be a
+nobleman of the highest possible rank, short of belonging to a reigning
+stock. There you see one striding up and down, looking at his watch, and
+counting the minutes till my daughter reappears!"
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a huge compassion for the heroine of
+the tale. What an education, what a history, what a school of character
+and of morals! He looked at the prince and wondered whether he too had
+heard Mrs. Light's story. If he had he was a brave man. "I certainly
+hope you 'll keep him," he said to Mrs. Light. "You have played a
+dangerous game with your daughter; it would be a pity not to win. But
+there is hope for you yet; here she comes at last!"
+
+Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her
+companion with the same indifferent tread with which she had departed.
+Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek which
+she had not carried away with her, and there was certainly a light in
+Roderick's eyes which he had not seen there for a week.
+
+"Bless my soul, how they are all looking at us!" she cried, as they
+advanced. "One would think we were prisoners of the Inquisition!" And
+she paused and glanced from the prince to her mother, and from
+Rowland to the Cavaliere, and then threw back her head and burst into
+far-ringing laughter. "What is it, pray? Have I been very improper? Am I
+ruined forever? Dear prince, you are looking at me as if I had committed
+the unpardonable sin!"
+
+"I myself," said the prince, "would never have ventured to ask you to
+walk with me alone in the country for an hour!"
+
+"The more fool you, dear prince, as the vulgar say! Our walk has been
+charming. I hope you, on your side, have enjoyed each other's society."
+
+"My dear daughter," said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined
+son-in-law, "I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach
+home. We will go back to the carriage."
+
+"Something serious! Decidedly, it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson,
+stand firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring
+previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr.
+Mallet, I see also," Christina added, "has something serious to say to
+me!"
+
+Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his lately-stirred
+pity in his eyes. "Possibly," he said. "But it must be for some other
+time."
+
+"I am at your service. I see our good-humor is gone. And I only wanted
+to be amiable! It is very discouraging. Cavaliere, you, only, look as if
+you had a little of the milk of human kindness left; from your venerable
+visage, at least; there is no telling what you think. Give me your arm
+and take me away!"
+
+The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in
+the grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends
+farewell. Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes;
+a manoeuvre for which Rowland imagined the prince was grateful, as it
+enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his attitude
+of distinguished disapproval. Rowland found himself aroused from sleep
+early the next morning, to see Roderick standing before him, dressed for
+departure, with his bag in his hand. "I am off," he said. "I am back to
+work. I have an idea. I must strike while the iron 's hot! Farewell!"
+And he departed by the first train. Rowland went alone by the next.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. Saint Cecilia's
+
+Rowland went often to the Coliseum; he never wearied of it. One morning,
+about a month after his return from Frascati, as he was strolling across
+the vast arena, he observed a young woman seated on one of the fragments
+of stone which are ranged along the line of the ancient parapet. It
+seemed to him that he had seen her before, but he was unable to localize
+her face. Passing her again, he perceived that one of the little
+red-legged French soldiers at that time on guard there had approached
+her and was gallantly making himself agreeable. She smiled brilliantly,
+and Rowland recognized the smile (it had always pleased him) of a
+certain comely Assunta, who sometimes opened the door for Mrs. Light's
+visitors. He wondered what she was doing alone in the Coliseum, and
+conjectured that Assunta had admirers as well as her young mistress, but
+that, being without the same domiciliary conveniencies, she was using
+this massive heritage of her Latin ancestors as a boudoir. In other
+words, she had an appointment with her lover, who had better, from
+present appearances, be punctual. It was a long time since Rowland had
+ascended to the ruinous upper tiers of the great circus, and, as the day
+was radiant and the distant views promised to be particularly clear,
+he determined to give himself the pleasure. The custodian unlocked the
+great wooden wicket, and he climbed through the winding shafts, where
+the eager Roman crowds had billowed and trampled, not pausing till he
+reached the highest accessible point of the ruin. The views were as fine
+as he had supposed; the lights on the Sabine Mountains had never been
+more lovely. He gazed to his satisfaction and retraced his steps. In
+a moment he paused again on an abutment somewhat lower, from which
+the glance dropped dizzily into the interior. There are chance
+anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions of the Coliseum which
+offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an Alpine cliff. In
+those days a multitude of delicate flowers and sprays of wild herbage
+had found a friendly soil in the hoary crevices, and they bloomed and
+nodded amid the antique masonry as freely as they would have done in the
+virgin rock. Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound of voices
+rising up from below. He had but to step slightly forward to find
+himself overlooking two persons who had seated themselves on a narrow
+ledge, in a sunny corner. They had apparently had an eye to extreme
+privacy, but they had not observed that their position was commanded by
+Rowland's stand-point. One of these airy adventurers was a lady, thickly
+veiled, so that, even if he had not been standing directly above her,
+Rowland could not have seen her face. The other was a young man, whose
+face was also invisible, but who, as Rowland stood there, gave a toss
+of his clustering locks which was equivalent to the signature--Roderick
+Hudson. A moment's reflection, hereupon, satisfied him of the identity
+of the lady. He had been unjust to poor Assunta, sitting patient in the
+gloomy arena; she had not come on her own errand. Rowland's discoveries
+made him hesitate. Should he retire as noiselessly as possible, or
+should he call out a friendly good morning? While he was debating the
+question, he found himself distinctly hearing his friends' words. They
+were of such a nature as to make him unwilling to retreat, and yet
+to make it awkward to be discovered in a position where it would be
+apparent that he had heard them.
+
+"If what you say is true," said Christina, with her usual soft
+deliberateness--it made her words rise with peculiar distinctness to
+Rowland's ear--"you are simply weak. I am sorry! I hoped--I really
+believed--you were not."
+
+"No, I am not weak," answered Roderick, with vehemence; "I maintain that
+I am not weak! I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can't help that. Weakness
+is a man's own fault!"
+
+"Incomplete, then!" said Christina, with a laugh. "It 's the same thing,
+so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement. Is it written, then,
+that I shall really never know what I have so often dreamed of?"
+
+"What have you dreamed of?"
+
+"A man whom I can perfectly respect!" cried the young girl, with a
+sudden flame. "A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire. I meet
+one, as I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe to be
+cast in a larger mould than most of the vile human breed, to be large
+in character, great in talent, strong in will! In such a man as that,
+I say, one's weary imagination at last may rest; or it may wander if it
+will, yet never need to wander far from the deeps where one's heart is
+anchored. When I first knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck
+me. I observed you, as women observe, and I fancied you had the sacred
+fire."
+
+"Before heaven, I believe I have!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Ah, but so little! It flickers and trembles and sputters; it goes out,
+you tell me, for whole weeks together. From your own account, it 's ten
+to one that in the long run you 're a failure."
+
+"I say those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them they
+make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to
+refute you!"
+
+"Ah, the man who is strong with what I call strength," Christina
+replied, "would neither rise nor fall by anything I could say! I am a
+poor, weak woman; I have no strength myself, and I can give no strength.
+I am a miserable medley of vanity and folly. I am silly, I am ignorant,
+I am affected, I am false. I am the fruit of a horrible education, sown
+on a worthless soil. I am all that, and yet I believe I have one merit!
+I should know a great character when I saw it, and I should delight in
+it with a generosity which would do something toward the remission of
+my sins. For a man who should really give me a certain feeling--which
+I have never had, but which I should know when it came--I would send
+Prince Casamassima and his millions to perdition. I don't know what you
+think of me for saying all this; I suppose we have not climbed up here
+under the skies to play propriety. Why have you been at such pains to
+assure me, after all, that you are a little man and not a great one, a
+weak one and not a strong? I innocently imagined that your eyes declared
+you were strong. But your voice condemns you; I always wondered at it;
+it 's not the voice of a conqueror!"
+
+"Give me something to conquer," cried Roderick, "and when I say that I
+thank you from my soul, my voice, whatever you think of it, shall speak
+the truth!"
+
+Christina for a moment said nothing. Rowland was too interested to think
+of moving. "You pretend to such devotion," she went on, "and yet I
+am sure you have never really chosen between me and that person in
+America."
+
+"Do me the favor not to speak of her," said Roderick, imploringly.
+
+"Why not? I say no ill of her, and I think all kinds of good. I am
+certain she is a far better girl than I, and far more likely to make you
+happy."
+
+"This is happiness, this present, palpable moment," said Roderick;
+"though you have such a genius for saying the things that torture me!"
+
+"It 's greater happiness than you deserve, then! You have never chosen,
+I say; you have been afraid to choose. You have never really faced the
+fact that you are false, that you have broken your faith. You have never
+looked at it and seen that it was hideous, and yet said, 'No matter, I
+'ll brave the penalty, I 'll bear the shame!' You have closed your eyes;
+you have tried to stifle remembrance, to persuade yourself that you were
+not behaving as badly as you seemed to be, and there would be some
+way, after all, of compassing bliss and yet escaping trouble. You have
+faltered and drifted, you have gone on from accident to accident, and I
+am sure that at this present moment you can't tell what it is you really
+desire!"
+
+Roderick was sitting with his knees drawn up and bent, and his hands
+clapsed around his legs. He bent his head and rested his forehead on his
+knees.
+
+Christina went on with a sort of infernal calmness: "I believe that,
+really, you don't greatly care for your friend in America any more than
+you do for me. You are one of the men who care only for themselves and
+for what they can make of themselves. That 's very well when they
+can make something great, and I could interest myself in a man of
+extraordinary power who should wish to turn all his passions to account.
+But if the power should turn out to be, after all, rather ordinary?
+Fancy feeling one's self ground in the mill of a third-rate talent! If
+you have doubts about yourself, I can't reassure you; I have too many
+doubts myself, about everything in this weary world. You have gone up
+like a rocket, in your profession, they tell me; are you going to come
+down like the stick? I don't pretend to know; I repeat frankly what I
+have said before--that all modern sculpture seems to me weak, and that
+the only things I care for are some of the most battered of the antiques
+of the Vatican. No, no, I can't reassure you; and when you tell
+me--with a confidence in my discretion of which, certainly, I am duly
+sensible--that at times you feel terribly small, why, I can only answer,
+'Ah, then, my poor friend, I am afraid you are small.' The language I
+should like to hear, from a certain person, would be the language of
+absolute decision."
+
+Roderick raised his head, but he said nothing; he seemed to be
+exchanging a long glance with his companion. The result of it was
+to make him fling himself back with an inarticulate murmur. Rowland,
+admonished by the silence, was on the point of turning away, but he was
+arrested by a gesture of the young girl. She pointed for a moment into
+the blue air. Roderick followed the direction of her gesture.
+
+"Is that little flower we see outlined against that dark niche," she
+asked, "as intensely blue as it looks through my veil?" She spoke
+apparently with the amiable design of directing the conversation into a
+less painful channel.
+
+Rowland, from where he stood, could see the flower she meant--a delicate
+plant of radiant hue, which sprouted from the top of an immense fragment
+of wall some twenty feet from Christina's place.
+
+Roderick turned his head and looked at it without answering. At last,
+glancing round, "Put up your veil!" he said. Christina complied. "Does
+it look as blue now?" he asked.
+
+"Ah, what a lovely color!" she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
+
+"Would you like to have it?"
+
+She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
+
+"Would you like to have it?" he repeated in a ringing voice.
+
+"Don't look as if you would eat me up," she answered. "It 's harmless if
+I say yes!"
+
+Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower. It
+was separated from the ledge on which he stood by a rugged surface of
+vertical wall, which dropped straight into the dusky vaults behind the
+arena. Suddenly he took off his hat and flung it behind him. Christina
+then sprang to her feet.
+
+"I will bring it you," he said.
+
+She seized his arm. "Are you crazy? Do you mean to kill yourself?"
+
+"I shall not kill myself. Sit down!"
+
+"Excuse me. Not till you do!" And she grasped his arm with both hands.
+
+Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture to her former
+place. "Go there!" he cried fiercely.
+
+"You can never, never!" she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands.
+"I implore you!"
+
+Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland had
+never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which awakened
+the echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, "Sit down!" She hesitated
+a moment and then she dropped on the ground and buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more. He saw Roderick clasp in
+his left arm the jagged corner of the vertical partition along which he
+proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for
+a resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the
+possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil.
+The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains
+apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had
+long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets
+and grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances on a
+level with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed. The relics of
+the cornice were utterly worthless as a support. Rowland had observed
+this, and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated. If the thing were
+possible, he felt a sudden admiring glee at the thought of Roderick's
+doing it. It would be finely done, it would be gallant, it would have
+a sort of masculine eloquence as an answer to Christina's sinister
+persiflage. But it was not possible! Rowland left his place with a
+bound, and scrambled down some neighboring steps, and the next moment
+a stronger pair of hands than Christina's were laid upon Roderick's
+shoulder.
+
+He turned, staring, pale and angry. Christina rose, pale and staring,
+too, but beautiful in her wonder and alarm. "My dear Roderick," said
+Rowland, "I am only preventing you from doing a very foolish thing. That
+'s an exploit for spiders, not for young sculptors of promise."
+
+Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then closed
+his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. "I won't resist
+you," he said. "But I have made you obey," he added, turning to
+Christina. "Am I weak now?"
+
+She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him and
+addressed Rowland: "Be so good as to show me the way out of this
+horrible place!"
+
+He helped her back into the corridor; Roderick followed after a short
+interval. Of course, as they were descending the steps, came questions
+for Rowland to answer, and more or less surprise. Where had he come
+from? how happened he to have appeared at just that moment? Rowland
+answered that he had been rambling overhead, and that, looking out of an
+aperture, he had seen a gentleman preparing to undertake a preposterous
+gymnastic feat, and a lady swooning away in consequence. Interference
+seemed justifiable, and he had made it as prompt as possible. Roderick
+was far from hanging his head, like a man who has been caught in the
+perpetration of an extravagant folly; but if he held it more erect than
+usual Rowland believed that this was much less because he had made
+a show of personal daring than because he had triumphantly proved to
+Christina that, like a certain person she had dreamed of, he too could
+speak the language of decision. Christina descended to the arena in
+silence, apparently occupied with her own thoughts. She betrayed
+no sense of the privacy of her interview with Roderick needing an
+explanation. Rowland had seen stranger things in New York! The only
+evidence of her recent agitation was that, on being joined by her maid,
+she declared that she was unable to walk home; she must have a carriage.
+A fiacre was found resting in the shadow of the Arch of Constantine,
+and Rowland suspected that after she had got into it she disburdened
+herself, under her veil, of a few natural tears.
+
+Rowland had played eavesdropper to so good a purpose that he might
+justly have omitted the ceremony of denouncing himself to Roderick. He
+preferred, however, to let him know that he had overheard a portion of
+his talk with Christina.
+
+"Of course it seems to you," Roderick said, "a proof that I am utterly
+infatuated."
+
+"Miss Light seemed to me to know very well how far she could go,"
+Rowland answered. "She was twisting you round her finger. I don't think
+she exactly meant to defy you; but your crazy pursuit of that flower
+was a proof that she could go all lengths in the way of making a fool of
+you."
+
+"Yes," said Roderick, meditatively; "she is making a fool of me."
+
+"And what do you expect to come of it?"
+
+"Nothing good!" And Roderick put his hands into his pockets and looked
+as if he had announced the most colorless fact in the world.
+
+"And in the light of your late interview, what do you make of your young
+lady?"
+
+"If I could tell you that, it would be plain sailing. But she 'll not
+tell me again I am weak!"
+
+"Are you very sure you are not weak?"
+
+"I may be, but she shall never know it."
+
+Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked his
+companion whether he was going to his studio.
+
+Roderick started out of a reverie and passed his hands over his eyes.
+"Oh no, I can't settle down to work after such a scene as that. I was
+not afraid of breaking my neck then, but I feel all in a tremor now. I
+will go--I will go and sit in the sun on the Pincio!"
+
+"Promise me this, first," said Rowland, very solemnly: "that the next
+time you meet Miss Light, it shall be on the earth and not in the air."
+
+Since his return from Frascati, Roderick had been working doggedly at
+the statue ordered by Mr. Leavenworth. To Rowland's eye he had made a
+very fair beginning, but he had himself insisted, from the first, that
+he liked neither his subject nor his patron, and that it was impossible
+to feel any warmth of interest in a work which was to be incorporated
+into the ponderous personality of Mr. Leavenworth. It was all against
+the grain; he wrought without love. Nevertheless after a fashion he
+wrought, and the figure grew beneath his hands. Miss Blanchard's friend
+was ordering works of art on every side, and his purveyors were in many
+cases persons whom Roderick declared it was infamy to be paired with.
+There had been grand tailors, he said, who declined to make you a coat
+unless you got the hat you were to wear with it from an artist of their
+own choosing. It seemed to him that he had an equal right to exact that
+his statue should not form part of the same system of ornament as the
+"Pearl of Perugia," a picture by an American confrere who had, in Mr.
+Leavenworth's opinion, a prodigious eye for color. As a customer, Mr.
+Leavenworth used to drop into Roderick's studio, to see how things
+were getting on, and give a friendly hint or so. He would seat himself
+squarely, plant his gold-topped cane between his legs, which he held
+very much apart, rest his large white hands on the head, and enunciate
+the principles of spiritual art, as he hoisted them one by one, as you
+might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness. His benignant
+and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating
+beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the matter was that
+the good gentleman's placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no
+sarcastic shaft could pierce. Roderick admitted that in thinking
+over the tribulations of struggling genius, the danger of dying of
+over-patronage had never occurred to him.
+
+The deterring effect of the episode of the Coliseum was apparently of
+long continuance; if Roderick's nerves had been shaken his hand needed
+time to recover its steadiness. He cultivated composure upon principles
+of his own; by frequenting entertainments from which he returned at four
+o'clock in the morning, and lapsing into habits which might fairly be
+called irregular. He had hitherto made few friends among the artistic
+fraternity; chiefly because he had taken no trouble about it, and
+there was in his demeanor an elastic independence of the favor of his
+fellow-mortals which made social advances on his own part peculiarly
+necessary. Rowland had told him more than once that he ought to
+fraternize a trifle more with the other artists, and he had always
+answered that he had not the smallest objection to fraternizing:
+let them come! But they came on rare occasions, and Roderick was not
+punctilious about returning their visits. He declared there was not one
+of them whose works gave him the smallest desire to make acquaintance
+with the insides of their heads. For Gloriani he professed a superb
+contempt, and, having been once to look at his wares, never crossed
+his threshold again. The only one of the fraternity for whom by his own
+admission he cared a straw was little Singleton; but he expressed his
+regard only in a kind of sublime hilarity whenever he encountered this
+humble genius, and quite forgot his existence in the intervals. He had
+never been to see him, but Singleton edged his way, from time to time,
+timidly, into Roderick's studio, and agreed with characteristic modesty
+that brilliant fellows like the sculptor might consent to receive
+homage, but could hardly be expected to render it. Roderick never
+exactly accepted homage, and apparently did not quite observe whether
+poor Singleton spoke in admiration or in blame. Roderick's taste as to
+companions was singularly capricious. There were very good fellows, who
+were disposed to cultivate him, who bored him to death; and there were
+others, in whom even Rowland's good-nature was unable to discover a
+pretext for tolerance, in whom he appeared to find the highest social
+qualities. He used to give the most fantastic reasons for his likes and
+dislikes. He would declare he could n't speak a civil word to a man
+who brushed his hair in a certain fashion, and he would explain his
+unaccountable fancy for an individual of imperceptible merit by telling
+you that he had an ancestor who in the thirteenth century had walled up
+his wife alive. "I like to talk to a man whose ancestor has walled up
+his wife alive," he would say. "You may not see the fun of it, and think
+poor P---- is a very dull fellow. It 's very possible; I don't ask you
+to admire him. But, for reasons of my own, I like to have him about. The
+old fellow left her for three days with her face uncovered, and placed
+a long mirror opposite to her, so that she could see, as he said, if her
+gown was a fit!"
+
+His relish for an odd flavor in his friends had led him to make the
+acquaintance of a number of people outside of Rowland's well-ordered
+circle, and he made no secret of their being very queer fish. He formed
+an intimacy, among others, with a crazy fellow who had come to Rome
+as an emissary of one of the Central American republics, to drive some
+ecclesiastical bargain with the papal government. The Pope had given him
+the cold shoulder, but since he had not prospered as a diplomatist, he
+had sought compensation as a man of the world, and his great flamboyant
+curricle and negro lackeys were for several weeks one of the striking
+ornaments of the Pincian. He spoke a queer jargon of Italian, Spanish,
+French, and English, humorously relieved with scraps of ecclesiastical
+Latin, and to those who inquired of Roderick what he found to interest
+him in such a fantastic jackanapes, the latter would reply, looking
+at his interlocutor with his lucid blue eyes, that it was worth any
+sacrifice to hear him talk nonsense! The two had gone together one night
+to a ball given by a lady of some renown in the Spanish colony, and very
+late, on his way home, Roderick came up to Rowland's rooms, in whose
+windows he had seen a light. Rowland was going to bed, but Roderick
+flung himself into an armchair and chattered for an hour. The friends of
+the Costa Rican envoy were as amusing as himself, and in very much the
+same line. The mistress of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and
+gold heels to her slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had
+sent for a pair of castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced a
+fandango, while the gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor. "It was
+awfully low," Roderick said; "all of a sudden I perceived it, and
+bolted. Nothing of that kind ever amuses me to the end: before it 's
+half over it bores me to death; it makes me sick. Hang it, why can't a
+poor fellow enjoy things in peace? My illusions are all broken-winded;
+they won't carry me twenty paces! I can't laugh and forget; my
+laugh dies away before it begins. Your friend Stendhal writes on his
+book-covers (I never got farther) that he has seen too early in life la
+beaute parfaite. I don't know how early he saw it; I saw it before I was
+born--in another state of being! I can't describe it positively; I can
+only say I don't find it anywhere now. Not at the bottom of champagne
+glasses; not, strange as it may seem, in that extra half-yard or so of
+shoulder that some women have their ball-dresses cut to expose. I
+don't find it at merry supper-tables, where half a dozen ugly men with
+pomatumed heads are rapidly growing uglier still with heat and wine; not
+when I come away and walk through these squalid black streets, and go
+out into the Forum and see a few old battered stone posts standing there
+like gnawed bones stuck into the earth. Everything is mean and dusky
+and shabby, and the men and women who make up this so-called brilliant
+society are the meanest and shabbiest of all. They have no real
+spontaneity; they are all cowards and popinjays. They have no more
+dignity than so many grasshoppers. Nothing is good but one!" And he
+jumped up and stood looking at one of his statues, which shone vaguely
+across the room in the dim lamplight.
+
+"Yes, do tell us," said Rowland, "what to hold on by!"
+
+"Those things of mine were tolerably good," he answered. "But my idea
+was better--and that 's what I mean!"
+
+Rowland said nothing. He was willing to wait for Roderick to complete
+the circle of his metamorphoses, but he had no desire to officiate as
+chorus to the play. If Roderick chose to fish in troubled waters, he
+must land his prizes himself.
+
+"You think I 'm an impudent humbug," the latter said at last, "coming
+up to moralize at this hour of the night. You think I want to throw
+dust into your eyes, to put you off the scent. That 's your eminently
+rational view of the case."
+
+"Excuse me from taking any view at all," said Rowland.
+
+"You have given me up, then?"
+
+"No, I have merely suspended judgment. I am waiting."
+
+"You have ceased then positively to believe in me?"
+
+Rowland made an angry gesture. "Oh, cruel boy! When you have hit your
+mark and made people care for you, you should n't twist your weapon
+about at that rate in their vitals. Allow me to say I am sleepy. Good
+night!"
+
+Some days afterward it happened that Rowland, on a long afternoon
+ramble, took his way through one of the quiet corners of the Trastevere.
+He was particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could hardly
+have expressed the charm he found in it. As you pass away from the
+dusky, swarming purlieus of the Ghetto, you emerge into a region of
+empty, soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys, where the shabby houses
+seem mouldering away in disuse, and yet your footstep brings figures of
+startling Roman type to the doorways. There are few monuments here, but
+no part of Rome seemed more historic, in the sense of being weighted
+with a crushing past, blighted with the melancholy of things that had
+had their day. When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow,
+battered walls, and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of
+small closed churches, the place acquired a strange fascination. The
+church of Saint Cecilia has one of these sunny, waste-looking courts;
+the edifice seems abandoned to silence and the charity of chance
+devotion. Rowland never passed it without going in, and he was generally
+the only visitor. He entered it now, but found that two persons had
+preceded him. Both were women. One was at her prayers at one of the side
+altars; the other was seated against a column at the upper end of the
+nave. Rowland walked to the altar, and paid, in a momentary glance at
+the clever statue of the saint in death, in the niche beneath it, the
+usual tribute to the charm of polished ingenuity. As he turned away he
+looked at the person seated and recognized Christina Light. Seeing that
+she perceived him, he advanced to speak to her.
+
+She was sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands in her lap;
+she seemed to be tired. She was dressed simply, as if for walking and
+escaping observation. When he had greeted her he glanced back at her
+companion, and recognized the faithful Assunta.
+
+Christina smiled. "Are you looking for Mr. Hudson? He is not here, I am
+happy to say."
+
+"But you?" he asked. "This is a strange place to find you."
+
+"Not at all! People call me a strange girl, and I might as well have the
+comfort of it. I came to take a walk; that, by the way, is part of
+my strangeness. I can't loll all the morning on a sofa, and all the
+afternoon in a carriage. I get horribly restless. I must move; I must
+do something and see something. Mamma suggests a cup of tea. Meanwhile I
+put on an old dress and half a dozen veils, I take Assunta under my arm,
+and we start on a pedestrian tour. It 's a bore that I can't take the
+poodle, but he attracts attention. We trudge about everywhere; there
+is nothing I like so much. I hope you will congratulate me on the
+simplicity of my tastes."
+
+"I congratulate you on your wisdom. To live in Rome and not to walk
+would, I think, be poor pleasure. But you are terribly far from home,
+and I am afraid you are tired."
+
+"A little--enough to sit here a while."
+
+"Might I offer you my company while you rest?"
+
+"If you will promise to amuse me. I am in dismal spirits."
+
+Rowland said he would do what he could, and brought a chair and placed
+it near her. He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her; he
+mistrusted her; and yet he felt it a kind of privilege to watch her, and
+he found a peculiar excitement in talking to her. The background of her
+nature, as he would have called it, was large and mysterious, and it
+emitted strange, fantastic gleams and flashes. Watching for these rather
+quickened one's pulses. Moreover, it was not a disadvantage to talk to
+a girl who made one keep guard on one's composure; it diminished one's
+chronic liability to utter something less than revised wisdom.
+
+Assunta had risen from her prayers, and, as he took his place, was
+coming back to her mistress. But Christina motioned her away. "No, no;
+while you are about it, say a few dozen more!" she said. "Pray for me,"
+she added in English. "Pray, I say nothing silly. She has been at it
+half an hour; I envy her capacity!"
+
+"Have you never felt in any degree," Rowland asked, "the fascination of
+Catholicism?"
+
+"Yes, I have been through that, too! There was a time when I wanted
+immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter. It was when I was
+about sixteen years old. I read the Imitation and the Life of Saint
+Catherine. I fully believed in the miracles of the saints, and I was
+dying to have one of my own. The least little accident that could have
+been twisted into a miracle would have carried me straight into the
+bosom of the church. I had the real religious passion. It has passed
+away, and, as I sat here just now, I was wondering what had become of
+it!"
+
+Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady's tone
+which he would have called a want of veracity, and this epitome of her
+religious experience failed to strike him as an absolute statement of
+fact. But the trait was not disagreeable, for she herself was evidently
+the foremost dupe of her inventions. She had a fictitious history
+in which she believed much more fondly than in her real one, and an
+infinite capacity for extemporized reminiscence adapted to the mood
+of the hour. She liked to idealize herself, to take interesting and
+picturesque attitudes to her own imagination; and the vivacity and
+spontaneity of her character gave her, really, a starting-point in
+experience; so that the many-colored flowers of fiction which blossomed
+in her talk were not so much perversions, as sympathetic exaggerations,
+of fact. And Rowland felt that whatever she said of herself might have
+been, under the imagined circumstances; impulse was there, audacity, the
+restless, questioning temperament. "I am afraid I am sadly prosaic,"
+he said, "for in these many months now that I have been in Rome, I
+have never ceased for a moment to look at Catholicism simply from the
+outside. I don't see an opening as big as your finger-nail where I could
+creep into it!"
+
+"What do you believe?" asked Christina, looking at him. "Are you
+religious?"
+
+"I believe in God."
+
+Christina let her beautiful eyes wander a while, and then gave a little
+sigh. "You are much to be envied!"
+
+"You, I imagine, in that line have nothing to envy me."
+
+"Yes, I have. Rest!"
+
+"You are too young to say that."
+
+"I am not young; I have never been young! My mother took care of that. I
+was a little wrinkled old woman at ten."
+
+"I am afraid," said Rowland, in a moment, "that you are fond of painting
+yourself in dark colors."
+
+She looked at him a while in silence. "Do you wish," she demanded at
+last, "to win my eternal gratitude? Prove to me that I am better than I
+suppose."
+
+"I should have first to know what you really suppose."
+
+She shook her head. "It would n't do. You would be horrified to learn
+even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of
+evil displayed in my very mistakes."
+
+"Well, then," said Rowland, "I will ask no questions. But, at a venture,
+I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very
+good."
+
+"Can it be, can it be," she asked, "that you too are trying to flatter
+me? I thought you and I had fallen, from the first, into rather a
+truth-speaking vein."
+
+"Oh, I have not abandoned it!" said Rowland; and he determined, since he
+had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage farther. The
+opportunity seemed excellent. But while he was hesitating as to just how
+to begin, the young girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in
+her lap, "Please tell me about your religion."
+
+"Tell you about it? I can't!" said Rowland, with a good deal of
+emphasis.
+
+She flushed a little. "Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot be put into
+words, nor communicated to my base ears?"
+
+"It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can't detach
+myself from it sufficiently to talk about it."
+
+"Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive. It should
+wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to sway all hearts!"
+
+"One's religion takes the color of one's general disposition. I am not
+aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent."
+
+"Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair! I
+am sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it, can
+be terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before
+you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of
+anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you
+know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those
+castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge them in this
+life?"
+
+"I don't know it, any more than any one knows the contrary. But one's
+religion is extremely ingenious in doing without knowledge."
+
+"In such a world as this it certainly needs to be!"
+
+Rowland smiled. "What is your particular quarrel with this world?"
+
+"It 's a general quarrel. Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent. We
+all seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque. It all comes
+over me here so dismally! The very atmosphere of this cold, deserted
+church seems to mock at one's longing to believe in something. Who cares
+for it now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously? Poor stupid Assunta
+there gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does n't understand, and
+you and I, proper, passionless tourists, come lounging in to rest from
+a walk. And yet the Catholic church was once the proudest institution
+in the world, and had quite its own way with men's souls. When such a
+mighty structure as that turns out to have a flaw, what faith is one to
+put in one's poor little views and philosophies? What is right and what
+is wrong? What is one really to care for? What is the proper rule of
+life? I am tired of trying to discover, and I suspect it 's not worth
+the trouble. Live as most amuses you!"
+
+"Your perplexities are so terribly comprehensive," said Rowland,
+smiling, "that one hardly knows where to meet them first."
+
+"I don't care much for anything you can say, because it 's sure to be
+half-hearted. You are not in the least contented, yourself."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Oh, I am an observer!"
+
+"No one is absolutely contented, I suppose, but I assure you I complain
+of nothing."
+
+"So much the worse for your honesty. To begin with, you are in love."
+
+"You would not have me complain of that!"
+
+"And it does n't go well. There are grievous obstacles. So much I know!
+You need n't protest; I ask no questions. You will tell no one--me least
+of all. Why does one never see you?"
+
+"Why, if I came to see you," said Rowland, deliberating, "it would n't
+be, it could n't be, for a trivial reason--because I had not been in a
+month, because I was passing, because I admire you. It would be because
+I should have something very particular to say. I have not come, because
+I have been slow in making up my mind to say it."
+
+"You are simply cruel. Something particular, in this ocean of inanities?
+In common charity, speak!"
+
+"I doubt whether you will like it."
+
+"Oh, I hope to heaven it 's not a compliment!"
+
+"It may be called a compliment to your reasonableness. You perhaps
+remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati."
+
+"Has it been hanging fire all this time? Explode! I promise not to stop
+my ears."
+
+"It relates to my friend Hudson." And Rowland paused. She was looking at
+him expectantly; her face gave no sign. "I am rather disturbed in mind
+about him. He seems to me at times to be in an unpromising way." He
+paused again, but Christina said nothing. "The case is simply this,"
+he went on. "It was by my advice he renounced his career at home and
+embraced his present one. I made him burn his ships. I brought him to
+Rome, I launched him in the world, and I stand surety, in a measure,
+to--to his mother, for his prosperity. It is not such smooth sailing as
+it might be, and I am inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he
+is to succeed, he must work--quietly, devotedly. It is not news to you,
+I imagine, that Hudson is a great admirer of yours."
+
+Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not
+of confusion, but of deep deliberation. Surprising frankness had, as a
+general thing, struck Rowland as the key-note of her character, but she
+had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power
+of calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly
+extravagant to call portentous. He had of course asked himself how far
+it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs
+of a cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had
+an uncomfortable analogy with the shrewdness that uses a cat's paw and
+lets it risk being singed. But he decided that even rigid discretion
+is not bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation,
+and Christina presently reassured him as to the limits of her
+susceptibility. "Mr. Hudson is in love with me!" she said.
+
+Rowland flinched a trifle. Then--"Am I," he asked, "from this point of
+view of mine, to be glad or sorry?"
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?"
+
+She hesitated a moment. "You wish him to be great in his profession? And
+for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?"
+
+"Decidedly. I don't say it 's a general rule, but I think it is a rule
+for him."
+
+"So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?"
+
+"He would at least do himself justice."
+
+"And by that you mean a great deal?"
+
+"A great deal."
+
+Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked
+and polished slabs of the pavement. At last, looking up, "You have not
+forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged?"
+
+"By no means."
+
+"He is still engaged, then?"
+
+"To the best of my belief."
+
+"And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by
+something I can do for him?"
+
+"What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should
+be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him.
+Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless
+time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don't know your own mind
+very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense
+of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I
+might not say the great word."
+
+"You need n't; I know it. I am a horrible coquette."
+
+"No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity.
+I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend."
+
+"There 's nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble."
+
+Rowland's brow contracted impatiently. "I cannot imagine it, then!" he
+affirmed.
+
+Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, "I am not so bad as you
+think," she said.
+
+"It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether
+circumstances don't make the thing an extreme improbability."
+
+"Worse and worse. I can be bullied, then, or bribed!"
+
+"You are not so candid," said Rowland, "as you pretend to be. My feeling
+is this. Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the
+stimulus of strong emotion, of passion. He's better without it; he's
+emotional and passionate enough when he 's left to himself. The sooner
+passion is at rest, therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work,
+and the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more,
+the better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him, I should
+have nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere. But I strongly
+suspect you don't, and therefore I would suggest, most respectfully,
+that you should let him alone."
+
+"And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him for ever
+more?"
+
+"Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier. He will
+be better able to concentrate himself."
+
+"What is he doing now? Wherein does he dissatisfy you?"
+
+"I can hardly say. He 's like a watch that 's running down. He is moody,
+desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic."
+
+"Heavens, what a list! And it 's all poor me?"
+
+"No, not all. But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you
+are a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others."
+
+Christina raised her hand to her eyes, and bent her head thoughtfully.
+Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather
+surprised him by her gentleness. At last, without moving, "If I were to
+marry him," she asked, "what would have become of his fiancee?"
+
+"I am bound to suppose that she would be extremely unhappy."
+
+Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make her
+reflections, left his place and strolled away. Poor Assunta, sitting
+patiently on a stone bench, and unprovided, on this occasion, with
+military consolation, gave him a bright, frank smile, which might have
+been construed as an expression of regret for herself, and of sympathy
+for her mistress. Rowland presently seated himself again near Christina.
+
+"What do you think," she asked, looking at him, "of your friend's
+infidelity?"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Was he very much in love with her?"
+
+"He asked her to marry him. You may judge."
+
+"Is she rich?"
+
+"No, she is poor."
+
+"Is she very much in love with him?"
+
+"I know her too little to say."
+
+She paused again, and then resumed: "You have settled in your mind,
+then, that I will never seriously listen to him?"
+
+"I think it unlikely, until the contrary is proved."
+
+"How shall it be proved? How do you know what passes between us?"
+
+"I can judge, of course, but from appearance; but, like you, I am an
+observer. Hudson has not at all the air of a prosperous suitor."
+
+"If he is depressed, there is a reason. He has a bad conscience. One
+must hope so, at least. On the other hand, simply as a friend," she
+continued gently, "you think I can do him no good?"
+
+The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty, as she made this
+remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland had an uncomfortable
+sense of being put at a disadvantage. "There are doubtless many good
+things you might do, if you had proper opportunity," he said. "But you
+seem to be sailing with a current which leaves you little leisure for
+quiet benevolence. You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which
+a poor artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you."
+
+"In plain English, I am hopelessly frivolous. You put it very
+generously."
+
+"I won't hesitate to say all my thought," said Rowland. "For better or
+worse, you seem to me to belong, both by character and by circumstance,
+to what is called the world, the great world. You are made to ornament
+it magnificently. You are not made to be an artist's wife."
+
+"I see. But even from your point of view, that would depend upon the
+artist. Extraordinary talent might make him a member of the great
+world!"
+
+Rowland smiled. "That is very true."
+
+"If, as it is," Christina continued in a moment, "you take a low view of
+me--no, you need n't protest--I wonder what you would think if you knew
+certain things."
+
+"What things do you mean?"
+
+"Well, for example, how I was brought up. I have had a horrible
+education. There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it,
+since I have turned and judged my circumstances."
+
+"My dear Miss Light!" Rowland murmured.
+
+She gave a little, quick laugh. "You don't want to hear? you don't want
+to have to think about that?"
+
+"Have I a right to? You need n't justify yourself."
+
+She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes,
+then fell to musing again. "Is there not some novel or some play," she
+asked at last, "in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a
+young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland. "I hope she consents."
+
+"I forget. But tell me," she continued, "shall you consider--admitting
+your proposition--that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that
+he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic,
+sublime--something with a fine name like that?"
+
+Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about
+to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he
+instantly suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides,
+it would not express his meaning.
+
+"You do something I shall greatly respect," he contented himself with
+saying.
+
+She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid. "What have
+I to do to-day?" she asked.
+
+Assunta meditated. "Eh, it 's a very busy day! Fortunately I have a
+better memory than the signorina," she said, turning to Rowland. She
+began to count on her fingers. "We have to go to the Pie di Marmo to see
+about those laces that were sent to be washed. You said also that you
+wished to say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress.
+You want some moss-rosebuds for to-night, and you won't get them for
+nothing! You dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman is to
+powder your hair. You 're to come home in time to receive, for the
+signora gives a dance. And so away, away till morning!"
+
+"Ah, yes, the moss-roses!" Christina murmured, caressingly. "I must have
+a quantity--at least a hundred. Nothing but buds, eh? You must sew them
+in a kind of immense apron, down the front of my dress. Packed tight
+together, eh? It will be delightfully barbarous. And then twenty more or
+so for my hair. They go very well with powder; don't you think so?" And
+she turned to Rowland. "I am going en Pompadour."
+
+"Going where?"
+
+"To the Spanish Embassy, or whatever it is."
+
+"All down the front, signorina? Dio buono! You must give me time!"
+Assunta cried.
+
+"Yes, we'll go!" And she left her place. She walked slowly to the door
+of the church, looking at the pavement, and Rowland could not guess
+whether she was thinking of her apron of moss-rosebuds or of her
+opportunity for moral sublimity. Before reaching the door she turned
+away and stood gazing at an old picture, indistinguishable with
+blackness, over an altar. At last they passed out into the court.
+Glancing at her in the open air, Rowland was startled; he imagined he
+saw the traces of hastily suppressed tears. They had lost time, she
+said, and they must hurry; she sent Assunta to look for a fiacre. She
+remained silent a while, scratching the ground with the point of her
+parasol, and then at last, looking up, she thanked Rowland for his
+confidence in her "reasonableness." "It 's really very comfortable to be
+asked, to be expected, to do something good, after all the horrid things
+one has been used to doing--instructed, commanded, forced to do! I 'll
+think over what you have said to me." In that deserted quarter fiacres
+are rare, and there was some delay in Assunta's procuring one. Christina
+talked of the church, of the picturesque old court, of that strange,
+decaying corner of Rome. Rowland was perplexed; he was ill at ease.
+At last the fiacre arrived, but she waited a moment longer. "So,
+decidedly," she suddenly asked, "I can only harm him?"
+
+"You make me feel very brutal," said Rowland.
+
+"And he is such a fine fellow that it would be really a great pity, eh?"
+
+"I shall praise him no more," Rowland said.
+
+She turned away quickly, but she lingered still. "Do you remember
+promising me, soon after we first met, that at the end of six months you
+would tell me definitely what you thought of me?"
+
+"It was a foolish promise."
+
+"You gave it. Bear it in mind. I will think of what you have said to me.
+Farewell." She stepped into the carriage, and it rolled away. Rowland
+stood for some minutes, looking after it, and then went his way with
+a sigh. If this expressed general mistrust, he ought, three days
+afterward, to have been reassured. He received by the post a note
+containing these words:--
+
+"I have done it. Begin and respect me!
+
+"--C. L."
+
+To be perfectly satisfactory, indeed, the note required a commentary.
+He called that evening upon Roderick, and found one in the information
+offered him at the door, by the old serving-woman--the startling
+information that the signorino had gone to Naples.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. Provocation
+
+About a month later, Rowland addressed to his cousin Cecilia a letter of
+which the following is a portion:--
+
+... "So much for myself; yet I tell you but a tithe of my own story
+unless I let you know how matters stand with poor Hudson, for he gives
+me more to think about just now than anything else in the world. I need
+a good deal of courage to begin this chapter. You warned me, you know,
+and I made rather light of your warning. I have had all kinds of hopes
+and fears, but hitherto, in writing to you, I have resolutely put the
+hopes foremost. Now, however, my pride has forsaken me, and I should
+like hugely to give expression to a little comfortable despair. I should
+like to say, 'My dear wise woman, you were right and I was wrong; you
+were a shrewd observer and I was a meddlesome donkey!' When I think of
+a little talk we had about the 'salubrity of genius,' I feel my ears
+tingle. If this is salubrity, give me raging disease! I 'm pestered to
+death; I go about with a chronic heartache; there are moments when I
+could shed salt tears. There 's a pretty portrait of the most placid
+of men! I wish I could make you understand; or rather, I wish you could
+make me! I don't understand a jot; it 's a hideous, mocking mystery; I
+give it up! I don't in the least give it up, you know; I 'm incapable
+of giving it up. I sit holding my head by the hour, racking my brain,
+wondering what under heaven is to be done. You told me at Northampton
+that I took the thing too easily; you would tell me now, perhaps, that
+I take it too hard. I do, altogether; but it can't be helped. Without
+flattering myself, I may say I 'm sympathetic. Many another man before
+this would have cast his perplexities to the winds and declared that Mr.
+Hudson must lie on his bed as he had made it. Some men, perhaps, would
+even say that I am making a mighty ado about nothing; that I have only
+to give him rope, and he will tire himself out. But he tugs at his rope
+altogether too hard for me to hold it comfortably. I certainly never
+pretended the thing was anything else than an experiment; I promised
+nothing, I answered for nothing; I only said the case was hopeful, and
+that it would be a shame to neglect it. I have done my best, and if
+the machine is running down I have a right to stand aside and let it
+scuttle. Amen, amen! No, I can write that, but I can't feel it. I can't
+be just; I can only be generous. I love the poor fellow and I can't give
+him up. As for understanding him, that 's another matter; nowadays I
+don't believe even you would. One's wits are sadly pestered over here,
+I assure you, and I 'm in the way of seeing more than one puzzling
+specimen of human nature. Roderick and Miss Light, between them!...
+Have n't I already told you about Miss Light? Last winter everything was
+perfection. Roderick struck out bravely, did really great things, and
+proved himself, as I supposed, thoroughly solid. He was strong, he was
+first-rate; I felt perfectly secure and sang private paeans of joy. We
+had passed at a bound into the open sea, and left danger behind. But
+in the summer I began to be puzzled, though I succeeded in not being
+alarmed. When we came back to Rome, however, I saw that the tide had
+turned and that we were close upon the rocks. It is, in fact, another
+case of Ulysses alongside of the Sirens; only Roderick refuses to be
+tied to the mast. He is the most extraordinary being, the strangest
+mixture of qualities. I don't understand so much force going with so
+much weakness--such a brilliant gift being subject to such lapses. The
+poor fellow is incomplete, and it is really not his own fault; Nature
+has given him the faculty out of hand and bidden him be hanged with it.
+I never knew a man harder to advise or assist, if he is not in the mood
+for listening. I suppose there is some key or other to his character,
+but I try in vain to find it; and yet I can't believe that Providence
+is so cruel as to have turned the lock and thrown the key away. He
+perplexes me, as I say, to death, and though he tires out my patience,
+he still fascinates me. Sometimes I think he has n't a grain of
+conscience, and sometimes I think that, in a way, he has an excess. He
+takes things at once too easily and too hard; he is both too lax and too
+tense, too reckless and too ambitious, too cold and too passionate. He
+has developed faster even than you prophesied, and for good and evil
+alike he takes up a formidable space. There 's too much of him for me,
+at any rate. Yes, he is hard; there is no mistake about that. He 's
+inflexible, he 's brittle; and though he has plenty of spirit, plenty of
+soul, he has n't what I call a heart. He has something that Miss Garland
+took for one, and I 'm pretty sure she 's a judge. But she judged on
+scanty evidence. He has something that Christina Light, here, makes
+believe at times that she takes for one, but she is no judge at all! I
+think it is established that, in the long run, egotism makes a failure
+in conduct: is it also true that it makes a failure in the arts?...
+Roderick's standard is immensely high; I must do him that justice. He
+will do nothing beneath it, and while he is waiting for inspiration, his
+imagination, his nerves, his senses must have something to amuse them.
+This is a highly philosophical way of saying that he has taken to
+dissipation, and that he has just been spending a month at Naples--a
+city where 'pleasure' is actively cultivated--in very bad company.
+Are they all like that, all the men of genius? There are a great many
+artists here who hammer away at their trade with exemplary industry; in
+fact I am surprised at their success in reducing the matter to a steady,
+daily grind: but I really don't think that one of them has his exquisite
+quality of talent. It is in the matter of quantity that he has broken
+down. The bottle won't pour; he turns it upside down; it 's no use!
+Sometimes he declares it 's empty--that he has done all he was made to
+do. This I consider great nonsense; but I would nevertheless take him on
+his own terms if it was only I that was concerned. But I keep thinking
+of those two praying, trusting neighbors of yours, and I feel wretchedly
+like a swindler. If his working mood came but once in five years I would
+willingly wait for it and maintain him in leisure, if need be, in the
+intervals; but that would be a sorry account to present to them. Five
+years of this sort of thing, moreover, would effectually settle the
+question. I wish he were less of a genius and more of a charlatan! He 's
+too confoundedly all of one piece; he won't throw overboard a grain
+of the cargo to save the rest. Fancy him thus with all his brilliant
+personal charm, his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a
+nervous nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there
+is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably
+foolish last summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a
+while he was steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled
+over. Now, literally, he 's lying prone. He came into my room last
+night, miserably tipsy. I assure you, it did n't amuse me..... About
+Miss Light it 's a long story. She is one of the great beauties of all
+time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to
+see. Her complexion, her glance, her step, her dusky tresses, may have
+been seen before in a goddess, but never in a woman. And you may take
+this for truth, because I 'm not in love with her. On the contrary! Her
+education has been simply infernal. She is corrupt, perverse, as proud
+as the queen of Sheba, and an appalling coquette; but she is generous,
+and with patience and skill you may enlist her imagination in a good
+cause as well as in a bad one. The other day I tried to manipulate it a
+little. Chance offered me an interview to which it was possible to give
+a serious turn, and I boldly broke ground and begged her to suffer
+my poor friend to go in peace. After a good deal of finessing she
+consented, and the next day, with a single word, packed him off to
+Naples to drown his sorrow in debauchery. I have come to the conclusion
+that she is more dangerous in her virtuous moods than in her vicious
+ones, and that she probably has a way of turning her back which is the
+most provoking thing in the world. She 's an actress, she could n't
+forego doing the thing dramatically, and it was the dramatic touch that
+made it fatal. I wished her, of course, to let him down easily; but
+she desired to have the curtain drop on an attitude, and her attitudes
+deprive inflammable young artists of their reason..... Roderick made an
+admirable bust of her at the beginning of the winter, and a dozen women
+came rushing to him to be done, mutatis mutandis, in the same style.
+They were all great ladies and ready to take him by the hand, but he
+told them all their faces did n't interest him, and sent them away
+vowing his destruction."
+
+At this point of his long effusion, Rowland had paused and put by his
+letter. He kept it three days and then read it over. He was disposed at
+first to destroy it, but he decided finally to keep it, in the hope that
+it might strike a spark of useful suggestion from the flint of Cecilia's
+good sense. We know he had a talent for taking advice. And then it might
+be, he reflected, that his cousin's answer would throw some light on
+Mary Garland's present vision of things. In his altered mood he added
+these few lines:--
+
+"I unburdened myself the other day of this monstrous load of perplexity;
+I think it did me good, and I let it stand. I was in a melancholy
+muddle, and I was trying to work myself free. You know I like
+discussion, in a quiet way, and there is no one with whom I can have it
+as quietly as with you, most sagacious of cousins! There is an excellent
+old lady with whom I often chat, and who talks very much to the point.
+But Madame Grandoni has disliked Roderick from the first, and if I were
+to take her advice I would wash my hands of him. You will laugh at me
+for my long face, but you would do that in any circumstances. I am half
+ashamed of my letter, for I have a faith in my friend that is deeper
+than my doubts. He was here last evening, talking about the Naples
+Museum, the Aristides, the bronzes, the Pompeian frescoes, with such
+a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the ultimate future seemed
+blasphemy. I walked back to his lodging with him, and he was as mild
+as midsummer moonlight. He has the ineffable something that charms and
+convinces; my last word about him shall not be a harsh one."
+
+Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into his friend's
+studio, he found Roderick suffering from the grave infliction of a visit
+from Mr. Leavenworth. Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being
+bored, and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation. He had
+lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an
+image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life. The real lazzarone, he
+had admitted, was a vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone--and his own
+had been subtly idealized--was a precursor of the millennium.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying gaze to
+the figure.
+
+"Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?" he sympathetically
+observed.
+
+"Oh no," said Roderick seriously, "he 's not dying, he 's only drunk!"
+
+"Ah, but intoxication, you know," Mr. Leavenworth rejoined, "is not a
+proper subject for sculpture. Sculpture should not deal with transitory
+attitudes."
+
+"Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude! Nothing is more
+permanent, more sculpturesque, more monumental!"
+
+"An entertaining paradox," said Mr. Leavenworth, "if we had time to
+exercise our wits upon it. I remember at Florence an intoxicated figure
+by Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration of a
+great mind. I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever. I have traveled
+through Europe on cold water. The most varied and attractive lists of
+wines are offered me, but I brush them aside. No cork has ever been
+drawn at my command!"
+
+"The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set
+of muscles," said Roderick. "I think I will make a figure in that
+position."
+
+"A Bacchus, realistically treated! My dear young friend, never trifle
+with your lofty mission. Spotless marble should represent virtue, not
+vice!" And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise
+the spirit of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely
+benignity to another object--a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light.
+"An ideal head, I presume," he went on; "a fanciful representation of
+one of the pagan goddesses--a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad? I often
+regret that our American artists should not boldly cast off that extinct
+nomenclature."
+
+"She is neither a naiad nor a dryad," said Roderick, "and her name is as
+good as yours or mine."
+
+"You call her"--Mr. Leavenworth blandly inquired.
+
+"Miss Light," Rowland interposed, in charity.
+
+"Ah, our great American beauty! Not a pagan goddess--an American,
+Christian lady! Yes, I have had the pleasure of conversing with Miss
+Light. Her conversational powers are not remarkable, but her beauty
+is of a high order. I observed her the other evening at a large party,
+where some of the proudest members of the European aristocracy were
+present--duchesses, princesses, countesses, and others distinguished by
+similar titles. But for beauty, grace, and elegance my fair countrywoman
+left them all nowhere. What women can compare with a truly refined
+American lady? The duchesses the other night had no attractions for my
+eyes; they looked coarse and sensual! It seemed to me that the tyranny
+of class distinctions must indeed be terrible when such countenances
+could inspire admiration. You see more beautiful girls in an hour on
+Broadway than in the whole tour of Europe. Miss Light, now, on Broadway,
+would excite no particular remark."
+
+"She has never been there!" cried Roderick, triumphantly.
+
+"I 'm afraid she never will be there. I suppose you have heard the news
+about her."
+
+"What news?" Roderick had stood with his back turned, fiercely poking
+at his lazzarone; but at Mr. Leavenworth's last words he faced quickly
+about.
+
+"It 's the news of the hour, I believe. Miss Light is admired by the
+highest people here. They tacitly recognize her superiority. She has had
+offers of marriage from various great lords. I was extremely happy
+to learn this circumstance, and to know that they all had been left
+sighing. She has not been dazzled by their titles and their gilded
+coronets. She has judged them simply as men, and found them wanting. One
+of them, however, a young Neapolitan prince, I believe, has after a long
+probation succeeded in making himself acceptable. Miss Light has at last
+said yes, and the engagement has just been announced. I am not generally
+a retailer of gossip of this description, but the fact was alluded to
+an hour ago by a lady with whom I was conversing, and here, in Europe,
+these conversational trifles usurp the lion's share of one's attention.
+I therefore retained the circumstance. Yes, I regret that Miss Light
+should marry one of these used-up foreigners. Americans should stand by
+each other. If she wanted a brilliant match we could have fixed it for
+her. If she wanted a fine fellow--a fine, sharp, enterprising modern
+man--I would have undertaken to find him for her without going out of
+the city of New York. And if she wanted a big fortune, I would have
+found her twenty that she would have had hard work to spend: money
+down--not tied up in fever-stricken lands and worm-eaten villas! What is
+the name of the young man? Prince Castaway, or some such thing!"
+
+It was well for Mr. Leavenworth that he was a voluminous and
+imperturbable talker; for the current of his eloquence floated him
+past the short, sharp, startled cry with which Roderick greeted his
+"conversational trifle." The young man stood looking at him with parted
+lips and an excited eye.
+
+"The position of woman," Mr. Leavenworth placidly resumed, "is certainly
+a very degraded one in these countries. I doubt whether a European
+princess can command the respect which in our country is exhibited
+toward the obscurest females. The civilization of a country should
+be measured by the deference shown to the weaker sex. Judged by that
+standard, where are they, over here?"
+
+Though Mr. Leavenworth had not observed Roderick's emotion, it was not
+lost upon Rowland, who was making certain uncomfortable reflections upon
+it. He saw that it had instantly become one with the acute irritation
+produced by the poor gentleman's oppressive personality, and that
+an explosion of some sort was imminent. Mr. Leavenworth, with calm
+unconsciousness, proceeded to fire the mine.
+
+"And now for our Culture!" he said in the same sonorous tones, demanding
+with a gesture the unveiling of the figure, which stood somewhat apart,
+muffled in a great sheet.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with concentrated rancor, and
+then strode to the statue and twitched off the cover. Mr. Leavenworth
+settled himself into his chair with an air of flattered proprietorship,
+and scanned the unfinished image. "I can conscientiously express myself
+as gratified with the general conception," he said. "The figure has
+considerable majesty, and the countenance wears a fine, open expression.
+The forehead, however, strikes me as not sufficiently intellectual. In
+a statue of Culture, you know, that should be the great point. The eye
+should instinctively seek the forehead. Could n't you heighten it up a
+little?"
+
+Roderick, for all answer, tossed the sheet back over the statue. "Oblige
+me, sir," he said, "oblige me! Never mention that thing again."
+
+"Never mention it? Why my dear sir"--
+
+"Never mention it. It 's an abomination!"
+
+"An abomination! My Culture!"
+
+"Yours indeed!" cried Roderick. "It 's none of mine. I disown it."
+
+"Disown it, if you please," said Mr. Leavenworth sternly, "but finish it
+first!"
+
+"I 'd rather smash it!" cried Roderick.
+
+"This is folly, sir. You must keep your engagements."
+
+"I made no engagement. A sculptor is n't a tailor. Did you ever hear of
+inspiration? Mine is dead! And it 's no laughing matter. You yourself
+killed it."
+
+"I--I--killed your inspiration?" cried Mr. Leavenworth, with the accent
+of righteous wrath. "You 're a very ungrateful boy! If ever I encouraged
+and cheered and sustained any one, I 'm sure I have done so to you."
+
+"I appreciate your good intentions, and I don't wish to be uncivil. But
+your encouragement is--superfluous. I can't work for you!"
+
+"I call this ill-humor, young man!" said Mr. Leavenworth, as if he had
+found the damning word.
+
+"Oh, I 'm in an infernal humor!" Roderick answered.
+
+"Pray, sir, is it my infelicitous allusion to Miss Light's marriage?"
+
+"It 's your infelicitous everything! I don't say that to offend you;
+I beg your pardon if it does. I say it by way of making our rupture
+complete, irretrievable!"
+
+Rowland had stood by in silence, but he now interfered. "Listen to me,"
+he said, laying his hand on Roderick's arm. "You are standing on the
+edge of a gulf. If you suffer anything that has passed to interrupt
+your work on that figure, you take your plunge. It 's no matter that
+you don't like it; you will do the wisest thing you ever did if you make
+that effort of will necessary for finishing it. Destroy the statue then,
+if you like, but make the effort. I speak the truth!"
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes that still inexorableness made almost
+tender. "You too!" he simply said.
+
+Rowland felt that he might as well attempt to squeeze water from a
+polished crystal as hope to move him. He turned away and walked into the
+adjoining room with a sense of sickening helplessness. In a few moments
+he came back and found that Mr. Leavenworth had departed--presumably in
+a manner somewhat portentous. Roderick was sitting with his elbows on
+his knees and his head in his hands.
+
+Rowland made one more attempt. "You decline to think of what I urge?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"There's one more point--that you shouldn't, for a month, go to Mrs.
+Light's."
+
+"I go there this evening."
+
+"That too is an utter folly."
+
+"There are such things as necessary follies."
+
+"You are not reflecting; you are speaking in passion."
+
+"Why then do you make me speak?"
+
+Rowland meditated a moment. "Is it also necessary that you should lose
+the best friend you have?"
+
+Roderick looked up. "That 's for you to settle!"
+
+His best friend clapped on his hat and strode away; in a moment the door
+closed behind him. Rowland walked hard for nearly a couple of hours.
+He passed up the Corso, out of the Porta del Popolo and into the Villa
+Borghese, of which he made a complete circuit. The keenness of his
+irritation subsided, but it left him with an intolerable weight upon his
+heart. When dusk had fallen, he found himself near the lodging of his
+friend Madame Grandoni. He frequently paid her a visit during the hour
+which preceded dinner, and he now ascended her unillumined staircase and
+rang at her relaxed bell-rope with an especial desire for diversion. He
+was told that, for the moment, she was occupied, but that if he would
+come in and wait, she would presently be with him. He had not sat
+musing in the firelight for ten minutes when he heard the jingle of the
+door-bell and then a rustling and murmuring in the hall. The door of the
+little saloon opened, but before the visitor appeared he had recognized
+her voice. Christina Light swept forward, preceded by her poodle, and
+almost filling the narrow parlor with the train of her dress. She was
+colored here and there by the flicking firelight.
+
+"They told me you were here," she said simply, as she took a seat.
+
+"And yet you came in? It is very brave," said Rowland.
+
+"You are the brave one, when one thinks of it! Where is the padrona?"
+
+"Occupied for the moment. But she is coming."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"I have already waited ten minutes; I expect her from moment to moment."
+
+"Meanwhile we are alone?" And she glanced into the dusky corners of the
+room.
+
+"Unless Stenterello counts," said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, he knows my secrets--unfortunate brute!" She sat silent awhile,
+looking into the firelight. Then at last, glancing at Rowland, "Come!
+say something pleasant!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I have been very happy to hear of your engagement."
+
+"No, I don't mean that. I have heard that so often, only since
+breakfast, that it has lost all sense. I mean some of those unexpected,
+charming things that you said to me a month ago at Saint Cecilia's."
+
+"I offended you, then," said Rowland. "I was afraid I had."
+
+"Ah, it occurred to you? Why have n't I seen you since?"
+
+"Really, I don't know." And he began to hesitate for an explanation. "I
+have called, but you have never been at home."
+
+"You were careful to choose the wrong times. You have a way with a
+poor girl! You sit down and inform her that she is a person with whom
+a respectable young man cannot associate without contamination; your
+friend is a very nice fellow, you are very careful of his morals, you
+wish him to know none but nice people, and you beg me therefore to
+desist. You request me to take these suggestions to heart and to act
+upon them as promptly as possible. They are not particularly flattering
+to my vanity. Vanity, however, is a sin, and I listen submissively,
+with an immense desire to be just. If I have many faults I know it, in
+a general way, and I try on the whole to do my best. 'Voyons,' I say
+to myself, 'it is n't particularly charming to hear one's self made out
+such a low person, but it is worth thinking over; there 's probably a
+good deal of truth in it, and at any rate we must be as good a girl as
+we can. That 's the great point! And then here 's a magnificent chance
+for humility. If there 's doubt in the matter, let the doubt count
+against one's self. That is what Saint Catherine did, and Saint Theresa,
+and all the others, and they are said to have had in consequence the
+most ineffable joys. Let us go in for a little ineffable joy!' I tried
+it; I swallowed my rising sobs, I made you my courtesy, I determined I
+would not be spiteful, nor passionate, nor vengeful, nor anything that
+is supposed to be particularly feminine. I was a better girl than
+you made out--better at least than you thought; but I would let the
+difference go and do magnificently right, lest I should not do right
+enough. I thought of it a deal for six hours when I know I did n't seem
+to be, and then at last I did it! Santo Dio!"
+
+"My dear Miss Light, my dear Miss Light!" said Rowland, pleadingly.
+
+"Since then," the young girl went on, "I have been waiting for the
+ineffable joys. They have n't yet turned up!"
+
+"Pray listen to me!" Rowland urged.
+
+"Nothing, nothing, nothing has come of it. I have passed the dreariest
+month of my life!"
+
+"My dear Miss Light, you are a very terrible young lady!" cried Rowland.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"A good many things. We 'll talk them over. But first, forgive me if I
+have offended you!"
+
+She looked at him a moment, hesitating, and then thrust her hands into
+her muff. "That means nothing. Forgiveness is between equals, and you
+don't regard me as your equal."
+
+"Really, I don't understand!"
+
+Christina rose and moved for a moment about the room. Then turning
+suddenly, "You don't believe in me!" she cried; "not a grain! I don't
+know what I would not give to force you to believe in me!"
+
+Rowland sprang up, protesting, but before he had time to go far one of
+the scanty portieres was raised, and Madame Grandoni came in, pulling
+her wig straight. "But you shall believe in me yet," murmured Christina,
+as she passed toward her hostess.
+
+Madame Grandoni turned tenderly to Christina. "I must give you a very
+solemn kiss, my dear; you are the heroine of the hour. You have really
+accepted him, eh?"
+
+"So they say!"
+
+"But you ought to know best."
+
+"I don't know--I don't care!" She stood with her hand in Madame
+Grandoni's, but looking askance at Rowland.
+
+"That 's a pretty state of mind," said the old lady, "for a young person
+who is going to become a princess."
+
+Christina shrugged her shoulders. "Every one expects me to go into
+ecstacies over that! Could anything be more vulgar? They may chuckle by
+themselves! Will you let me stay to dinner?"
+
+"If you can dine on a risotto. But I imagine you are expected at home."
+
+"You are right. Prince Casamassima dines there, en famille. But I 'm not
+in his family, yet!"
+
+"Do you know you are very wicked? I have half a mind not to keep you."
+
+Christina dropped her eyes, reflectively. "I beg you will let me stay,"
+she said. "If you wish to cure me of my wickedness you must be very
+patient and kind with me. It will be worth the trouble. You must
+show confidence in me." And she gave another glance at Rowland. Then
+suddenly, in a different tone, "I don't know what I 'm saying!" she
+cried. "I am weary, I am more lonely than ever, I wish I were dead!" The
+tears rose to her eyes, she struggled with them an instant, and buried
+her face in her muff; but at last she burst into uncontrollable sobs
+and flung her arms upon Madame Grandoni's neck. This shrewd woman gave
+Rowland a significant nod, and a little shrug, over the young girl's
+beautiful bowed head, and then led Christina tenderly away into the
+adjoining room. Rowland, left alone, stood there for an instant,
+intolerably puzzled, face to face with Miss Light's poodle, who had set
+up a sharp, unearthly cry of sympathy with his mistress. Rowland
+vented his confusion in dealing a rap with his stick at the animal's
+unmelodious muzzle, and then rapidly left the house. He saw Mrs. Light's
+carriage waiting at the door, and heard afterwards that Christina went
+home to dinner.
+
+A couple of days later he went, for a fortnight, to Florence. He had
+twenty minds to leave Italy altogether; and at Florence he could at
+least more freely decide upon his future movements. He felt profoundly,
+incurably disgusted. Reflective benevolence stood prudently aside, and
+for the time touched the source of his irritation with no softening
+side-lights.
+
+It was the middle of March, and by the middle of March in Florence the
+spring is already warm and deep. He had an infinite relish for the place
+and the season, but as he strolled by the Arno and paused here and there
+in the great galleries, they failed to soothe his irritation. He was
+sore at heart, and as the days went by the soreness deepened rather than
+healed. He felt as if he had a complaint against fortune; good-natured
+as he was, his good-nature this time quite declined to let it pass. He
+had tried to be wise, he had tried to be kind, he had embarked upon an
+estimable enterprise; but his wisdom, his kindness, his energy, had been
+thrown back in his face. He was disappointed, and his disappointment
+had an angry spark in it. The sense of wasted time, of wasted hope and
+faith, kept him constant company. There were times when the beautiful
+things about him only exasperated his discontent. He went to the Pitti
+Palace, and Raphael's Madonna of the Chair seemed, in its soft serenity,
+to mock him with the suggestion of unattainable repose. He lingered on
+the bridges at sunset, and knew that the light was enchanting and the
+mountains divine, but there seemed to be something horribly invidious
+and unwelcome in the fact. He felt, in a word, like a man who has been
+cruelly defrauded and who wishes to have his revenge. Life owed him, he
+thought, a compensation, and he would be restless and resentful until he
+found it. He knew--or he seemed to know--where he should find it; but he
+hardly told himself, and thought of the thing under mental protest, as a
+man in want of money may think of certain funds that he holds in trust.
+In his melancholy meditations the idea of something better than all
+this, something that might softly, richly interpose, something that
+might reconcile him to the future, something that might make one's
+tenure of life deep and zealous instead of harsh and uneven--the idea of
+concrete compensation, in a word--shaped itself sooner or later into the
+image of Mary Garland.
+
+Very odd, you may say, that at this time of day Rowland should still
+be brooding over a plain girl of whom he had had but the lightest of
+glimpses two years before; very odd that so deep an impression should
+have been made by so lightly-pressed an instrument. We must admit the
+oddity and offer simply in explanation that his sentiment apparently
+belonged to that species of emotion of which, by the testimony of the
+poets, the very name and essence is oddity. One night he slept but
+half an hour; he found his thoughts taking a turn which excited him
+portentously. He walked up and down his room half the night. It looked
+out on the Arno; the noise of the river came in at the open window; he
+felt like dressing and going down into the streets. Toward morning
+he flung himself into a chair; though he was wide awake he was less
+excited. It seemed to him that he saw his idea from the outside, that he
+judged it and condemned it; yet it stood there before him, distinct,
+and in a certain way imperious. During the day he tried to banish it
+and forget it; but it fascinated, haunted, at moments frightened him. He
+tried to amuse himself, paid visits, resorted to several rather violent
+devices for diverting his thoughts. If on the morrow he had committed a
+crime, the persons whom he had seen that day would have testified
+that he had talked strangely and had not seemed like himself. He felt
+certainly very unlike himself; long afterwards, in retrospect, he used
+to reflect that during those days he had for a while been literally
+beside himself. His idea persisted; it clung to him like a sturdy
+beggar. The sense of the matter, roughly expressed, was this: If
+Roderick was really going, as he himself had phrased it, to "fizzle
+out," one might help him on the way--one might smooth the descensus
+Averno. For forty-eight hours there swam before Rowland's eyes a vision
+of Roderick, graceful and beautiful as he passed, plunging, like a
+diver, from an eminence into a misty gulf. The gulf was destruction,
+annihilation, death; but if death was decreed, why should not the agony
+be brief? Beyond this vision there faintly glimmered another, as in the
+children's game of the "magic lantern" a picture is superposed on the
+white wall before the last one has quite faded. It represented Mary
+Garland standing there with eyes in which the horror seemed slowly,
+slowly to expire, and hanging, motionless hands which at last made no
+resistance when his own offered to take them. When, of old, a man was
+burnt at the stake it was cruel to have to be present; but if one was
+present it was kind to lend a hand to pile up the fuel and make the
+flames do their work quickly and the smoke muffle up the victim. With
+all deference to your kindness, this was perhaps an obligation you would
+especially feel if you had a reversionary interest in something the
+victim was to leave behind him.
+
+One morning, in the midst of all this, Rowland walked heedlessly out of
+one of the city gates and found himself on the road to Fiesole. It was a
+completely lovely day; the March sun felt like May, as the English poet
+of Florence says; the thick-blossomed shrubs and vines that hung over
+the walls of villa and podere flung their odorous promise into the warm,
+still air. Rowland followed the winding, climbing lanes; lingered, as he
+got higher, beneath the rusty cypresses, beside the low parapets, where
+you look down on the charming city and sweep the vale of the Arno;
+reached the little square before the cathedral, and rested awhile in the
+massive, dusky church; then climbed higher, to the Franciscan convent
+which is poised on the very apex of the mountain. He rang at the little
+gateway; a shabby, senile, red-faced brother admitted him with almost
+maudlin friendliness. There was a dreary chill in the chapel and the
+corridors, and he passed rapidly through them into the delightfully
+steep and tangled old garden which runs wild over the forehead of the
+great hill. He had been in it before, and he was very fond of it. The
+garden hangs in the air, and you ramble from terrace to terrace and
+wonder how it keeps from slipping down, in full consummation of its
+bereaved forlornness, into the nakedly romantic gorge beneath. It was
+just noon when Rowland went in, and after roaming about awhile he flung
+himself in the sun on a mossy stone bench and pulled his hat over his
+eyes. The short shadows of the brown-coated cypresses above him had
+grown very long, and yet he had not passed back through the convent. One
+of the monks, in his faded snuff-colored robe, came wandering out into
+the garden, reading his greasy little breviary. Suddenly he came toward
+the bench on which Rowland had stretched himself, and paused a moment,
+attentively. Rowland was lingering there still; he was sitting with his
+head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. He seemed not to have
+heard the sandaled tread of the good brother, but as the monk remained
+watching him, he at last looked up. It was not the ignoble old man who
+had admitted him, but a pale, gaunt personage, of a graver and more
+ascetic, and yet of a benignant, aspect. Rowland's face bore the traces
+of extreme trouble. The frate kept his finger in his little book,
+and folded his arms picturesquely across his breast. It can hardly be
+determined whether his attitude, as he bent his sympathetic Italian
+eye upon Rowland, was a happy accident or the result of an exquisite
+spiritual discernment. To Rowland, at any rate, under the emotion of
+that moment, it seemed blessedly opportune. He rose and approached the
+monk, and laid his hand on his arm.
+
+"My brother," he said, "did you ever see the Devil?"
+
+The frate gazed, gravely, and crossed himself. "Heaven forbid!"
+
+"He was here," Rowland went on, "here in this lovely garden, as he was
+once in Paradise, half an hour ago. But have no fear; I drove him out."
+And Rowland stooped and picked up his hat, which had rolled away into a
+bed of cyclamen, in vague symbolism of an actual physical tussle.
+
+"You have been tempted, my brother?" asked the friar, tenderly.
+
+"Hideously!"
+
+"And you have resisted--and conquered!"
+
+"I believe I have conquered."
+
+"The blessed Saint Francis be praised! It is well done. If you like, we
+will offer a mass for you."
+
+"I am not a Catholic," said Rowland.
+
+The frate smiled with dignity. "That is a reason the more."
+
+"But it 's for you, then, to choose. Shake hands with me," Rowland
+added; "that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out, to stop a
+moment in your chapel."
+
+They shook hands and separated. The frate crossed himself, opened his
+book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky. Rowland
+passed back into the convent, and paused long enough in the chapel to
+look for the alms-box. He had had what is vulgarly termed a great scare;
+he believed, very poignantly for the time, in the Devil, and he felt an
+irresistible need to subscribe to any institution which engaged to keep
+him at a distance.
+
+The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards he went in
+search of Roderick. He found him on the Pincian with his back turned to
+the crowd, looking at the sunset. "I went to Florence," Rowland said,
+"and I thought of going farther; but I came back on purpose to give you
+another piece of advice. Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?"
+
+"Never!" said Roderick.
+
+"The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of
+responsibility to--to those various sacred things you have forgotten, is
+in sending for your mother to join you here."
+
+Roderick stared. "For my mother?"
+
+"For your mother--and for Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.
+"For Mary Garland--for my mother?" he repeated. "Send for them?"
+
+"Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to
+ask. You are still engaged to Miss Garland?"
+
+Roderick frowned darkly, but assented.
+
+"It would give you pleasure, then, to see her?"
+
+Roderick turned away and for some moments answered nothing. "Pleasure!"
+he said at last, huskily. "Call it pain."
+
+"I regard you as a sick man," Rowland continued. "In such a case Miss
+Garland would say that her place was at your side."
+
+Roderick looked at him some time askance, mistrustfully. "Is this a
+deep-laid snare?" he asked slowly.
+
+Rowland had come back with all his patience rekindled, but these words
+gave it an almost fatal chill. "Heaven forgive you!" he cried bitterly.
+"My idea has been simply this. Try, in decency, to understand it. I have
+tried to befriend you, to help you, to inspire you with confidence,
+and I have failed. I took you from the hands of your mother and your
+betrothed, and it seemed to me my duty to restore you to their hands.
+That 's all I have to say."
+
+He was going, but Roderick forcibly detained him. It would have been
+but a rough way of expressing it to say that one could never know how
+Roderick would take a thing. It had happened more than once that when
+hit hard, deservedly, he had received the blow with touching gentleness.
+On the other hand, he had often resented the softest taps. The secondary
+effect of Rowland's present admonition seemed reassuring. "I beg you to
+wait," he said, "to forgive that shabby speech, and to let me reflect."
+And he walked up and down awhile, reflecting. At last he stopped, with
+a look in his face that Rowland had not seen all winter. It was a
+strikingly beautiful look.
+
+"How strange it is," he said, "that the simplest devices are the last
+that occur to one!" And he broke into a light laugh. "To see Mary
+Garland is just what I want. And my mother--my mother can't hurt me
+now."
+
+"You will write, then?"
+
+"I will telegraph. They must come, at whatever cost. Striker can arrange
+it all for them."
+
+In a couple of days he told Rowland that he had received a telegraphic
+answer to his message, informing him that the two ladies were to sail
+immediately for Leghorn, in one of the small steamers which ply between
+that port and New York. They would arrive, therefore, in less than a
+month. Rowland passed this month of expectation in no very serene frame
+of mind. His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his
+agitated conscience; but there was something intolerable in the thought
+of the suffering to which the event was probably subjecting those
+undefended women. They had scraped together their scanty funds and
+embarked, at twenty-four hours' notice, upon the dreadful sea, to
+journey tremulously to shores darkened by the shadow of deeper alarms.
+He could only promise himself to be their devoted friend and servant.
+Preoccupied as he was, he was able to observe that expectation,
+with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his
+characteristic singularities. If redemption--Roderick seemed to
+reason--was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride, these
+last moments of error should be doubly erratic. He did nothing; but
+inaction, with him, took on an unwonted air of gentle gayety. He laughed
+and whistled and went often to Mrs. Light's; though Rowland knew not
+in what fashion present circumstances had modified his relations with
+Christina. The month ebbed away and Rowland daily expected to hear from
+Roderick that he had gone to Leghorn to meet the ship. He heard nothing,
+and late one evening, not having seen his friend in three or four days,
+he stopped at Roderick's lodging to assure himself that he had gone at
+last. A cab was standing in the street, but as it was a couple of doors
+off he hardly heeded it. The hall at the foot of the staircase was dark,
+like most Roman halls, and he paused in the street-doorway on hearing
+the advancing footstep of a person with whom he wished to avoid coming
+into collision. While he did so he heard another footstep behind him,
+and turning round found that Roderick in person had just overtaken him.
+At the same moment a woman's figure advanced from within, into the light
+of the street-lamp, and a face, half-startled, glanced at him out of
+the darkness. He gave a cry--it was the face of Mary Garland. Her glance
+flew past him to Roderick, and in a second a startled exclamation broke
+from her own lips. It made Rowland turn again. Roderick stood there,
+pale, apparently trying to speak, but saying nothing. His lips were
+parted and he was wavering slightly with a strange movement--the
+movement of a man who has drunk too much. Then Rowland's eyes met Miss
+Garland's again, and her own, which had rested a moment on Roderick's,
+were formidable!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. Mary Garland
+
+How it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn on his mother's
+arrival never clearly transpired; for he undertook to give no elaborate
+explanation of his fault. He never indulged in professions (touching
+personal conduct) as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and
+as he would have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to
+embrace his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland's
+presence, at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of
+him. It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season,
+the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that,
+according to common probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the
+morrow (as he declared that he had intended), he would have had a day or
+two of waiting at Leghorn. Rowland's silent inference was that
+Christina Light had beguiled him into letting the time slip, and it was
+accompanied with a silent inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously
+or maliciously. He had told her, presumably, that his mother and his
+cousin were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember hereupon
+that she was a young lady of mysterious impulses. Rowland heard in due
+time the story of the adventures of the two ladies from Northampton.
+Miss Garland's wish, at Leghorn, on finding they were left at the mercy
+of circumstances, had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an
+answer; for she knew that their arrival was a trifle premature. But Mrs.
+Hudson's maternal heart had taken the alarm. Roderick's sending for them
+was, to her imagination, a confession of illness, and his not being
+at Leghorn, a proof of it; an hour's delay was therefore cruel both to
+herself and to him. She insisted on immediate departure; and, unskilled
+as they were in the mysteries of foreign (or even of domestic) travel,
+they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome. They had arrived late
+in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns, had got into a cab
+and proceeded to Roderick's lodging. At the door, poor Mrs. Hudson's
+frightened anxiety had overcome her, and she had sat quaking and crying
+in the vehicle, too weak to move. Miss Garland had bravely gone in,
+groped her way up the dusky staircase, reached Roderick's door, and,
+with the assistance of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she
+had culled from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage,
+had learned from the old woman who had her cousin's household economy in
+charge that he was in the best of health and spirits, and had gone forth
+a few hours before with his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.
+
+These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies the
+evening after their arrival. Mrs. Hudson spoke of them at great length
+and with an air of clinging confidence in Rowland which told him how
+faithfully time had served him, in her imagination. But her fright was
+over, though she was still catching her breath a little, like a person
+dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep. She was excessively
+bewildered and confused, and seemed more than ever to demand a tender
+handling from her friends. Before Miss Garland, Rowland was distinctly
+conscious that he trembled. He wondered extremely what was going on in
+her mind; what was her silent commentary on the incidents of the night
+before. He wondered all the more, because he immediately perceived that
+she was greatly changed since their parting, and that the change was by
+no means for the worse. She was older, easier, more free, more like
+a young woman who went sometimes into company. She had more beauty
+as well, inasmuch as her beauty before had been the depth of her
+expression, and the sources from which this beauty was fed had in
+these two years evidently not wasted themselves. Rowland felt almost
+instantly--he could hardly have said why: it was in her voice, in her
+tone, in the air--that a total change had passed over her attitude
+towards himself. She trusted him now, absolutely; whether or no she
+liked him, she believed he was solid. He felt that during the coming
+weeks he would need to be solid. Mrs. Hudson was at one of the smaller
+hotels, and her sitting-room was frugally lighted by a couple of
+candles. Rowland made the most of this dim illumination to try to detect
+the afterglow of that frightened flash from Miss Garland's eyes
+the night before. It had been but a flash, for what provoked it had
+instantly vanished. Rowland had murmured a rapturous blessing on
+Roderick's head, as he perceived him instantly apprehend the situation.
+If he had been drinking, its gravity sobered him on the spot; in a
+single moment he collected his wits. The next moment, with a ringing,
+jovial cry, he was folding the young girl in his arms, and the next
+he was beside his mother's carriage, half smothered in her sobs and
+caresses. Rowland had recommended a hotel close at hand, and had then
+discreetly withdrawn. Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly,
+and Miss Garland's brow was serene. It was serene now, twenty-four hours
+later; but nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment.
+What had become of it? It had dropped down deep into her memory, and
+it was lying there for the present in the shade. But with another
+week, Rowland said to himself, it would leap erect again; the lightest
+friction would strike a spark from it. Rowland thought he had schooled
+himself to face the issue of Mary Garland's advent, casting it even in
+a tragical phase; but in her personal presence--in which he found a
+poignant mixture of the familiar and the strange--he seemed to face
+it and all that it might bring with it for the first time. In vulgar
+parlance, he stood uneasy in his shoes. He felt like walking on tiptoe,
+not to arouse the sleeping shadows. He felt, indeed, almost like saying
+that they might have their own way later, if they would only allow
+to these first few days the clear light of ardent contemplation. For
+Rowland at last was ardent, and all the bells within his soul were
+ringing bravely in jubilee. Roderick, he learned, had been the whole
+day with his mother, and had evidently responded to her purest trust.
+He appeared to her appealing eyes still unspotted by the world. That
+is what it is, thought Rowland, to be "gifted," to escape not only the
+superficial, but the intrinsic penalties of misconduct. The two ladies
+had spent the day within doors, resting from the fatigues of travel.
+Miss Garland, Rowland suspected, was not so fatigued as she suffered
+it to be assumed. She had remained with Mrs. Hudson, to attend to her
+personal wants, which the latter seemed to think, now that she was in
+a foreign land, with a southern climate and a Catholic religion, would
+forthwith become very complex and formidable, though as yet they had
+simply resolved themselves into a desire for a great deal of tea and for
+a certain extremely familiar old black and white shawl across her feet,
+as she lay on the sofa. But the sense of novelty was evidently strong
+upon Miss Garland, and the light of expectation was in her eye. She was
+restless and excited; she moved about the room and went often to the
+window; she was observing keenly; she watched the Italian servants
+intently, as they came and went; she had already had a long colloquy
+with the French chambermaid, who had expounded her views on the Roman
+question; she noted the small differences in the furniture, in the food,
+in the sounds that came in from the street. Rowland felt, in all this,
+that her intelligence, here, would have a great unfolding. He wished
+immensely he might have a share in it; he wished he might show her Rome.
+That, of course, would be Roderick's office. But he promised himself at
+least to take advantage of off-hours.
+
+"It behooves you to appreciate your good fortune," he said to her. "To
+be young and elastic, and yet old enough and wise enough to discriminate
+and reflect, and to come to Italy for the first time--that is one of the
+greatest pleasures that life offers us. It is but right to remind you of
+it, so that you make the most of opportunity and do not accuse yourself,
+later, of having wasted the precious season."
+
+Miss Garland looked at him, smiling intently, and went to the window
+again. "I expect to enjoy it," she said. "Don't be afraid; I am not
+wasteful."
+
+"I am afraid we are not qualified, you know," said Mrs. Hudson. "We are
+told that you must know so much, that you must have read so many books.
+Our taste has not been cultivated. When I was a young lady at school, I
+remember I had a medal, with a pink ribbon, for 'proficiency in Ancient
+History'--the seven kings, or is it the seven hills? and Quintus Curtius
+and Julius Caesar and--and that period, you know. I believe I have my
+medal somewhere in a drawer, now, but I have forgotten all about the
+kings. But after Roderick came to Italy we tried to learn something
+about it. Last winter Mary used to read 'Corinne' to me in the evenings,
+and in the mornings she used to read another book, to herself. What was
+it, Mary, that book that was so long, you know,--in fifteen volumes?"
+
+"It was Sismondi's Italian Republics," said Mary, simply.
+
+Rowland could not help laughing; whereupon Mary blushed. "Did you finish
+it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, and began another--a shorter one--Roscoe's Leo the Tenth."
+
+"Did you find them interesting?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"Do you like history?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"That 's a woman's answer! And do you like art?"
+
+She paused a moment. "I have never seen it!"
+
+"You have great advantages, now, my dear, with Roderick and Mr. Mallet,"
+said Mrs. Hudson. "I am sure no young lady ever had such advantages. You
+come straight to the highest authorities. Roderick, I suppose, will show
+you the practice of art, and Mr. Mallet, perhaps, if he will be so
+good, will show you the theory. As an artist's wife, you ought to know
+something about it."
+
+"One learns a good deal about it, here, by simply living," said Rowland;
+"by going and coming about one's daily avocations."
+
+"Dear, dear, how wonderful that we should be here in the midst of it!"
+murmured Mrs. Hudson. "To think of art being out there in the streets!
+We did n't see much of it last evening, as we drove from the depot. But
+the streets were so dark and we were so frightened! But we are very easy
+now; are n't we, Mary?"
+
+"I am very happy," said Mary, gravely, and wandered back to the window
+again.
+
+Roderick came in at this moment and kissed his mother, and then
+went over and joined Miss Garland. Rowland sat with Mrs. Hudson, who
+evidently had a word which she deemed of some value for his private ear.
+She followed Roderick with intensely earnest eyes.
+
+"I wish to tell you, sir," she said, "how very grateful--how very
+thankful--what a happy mother I am! I feel as if I owed it all to you,
+sir. To find my poor boy so handsome, so prosperous, so elegant, so
+famous--and ever to have doubted of you! What must you think of me? You
+'re our guardian angel, sir. I often say so to Mary."
+
+Rowland wore, in response to this speech, a rather haggard brow. He
+could only murmur that he was glad she found Roderick looking well.
+He had of course promptly asked himself whether the best discretion
+dictated that he should give her a word of warning--just turn the handle
+of the door through which, later, disappointment might enter. He had
+determined to say nothing, but simply to wait in silence for Roderick to
+find effective inspiration in those confidently expectant eyes. It was
+to be supposed that he was seeking for it now; he remained sometime at
+the window with his cousin. But at last he turned away and came over to
+the fireside with a contraction of the eyebrows which seemed to
+intimate that Miss Garland's influence was for the moment, at least,
+not soothing. She presently followed him, and for an instant Rowland
+observed her watching him as if she thought him strange. "Strange
+enough," thought Rowland, "he may seem to her, if he will!" Roderick
+directed his glance to his friend with a certain peremptory air,
+which--roughly interpreted--was equivalent to a request to share the
+intellectual expense of entertaining the ladies. "Good heavens!" Rowland
+cried within himself; "is he already tired of them?"
+
+"To-morrow, of course, we must begin to put you through the mill,"
+Roderick said to his mother. "And be it hereby known to Mallet that we
+count upon him to turn the wheel."
+
+"I will do as you please, my son," said Mrs. Hudson. "So long as I have
+you with me I don't care where I go. We must not take up too much of Mr.
+Mallet's time."
+
+"His time is inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Have
+you, Rowland? If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it!
+Where will you go first? You have your choice--from the Scala Santa to
+the Cloaca Maxima."
+
+"Let us take things in order," said Rowland. "We will go first to Saint
+Peter's. Miss Garland, I hope you are impatient to see Saint Peter's."
+
+"I would like to go first to Roderick's studio," said Miss Garland.
+
+"It 's a very nasty place," said Roderick. "At your pleasure!"
+
+"Yes, we must see your beautiful things before we can look contentedly
+at anything else," said Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"I have no beautiful things," said Roderick. "You may see what there is!
+What makes you look so odd?"
+
+This inquiry was abruptly addressed to his mother, who, in response,
+glanced appealingly at Mary and raised a startled hand to her smooth
+hair.
+
+"No, it 's your face," said Roderick. "What has happened to it these two
+years? It has changed its expression."
+
+"Your mother has prayed a great deal," said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+"I did n't suppose, of course, it was from doing anything bad! It makes
+you a very good face--very interesting, very solemn. It has very fine
+lines in it; something might be done with it." And Rowland held one of
+the candles near the poor lady's head.
+
+She was covered with confusion. "My son, my son," she said with dignity,
+"I don't understand you."
+
+In a flash all his old alacrity had come to him. "I suppose a man may
+admire his own mother!" he cried. "If you please, madame, you 'll sit to
+me for that head. I see it, I see it! I will make something that a queen
+can't get done for her."
+
+Rowland respectfully urged her to assent; he saw Roderick was in the
+vein and would probably do something eminently original. She gave
+her promise, at last, after many soft, inarticulate protests and a
+frightened petition that she might be allowed to keep her knitting.
+
+Rowland returned the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part Roderick
+had assigned to him. It had been arranged that they should go to Saint
+Peter's. Roderick was in high good-humor, and, in the carriage, was
+watching his mother with a fine mixture of filial and professional
+tenderness. Mrs. Hudson looked up mistrustfully at the tall, shabby
+houses, and grasped the side of the barouche in her hand, as if she
+were in a sail-boat, in dangerous waters. Rowland sat opposite to Miss
+Garland. She was totally oblivious of her companions; from the moment
+the carriage left the hotel, she sat gazing, wide-eyed and absorbed, at
+the objects about them. If Rowland had felt disposed he might have made
+a joke of her intense seriousness. From time to time he told her the
+name of a place or a building, and she nodded, without looking at him.
+When they emerged into the great square between Bernini's colonnades,
+she laid her hand on Mrs. Hudson's arm and sank back in the carriage,
+staring up at the vast yellow facade of the church. Inside the
+church, Roderick gave his arm to his mother, and Rowland constituted
+himself the especial guide of Miss Garland. He walked with her slowly
+everywhere, and made the entire circuit, telling her all he knew of
+the history of the building. This was a great deal, but she listened
+attentively, keeping her eyes fixed on the dome. To Rowland himself
+it had never seemed so radiantly sublime as at these moments; he felt
+almost as if he had contrived it himself and had a right to be proud of
+it. He left Miss Garland a while on the steps of the choir, where she
+had seated herself to rest, and went to join their companions. Mrs.
+Hudson was watching a great circle of tattered contadini, who were
+kneeling before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their tatters
+fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort of terrified pity,
+and could not be induced to look at anything else. Rowland went back to
+Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
+
+"Well, what do you think of Europe?" he asked, smiling.
+
+"I think it 's horrible!" she said abruptly.
+
+"Horrible?"
+
+"I feel so strangely--I could almost cry."
+
+"How is it that you feel?"
+
+"So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart,
+in an hour!"
+
+"But, surely, you 're pleased--you 're interested."
+
+"I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is
+as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me
+lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little
+narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful."
+
+"But you did n't come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow
+little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this."
+
+"I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that
+golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of
+certain people and things at home. To enjoy, as you say, as these things
+demand of one to enjoy them, is to break with one's past. And breaking
+is a pain!"
+
+"Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it
+is your duty. Yours especially!"
+
+"Why mine especially?"
+
+"Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the
+most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are
+extremely intelligent."
+
+"You don't know," said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+"In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you.
+I don't want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is
+susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it,
+let it go!"
+
+She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of
+the great church. "But what you say," she said at last, "means change!"
+
+"Change for the better!" cried Rowland.
+
+"How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me
+very frightful to develop," she added, with her complete smile.
+
+"One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it
+with a good grace as with a bad! Since one can't escape life, it is
+better to take it by the hand."
+
+"Is this what you call life?" she asked.
+
+"What do you mean by 'this'?"
+
+"Saint Peter's--all this splendor, all Rome--pictures, ruins, statues,
+beggars, monks."
+
+"It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things
+are impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex
+civilization."
+
+"An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don't like that."
+
+"Don't conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested
+it. While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful
+things--things that you are made to understand. They won't leave you as
+they found you; then you can judge. Don't tell me I know nothing about
+your understanding. I have a right to assume it."
+
+Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. "I am not sure I understand
+that," she said.
+
+"I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you," said
+Rowland. "You need n't be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some
+people is that it is so remarkably small."
+
+"Oh, it's large enough; it's very wonderful. There are things in Rome,
+then," she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, "that are
+very, very beautiful?"
+
+"Lots of them."
+
+"Some of the most beautiful things in the world?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"What are they? which things have most beauty?"
+
+"That is according to taste. I should say the statues."
+
+"How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something
+about them?"
+
+"You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But
+to know them is a thing for one's leisure. The more time you spend among
+them, the more you care for them." After a moment's hesitation he went
+on: "Why should you grudge time? It 's all in your way, since you are to
+be an artist's wife."
+
+"I have thought of that," she said. "It may be that I shall always live
+here, among the most beautiful things in the world!"
+
+"Very possibly! I should like to see you ten years hence."
+
+"I dare say I shall seem greatly altered. But I am sure of one thing."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"That for the most part I shall be quite the same. I ask nothing better
+than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even
+if they are true, it won't matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am
+now--a young woman from the country! The fruit of a civilization not old
+and complex, but new and simple."
+
+"I am delighted to hear it: that 's an excellent foundation."
+
+"Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so
+kindly of it. Therefore I warn you."
+
+"I am not frightened. I should like vastly to say something to you: Be
+what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you."
+
+If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but
+she seemed at least slightly disturbed. She proposed that they should
+join their companions.
+
+Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want
+of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic
+temples. "Mary, dear," she whispered, "suppose we had to kiss that
+dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at
+Northampton, as bright as that! I think it's so heathenish; but Roderick
+says he thinks it 's sublime."
+
+Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. "It 's sublimer than
+anything that your religion asks you to do!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties," said
+Miss Garland.
+
+"The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and listening to a
+nasal Puritan! I admit that 's difficult. But it 's not sublime. I am
+speaking of ceremonies, of forms. It is in my line, you know, to make
+much of forms. I think this is a very beautiful one. Could n't you do
+it?" he demanded, looking at his cousin.
+
+She looked back at him intently and then shook her head. "I think not!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know; I could n't!"
+
+During this little discussion our four friends were standing near the
+venerable image of Saint Peter, and a squalid, savage-looking peasant,
+a tattered ruffian of the most orthodox Italian aspect, had been
+performing his devotions before it. He turned away, crossing himself,
+and Mrs. Hudson gave a little shudder of horror.
+
+"After that," she murmured, "I suppose he thinks he is as good as any
+one! And here is another. Oh, what a beautiful person!"
+
+A young lady had approached the sacred effigy, after having wandered
+away from a group of companions. She kissed the brazen toe, touched it
+with her forehead, and turned round, facing our friends. Rowland then
+recognized Christina Light. He was stupefied: had she suddenly embraced
+the Catholic faith? It was but a few weeks before that she had treated
+him to a passionate profession of indifference. Had she entered the
+church to put herself en regle with what was expected of a Princess
+Casamassima? While Rowland was mentally asking these questions she was
+approaching him and his friends, on her way to the great altar. At first
+she did not perceive them.
+
+Mary Garland had been gazing at her. "You told me," she said gently, to
+Rowland, "that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things in the
+world. This surely is one of them!"
+
+At this moment Christina's eye met Rowland's and before giving him
+any sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at his companions. She saw
+Roderick, but she gave him no bow; she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked
+at Mary Garland. At Mary Garland she looked fixedly, piercingly, from
+head to foot, as the slow pace at which she was advancing made possible.
+Then suddenly, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time,
+she gave him a charming nod, a radiant smile. In a moment he was at her
+side. She stopped, and he stood talking to her; she continued to look at
+Miss Garland.
+
+"Why, Roderick knows her!" cried Mrs. Hudson, in an awe-struck whisper.
+"I supposed she was some great princess."
+
+"She is--almost!" said Rowland. "She is the most beautiful girl in
+Europe, and Roderick has made her bust."
+
+"Her bust? Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, vaguely shocked. "What a
+strange bonnet!"
+
+"She has very strange eyes," said Mary, and turned away.
+
+The two ladies, with Rowland, began to descend toward the door of the
+church. On their way they passed Mrs. Light, the Cavaliere, and the
+poodle, and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which
+these personages stood to Roderick's young lady.
+
+"Think of it, Mary!" said Mrs. Hudson. "What splendid people he must
+know! No wonder he found Northampton dull!"
+
+"I like the poor little old gentleman," said Mary.
+
+"Why do you call him poor?" Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
+
+"He seems so!" she answered simply.
+
+As they were reaching the door they were overtaken by Roderick, whose
+interview with Miss Light had perceptibly brightened his eye. "So you
+are acquainted with princesses!" said his mother softly, as they passed
+into the portico.
+
+"Miss Light is not a princess!" said Roderick, curtly.
+
+"But Mr. Mallet says so," urged Mrs. Hudson, rather disappointed.
+
+"I meant that she was going to be!" said Rowland.
+
+"It 's by no means certain that she is even going to be!" Roderick
+answered.
+
+"Ah," said Rowland, "I give it up!"
+
+Roderick almost immediately demanded that his mother should sit to him,
+at his studio, for her portrait, and Rowland ventured to add another
+word of urgency. If Roderick's idea really held him, it was an immense
+pity that his inspiration should be wasted; inspiration, in these days,
+had become too precious a commodity. It was arranged therefore that, for
+the present, during the mornings, Mrs. Hudson should place herself at
+her son's service. This involved but little sacrifice, for the good
+lady's appetite for antiquities was diminutive and bird-like, the
+usual round of galleries and churches fatigued her, and she was glad
+to purchase immunity from sight-seeing by a regular afternoon drive. It
+became natural in this way that, Miss Garland having her mornings
+free, Rowland should propose to be the younger lady's guide in whatever
+explorations she might be disposed to make. She said she knew nothing
+about it, but she had a great curiosity, and would be glad to see
+anything that he would show her. Rowland could not find it in his heart
+to accuse Roderick of neglect of the young girl; for it was natural that
+the inspirations of a capricious man of genius, when they came, should
+be imperious; but of course he wondered how Miss Garland felt, as the
+young man's promised wife, on being thus expeditiously handed over to
+another man to be entertained. However she felt, he was certain he would
+know little about it. There had been, between them, none but indirect
+allusions to her engagement, and Rowland had no desire to discuss it
+more largely; for he had no quarrel with matters as they stood. They
+wore the same delightful aspect through the lovely month of May, and the
+ineffable charm of Rome at that period seemed but the radiant sympathy
+of nature with his happy opportunity. The weather was divine; each
+particular morning, as he walked from his lodging to Mrs. Hudson's
+modest inn, seemed to have a blessing upon it. The elder lady had
+usually gone off to the studio, and he found Miss Garland sitting alone
+at the open window, turning the leaves of some book of artistic or
+antiquarian reference that he had given her. She always had a smile, she
+was always eager, alert, responsive. She might be grave by nature, she
+might be sad by circumstance, she might have secret doubts and pangs,
+but she was essentially young and strong and fresh and able to enjoy.
+Her enjoyment was not especially demonstrative, but it was curiously
+diligent. Rowland felt that it was not amusement and sensation that she
+coveted, but knowledge--facts that she might noiselessly lay away, piece
+by piece, in the perfumed darkness of her serious mind, so that, under
+this head at least, she should not be a perfectly portionless bride. She
+never merely pretended to understand; she let things go, in her modest
+fashion, at the moment, but she watched them on their way, over the
+crest of the hill, and when her fancy seemed not likely to be missed it
+went hurrying after them and ran breathless at their side, as it were,
+and begged them for the secret. Rowland took an immense satisfaction in
+observing that she never mistook the second-best for the best, and
+that when she was in the presence of a masterpiece, she recognized the
+occasion as a mighty one. She said many things which he thought very
+profound--that is, if they really had the fine intention he suspected.
+This point he usually tried to ascertain; but he was obliged to proceed
+cautiously, for in her mistrustful shyness it seemed to her that
+cross-examination must necessarily be ironical. She wished to know just
+where she was going--what she would gain or lose. This was partly on
+account of a native intellectual purity, a temper of mind that had
+not lived with its door ajar, as one might say, upon the high-road of
+thought, for passing ideas to drop in and out at their pleasure; but had
+made much of a few long visits from guests cherished and honored--guests
+whose presence was a solemnity. But it was even more because she was
+conscious of a sort of growing self-respect, a sense of devoting her
+life not to her own ends, but to those of another, whose life would be
+large and brilliant. She had been brought up to think a great deal of
+"nature" and nature's innocent laws; but now Rowland had spoken to her
+ardently of culture; her strenuous fancy had responded, and she was
+pursuing culture into retreats where the need for some intellectual
+effort gave a noble severity to her purpose. She wished to be very sure,
+to take only the best, knowing it to be the best. There was something
+exquisite in this labor of pious self-adornment, and Rowland helped it,
+though its fruits were not for him. In spite of her lurking rigidity
+and angularity, it was very evident that a nervous, impulsive sense
+of beauty was constantly at play in her soul, and that her actual
+experience of beautiful things moved her in some very deep places. For
+all that she was not demonstrative, that her manner was simple, and her
+small-talk of no very ample flow; for all that, as she had said, she was
+a young woman from the country, and the country was West Nazareth, and
+West Nazareth was in its way a stubborn little fact, she was feeling
+the direct influence of the great amenities of the world, and they were
+shaping her with a divinely intelligent touch. "Oh exquisite virtue of
+circumstance!" cried Rowland to himself, "that takes us by the hand
+and leads us forth out of corners where, perforce, our attitudes are a
+trifle contracted, and beguiles us into testing mistrusted faculties!"
+When he said to Mary Garland that he wished he might see her ten years
+hence, he was paying mentally an equal compliment to circumstance and
+to the girl herself. Capacity was there, it could be freely trusted;
+observation would have but to sow its generous seed. "A superior
+woman"--the idea had harsh associations, but he watched it imaging
+itself in the vagueness of the future with a kind of hopeless
+confidence.
+
+They went a great deal to Saint Peter's, for which Rowland had an
+exceeding affection, a large measure of which he succeeded in infusing
+into his companion. She confessed very speedily that to climb the long,
+low, yellow steps, beneath the huge florid facade, and then to push
+the ponderous leathern apron of the door, to find one's self confronted
+with that builded, luminous sublimity, was a sensation of which the
+keenness renewed itself with surprising generosity. In those days the
+hospitality of the Vatican had not been curtailed, and it was an easy
+and delightful matter to pass from the gorgeous church to the solemn
+company of the antique marbles. Here Rowland had with his companion a
+great deal of talk, and found himself expounding aesthetics a perte de
+vue. He discovered that she made notes of her likes and dislikes in a
+new-looking little memorandum book, and he wondered to what extent she
+reported his own discourse. These were charming hours. The galleries had
+been so cold all winter that Rowland had been an exile from them; but
+now that the sun was already scorching in the great square between the
+colonnades, where the twin fountains flashed almost fiercely, the marble
+coolness of the long, image-bordered vistas made them a delightful
+refuge. The great herd of tourists had almost departed, and our two
+friends often found themselves, for half an hour at a time, in sole and
+tranquil possession of the beautiful Braccio Nuovo. Here and there was
+an open window, where they lingered and leaned, looking out into the
+warm, dead air, over the towers of the city, at the soft-hued, historic
+hills, at the stately shabby gardens of the palace, or at some sunny,
+empty, grass-grown court, lost in the heart of the labyrinthine pile.
+They went sometimes into the chambers painted by Raphael, and of course
+paid their respects to the Sistine Chapel; but Mary's evident preference
+was to linger among the statues. Once, when they were standing before
+that noblest of sculptured portraits, the so-called Demosthenes, in the
+Braccio Nuovo, she made the only spontaneous allusion to her projected
+marriage, direct or indirect, that had yet fallen from her lips. "I am
+so glad," she said, "that Roderick is a sculptor and not a painter."
+
+The allusion resided chiefly in the extreme earnestness with which the
+words were uttered. Rowland immediately asked her the reason of her
+gladness.
+
+"It 's not that painting is not fine," she said, "but that sculpture is
+finer. It is more manly."
+
+Rowland tried at times to make her talk about herself, but in this she
+had little skill. She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant
+to social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a
+desire to draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and
+thoughts. He told her his desire and what suggested it. "It appears,
+then," she said, "that, after all, one can grow at home!"
+
+"Unquestionably, if one has a motive. Your growth, then, was
+unconscious? You did not watch yourself and water your roots?"
+
+She paid no heed to his question. "I am willing to grant," she said,
+"that Europe is more delightful than I supposed; and I don't think that,
+mentally, I had been stingy. But you must admit that America is better
+than you have supposed."
+
+"I have not a fault to find with the country which produced you!"
+Rowland thought he might risk this, smiling.
+
+"And yet you want me to change--to assimilate Europe, I suppose you
+would call it."
+
+"I have felt that desire only on general principles. Shall I tell you
+what I feel now? America has made you thus far; let America finish you!
+I should like to ship you back without delay and see what becomes
+of you. That sounds unkind, and I admit there is a cold intellectual
+curiosity in it."
+
+She shook her head. "The charm is broken; the thread is snapped! I
+prefer to remain here."
+
+Invariably, when he was inclined to make of something they were talking
+of a direct application to herself, she wholly failed to assist him; she
+made no response. Whereupon, once, with a spark of ardent irritation, he
+told her she was very "secretive." At this she colored a little, and
+he said that in default of any larger confidence it would at least be
+a satisfaction to make her confess to that charge. But even this
+satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making, two
+or three times afterward, a softly ironical allusion to her slyness. He
+told her that she was what is called in French a sournoise. "Very good,"
+she answered, almost indifferently, "and now please tell me again--I
+have forgotten it--what you said an 'architrave' was."
+
+It was on the occasion of her asking him a question of this kind that
+he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had
+been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless
+ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. "You are always
+snatching at information," he said; "you will never consent to have any
+disinterested conversation."
+
+She frowned a little, as she always did when he arrested their talk upon
+something personal. But this time she assented, and said that she knew
+she was eager for facts. "One must make hay while the sun shines," she
+added. "I must lay up a store of learning against dark days. Somehow,
+my imagination refuses to compass the idea that I may be in Rome
+indefinitely."
+
+He knew he had divined her real motives; but he felt that if he might
+have said to her--what it seemed impossible to say--that fortune
+possibly had in store for her a bitter disappointment, she would have
+been capable of answering, immediately after the first sense of pain,
+"Say then that I am laying up resources for solitude!"
+
+But all the accusations were not his. He had been watching, once, during
+some brief argument, to see whether she would take her forefinger out
+of her Murray, into which she had inserted it to keep a certain page.
+It would have been hard to say why this point interested him, for he had
+not the slightest real apprehension that she was dry or pedantic. The
+simple human truth was, the poor fellow was jealous of science.
+In preaching science to her, he had over-estimated his powers of
+self-effacement. Suddenly, sinking science for the moment, she looked at
+him very frankly and began to frown. At the same time she let the Murray
+slide down to the ground, and he was so charmed with this circumstance
+that he made no movement to pick it up.
+
+"You are singularly inconsistent, Mr. Mallet," she said.
+
+"How?"
+
+"That first day that we were in Saint Peter's you said things that
+inspired me. You bade me plunge into all this. I was all ready; I only
+wanted a little push; yours was a great one; here I am in mid-ocean! And
+now, as a reward for my bravery, you have repeatedly snubbed me."
+
+"Distinctly, then," said Rowland, "I strike you as inconsistent?"
+
+"That is the word."
+
+"Then I have played my part very ill."
+
+"Your part? What is your part supposed to have been?"
+
+He hesitated a moment. "That of usefulness, pure and simple."
+
+"I don't understand you!" she said; and picking up her Murray, she
+fairly buried herself in it.
+
+That evening he said something to her which necessarily increased her
+perplexity, though it was not uttered with such an intention. "Do you
+remember," he asked, "my begging you, the other day, to do occasionally
+as I told you? It seemed to me you tacitly consented."
+
+"Very tacitly."
+
+"I have never yet really presumed on your consent. But now I would
+like you to do this: whenever you catch me in the act of what you call
+inconsistency, ask me the meaning of some architectural term. I will
+know what you mean; a word to the wise!"
+
+One morning they spent among the ruins of the Palatine, that sunny
+desolation of crumbling, over-tangled fragments, half excavated and half
+identified, known as the Palace of the Caesars. Nothing in Rome is more
+interesting, and no locality has such a confusion of picturesque charms.
+It is a vast, rambling garden, where you stumble at every step on the
+disinterred bones of the past; where damp, frescoed corridors, relics,
+possibly, of Nero's Golden House, serve as gigantic bowers, and where,
+in the springtime, you may sit on a Latin inscription, in the shade of
+a flowering almond-tree, and admire the composition of the Campagna.
+The day left a deep impression on Rowland's mind, partly owing to its
+intrinsic sweetness, and partly because his companion, on this occasion,
+let her Murray lie unopened for an hour, and asked several questions
+irrelevant to the Consuls and the Caesars. She had begun by saying
+that it was coming over her, after all, that Rome was a ponderously sad
+place. The sirocco was gently blowing, the air was heavy, she was tired,
+she looked a little pale.
+
+"Everything," she said, "seems to say that all things are vanity. If one
+is doing something, I suppose one feels a certain strength within one to
+contradict it. But if one is idle, surely it is depressing to live, year
+after year, among the ashes of things that once were mighty. If I were
+to remain here I should either become permanently 'low,' as they say, or
+I would take refuge in some dogged daily work."
+
+"What work?"
+
+"I would open a school for those beautiful little beggars; though I am
+sadly afraid I should never bring myself to scold them."
+
+"I am idle," said Rowland, "and yet I have kept up a certain spirit."
+
+"I don't call you idle," she answered with emphasis.
+
+"It is very good of you. Do you remember our talking about that in
+Northampton?"
+
+"During that picnic? Perfectly. Has your coming abroad succeeded, for
+yourself, as well as you hoped?"
+
+"I think I may say that it has turned out as well as I expected."
+
+"Are you happy?"
+
+"Don't I look so?"
+
+"So it seems to me. But"--and she hesitated a moment--"I imagine you
+look happy whether you are so or not."
+
+"I 'm like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder
+excavated fresco: I am made to grin."
+
+"Shall you come back here next winter?"
+
+"Very probably."
+
+"Are you settled here forever?"
+
+"'Forever' is a long time. I live only from year to year."
+
+"Shall you never marry?"
+
+Rowland gave a laugh. "'Forever'--'never!' You handle large ideas. I
+have not taken a vow of celibacy."
+
+"Would n't you like to marry?"
+
+"I should like it immensely."
+
+To this she made no rejoinder: but presently she asked, "Why don't you
+write a book?"
+
+Rowland laughed, this time more freely. "A book! What book should I
+write?"
+
+"A history; something about art or antiquities."
+
+"I have neither the learning nor the talent."
+
+She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said she had supposed
+otherwise. "You ought, at any rate," she continued in a moment, "to do
+something for yourself."
+
+"For myself? I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed to live
+for himself"--
+
+"I don't know how it seems," she interrupted, "to careless observers.
+But we know--we know that you have lived--a great deal--for us."
+
+Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words with a
+little jerk.
+
+"She has had that speech on her conscience," thought Rowland; "she has
+been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her that now was her
+time to make it and have done with it."
+
+She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with
+due solemnity. "You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel.
+Mrs. Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels. Of course
+Roderick has expressed himself. I have been wanting to thank you too; I
+do, from my heart."
+
+Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic
+mask much more than the comic. But Miss Garland was not looking at him;
+she had taken up her Murray again.
+
+In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland
+frequently saw her again in the evening. He was apt to spend half an
+hour in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension on the slope of the
+Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly with his mother, was present
+on these occasions. Rowland saw him little at other times, and for
+three weeks no observations passed between them on the subject of Mrs.
+Hudson's advent. To Rowland's vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits
+to proceed from the presence of the two ladies remained shrouded in
+mystery. Roderick was peculiarly inscrutable. He was preoccupied with
+his work on his mother's portrait, which was taking a very happy turn;
+and often, when he sat silent, with his hands in his pockets, his legs
+outstretched, his head thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to
+be supposed that his fancy was hovering about the half-shaped image in
+his studio, exquisite even in its immaturity. He said little, but his
+silence did not of necessity imply disaffection, for he evidently found
+it a deep personal luxury to lounge away the hours in an atmosphere so
+charged with feminine tenderness. He was not alert, he suggested nothing
+in the way of excursions (Rowland was the prime mover in such as were
+attempted), but he conformed passively at least to the tranquil temper
+of the two women, and made no harsh comments nor sombre allusions.
+Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his friend injustice in
+denying him the sentiment of duty. He refused invitations, to Rowland's
+knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little table-d'hote; wherever
+his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh with religious
+constancy. Mrs. Hudson's felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable
+tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown. Her
+tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers that
+the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch is an inanimate
+terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust, and that it is even a safe
+audacity to tickle its nose. As to whether the love-knot of which Mary
+Garland had the keeping still held firm, who should pronounce? The young
+girl, as we know, did not wear it on her sleeve. She always sat at
+the table, near the candles, with a piece of needle-work. This was the
+attitude in which Rowland had first seen her, and he thought, now that
+he had seen her in several others, it was not the least becoming.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. The Cavaliere
+
+There befell at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable
+to go to the hotel. Late in the evening of the second one Roderick came
+into his room. In a few moments he announced that he had finished the
+bust of his mother.
+
+"And it 's magnificent!" he declared. "It 's one of the best things I
+have done."
+
+"I believe it," said Rowland. "Never again talk to me about your
+inspiration being dead."
+
+"Why not? This may be its last kick! I feel very tired. But it 's a
+masterpiece, though I do say it. They tell us we owe so much to our
+parents. Well, I 've paid the filial debt handsomely!" He walked up and
+down the room a few moments, with the purpose of his visit evidently
+still undischarged. "There 's one thing more I want to say," he
+presently resumed. "I feel as if I ought to tell you!" He stopped before
+Rowland with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded. "Your
+invention is a failure!"
+
+"My invention?" Rowland repeated.
+
+"Bringing out my mother and Mary."
+
+"A failure?"
+
+"It 's no use! They don't help me."
+
+Rowland had fancied that Roderick had no more surprises for him; but he
+was now staring at him, wide-eyed.
+
+"They bore me!" Roderick went on.
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.
+
+"Listen, listen!" said Roderick with perfect gentleness. "I am not
+complaining of them; I am simply stating a fact. I am very sorry for
+them; I am greatly disappointed."
+
+"Have you given them a fair trial?"
+
+"Should n't you say so? It seems to me I have behaved beautifully."
+
+"You have done very well; I have been building great hopes on it."
+
+"I have done too well, then. After the first forty-eight hours my own
+hopes collapsed. But I determined to fight it out; to stand within the
+temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend! Do you want to know the
+result? Another week of it, and I shall begin to hate them. I shall want
+to poison them."
+
+"Miserable boy!" cried Rowland. "They are the loveliest of women!"
+
+"Very likely! But they mean no more to me than a Bible text to an
+atheist!"
+
+"I utterly fail," said Rowland, in a moment, "to understand your
+relation to Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides.
+"She adores me! That 's my relation." And he smiled strangely.
+
+"Have you broken your engagement?"
+
+"Broken it? You can't break a ray of moonshine."
+
+"Have you absolutely no affection for her?"
+
+Roderick placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment.
+"Dead--dead--dead!" he said at last.
+
+"I wonder," Rowland asked presently, "if you begin to comprehend the
+beauty of Miss Garland's character. She is a person of the highest
+merit."
+
+"Evidently--or I would not have cared for her!"
+
+"Has that no charm for you now?"
+
+"Oh, don't force a fellow to say rude things!"
+
+"Well, I can only say that you don't know what you are giving up."
+
+Roderick gave a quickened glance. "Do you know, so well?"
+
+"I admire her immeasurably."
+
+Roderick smiled, we may almost say sympathetically. "You have not wasted
+time."
+
+Rowland's thoughts were crowding upon him fast. If Roderick was
+resolute, why oppose him? If Mary was to be sacrificed, why, in that
+way, try to save her? There was another way; it only needed a little
+presumption to make it possible. Rowland tried, mentally, to summon
+presumption to his aid; but whether it came or not, it found conscience
+there before it. Conscience had only three words, but they were cogent.
+"For her sake--for her sake," it dumbly murmured, and Rowland resumed
+his argument. "I don't know what I would n't do," he said, "rather than
+that Miss Garland should suffer."
+
+"There is one thing to be said," Roderick answered reflectively. "She is
+very strong."
+
+"Well, then, if she 's strong, believe that with a longer chance, a
+better chance, she will still regain your affection."
+
+"Do you know what you ask?" cried Roderick. "Make love to a girl I
+hate?"
+
+"You hate?"
+
+"As her lover, I should hate her!"
+
+"Listen to me!" said Rowland with vehemence.
+
+"No, listen you to me! Do you really urge my marrying a woman who would
+bore me to death? I would let her know it in very good season, and then
+where would she be?"
+
+Rowland walked the length of the room a couple of times and then stopped
+suddenly. "Go your way, then! Say all this to her, not to me!"
+
+"To her? I am afraid of her; I want you to help me."
+
+"My dear Roderick," said Rowland with an eloquent smile, "I can help you
+no more!"
+
+Roderick frowned, hesitated a moment, and then took his hat. "Oh, well,"
+he said, "I am not so afraid of her as all that!" And he turned, as if
+to depart.
+
+"Stop!" cried Rowland, as he laid his hand on the door.
+
+Roderick paused and stood waiting, with his irritated brow.
+
+"Come back; sit down there and listen to me. Of anything you were to say
+in your present state of mind you would live most bitterly to repent.
+You don't know what you really think; you don't know what you really
+feel. You don't know your own mind; you don't do justice to Miss
+Garland. All this is impossible here, under these circumstances. You 're
+blind, you 're deaf, you 're under a spell. To break it, you must leave
+Rome."
+
+"Leave Rome! Rome was never so dear to me."
+
+"That 's not of the smallest consequence. Leave it instantly."
+
+"And where shall I go?"
+
+"Go to some place where you may be alone with your mother and Miss
+Garland."
+
+"Alone? You will not come?"
+
+"Oh, if you desire it, I will come."
+
+Roderick inclining his head a little, looked at his friend askance. "I
+don't understand you," he said; "I wish you liked Miss Garland either a
+little less, or a little more."
+
+Rowland felt himself coloring, but he paid no heed to Roderick's speech.
+"You ask me to help you," he went on. "On these present conditions I can
+do nothing. But if you will postpone all decision as to the continuance
+of your engagement a couple of months longer, and meanwhile leave Rome,
+leave Italy, I will do what I can to 'help you,' as you say, in the
+event of your still wishing to break it."
+
+"I must do without your help then! Your conditions are impossible. I
+will leave Rome at the time I have always intended--at the end of June.
+My rooms and my mother's are taken till then; all my arrangements are
+made accordingly. Then, I will depart; not before."
+
+"You are not frank," said Rowland. "Your real reason for staying has
+nothing to do with your rooms."
+
+Roderick's face betrayed neither embarrassment nor resentment. "If I 'm
+not frank, it 's for the first time in my life. Since you know so much
+about my real reason, let me hear it! No, stop!" he suddenly added, "I
+won't trouble you. You are right, I have a motive. On the twenty-fourth
+of June Miss Light is to be married. I take an immense interest in all
+that concerns her, and I wish to be present at her wedding."
+
+"But you said the other day at Saint Peter's that it was by no means
+certain her marriage would take place."
+
+"Apparently I was wrong: the invitations, I am told, are going out."
+
+Rowland felt that it would be utterly vain to remonstrate, and that the
+only thing for him was to make the best terms possible. "If I offer no
+further opposition to your waiting for Miss Light's marriage," he said,
+"will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period, to
+defer to my judgment--to say nothing that may be a cause of suffering to
+Miss Garland?"
+
+"For a certain period? What period?" Roderick demanded.
+
+"Ah, don't drive so close a bargain! Don't you understand that I have
+taken you away from her, that I suffer in every nerve in consequence,
+and that I must do what I can to restore you?"
+
+"Do what you can, then," said Roderick gravely, putting out his hand.
+"Do what you can!" His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute a
+promise, and upon this they parted.
+
+Roderick's bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what
+he called the filial debt, was at least a most admirable production.
+Rowland, at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening, and this
+unscrupulous genius immediately began to ask questions about it. "I am
+told our high-flying friend has come down," he said. "He has been doing
+a queer little old woman."
+
+"A queer little old woman!" Rowland exclaimed. "My dear sir, she is
+Hudson's mother."
+
+"All the more reason for her being queer! It is a bust for terra-cotta,
+eh?"
+
+"By no means; it is for marble."
+
+"That 's a pity. It was described to me as a charming piece of
+quaintness: a little demure, thin-lipped old lady, with her head on
+one side, and the prettiest wrinkles in the world--a sort of fairy
+godmother."
+
+"Go and see it, and judge for yourself," said Rowland.
+
+"No, I see I shall be disappointed. It 's quite the other thing, the
+sort of thing they put into the campo-santos. I wish that boy would
+listen to me an hour!"
+
+But a day or two later Rowland met him again in the street, and, as
+they were near, proposed they should adjourn to Roderick's studio.
+He consented, and on entering they found the young master. Roderick's
+demeanor to Gloriani was never conciliatory, and on this occasion
+supreme indifference was apparently all he had to offer. But Gloriani,
+like a genuine connoisseur, cared nothing for his manners; he cared only
+for his skill. In the bust of Mrs. Hudson there was something almost
+touching; it was an exquisite example of a ruling sense of beauty. The
+poor lady's small, neat, timorous face had certainly no great character,
+but Roderick had reproduced its sweetness, its mildness, its minuteness,
+its still maternal passion, with the most unerring art. It was perfectly
+unflattered, and yet admirably tender; it was the poetry of fidelity.
+Gloriani stood looking at it a long time most intently. Roderick
+wandered away into the neighboring room.
+
+"I give it up!" said the sculptor at last. "I don't understand it."
+
+"But you like it?" said Rowland.
+
+"Like it? It 's a pearl of pearls. Tell me this," he added: "is he very
+fond of his mother; is he a very good son?" And he gave Rowland a sharp
+look.
+
+"Why, she adores him," said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"That 's not an answer! But it 's none of my business. Only if I, in his
+place, being suspected of having--what shall I call it?--a cold heart,
+managed to do that piece of work, oh, oh! I should be called a pretty
+lot of names. Charlatan, poseur, arrangeur! But he can do as he chooses!
+My dear young man, I know you don't like me," he went on, as Roderick
+came back. "It 's a pity; you are strong enough not to care about me at
+all. You are very strong."
+
+"Not at all," said Roderick curtly. "I am very weak!"
+
+"I told you last year that you would n't keep it up. I was a great ass.
+You will!"
+
+"I beg your pardon--I won't!" retorted Roderick.
+
+"Though I 'm a great ass, all the same, eh? Well, call me what you will,
+so long as you turn out this sort of thing! I don't suppose it makes any
+particular difference, but I should like to say now I believe in you."
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with a strange hardness in
+his face. It flushed slowly, and two glittering, angry tears filled his
+eyes. It was the first time Rowland had ever seen them there; he saw
+them but once again. Poor Gloriani, he was sure, had never in his life
+spoken with less of irony; but to Roderick there was evidently a sense
+of mockery in his profession of faith. He turned away with a muttered,
+passionate imprecation. Gloriani was accustomed to deal with complex
+problems, but this time he was hopelessly puzzled. "What 's the matter
+with him?" he asked, simply.
+
+Rowland gave a sad smile, and touched his forehead. "Genius, I suppose."
+
+Gloriani sent another parting, lingering look at the bust of Mrs.
+Hudson. "Well, it 's deuced perfect, it 's deuced simple; I do believe
+in him!" he said. "But I 'm glad I 'm not a genius. It makes," he added
+with a laugh, as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his
+back still turned, "it makes a more sociable studio."
+
+Rowland had purchased, as he supposed, temporary tranquillity for Mary
+Garland; but his own humor in these days was not especially peaceful. He
+was attempting, in a certain sense, to lead the ideal life, and he found
+it, at the least, not easy. The days passed, but brought with them no
+official invitation to Miss Light's wedding. He occasionally met her,
+and he occasionally met Prince Casamassima; but always separately,
+never together. They were apparently taking their happiness in the
+inexpressive manner proper to people of social eminence. Rowland
+continued to see Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt a confirmed
+affection. He had always talked to her with frankness, but now he made
+her a confidant of all his hidden dejection. Roderick and Roderick's
+concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural
+course to talk of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Miss Garland's fine smile.
+Madame Grandoni was an intelligent listener, and she lost no time in
+putting his case for him in a nutshell. "At one moment you tell me the
+girl is plain," she said; "the next you tell me she 's pretty. I will
+invite them, and I shall see for myself. But one thing is very clear:
+you are in love with her."
+
+Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her.
+
+"More than that," she added, "you have been in love with her these two
+years. There was that certain something about you!... I knew you were a
+mild, sweet fellow, but you had a touch of it more than was natural.
+Why did n't you tell me at once? You would have saved me a great deal of
+trouble. And poor Augusta Blanchard too!" And herewith Madame Grandoni
+communicated a pertinent fact: Augusta Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth
+were going to make a match. The young lady had been staying for a month
+at Albano, and Mr. Leavenworth had been dancing attendance. The event
+was a matter of course. Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself
+with a failure of attention to Miss Blanchard's doings, made some such
+observation.
+
+"But you did not find it so!" cried his hostess. "It was a matter of
+course, perhaps, that Mr. Leavenworth, who seems to be going about
+Europe with the sole view of picking up furniture for his 'home,' as he
+calls it, should think Miss Blanchard a very handsome piece; but it was
+not a matter of course--or it need n't have been--that she should be
+willing to become a sort of superior table-ornament. She would have
+accepted you if you had tried."
+
+"You are supposing the insupposable," said Rowland. "She never gave me a
+particle of encouragement."
+
+"What would you have had her do? The poor girl did her best, and I am
+sure that when she accepted Mr. Leavenworth she thought of you."
+
+"She thought of the pleasure her marriage would give me."
+
+"Ay, pleasure indeed! She is a thoroughly good girl, but she has her
+little grain of feminine spite, like the rest. Well, he 's richer than
+you, and she will have what she wants; but before I forgive you I must
+wait and see this new arrival--what do you call her?--Miss Garland. If
+I like her, I will forgive you; if I don't, I shall always bear you a
+grudge."
+
+Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she might
+offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland was a
+figment of her fancy. Miss Garland was engaged to another man, and he
+himself had no claims.
+
+"Well, then," said Madame Grandoni, "if I like her, we 'll have it that
+you ought to be in love with her. If you fail in this, it will be a
+double misdemeanor. The man she 's engaged to does n't care a straw for
+her. Leave me alone and I 'll tell her what I think of you."
+
+As to Christina Light's marriage, Madame Grandoni could make no definite
+statement. The young girl, of late, had made her several flying
+visits, in the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial shopping and
+dress-fitting; she had spoken of the event with a toss of her head, as a
+matter which, with a wise old friend who viewed things in their
+essence, she need not pretend to treat as a solemnity. It was for Prince
+Casamassima to do that. "It is what they call a marriage of reason," she
+once said. "That means, you know, a marriage of madness!"
+
+"What have you said in the way of advice?" Rowland asked.
+
+"Very little, but that little has favored the prince. I know nothing of
+the mysteries of the young lady's heart. It may be a gold-mine, but at
+any rate it 's a mine, and it 's a long journey down into it. But the
+marriage in itself is an excellent marriage. It 's not only brilliant,
+but it 's safe. I think Christina is quite capable of making it a
+means of misery; but there is no position that would be sacred to her.
+Casamassima is an irreproachable young man; there is nothing against
+him but that he is a prince. It is not often, I fancy, that a prince has
+been put through his paces at this rate. No one knows the wedding-day;
+the cards of invitation have been printed half a dozen times over, with
+a different date; each time Christina has destroyed them. There are
+people in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away; they
+are in a dreadful fright about the fever, but they are dying to see the
+wedding, and if the day were fixed, they would make their arrangements
+to wait for it. I think it very possible that after having kept them a
+month and produced a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married
+at midnight by an old friar, with simply the legal witnesses."
+
+"It is true, then, that she has become a Catholic?"
+
+"So she tells me. One day she got up in the depths of despair; at her
+wit's end, I suppose, in other words, for a new sensation. Suddenly it
+occurred to her that the Catholic church might after all hold the key,
+might give her what she wanted! She sent for a priest; he happened to be
+a clever man, and he contrived to interest her. She put on a black dress
+and a black lace veil, and looking handsomer than ever she rustled into
+the Catholic church. The prince, who is very devout, and who had her
+heresy sorely on his conscience, was thrown into an ecstasy. May she
+never have a caprice that pleases him less!"
+
+Rowland had already asked Madame Grandoni what, to her perception, was
+the present state of matters between Christina and Roderick; and he now
+repeated his question with some earnestness of apprehension. "The girl
+is so deucedly dramatic," he said, "that I don't know what coup de
+theatre she may have in store for us. Such a stroke was her turning
+Catholic; such a stroke would be her some day making her courtesy to a
+disappointed world as Princess Casamassima, married at midnight, in her
+bonnet. She might do--she may do--something that would make even more
+starers! I 'm prepared for anything."
+
+"You mean that she might elope with your sculptor, eh?"
+
+"I 'm prepared for anything!"
+
+"Do you mean that he 's ready?"
+
+"Do you think that she is?"
+
+"They 're a precious pair! I think this. You by no means exhaust the
+subject when you say that Christina is dramatic. It 's my belief that in
+the course of her life she will do a certain number of things from pure
+disinterested passion. She 's immeasurably proud, and if that is often
+a fault in a virtuous person, it may be a merit in a vicious one. She
+needs to think well of herself; she knows a fine character, easily,
+when she meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison, even though the
+comparison is made by herself alone; and when the estimate she may
+have made of herself grows vague, she needs to do something to give
+it definite, impressive form. What she will do in such a case will be
+better or worse, according to her opportunity; but I imagine it will
+generally be something that will drive her mother to despair; something
+of the sort usually termed 'unworldly.'"
+
+Rowland, as he was taking his leave, after some further exchange of
+opinions, rendered Miss Light the tribute of a deeply meditative sigh.
+"She has bothered me half to death," he said, "but somehow I can't
+manage, as I ought, to hate her. I admire her, half the time, and a good
+part of the rest I pity her."
+
+"I think I most pity her!" said Madame Grandoni.
+
+This enlightened woman came the next day to call upon the two ladies
+from Northampton. She carried their shy affections by storm, and made
+them promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow. Her
+visit was an era in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing but
+make sudden desultory allusions to her, for the next thirty-six hours.
+"To think of her being a foreigner!" she would exclaim, after much
+intent reflection, over her knitting; "she speaks so beautifully!"
+Then in a little while, "She was n't so much dressed as you might have
+expected. Did you notice how easy it was in the waist? I wonder if that
+'s the fashion?" Or, "She 's very old to wear a hat; I should never dare
+to wear a hat!" Or, "Did you notice her hands?--very pretty hands for
+such a stout person. A great many rings, but nothing very handsome. I
+suppose they are hereditary." Or, "She 's certainly not handsome, but
+she 's very sweet-looking. I wonder why she does n't have something
+done to her teeth." Rowland also received a summons to Madame Grandoni's
+tea-drinking, and went betimes, as he had been requested. He was eagerly
+desirous to lend his mute applause to Mary Garland's debut in the Roman
+social world. The two ladies had arrived, with Roderick, silent and
+careless, in attendance. Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by
+Mr. Leavenworth, and the party was completed by a dozen artists of both
+sexes and various nationalities. It was a friendly and easy assembly,
+like all Madame Grandoni's parties, and in the course of the evening
+there was some excellent music. People played and sang for Madame
+Grandoni, on easy terms, who, elsewhere, were not to be heard for the
+asking. She was herself a superior musician, and singers found it a
+privilege to perform to her accompaniment. Rowland talked to various
+persons, but for the first time in his life his attention visibly
+wandered; he could not keep his eyes off Mary Garland. Madame Grandoni
+had said that he sometimes spoke of her as pretty and sometimes as
+plain; to-night, if he had had occasion to describe her appearance, he
+would have called her beautiful. She was dressed more than he had ever
+seen her; it was becoming, and gave her a deeper color and an ampler
+presence. Two or three persons were introduced to her who were
+apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them with her
+brilliant natural smile. Rowland, from an opposite corner, reflected
+that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard's classic
+contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed him hardly more
+than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value. Roderick could not be
+accused of rancor, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied
+familiarity, and, lounging against the wall, with hands in pockets, was
+discoursing to him with candid serenity. Now that he had done him an
+impertinence, he evidently found him less intolerable. Mr. Leavenworth
+stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth,
+without looking at the young sculptor, like a large, drowsy dog snapping
+at flies. Rowland had found it disagreeable to be told Miss Blanchard
+would have married him for the asking, and he would have felt some
+embarrassment in going to speak to her if his modesty had not found
+incredulity so easy. The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had
+never been present to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all
+ways, to be compassed with a great effort. He had half an hour's talk
+with her; a farewell talk, as it seemed to him--a farewell not to a real
+illusion, but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever
+be an acceptable pis-aller. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her
+engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness.
+But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs.
+Browning and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her
+responding on this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a "glorious heart."
+Rowland wished to manifest an extreme regard, but toward the end of the
+talk his zeal relaxed, and he fell a-thinking that a certain natural
+ease in a woman was the most delightful thing in the world. There was
+Christina Light, who had too much, and here was Miss Blanchard, who had
+too little, and there was Mary Garland (in whom the quality was wholly
+uncultivated), who had just the right amount.
+
+He went to Madame Grandoni in an adjoining room, where she was pouring
+out tea.
+
+"I will make you an excellent cup," she said, "because I have forgiven
+you."
+
+He looked at her, answering nothing; but he swallowed his tea with great
+gusto, and a slight deepening of his color; by all of which one would
+have known that he was gratified. In a moment he intimated that, in so
+far as he had sinned, he had forgiven himself.
+
+"She is a lovely girl," said Madame Grandoni. "There is a great deal
+there. I have taken a great fancy to her, and she must let me make a
+friend of her."
+
+"She is very plain," said Rowland, slowly, "very simple, very ignorant."
+
+"Which, being interpreted, means, 'She is very handsome, very subtle,
+and has read hundreds of volumes on winter evenings in the country.'"
+
+"You are a veritable sorceress," cried Rowland; "you frighten me away!"
+As he was turning to leave her, there rose above the hum of voices in
+the drawing-room the sharp, grotesque note of a barking dog. Their eyes
+met in a glance of intelligence.
+
+"There is the sorceress!" said Madame Grandoni. "The sorceress and her
+necromantic poodle!" And she hastened back to the post of hospitality.
+
+Rowland followed her, and found Christina Light standing in the middle
+of the drawing-room, and looking about in perplexity. Her poodle,
+sitting on his haunches and gazing at the company, had apparently been
+expressing a sympathetic displeasure at the absence of a welcome. But
+in a moment Madame Grandoni had come to the young girl's relief, and
+Christina had tenderly kissed her.
+
+"I had no idea," said Christina, surveying the assembly, "that you had
+such a lot of grand people, or I would not have come in. The servant
+said nothing; he took me for an invitee. I came to spend a neighborly
+half-hour; you know I have n't many left! It was too dismally dreary at
+home. I hoped I should find you alone, and I brought Stenterello to play
+with the cat. I don't know that if I had known about all this I would
+have dared to come in; but since I 've stumbled into the midst of it, I
+beg you 'll let me stay. I am not dressed, but am I very hideous? I will
+sit in a corner and no one will notice me. My dear, sweet lady, do let
+me stay. Pray, why did n't you ask me? I never have been to a little
+party like this. They must be very charming. No dancing--tea and
+conversation? No tea, thank you; but if you could spare a biscuit for
+Stenterello; a sweet biscuit, please. Really, why did n't you ask me?
+Do you have these things often? Madame Grandoni, it 's very unkind!" And
+the young girl, who had delivered herself of the foregoing succession of
+sentences in her usual low, cool, penetrating voice, uttered these last
+words with a certain tremor of feeling. "I see," she went on, "I do very
+well for balls and great banquets, but when people wish to have a
+cosy, friendly, comfortable evening, they leave me out, with the big
+flower-pots and the gilt candlesticks."
+
+"I 'm sure you 're welcome to stay, my dear," said Madame Grandoni, "and
+at the risk of displeasing you I must confess that if I did n't invite
+you, it was because you 're too grand. Your dress will do very well,
+with its fifty flounces, and there is no need of your going into a
+corner. Indeed, since you 're here, I propose to have the glory of it.
+You must remain where my people can see you."
+
+"They are evidently determined to do that by the way they stare. Do they
+think I intend to dance a tarantella? Who are they all; do I know them?"
+And lingering in the middle of the room, with her arm passed into Madame
+Grandoni's, she let her eyes wander slowly from group to group.
+They were of course observing her. Standing in the little circle
+of lamplight, with the hood of an Eastern burnous, shot with silver
+threads, falling back from her beautiful head, one hand gathering
+together its voluminous, shimmering folds, and the other playing with
+the silken top-knot on the uplifted head of her poodle, she was a figure
+of radiant picturesqueness. She seemed to be a sort of extemporized
+tableau vivant. Rowland's position made it becoming for him to speak
+to her without delay. As she looked at him he saw that, judging by the
+light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a humor of which she had not yet
+treated him to a specimen. In a simpler person he would have called it
+exquisite kindness; but in this young lady's deportment the flower was
+one thing and the perfume another. "Tell me about these people," she
+said to him. "I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I had not
+seen. What are they all talking about? It 's all beyond me, I suppose.
+There is Miss Blanchard, sitting as usual in profile against a dark
+object. She is like a head on a postage-stamp. And there is that nice
+little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman for a
+mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancee, of course
+she 's here. Ah, I see!" She paused; she was looking intently at Miss
+Garland. Rowland measured the intentness of her glance, and suddenly
+acquired a firm conviction. "I should like so much to know her!" she
+said, turning to Madame Grandoni. "She has a charming face; I am sure
+she 's an angel. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second
+thoughts, I had rather you did n't. I will speak to her bravely myself,
+as a friend of her cousin." Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged
+glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous,
+crumpled it together, and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a
+corner, gave it in charge to her poodle. He stationed himself upon it,
+on his haunches, with upright vigilance. Christina crossed the room with
+the step and smile of a ministering angel, and introduced herself to
+Mary Garland. She had once told Rowland that she would show him, some
+day, how gracious her manners could be; she was now redeeming her
+promise. Rowland, watching her, saw Mary Garland rise slowly, in
+response to her greeting, and look at her with serious deep-gazing eyes.
+The almost dramatic opposition of these two keenly interesting girls
+touched Rowland with a nameless apprehension, and after a moment he
+preferred to turn away. In doing so he noticed Roderick. The young
+sculptor was standing planted on the train of a lady's dress, gazing
+across at Christina's movements with undisguised earnestness. There were
+several more pieces of music; Rowland sat in a corner and listened to
+them. When they were over, several people began to take their leave,
+Mrs. Hudson among the number. Rowland saw her come up to Madame
+Grandoni, clinging shyly to Mary Garland's arm. Miss Garland had a
+brilliant eye and a deep color in her cheek. The two ladies looked
+about for Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned. He had approached
+Christina, who, with an absent air, was sitting alone, where she had
+taken her place near Miss Garland, looking at the guests pass out of the
+room. Christina's eye, like Miss Garland's, was bright, but her cheek
+was pale. Hearing Roderick's voice, she looked up at him sharply; then
+silently, with a single quick gesture, motioned him away. He obeyed her,
+and came and joined his mother in bidding good night to Madame Grandoni.
+Christina, in a moment, met Rowland's glance, and immediately beckoned
+him to come to her. He was familiar with her spontaneity of movement,
+and was scarcely surprised. She made a place for him on the sofa beside
+her; he wondered what was coming now. He was not sure it was not a mere
+fancy, but it seemed to him that he had never seen her look just as
+she was looking then. It was a humble, touching, appealing look, and it
+threw into wonderful relief the nobleness of her beauty. "How many more
+metamorphoses," he asked himself, "am I to be treated to before we have
+done?"
+
+"I want to tell you," said Christina. "I have taken an immense fancy to
+Miss Garland. Are n't you glad?"
+
+"Delighted!" exclaimed poor Rowland.
+
+"Ah, you don't believe it," she said with soft dignity.
+
+"Is it so hard to believe?"
+
+"Not that people in general should admire her, but that I should. But I
+want to tell you; I want to tell some one, and I can't tell Miss Garland
+herself. She thinks me already a horrid false creature, and if I were to
+express to her frankly what I think of her, I should simply disgust her.
+She would be quite right; she has repose, and from that point of view I
+and my doings must seem monstrous. Unfortunately, I have n't repose. I
+am trembling now; if I could ask you to feel my arm, you would see!
+But I want to tell you that I admire Miss Garland more than any of the
+people who call themselves her friends--except of course you. Oh, I know
+that! To begin with, she is extremely handsome, and she does n't know
+it."
+
+"She is not generally thought handsome," said Rowland.
+
+"Evidently! That 's the vulgarity of the human mind. Her head has great
+character, great natural style. If a woman is not to be a supreme beauty
+in the regular way, she will choose, if she 's wise, to look like that.
+She 'll not be thought pretty by people in general, and desecrated, as
+she passes, by the stare of every vile wretch who chooses to thrust his
+nose under her bonnet; but a certain number of superior people will find
+it one of the delightful things of life to look at her. That lot is as
+good as another! Then she has a beautiful character!"
+
+"You found that out soon!" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"How long did it take you? I found it out before I ever spoke to her.
+I met her the other day in Saint Peter's; I knew it then. I knew it--do
+you want to know how long I have known it?"
+
+"Really," said Rowland, "I did n't mean to cross-examine you."
+
+"Do you remember mamma's ball in December? We had some talk and you
+then mentioned her--not by name. You said but three words, but I saw
+you admired her, and I knew that if you admired her she must have a
+beautiful character. That 's what you require!"
+
+"Upon my word," cried Rowland, "you make three words go very far!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hudson has also spoken of her."
+
+"Ah, that 's better!" said Rowland.
+
+"I don't know; he does n't like her."
+
+"Did he tell you so?" The question left Rowland's lips before he could
+stay it, which he would have done on a moment's reflection.
+
+Christina looked at him intently. "No!" she said at last. "That would
+have been dishonorable, would n't it? But I know it from my knowledge of
+him. He does n't like perfection; he is not bent upon being safe, in
+his likings; he 's willing to risk something! Poor fellow, he risks too
+much!"
+
+Rowland was silent; he did not care for the thrust; but he was
+profoundly mystified. Christina beckoned to her poodle, and the
+dog marched stiffly across to her. She gave a loving twist to his
+rose-colored top-knot, and bade him go and fetch her burnous. He obeyed,
+gathered it up in his teeth, and returned with great solemnity, dragging
+it along the floor.
+
+"I do her justice. I do her full justice," she went on, with soft
+earnestness. "I like to say that, I like to be able to say it. She 's
+full of intelligence and courage and devotion. She does n't do me a
+grain of justice; but that is no harm. There is something so fine in the
+aversions of a good woman!"
+
+"If you would give Miss Garland a chance," said Rowland, "I am sure she
+would be glad to be your friend."
+
+"What do you mean by a chance? She has only to take it. I told her
+I liked her immensely, and she frowned as if I had said something
+disgusting. She looks very handsome when she frowns." Christina rose,
+with these words, and began to gather her mantle about her. "I don't
+often like women," she went on. "In fact I generally detest them. But
+I should like to know Miss Garland well. I should like to have a
+friendship with her; I have never had one; they must be very delightful.
+But I shan't have one now, either--not if she can help it! Ask her what
+she thinks of me; see what she will say. I don't want to know; keep it
+to yourself. It 's too sad. So we go through life. It 's fatality--that
+'s what they call it, is n't it? We please the people we don't care for,
+we displease those we do! But I appreciate her, I do her justice; that
+'s the more important thing. It 's because I have imagination. She has
+none. Never mind; it 's her only fault. I do her justice; I understand
+very well." She kept softly murmuring and looking about for Madame
+Grandoni. She saw the good lady near the door, and put out her hand to
+Rowland for good night. She held his hand an instant, fixing him with
+her eyes, the living splendor of which, at this moment, was something
+transcendent. "Yes, I do her justice," she repeated. "And you do her
+more; you would lay down your life for her." With this she turned away,
+and before he could answer, she left him. She went to Madame Grandoni,
+grasped her two hands, and held out her forehead to be kissed. The next
+moment she was gone.
+
+"That was a happy accident!" said Madame Grandoni. "She never looked so
+beautiful, and she made my little party brilliant."
+
+"Beautiful, verily!" Rowland answered. "But it was no accident."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"It was a plan. She wished to see Miss Garland. She knew she was to be
+here."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"By Roderick, evidently."
+
+"And why did she wish to see Miss Garland?"
+
+"Heaven knows! I give it up!"
+
+"Ah, the wicked girl!" murmured Madame Grandoni.
+
+"No," said Rowland; "don't say that now. She 's too beautiful."
+
+"Oh, you men! The best of you!"
+
+"Well, then," cried Rowland, "she 's too good!"
+
+The opportunity presenting itself the next day, he failed not, as you
+may imagine, to ask Mary Garland what she thought of Miss Light. It was
+a Saturday afternoon, the time at which the beautiful marbles of the
+Villa Borghese are thrown open to the public. Mary had told him that
+Roderick had promised to take her to see them, with his mother, and he
+joined the party in the splendid Casino. The warm weather had left so
+few strangers in Rome that they had the place almost to themselves. Mrs.
+Hudson had confessed to an invincible fear of treading, even with the
+help of her son's arm, the polished marble floors, and was sitting
+patiently on a stool, with folded hands, looking shyly, here and there,
+at the undraped paganism around her. Roderick had sauntered off alone,
+with an irritated brow, which seemed to betray the conflict between
+the instinct of observation and the perplexities of circumstance.
+Miss Garland was wandering in another direction, and though she was
+consulting her catalogue, Rowland fancied it was from habit; she too
+was preoccupied. He joined her, and she presently sat down on a divan,
+rather wearily, and closed her Murray. Then he asked her abruptly how
+Christina had pleased her.
+
+She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she had been
+thinking of Christina.
+
+"I don't like her!" she said with decision.
+
+"What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think she 's false." This was said without petulance or bitterness,
+but with a very positive air.
+
+"But she wished to please you; she tried," Rowland rejoined, in a
+moment.
+
+"I think not. She wished to please herself!"
+
+Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more. No allusion to Christina
+had passed between them since the day they met her at Saint Peter's,
+but he knew that she knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who
+loves, that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her.
+To what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain; but last night's
+interview, apparently, had not reassured her. It was, under these
+circumstances, equally unbecoming for Rowland either to depreciate or
+to defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having
+verified the girl's own assurance that she had made a bad impression.
+He tried to talk of indifferent matters--about the statues and the
+frescoes; but to-day, plainly, aesthetic curiosity, with Miss Garland,
+had folded its wings. Curiosity of another sort had taken its place.
+Mary was longing, he was sure, to question him about Christina; but she
+found a dozen reasons for hesitating. Her questions would imply that
+Roderick had not treated her with confidence, for information on this
+point should properly have come from him. They would imply that she was
+jealous, and to betray her jealousy was intolerable to her pride. For
+some minutes, as she sat scratching the brilliant pavement with the
+point of her umbrella, it was to be supposed that her pride and her
+anxiety held an earnest debate. At last anxiety won.
+
+"A propos of Miss Light," she asked, "do you know her well?"
+
+"I can hardly say that. But I have seen her repeatedly."
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"Yes and no. I think I am sorry for her."
+
+Mary had spoken with her eyes on the pavement. At this she looked up.
+"Sorry for her? Why?"
+
+"Well--she is unhappy."
+
+"What are her misfortunes?"
+
+"Well--she has a horrible mother, and she has had a most injurious
+education."
+
+For a moment Miss Garland was silent. Then, "Is n't she very beautiful?"
+she asked.
+
+"Don't you think so?"
+
+"That 's measured by what men think! She is extremely clever, too."
+
+"Oh, incontestably."
+
+"She has beautiful dresses."
+
+"Yes, any number of them."
+
+"And beautiful manners."
+
+"Yes--sometimes."
+
+"And plenty of money."
+
+"Money enough, apparently."
+
+"And she receives great admiration."
+
+"Very true."
+
+"And she is to marry a prince."
+
+"So they say."
+
+Miss Garland rose and turned to rejoin her companions, commenting these
+admissions with a pregnant silence. "Poor Miss Light!" she said at
+last, simply. And in this it seemed to Rowland there was a touch of
+bitterness.
+
+Very late on the following evening his servant brought him the card of a
+visitor. He was surprised at a visit at such an hour, but it may be
+said that when he read the inscription--Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa--his
+surprise declined. He had had an unformulated conviction that there was
+to be a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni's; the Cavaliere had
+come to usher it in.
+
+He had come, evidently, on a portentous errand. He was as pale as ashes
+and prodigiously serious; his little cold black eye had grown ardent,
+and he had left his caressing smile at home. He saluted Rowland,
+however, with his usual obsequious bow.
+
+"You have more than once done me the honor to invite me to call upon
+you," he said. "I am ashamed of my long delay, and I can only say to
+you, frankly, that my time this winter has not been my own." Rowland
+assented, ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative of the adage
+"Better late than never," begged him to be seated, and offered him a
+cigar. The Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly the fragrant weed, and then
+declared that, if his kind host would allow him, he would reserve it for
+consumption at another time. He apparently desired to intimate that
+the solemnity of his errand left him no breath for idle smoke-puffings.
+Rowland stayed himself, just in time, from an enthusiastic offer of a
+dozen more cigars, and, as he watched the Cavaliere stow his treasure
+tenderly away in his pocket-book, reflected that only an Italian could
+go through such a performance with uncompromised dignity. "I must
+confess," the little old man resumed, "that even now I come on business
+not of my own--or my own, at least, only in a secondary sense. I have
+been dispatched as an ambassador, an envoy extraordinary, I may say, by
+my dear friend Mrs. Light."
+
+"If I can in any way be of service to Mrs. Light, I shall be happy,"
+Rowland said.
+
+"Well then, dear sir, Casa Light is in commotion. The signora is in
+trouble--in terrible trouble." For a moment Rowland expected to hear
+that the signora's trouble was of a nature that a loan of five thousand
+francs would assuage. But the Cavaliere continued: "Miss Light has
+committed a great crime; she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her
+mother."
+
+"A dagger!" cried Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere patted the air an instant with his finger-tips. "I speak
+figuratively. She has broken off her marriage."
+
+"Broken it off?"
+
+"Short! She has turned the prince from the door." And the Cavaliere,
+when he had made this announcement, folded his arms and bent upon
+Rowland his intense, inscrutable gaze. It seemed to Rowland that he
+detected in the polished depths of it a sort of fantastic gleam of
+irony or of triumph; but superficially, at least, Giacosa did nothing
+to discredit his character as a presumably sympathetic representative of
+Mrs. Light's affliction.
+
+Rowland heard his news with a kind of fierce disgust; it seemed the
+sinister counterpart of Christina's preternatural mildness at Madame
+Grandoni's tea-party. She had been too plausible to be honest. Without
+being able to trace the connection, he yet instinctively associated her
+present rebellion with her meeting with Mary Garland. If she had not
+seen Mary, she would have let things stand. It was monstrous to suppose
+that she could have sacrificed so brilliant a fortune to a mere movement
+of jealousy, to a refined instinct of feminine deviltry, to a desire to
+frighten poor Mary from her security by again appearing in the field.
+Yet Rowland remembered his first impression of her; she was "dangerous,"
+and she had measured in each direction the perturbing effect of her
+rupture. She was smiling her sweetest smile at it! For half an hour
+Rowland simply detested her, and longed to denounce her to her face. Of
+course all he could say to Giacosa was that he was extremely sorry. "But
+I am not surprised," he added.
+
+"You are not surprised?"
+
+"With Miss Light everything is possible. Is n't that true?"
+
+Another ripple seemed to play for an instant in the current of the old
+man's irony, but he waived response. "It was a magnificent marriage,"
+he said, solemnly. "I do not respect many people, but I respect Prince
+Casamassima."
+
+"I should judge him indeed to be a very honorable young man," said
+Rowland.
+
+"Eh, young as he is, he 's made of the old stuff. And now, perhaps he
+'s blowing his brains out. He is the last of his house; it 's a great
+house. But Miss Light will have put an end to it!"
+
+"Is that the view she takes of it?" Rowland ventured to ask.
+
+This time, unmistakably, the Cavaliere smiled, but still in that very
+out-of-the-way place. "You have observed Miss Light with attention," he
+said, "and this brings me to my errand. Mrs. Light has a high opinion
+of your wisdom, of your kindness, and she has reason to believe you have
+influence with her daughter."
+
+"I--with her daughter? Not a grain!"
+
+"That is possibly your modesty. Mrs. Light believes that something may
+yet be done, and that Christina will listen to you. She begs you to come
+and see her before it is too late."
+
+"But all this, my dear Cavaliere, is none of my business," Rowland
+objected. "I can't possibly, in such a matter, take the responsibility
+of advising Miss Light."
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor, in brief but
+intense reflection. Then looking up, "Unfortunately," he said, "she has
+no man near her whom she respects; she has no father!"
+
+"And a fatally foolish mother!" Rowland gave himself the satisfaction of
+exclaiming.
+
+The Cavaliere was so pale that he could not easily have turned paler;
+yet it seemed for a moment that his dead complexion blanched. "Eh,
+signore, such as she is, the mother appeals to you. A very handsome
+woman--disheveled, in tears, in despair, in dishabille!"
+
+Rowland reflected a moment, not on the attractions of Mrs. Light
+under the circumstances thus indicated by the Cavaliere, but on the
+satisfaction he would take in accusing Christina to her face of having
+struck a cruel blow.
+
+"I must add," said the Cavaliere, "that Mrs. Light desires also to speak
+to you on the subject of Mr. Hudson."
+
+"She considers Mr. Hudson, then, connected with this step of her
+daughter's?"
+
+"Intimately. He must be got out of Rome."
+
+"Mrs. Light, then, must get an order from the Pope to remove him. It 's
+not in my power."
+
+The Cavaliere assented, deferentially. "Mrs. Light is equally helpless.
+She would leave Rome to-morrow, but Christina will not budge. An order
+from the Pope would do nothing. A bull in council would do nothing."
+
+"She 's a remarkable young lady," said Rowland, with bitterness.
+
+But the Cavaliere rose and responded coldly, "She has a great spirit."
+And it seemed to Rowland that her great spirit, for mysterious reasons,
+gave him more pleasure than the distressing use she made of it gave him
+pain. He was on the point of charging him with his inconsistency, when
+Giacosa resumed: "But if the marriage can be saved, it must be saved. It
+'s a beautiful marriage. It will be saved."
+
+"Notwithstanding Miss Light's great spirit to the contrary?"
+
+"Miss Light, notwithstanding her great spirit, will call Prince
+Casamassima back."
+
+"Heaven grant it!" said Rowland.
+
+"I don't know," said the Cavaliere, solemnly, "that heaven will have
+much to do with it."
+
+Rowland gave him a questioning look, but he laid his finger on his lips.
+And with Rowland's promise to present himself on the morrow at Casa
+Light, he shortly afterwards departed. He left Rowland revolving many
+things: Christina's magnanimity, Christina's perversity, Roderick's
+contingent fortune, Mary Garland's certain trouble, and the Cavaliere's
+own fine ambiguities.
+
+Rowland's promise to the Cavaliere obliged him to withdraw from an
+excursion which he had arranged with the two ladies from Northampton.
+Before going to Casa Light he repaired in person to Mrs. Hudson's hotel,
+to make his excuses.
+
+He found Roderick's mother sitting with tearful eyes, staring at an open
+note that lay in her lap. At the window sat Miss Garland, who turned her
+intense regard upon him as he came in. Mrs. Hudson quickly rose and came
+to him, holding out the note.
+
+"In pity's name," she cried, "what is the matter with my boy? If he is
+ill, I entreat you to take me to him!"
+
+"He is not ill, to my knowledge," said Rowland. "What have you there?"
+
+"A note--a dreadful note. He tells us we are not to see him for a week.
+If I could only go to his room! But I am afraid, I am afraid!"
+
+"I imagine there is no need of going to his room. What is the occasion,
+may I ask, of his note?"
+
+"He was to have gone with us on this drive to--what is the place?--to
+Cervara. You know it was arranged yesterday morning. In the evening he
+was to have dined with us. But he never came, and this morning arrives
+this awful thing. Oh dear, I 'm so excited! Would you mind reading it?"
+
+Rowland took the note and glanced at its half-dozen lines. "I cannot go
+to Cervara," they ran; "I have something else to do. This will occupy me
+perhaps for a week, and you 'll not see me. Don't miss me--learn not to
+miss me. R. H."
+
+"Why, it means," Rowland commented, "that he has taken up a piece
+of work, and that it is all-absorbing. That 's very good news." This
+explanation was not sincere; but he had not the courage not to offer it
+as a stop-gap. But he found he needed all his courage to maintain it,
+for Miss Garland had left her place and approached him, formidably
+unsatisfied.
+
+"He does not work in the evening," said Mrs. Hudson. "Can't he come
+for five minutes? Why does he write such a cruel, cold note to his poor
+mother--to poor Mary? What have we done that he acts so strangely? It
+'s this wicked, infectious, heathenish place!" And the poor lady's
+suppressed mistrust of the Eternal City broke out passionately. "Oh,
+dear Mr. Mallet," she went on, "I am sure he has the fever and he 's
+already delirious!"
+
+"I am very sure it 's not that," said Miss Garland, with a certain
+dryness.
+
+She was still looking at Rowland; his eyes met hers, and his own glance
+fell. This made him angry, and to carry off his confusion he pretended
+to be looking at the floor, in meditation. After all, what had he to be
+ashamed of? For a moment he was on the point of making a clean breast of
+it, of crying out, "Dearest friends, I abdicate: I can't help you!" But
+he checked himself; he felt so impatient to have his three words with
+Christina. He grasped his hat.
+
+"I will see what it is!" he cried. And then he was glad he had not
+abdicated, for as he turned away he glanced again at Mary and saw that,
+though her eyes were full of trouble, they were not hard and accusing,
+but charged with appealing friendship.
+
+He went straight to Roderick's apartment, deeming this, at an early
+hour, the safest place to seek him. He found him in his sitting-room,
+which had been closely darkened to keep out the heat. The carpets and
+rugs had been removed, the floor of speckled concrete was bare and
+lightly sprinkled with water. Here and there, over it, certain strongly
+perfumed flowers had been scattered. Roderick was lying on his divan in
+a white dressing-gown, staring up at the frescoed ceiling. The room
+was deliciously cool, and filled with the moist, sweet odor of the
+circumjacent roses and violets. All this seemed highly fantastic, and
+yet Rowland hardly felt surprised.
+
+"Your mother was greatly alarmed at your note," he said, "and I came
+to satisfy myself that, as I believed, you are not ill." Roderick lay
+motionless, except that he slightly turned his head toward his friend.
+He was smelling a large white rose, and he continued to present it to
+his nose. In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but
+his handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy. He let them rest for
+some time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual
+swoon, whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal
+matters. "Oh, I 'm not ill," he said at last. "I have never been
+better."
+
+"Your note, nevertheless, and your absence," Rowland said, "have very
+naturally alarmed your mother. I advise you to go to her directly and
+reassure her."
+
+"Go to her? Going to her would be worse than staying away. Staying away
+at present is a kindness." And he inhaled deeply his huge rose, looking
+up over it at Rowland. "My presence, in fact, would be indecent."
+
+"Indecent? Pray explain."
+
+"Why, you see, as regards Mary Garland. I am divinely happy! Does n't
+it strike you? You ought to agree with me. You wish me to spare her
+feelings; I spare them by staying away. Last night I heard something"--
+
+"I heard it, too," said Rowland with brevity. "And it 's in honor of
+this piece of news that you have taken to your bed in this fashion?"
+
+"Extremes meet! I can't get up for joy."
+
+"May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?--from Miss Light
+herself?"
+
+"By no means. It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as
+well."
+
+"Casamassima's loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?"
+
+"I don't talk about certainties. I don't want to be arrogant, I don't
+want to offend the immortal gods. I 'm keeping very quiet, but I can't
+help being happy. I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she threw
+overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!"
+
+"I feel bound to tell you," was in the course of a moment Rowland's
+response to this speech, "that I am now on my way to Mrs. Light's."
+
+"I congratulate you, I envy you!" Roderick murmured, imperturbably.
+
+"Mrs. Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter, with whom
+she has taken it into her head that I have influence. I don't know to
+what extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you notice I shall not speak
+in your interest."
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes. "Pray
+don't!" he simply answered.
+
+"You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow."
+
+"My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you. You 're
+incapable of doing anything disloyal."
+
+"You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your
+visions, and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with
+anxiety?"
+
+"Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used
+to it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least
+forbear to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for
+the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I
+should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I
+lock myself up as a dangerous character."
+
+"Well, I can only say, 'May your pleasure never grow less, or your
+danger greater!'"
+
+Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose. "God's will be
+done!"
+
+On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs. Light's. This
+afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him. Since the Cavaliere's report
+of her condition she had somewhat smoothed and trimmed the exuberance
+of her distress, but she was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she
+clutched Rowland by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes,
+he were her single floating spar. Rowland greatly pitied her, for there
+is something respectable in passionate grief, even in a very bad cause;
+and as pity is akin to love, he endured her rather better than he had
+done hitherto.
+
+"Speak to her, plead with her, command her!" she cried, pressing and
+shaking his hands. "She 'll not heed us, no more than if we were a pair
+of clocks a-ticking. Perhaps she will listen to you; she always liked
+you."
+
+"She always disliked me," said Rowland. "But that does n't matter now.
+I have come here simply because you sent for me, not because I can help
+you. I cannot advise your daughter."
+
+"Oh, cruel, deadly man! You must advise her; you shan't leave this house
+till you have advised her!" the poor woman passionately retorted. "Look
+at me in my misery and refuse to help me! Oh, you need n't be afraid, I
+know I 'm a fright, I have n't an idea what I have on. If this goes
+on, we may both as well turn scarecrows. If ever a woman was desperate,
+frantic, heart-broken, I am that woman. I can't begin to tell you. To
+have nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! to have lavished one's
+self upon a viper that turns and stings her own poor mother! To have
+toiled and prayed, to have pushed and struggled, to have eaten the bread
+of bitterness, and all the rest of it, sir--and at the end of all things
+to find myself at this pass. It can't be, it 's too cruel, such things
+don't happen, the Lord don't allow it. I 'm a religious woman, sir,
+and the Lord knows all about me. With his own hand he had given me his
+reward! I would have lain down in the dust and let her walk over me; I
+would have given her the eyes out of my head, if she had taken a fancy
+to them. No, she 's a cruel, wicked, heartless, unnatural girl! I speak
+to you, Mr. Mallet, in my dire distress, as to my only friend. There is
+n't a creature here that I can look to--not one of them all that I have
+faith in. But I always admired you. I said to Christina the first time I
+saw you that there at last was a real gentleman. Come, don't disappoint
+me now! I feel so terribly alone, you see; I feel what a nasty, hard,
+heartless world it is that has come and devoured my dinners and danced
+to my fiddles, and yet that has n't a word to throw to me in my agony!
+Oh, the money, alone, that I have put into this thing, would melt the
+heart of a Turk!"
+
+During this frenzied outbreak Rowland had had time to look round the
+room, and to see the Cavaliere sitting in a corner, like a major-domo on
+the divan of an antechamber, pale, rigid, and inscrutable.
+
+"I have it at heart to tell you," Rowland said, "that if you consider my
+friend Hudson"--
+
+Mrs. Light gave a toss of her head and hands. "Oh, it 's not that. She
+told me last night to bother her no longer with Hudson, Hudson! She did
+n't care a button for Hudson. I almost wish she did; then perhaps one
+might understand it. But she does n't care for anything in the wide
+world, except to do her own hard, wicked will, and to crush me and shame
+me with her cruelty."
+
+"Ah, then," said Rowland, "I am as much at sea as you, and my presence
+here is an impertinence. I should like to say three words to Miss Light
+on my own account. But I must absolutely and inexorably decline to urge
+the cause of Prince Casamassima. This is simply impossible."
+
+Mrs. Light burst into angry tears. "Because the poor boy is a prince,
+eh? because he 's of a great family, and has an income of millions, eh?
+That 's why you grudge him and hate him. I knew there were vulgar people
+of that way of feeling, but I did n't expect it of you. Make an effort,
+Mr. Mallet; rise to the occasion; forgive the poor fellow his splendor.
+Be just, be reasonable! It 's not his fault, and it 's not mine. He 's
+the best, the kindest young man in the world, and the most correct and
+moral and virtuous! If he were standing here in rags, I would say it all
+the same. The man first--the money afterwards: that was always my motto,
+and always will be. What do you take me for? Do you suppose I would
+give Christina to a vicious person? do you suppose I would sacrifice my
+precious child, little comfort as I have in her, to a man against whose
+character one word could be breathed? Casamassima is only too good, he
+'s a saint of saints, he 's stupidly good! There is n't such another
+in the length and breadth of Europe. What he has been through in this
+house, not a common peasant would endure. Christina has treated him as
+you would n't treat a dog. He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted!
+He has been driven hither and thither till he did n't know where he
+was. He has stood there where you stand--there, with his name and his
+millions and his devotion--as white as your handkerchief, with hot tears
+in his eyes, and me ready to go down on my knees to him and say, 'My own
+sweet prince, I could kiss the ground you tread on, but it is n't decent
+that I should allow you to enter my house and expose yourself to these
+horrors again.' And he would come back, and he would come back, and go
+through it all again, and take all that was given him, and only want the
+girl the more! I was his confidant; I know everything. He used to beg
+my forgiveness for Christina. What do you say to that? I seized him once
+and kissed him, I did! To find that and to find all the rest with it,
+and to believe it was a gift straight from the pitying angels of heaven,
+and then to see it dashed away before your eyes and to stand here
+helpless--oh, it 's a fate I hope you may ever be spared!"
+
+"It would seem, then, that in the interest of Prince Casamassima himself
+I ought to refuse to interfere," said Rowland.
+
+Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes. The intensity
+of her grief and anger gave her a kind of majesty, and Rowland, for
+the moment, felt ashamed of the ironical ring of his observation. "Very
+good, sir," she said. "I 'm sorry your heart is not so tender as your
+conscience. My compliments to your conscience! It must give you great
+happiness. Heaven help me! Since you fail us, we are indeed driven to
+the wall. But I have fought my own battles before, and I have never lost
+courage, and I don't see why I should break down now. Cavaliere, come
+here!"
+
+Giacosa rose at her summons and advanced with his usual deferential
+alacrity. He shook hands with Rowland in silence.
+
+"Mr. Mallet refuses to say a word," Mrs. Light went on. "Time presses,
+every moment is precious. Heaven knows what that poor boy may be doing.
+If at this moment a clever woman should get hold of him she might be as
+ugly as she pleased! It 's horrible to think of it."
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes on Rowland, and his look, which the night
+before had been singular, was now most extraordinary. There was a
+nameless force of anguish in it which seemed to grapple with the young
+man's reluctance, to plead, to entreat, and at the same time to be
+glazed over with a reflection of strange things.
+
+Suddenly, though most vaguely, Rowland felt the presence of a new
+element in the drama that was going on before him. He looked from the
+Cavaliere to Mrs. Light, whose eyes were now quite dry, and were fixed
+in stony hardness on the floor.
+
+"If you could bring yourself," the Cavaliere said, in a low, soft,
+caressing voice, "to address a few words of solemn remonstrance to Miss
+Light, you would, perhaps, do more for us than you know. You would
+save several persons a great pain. The dear signora, first, and then
+Christina herself. Christina in particular. Me too, I might take the
+liberty to add!"
+
+There was, to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble
+petition. He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor
+little unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion
+of the mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched
+the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and
+it stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. Light. His idea
+embarrassed him, and to carry off his embarrassment, he repeated that
+it was folly to suppose that his words would have any weight with
+Christina.
+
+The Cavaliere stepped forward and laid two fingers on Rowland's breast.
+"Do you wish to know the truth? You are the only man whose words she
+remembers."
+
+Rowland was going from surprise to surprise. "I will say what I can!"
+he said. By this time he had ventured to glance at Mrs. Light. She was
+looking at him askance, as if, upon this, she was suddenly mistrusting
+his motives.
+
+"If you fail," she said sharply, "we have something else! But please to
+lose no time."
+
+She had hardly spoken when the sound of a short, sharp growl caused the
+company to turn. Christina's fleecy poodle stood in the middle of the
+vast saloon, with his muzzle lowered, in pompous defiance of the three
+conspirators against the comfort of his mistress. This young lady's
+claims for him seemed justified; he was an animal of amazingly delicate
+instincts. He had preceded Christina as a sort of van-guard of defense,
+and she now slowly advanced from a neighboring room.
+
+"You will be so good as to listen to Mr. Mallet," her mother said, in a
+terrible voice, "and to reflect carefully upon what he says. I suppose
+you will admit that he is disinterested. In half an hour you shall hear
+from me again!" And passing her hand through the Cavaliere's arm, she
+swept rapidly out of the room.
+
+Christina looked hard at Rowland, but offered him no greeting. She was
+very pale, and, strangely enough, it at first seemed to Rowland that
+her beauty was in eclipse. But he very soon perceived that it had only
+changed its character, and that if it was a trifle less brilliant than
+usual, it was admirably touching and noble. The clouded light of her
+eyes, the magnificent gravity of her features, the conscious erectness
+of her head, might have belonged to a deposed sovereign or a condemned
+martyr. "Why have you come here at this time?" she asked.
+
+"Your mother sent for me in pressing terms, and I was very glad to have
+an opportunity to speak to you."
+
+"Have you come to help me, or to persecute me?"
+
+"I have as little power to do one as I have desire to do the other.
+I came in great part to ask you a question. First, your decision is
+irrevocable?"
+
+Christina's two hands had been hanging clasped in front of her; she
+separated them and flung them apart by an admirable gesture.
+
+"Would you have done this if you had not seen Miss Garland?"
+
+She looked at him with quickened attention; then suddenly, "This is
+interesting!" she cried. "Let us have it out." And she flung herself
+into a chair and pointed to another.
+
+"You don't answer my question," Rowland said.
+
+"You have no right, that I know of, to ask it. But it 's a very clever
+one; so clever that it deserves an answer. Very likely I would not."
+
+"Last night, when I said that to myself, I was extremely angry," Rowland
+rejoined.
+
+"Oh, dear, and you are not angry now?"
+
+"I am less angry."
+
+"How very stupid! But you can say something at least."
+
+"If I were to say what is uppermost in my mind, I would say that, face
+to face with you, it is never possible to condemn you."
+
+"Perche?"
+
+"You know, yourself! But I can at least say now what I felt last night.
+It seemed to me that you had consciously, cruelly dealt a blow at that
+poor girl. Do you understand?"
+
+"Wait a moment!" And with her eyes fixed on him, she inclined her head
+on one side, meditatively. Then a cold, brilliant smile covered
+her face, and she made a gesture of negation. "I see your train of
+reasoning, but it 's quite wrong. I meant no harm to Miss Garland; I
+should be extremely sorry to make her suffer. Tell me you believe that."
+
+This was said with ineffable candor. Rowland heard himself answering, "I
+believe it!"
+
+"And yet, in a sense, your supposition was true," Christina continued.
+"I conceived, as I told you, a great admiration for Miss Garland, and I
+frankly confess I was jealous of her. What I envied her was simply
+her character! I said to myself, 'She, in my place, would n't marry
+Casamassima.' I could not help saying it, and I said it so often that I
+found a kind of inspiration in it. I hated the idea of being worse than
+she--of doing something that she would n't do. I might be bad by nature,
+but I need n't be by volition. The end of it all was that I found it
+impossible not to tell the prince that I was his very humble servant,
+but that I could not marry him."
+
+"Are you sure it was only of Miss Garland's character that you were
+jealous, not of--not of"--
+
+"Speak out, I beg you. We are talking philosophy!"
+
+"Not of her affection for her cousin?"
+
+"Sure is a good deal to ask. Still, I think I may say it! There are two
+reasons; one, at least, I can tell you: her affection has not a shadow's
+weight with Mr. Hudson! Why then should one fear it?"
+
+"And what is the other reason?"
+
+"Excuse me; that is my own affair."
+
+Rowland was puzzled, baffled, charmed, inspired, almost, all at once. "I
+have promised your mother," he presently resumed, "to say something in
+favor of Prince Casamassima."
+
+She shook her head sadly. "Prince Casamassima needs nothing that you can
+say for him. He is a magnificent parti. I know it perfectly."
+
+"You know also of the extreme affliction of your mother?"
+
+"Her affliction is demonstrative. She has been abusing me for the last
+twenty-four hours as if I were the vilest of the vile." To see Christina
+sit there in the purity of her beauty and say this, might have made one
+bow one's head with a kind of awe. "I have failed of respect to her
+at other times, but I have not done so now. Since we are talking
+philosophy," she pursued with a gentle smile, "I may say it 's a simple
+matter! I don't love him. Or rather, perhaps, since we are talking
+philosophy, I may say it 's not a simple matter. I spoke just now of
+inspiration. The inspiration has been great, but--I frankly confess
+it--the choice has been hard. Shall I tell you?" she demanded, with
+sudden ardor; "will you understand me? It was on the one side the world,
+the splendid, beautiful, powerful, interesting world. I know what that
+is; I have tasted of the cup, I know its sweetness. Ah, if I chose, if I
+let myself go, if I flung everything to the winds, the world and I would
+be famous friends! I know its merits, and I think, without vanity, it
+would see mine. You would see some fine things! I should like to be a
+princess, and I think I should be a very good one; I would play my part
+well. I am fond of luxury, I am fond of a great society, I am fond of
+being looked at. I am corrupt, corruptible, corruption! Ah, what a pity
+that could n't be, too! Mercy of Heaven!" There was a passionate tremor
+in her voice; she covered her face with her hands and sat motionless.
+Rowland saw that an intense agitation, hitherto successfully repressed,
+underlay her calmness, and he could easily believe that her battle had
+been fierce. She rose quickly and turned away, walked a few paces, and
+stopped. In a moment she was facing him again, with tears in her eyes
+and a flush in her cheeks. "But you need n't think I 'm afraid!" she
+said. "I have chosen, and I shall hold to it. I have something here,
+here, here!" and she patted her heart. "It 's my own. I shan't part
+with it. Is it what you call an ideal? I don't know; I don't care! It is
+brighter than the Casamassima diamonds!"
+
+"You say that certain things are your own affair," Rowland presently
+rejoined; "but I must nevertheless make an attempt to learn what all
+this means--what it promises for my friend Hudson. Is there any hope for
+him?"
+
+"This is a point I can't discuss with you minutely. I like him very
+much."
+
+"Would you marry him if he were to ask you?"
+
+"He has asked me."
+
+"And if he asks again?"
+
+"I shall marry no one just now."
+
+"Roderick," said Rowland, "has great hopes."
+
+"Does he know of my rupture with the prince?"
+
+"He is making a great holiday of it."
+
+Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to smooth his silky
+fleece. "I like him very much," she repeated; "much more than I used to.
+Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia's, I have felt a
+great friendship for him. There 's something very fine about him; he 's
+not afraid of anything. He is not afraid of failure; he is not afraid of
+ruin or death."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Rowland, bitterly; "he is fatally picturesque."
+
+"Picturesque, yes; that 's what he is. I am very sorry for him."
+
+"Your mother told me just now that you had said that you did n't care a
+straw for him."
+
+"Very likely! I meant as a lover. One does n't want a lover one pities,
+and one does n't want--of all things in the world--a picturesque
+husband! I should like Mr. Hudson as something else. I wish he were my
+brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage. Then I could
+adore him. I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all
+disagreeable rubs and shocks. I am much stronger than he, and I would
+stand between him and the world. Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother,
+I should be willing to live and die an old maid!"
+
+"Have you ever told him all this?"
+
+"I suppose so; I 've told him five hundred things! If it would please
+you, I will tell him again."
+
+"Oh, Heaven forbid!" cried poor Rowland, with a groan.
+
+He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation,
+and feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway
+was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room. She stopped half-way,
+and gave the young persons a flushed and menacing look. It found
+apparently little to reassure her, and she moved away with a passionate
+toss of her drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister
+compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal
+flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing;
+but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down
+to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn. She
+would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed gross to
+make further demands upon it on Roderick's behalf.
+
+Rowland took up his hat. "You asked a while ago if I had come to help
+you," he said. "If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly
+glad."
+
+She stood silent a moment, reflecting. Then at last, looking up, "You
+remember," she said, "your promising me six months ago to tell me what
+you finally thought of me? I should like you to tell me now."
+
+He could hardly help smiling. Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact
+that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one; and this little
+speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot. She had played her great
+scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole
+in the curtain and she was watching the house! But she blushed as she
+perceived his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault
+venial.
+
+"You are an excellent girl!" he said, in a particular tone, and gave her
+his hand in farewell.
+
+There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light's apartment, the pride
+and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing
+visitor passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these
+Rowland found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted lady
+herself.
+
+"Well, well?" she cried, seizing his arm. "Has she listened to you--have
+you moved her?"
+
+"In Heaven's name, dear madame," Rowland begged, "leave the poor girl
+alone! She is behaving very well!"
+
+"Behaving very well? Is that all you have to tell me? I don't believe
+you said a proper word to her. You are conspiring together to kill me!"
+
+Rowland tried to soothe her, to remonstrate, to persuade her that it was
+equally cruel and unwise to try to force matters. But she answered him
+only with harsh lamentations and imprecations, and ended by telling him
+that her daughter was her property, not his, and that his interference
+was most insolent and most scandalous. Her disappointment seemed really
+to have crazed her, and his only possible rejoinder was to take a
+summary departure.
+
+A moment later he came upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting with his
+elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried in thought that
+Rowland had to call him before he roused himself. Giacosa looked at him
+a moment keenly, and then gave a shake of the head, interrogatively.
+
+Rowland gave a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded by a
+long, melancholy sigh. "But her mother is determined to force matters,"
+said Rowland.
+
+"It seems that it must be!"
+
+"Do you consider that it must be?"
+
+"I don't differ with Mrs. Light!"
+
+"It will be a great cruelty!"
+
+The Cavaliere gave a tragic shrug. "Eh! it is n't an easy world."
+
+"You should do nothing to make it harder, then."
+
+"What will you have? It 's a magnificent marriage."
+
+"You disappoint me, Cavaliere," said Rowland, solemnly. "I imagined you
+appreciated the great elevation of Miss Light's attitude. She does n't
+love the prince; she has let the matter stand or fall by that."
+
+The old man grasped him by the hand and stood a moment with averted
+eyes. At last, looking at him, he held up two fingers.
+
+"I have two hearts," he said, "one for myself, one for the world. This
+one opposes Miss Light, the other adores her! One suffers horribly at
+what the other does."
+
+"I don't understand double people, Cavaliere," Rowland said, "and I
+don't pretend to understand you. But I have guessed that you are going
+to play some secret card."
+
+"The card is Mrs. Light's, not mine," said the Cavaliere.
+
+"It 's a menace, at any rate?"
+
+"The sword of Damocles! It hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten
+minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there
+is something written in strange characters. Don't scratch your head; you
+will not make it out."
+
+"I think I have guessed it," Rowland said, after a pregnant silence. The
+Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added, "Though
+there are some signs, indeed, I don't understand."
+
+"Puzzle them out at your leisure," said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand.
+"I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post. I wish you were a Catholic; I
+would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us
+the next half-hour."
+
+"For 'us'? For whom?"
+
+"For all of us. At any rate remember this: I worship the Christina!"
+
+Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light's dress; he turned away, and the
+Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post. Rowland for the next couple of
+days pondered his riddle.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. Mrs. Hudson
+
+Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went to
+Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally good
+health and spirits. After this he called again on the two ladies from
+Northampton, but, as Roderick's absence continued, he was able neither
+to furnish nor to obtain much comfort. Miss Garland's apprehensive
+face seemed to him an image of his own state of mind. He was profoundly
+depressed; he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished
+it would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages. On the
+afternoon of the third day he went into Saint Peter's, his frequent
+resort whenever the outer world was disagreeable. From a heart-ache to
+a Roman rain there were few importunate pains the great church did not
+help him to forget. He had wandered there for half an hour, when he came
+upon a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers. He
+saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a
+memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery of the basilica; and
+in a moment he perceived that the artist was little Sam Singleton.
+
+Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his
+modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity.
+Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days,
+was as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk.
+There was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips
+to some simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense of
+extreme moral refreshment. On this occasion he mentally blessed the
+ingenuous little artist, and heard presently with keen regret that he
+was to leave Rome on the morrow. Singleton had come to bid farewell
+to Saint Peter's, and he was gathering a few supreme memories. He had
+earned a purse-full of money, and he was meaning to take a summer's
+holiday; going to Switzerland, to Germany, to Paris. In the autumn he
+was to return home; his family--composed, as Rowland knew, of a father
+who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried sisters, one of whom gave
+lyceum-lectures on woman's rights, the whole resident at Buffalo, New
+York--had been writing him peremptory letters and appealing to him as
+a son, brother, and fellow-citizen. He would have been grateful for
+another year in Rome, but what must be must be, and he had laid up
+treasure which, in Buffalo, would seem infinite. They talked some time;
+Rowland hoped they might meet in Switzerland, and take a walk or two
+together. Singleton seemed to feel that Buffalo had marked him for her
+own; he was afraid he should not see Rome again for many a year.
+
+"So you expect to live at Buffalo?" Rowland asked sympathetically.
+
+"Well, it will depend upon the views--upon the attitude--of my family,"
+Singleton replied. "Oh, I think I shall get on; I think it can be done.
+If I find it can be done, I shall really be quite proud of it; as an
+artist of course I mean, you know. Do you know I have some nine hundred
+sketches? I shall live in my portfolio. And so long as one is not in
+Rome, pray what does it matter where one is? But how I shall envy all
+you Romans--you and Mr. Gloriani, and Mr. Hudson, especially!"
+
+"Don't envy Hudson; he has nothing to envy."
+
+Singleton grinned at what he considered a harmless jest. "Yes, he 's
+going to be the great man of our time! And I say, Mr. Mallet, is n't it
+a mighty comfort that it 's we who have turned him out?"
+
+"Between ourselves," said Rowland, "he has disappointed me."
+
+Singleton stared, open-mouthed. "Dear me, what did you expect?"
+
+"Truly," said Rowland to himself, "what did I expect?"
+
+"I confess," cried Singleton, "I can't judge him rationally. He
+fascinates me; he 's the sort of man one makes one's hero of."
+
+"Strictly speaking, he is not a hero," said Rowland.
+
+Singleton looked intensely grave, and, with almost tearful eyes, "Is
+there anything amiss--anything out of the way, about him?" he timidly
+asked. Then, as Rowland hesitated to reply, he quickly added, "Please,
+if there is, don't tell me! I want to know no evil of him, and I think
+I should hardly believe it. In my memories of this Roman artist-life,
+he will be the central figure. He will stand there in radiant relief, as
+beautiful and unspotted as one of his own statues!"
+
+"Amen!" said Rowland, gravely. He remembered afresh that the sea is
+inhabited by big fishes and little, and that the latter often find their
+way down the throats of the former. Singleton was going to spend the
+afternoon in taking last looks at certain other places, and Rowland
+offered to join him on his sentimental circuit. But as they were
+preparing to leave the church, he heard himself suddenly addressed from
+behind. Turning, he beheld a young woman whom he immediately recognized
+as Madame Grandoni's maid. Her mistress was present, she said, and
+begged to confer with him before he departed.
+
+This summons obliged Rowland to separate from Singleton, to whom he bade
+farewell. He followed the messenger, and presently found Madame Grandoni
+occupying a liberal area on the steps of the tribune, behind the great
+altar, where, spreading a shawl on the polished red marble, she had
+comfortably seated herself. He expected that she had something especial
+to impart, and she lost no time in bringing forth her treasure.
+
+"Don't shout very loud," she said, "remember that we are in church;
+there 's a limit to the noise one may make even in Saint Peter's.
+Christina Light was married this morning to Prince Casamassima."
+
+Rowland did not shout at all; he gave a deep, short murmur:
+"Married--this morning?"
+
+"Married this morning, at seven o'clock, le plus tranquillement du
+monde, before three or four persons. The young couple left Rome an hour
+afterwards."
+
+For some moments this seemed to him really terrible; the dark little
+drama of which he had caught a glimpse had played itself out. He had
+believed that Christina would resist; that she had succumbed was a proof
+that the pressure had been cruel. Rowland's imagination followed her
+forth with an irresistible tremor into the world toward which she was
+rolling away, with her detested husband and her stifled ideal; but it
+must be confessed that if the first impulse of his compassion was
+for Christina, the second was for Prince Casamassima. Madame Grandoni
+acknowledged an extreme curiosity as to the secret springs of these
+strange doings: Casamassima's sudden dismissal, his still more sudden
+recall, the hurried private marriage. "Listen," said Rowland, hereupon,
+"and I will tell you something." And he related, in detail, his last
+visit to Mrs. Light and his talk with this lady, with Christina, and
+with the Cavaliere.
+
+"Good," she said; "it 's all very curious. But it 's a riddle, and I
+only half guess it."
+
+"Well," said Rowland, "I desire to harm no one; but certain suppositions
+have taken shape in my mind which serve as a solvent to several
+ambiguities."
+
+"It is very true," Madame Grandoni answered, "that the Cavaliere, as he
+stands, has always needed to be explained."
+
+"He is explained by the hypothesis that, three-and-twenty years ago, at
+Ancona, Mrs. Light had a lover."
+
+"I see. Ancona was dull, Mrs. Light was lively, and--three-and-twenty
+years ago--perhaps, the Cavaliere was fascinating. Doubtless it would be
+fairer to say that he was fascinated. Poor Giacosa!"
+
+"He has had his compensation," Rowland said. "He has been passionately
+fond of Christina."
+
+"Naturally. But has Christina never wondered why?"
+
+"If she had been near guessing, her mother's shabby treatment of him
+would have put her off the scent. Mrs. Light's conscience has apparently
+told her that she could expiate an hour's too great kindness by twenty
+years' contempt. So she kept her secret. But what is the profit of
+having a secret unless you can make some use of it? The day at last came
+when she could turn hers to account; she could let the skeleton out of
+the closet and create a panic."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Neither do I morally," said Rowland. "I only conceive that there was a
+horrible, fabulous scene. The poor Cavaliere stood outside, at the
+door, white as a corpse and as dumb. The mother and daughter had it out
+together. Mrs. Light burnt her ships. When she came out she had three
+lines of writing in her daughter's hand, which the Cavaliere was
+dispatched with to the prince. They overtook the young man in time, and,
+when he reappeared, he was delighted to dispense with further waiting. I
+don't know what he thought of the look in his bride's face; but that is
+how I roughly reconstruct history."
+
+"Christina was forced to decide, then, that she could not afford not to
+be a princess?"
+
+"She was reduced by humiliation. She was assured that it was not for her
+to make conditions, but to thank her stars that there were none made for
+her. If she persisted, she might find it coming to pass that there would
+be conditions, and the formal rupture--the rupture that the world would
+hear of and pry into--would then proceed from the prince and not from
+her."
+
+"That 's all nonsense!" said Madame Grandoni, energetically.
+
+"To us, yes; but not to the proudest girl in the world, deeply wounded
+in her pride, and not stopping to calculate probabilities, but muffling
+her shame, with an almost sensuous relief, in a splendor that stood
+within her grasp and asked no questions. Is it not possible that the
+late Mr. Light had made an outbreak before witnesses who are still
+living?"
+
+"Certainly her marriage now," said Madame Grandoni, less analytically,
+"has the advantage that it takes her away from her--parents!"
+
+This lady's farther comments upon the event are not immediately
+pertinent to our history; there were some other comments of which
+Rowland had a deeply oppressive foreboding. He called, on the evening
+of the morrow upon Mrs. Hudson, and found Roderick with the two
+ladies. Their companion had apparently but lately entered, and Rowland
+afterwards learned that it was his first appearance since the writing of
+the note which had so distressed his mother. He had flung himself upon
+a sofa, where he sat with his chin upon his breast, staring before him
+with a sinister spark in his eye. He fixed his gaze on Rowland, but gave
+him no greeting. He had evidently been saying something to startle the
+women; Mrs. Hudson had gone and seated herself, timidly and imploringly,
+on the edge of the sofa, trying to take his hand. Miss Garland was
+applying herself to some needlework with conscious intentness.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gave Rowland, on his entrance, a touching look of gratitude.
+"Oh, we have such blessed news!" she said. "Roderick is ready to leave
+Rome."
+
+"It 's not blessed news; it 's most damnable news!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Oh, but we are very glad, my son, and I am sure you will be when you
+get away. You 're looking most dreadfully thin; is n't he, Mr. Mallet?
+It 's plain enough you need a change. I 'm sure we will go wherever you
+like. Where would you like to go?"
+
+Roderick turned his head slowly and looked at her. He had let her take
+his hand, which she pressed tenderly between her own. He gazed at
+her for some time in silence. "Poor mother!" he said at last, in a
+portentous tone.
+
+"My own dear son!" murmured Mrs. Hudson in all the innocence of her
+trust.
+
+"I don't care a straw where you go! I don't care a straw for anything!"
+
+"Oh, my dear boy, you must not say that before all of us here--before
+Mary, before Mr. Mallet!"
+
+"Mary--Mr. Mallet?" Roderick repeated, almost savagely. He released
+himself from the clasp of his mother's hand and turned away, leaning
+his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. There was a
+silence; Rowland said nothing because he was watching Miss Garland. "Why
+should I stand on ceremony with Mary and Mr. Mallet?" Roderick presently
+added. "Mary pretends to believe I 'm a fine fellow, and if she believes
+it as she ought to, nothing I can say will alter her opinion. Mallet
+knows I 'm a hopeless humbug; so I need n't mince my words with him."
+
+"Ah, my dear, don't use such dreadful language!" said Mrs. Hudson. "Are
+n't we all devoted to you, and proud of you, and waiting only to hear
+what you want, so that we may do it?"
+
+Roderick got up, and began to walk about the room; he was evidently in a
+restless, reckless, profoundly demoralized condition. Rowland felt that
+it was literally true that he did not care a straw for anything, but
+he observed with anxiety that Mrs. Hudson, who did not know on what
+delicate ground she was treading, was disposed to chide him caressingly,
+as a mere expression of tenderness. He foresaw that she would bring down
+the hovering thunderbolt on her head.
+
+"In God's name," Roderick cried, "don't remind me of my obligations! It
+'s intolerable to me, and I don't believe it 's pleasant to Mallet.
+I know they 're tremendous--I know I shall never repay them. I 'm
+bankrupt! Do you know what that means?"
+
+The poor lady sat staring, dismayed, and Rowland angrily interfered.
+"Don't talk such stuff to your mother!" he cried. "Don't you see you 're
+frightening her?"
+
+"Frightening her? she may as well be frightened first as last. Do I
+frighten you, mother?" Roderick demanded.
+
+"Oh, Roderick, what do you mean?" whimpered the poor lady. "Mr. Mallet,
+what does he mean?"
+
+"I mean that I 'm an angry, savage, disappointed, miserable man!"
+Roderick went on. "I mean that I can't do a stroke of work nor think
+a profitable thought! I mean that I 'm in a state of helpless rage and
+grief and shame! Helpless, helpless--that 's what it is. You can't help
+me, poor mother--not with kisses, nor tears, nor prayers! Mary can't
+help me--not for all the honor she does me, nor all the big books on art
+that she pores over. Mallet can't help me--not with all his money, nor
+all his good example, nor all his friendship, which I 'm so profoundly
+well aware of: not with it all multiplied a thousand times and repeated
+to all eternity! I thought you would help me, you and Mary; that 's why
+I sent for you. But you can't, don't think it! The sooner you give up
+the idea the better for you. Give up being proud of me, too; there
+'s nothing left of me to be proud of! A year ago I was a mighty fine
+fellow; but do you know what has become of me now? I have gone to the
+devil!"
+
+There was something in the ring of Roderick's voice, as he uttered these
+words, which sent them home with convincing force. He was not talking
+for effect, or the mere sensuous pleasure of extravagant and paradoxical
+utterance, as had often enough been the case ere this; he was not
+even talking viciously or ill-humoredly. He was talking passionately,
+desperately, and from an irresistible need to throw off the oppressive
+burden of his mother's confidence. His cruel eloquence brought the poor
+lady to her feet, and she stood there with clasped hands, petrified
+and voiceless. Mary Garland quickly left her place, came straight to
+Roderick, and laid her hand on his arm, looking at him with all her
+tormented heart in her eyes. He made no movement to disengage himself;
+he simply shook his head several times, in dogged negation of her
+healing powers. Rowland had been living for the past month in such
+intolerable expectancy of disaster that now that the ice was broken, and
+the fatal plunge taken, his foremost feeling was almost elation; but
+in a moment his orderly instincts and his natural love of superficial
+smoothness overtook it.
+
+"I really don't see, Roderick," he said, "the profit of your talking in
+just this way at just this time. Don't you see how you are making your
+mother suffer?"
+
+"Do I enjoy it myself?" cried Roderick. "Is the suffering all on your
+side and theirs? Do I look as if I were happy, and were stirring you
+up with a stick for my amusement? Here we all are in the same boat; we
+might as well understand each other! These women must know that I 'm not
+to be counted on. That sounds remarkably cool, no doubt, and I certainly
+don't deny your right to be utterly disgusted with me."
+
+"Will you keep what you have got to say till another time," said Mary,
+"and let me hear it alone?"
+
+"Oh, I 'll let you hear it as often as you please; but what 's the use
+of keeping it? I 'm in the humor; it won't keep! It 's a very simple
+matter. I 'm a failure, that 's all; I 'm not a first-rate man. I 'm
+second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please. After that, it 's all
+one!"
+
+Mary Garland turned away and buried her face in her hands; but Roderick,
+struck, apparently, in some unwonted fashion with her gesture, drew
+her towards him again, and went on in a somewhat different tone. "It 's
+hardly worth while we should have any private talk about this, Mary," he
+said. "The thing would be comfortable for neither of us. It 's better,
+after all, that it be said once for all and dismissed. There are
+things I can't talk to you about. Can I, at least? You are such a queer
+creature!"
+
+"I can imagine nothing you should n't talk to me about," said Mary.
+
+"You are not afraid?" he demanded, sharply, looking at her.
+
+She turned away abruptly, with lowered eyes, hesitating a moment.
+"Anything you think I should hear, I will hear," she said. And then she
+returned to her place at the window and took up her work.
+
+"I have had a great blow," said Roderick. "I was a great ass, but it
+does n't make the blow any easier to bear."
+
+"Mr. Mallet, tell me what Roderick means!" said Mrs. Hudson, who had
+found her voice, in a tone more peremptory than Rowland had ever heard
+her use.
+
+"He ought to have told you before," said Roderick. "Really, Rowland,
+if you will allow me to say so, you ought! You could have given a much
+better account of all this than I myself; better, especially, in that
+it would have been more lenient to me. You ought to have let them down
+gently; it would have saved them a great deal of pain. But you always
+want to keep things so smooth! Allow me to say that it 's very weak of
+you."
+
+"I hereby renounce such weakness!" said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, what is it, sir; what is it?" groaned Mrs. Hudson, insistently.
+
+"It 's what Roderick says: he 's a failure!"
+
+Mary Garland, on hearing this declaration, gave Rowland a single glance
+and then rose, laid down her work, and walked rapidly out of the room.
+Mrs. Hudson tossed her head and timidly bristled. "This from you, Mr.
+Mallet!" she said with an injured air which Rowland found harrowing.
+
+But Roderick, most characteristically, did not in the least resent his
+friend's assertion; he sent him, on the contrary, one of those large,
+clear looks of his, which seemed to express a stoical pleasure in
+Rowland's frankness, and which set his companion, then and there,
+wondering again, as he had so often done before, at the extraordinary
+contradictions of his temperament. "My dear mother," Roderick said, "if
+you had had eyes that were not blinded by this sad maternal vanity, you
+would have seen all this for yourself; you would have seen that I 'm
+anything but prosperous."
+
+"Is it anything about money?" cried Mrs. Hudson. "Oh, do write to Mr.
+Striker!"
+
+"Money?" said Roderick. "I have n't a cent of money; I 'm bankrupt!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Mallet, how could you let him?" asked Mrs. Hudson, terribly.
+
+"Everything I have is at his service," said Rowland, feeling ill.
+
+"Of course Mr. Mallet will help you, my son!" cried the poor lady,
+eagerly.
+
+"Oh, leave Mr. Mallet alone!" said Roderick. "I have squeezed him dry;
+it 's not my fault, at least, if I have n't!"
+
+"Roderick, what have you done with all your money?" his mother demanded.
+
+"Thrown it away! It was no such great amount. I have done nothing this
+winter."
+
+"You have done nothing?"
+
+"I have done no work! Why in the world did n't you guess it and spare me
+all this? Could n't you see I was idle, distracted, dissipated?"
+
+"Dissipated, my dear son?" Mrs. Hudson repeated.
+
+"That 's over for the present! But could n't you see--could n't Mary
+see--that I was in a damnably bad way?"
+
+"I have no doubt Miss Garland saw," said Rowland.
+
+"Mary has said nothing!" cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"Oh, she 's a fine girl!" Rowland said.
+
+"Have you done anything that will hurt poor Mary?" Mrs. Hudson asked.
+
+"I have only been thinking night and day of another woman!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson dropped helplessly into her seat again. "Oh dear, dear, had
+n't we better go home?"
+
+"Not to get out of her way!" Roderick said. "She has started on a career
+of her own, and she does n't care a straw for me. My head was filled
+with her; I could think of nothing else; I would have sacrificed
+everything to her--you, Mary, Mallet, my work, my fortune, my future, my
+honor! I was in a fine state, eh? I don't pretend to be giving you good
+news; but I 'm telling the simple, literal truth, so that you may know
+why I have gone to the dogs. She pretended to care greatly for all this,
+and to be willing to make any sacrifice in return; she had a magnificent
+chance, for she was being forced into a mercenary marriage with a man
+she detested. She led me to believe that she would give this up, and
+break short off, and keep herself free and sacred and pure for me. This
+was a great honor, and you may believe that I valued it. It turned
+my head, and I lived only to see my happiness come to pass. She did
+everything to encourage me to hope it would; everything that her
+infernal coquetry and falsity could suggest."
+
+"Oh, I say, this is too much!" Rowland broke out.
+
+"Do you defend her?" Roderick cried, with a renewal of his passion. "Do
+you pretend to say that she gave me no hopes?" He had been speaking
+with growing bitterness, quite losing sight of his mother's pain and
+bewilderment in the passionate joy of publishing his wrongs. Since he
+was hurt, he must cry out; since he was in pain, he must scatter his
+pain abroad. Of his never thinking of others, save as they spoke and
+moved from his cue, as it were, this extraordinary insensibility to the
+injurious effects of his eloquence was a capital example; the more so
+as the motive of his eloquence was never an appeal for sympathy or
+compassion, things to which he seemed perfectly indifferent and of which
+he could make no use. The great and characteristic point with him was
+the perfect absoluteness of his own emotions and experience. He never
+saw himself as part of a whole; only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged,
+isolated individual, rejoicing or raging, as the case might be, but
+needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself. All this, to Rowland,
+was ancient history, but his perception of it stirred within him afresh,
+at the sight of Roderick's sense of having been betrayed. That he,
+under the circumstances, should not in fairness be the first to lodge a
+complaint of betrayal was a point to which, at his leisure, Rowland was
+of course capable of rendering impartial justice; but Roderick's
+present desperation was so peremptory that it imposed itself on one's
+sympathies. "Do you pretend to say," he went on, "that she did n't lead
+me along to the very edge of fulfillment and stupefy me with all that
+she suffered me to believe, all that she sacredly promised? It amused
+her to do it, and she knew perfectly well what she really meant. She
+never meant to be sincere; she never dreamed she could be. She 's a
+ravenous flirt, and why a flirt is a flirt is more than I can tell you.
+I can't understand playing with those matters; for me they 're serious,
+whether I take them up or lay them down. I don't see what 's in your
+head, Rowland, to attempt to defend Miss Light; you were the first to
+cry out against her! You told me she was dangerous, and I pooh-poohed
+you. You were right; you 're always right. She 's as cold and false and
+heartless as she 's beautiful, and she has sold her heartless beauty to
+the highest bidder. I hope he knows what he gets!"
+
+"Oh, my son," cried Mrs. Hudson, plaintively, "how could you ever care
+for such a dreadful creature?"
+
+"It would take long to tell you, dear mother!"
+
+Rowland's lately-deepened sympathy and compassion for Christina was
+still throbbing in his mind, and he felt that, in loyalty to it, he
+must say a word for her. "You believed in her too much at first," he
+declared, "and you believe in her too little now."
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes almost lurid, beneath lowering brows.
+"She is an angel, then, after all?--that 's what you want to prove!"
+he cried. "That 's consoling for me, who have lost her! You 're always
+right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy, be wrong for once!"
+
+"Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, be merciful!" said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which,
+for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow's stare
+covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension--a
+presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be
+capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity. There was no
+space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling,
+and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching
+on top of it. She was evidently not following Roderick at all in his
+dusky aberrations. Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was
+darkness and trouble, and as Roderick's glory had now quite outstripped
+her powers of imagination and urged him beyond her jurisdiction, so that
+he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame, she found it
+infinitely comfortable to lay the burden of their common affliction upon
+Rowland's broad shoulders. Had he not promised to make them all rich and
+happy? And this was the end of it! Rowland felt as if his trials were,
+in a sense, only beginning. "Had n't you better forget all this, my
+dear?" Mrs. Hudson said. "Had n't you better just quietly attend to your
+work?"
+
+"Work, madame?" cried Roderick. "My work 's over. I can't work--I have
+n't worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental
+collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and
+break the spell of my idleness. But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And
+he tapped his forehead. "It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every
+hour!"
+
+"I 'm sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little
+mother," said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.
+
+"I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since! I quarreled
+with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my
+nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!"
+
+"Threw away--five thousand dollars!" Roderick had been wandering among
+formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate. But here
+was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment,
+looked it in the face. She repeated her son's words a third time with a
+gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears. Roderick
+went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
+coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out. She leaned
+her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly. She said not a
+word, she made no attempt to scold; but the desolation of her tears was
+overwhelming. It lasted some time--too long for Rowland's courage. He
+had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful; but the
+elation that was mentioned a while since had utterly ebbed, and he found
+his situation intolerable. He walked away--not, perhaps, on tiptoe, but
+with a total absence of bravado in his tread.
+
+The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought him the card of
+a visitor. He read with surprise the name of Mrs. Hudson, and hurried
+forward to meet her. He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the
+arm of her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her
+lips tightly compressed. Her advent puzzled him, and it was not for
+some time that he began to understand the motive of it. Roderick's
+countenance threw no light upon it; but Roderick's countenance, full of
+light as it was, in a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything.
+He had not been in Rowland's rooms for several weeks, and he immediately
+began to look at those of his own works that adorned them. He lost
+himself in silent contemplation. Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself
+with dignity, and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive.
+Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland's whole attention
+centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep. She told him that she
+had come to him for practical advice; she begged to remind him that she
+was a stranger in the land. Where were they to go, please? what were
+they to do? Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his back
+turned and was gazing at his Adam with the intensity with which he might
+have examined Michael Angelo's Moses.
+
+"Roderick says he does n't know, he does n't care," Mrs. Hudson said;
+"he leaves it entirely to you."
+
+Many another man, in Rowland's place, would have greeted this
+information with an irate and sarcastic laugh, and told his visitors
+that he thanked them infinitely for their confidence, but that, really,
+as things stood now, they must settle these matters between themselves;
+many another man might have so demeaned himself, even if, like Rowland,
+he had been in love with Mary Garland and pressingly conscious that
+her destiny was also part of the question. But Rowland swallowed all
+hilarity and all sarcasm, and let himself seriously consider Mrs.
+Hudson's petition. His wits, however, were but indifferently at his
+command; they were dulled by his sense of the inexpressible change in
+Mrs. Hudson's attitude. Her visit was evidently intended as a formal
+reminder of the responsiblities Rowland had worn so lightly. Mrs. Hudson
+was doubtless too sincerely humble a person to suppose that if he had
+been recreant to his vows of vigilance and tenderness, her still, small
+presence would operate as a chastisement. But by some diminutive logical
+process of her own she had convinced herself that she had been weakly
+trustful, and that she had suffered Rowland to think too meanly, not
+only of her understanding, but of her social consequence. A visit in
+her best gown would have an admonitory effect as regards both of these
+attributes; it would cancel some favors received, and show him that she
+was no such fool! These were the reflections of a very shy woman,
+who, determining for once in her life to hold up her head, was perhaps
+carrying it a trifle extravagantly.
+
+"You know we have very little money to spend," she said, as Rowland
+remained silent. "Roderick tells me that he has debts and nothing at all
+to pay them with. He says I must write to Mr. Striker to sell my house
+for what it will bring, and send me out the money. When the money comes
+I must give it to him. I 'm sure I don't know; I never heard of anything
+so dreadful! My house is all I have. But that is all Roderick will say.
+We must be very economical."
+
+Before this speech was finished Mrs. Hudson's voice had begun to quaver
+softly, and her face, which had no capacity for the expression of
+superior wisdom, to look as humbly appealing as before. Rowland turned
+to Roderick and spoke like a school-master. "Come away from those
+statues, and sit down here and listen to me!"
+
+Roderick started, but obeyed with the most graceful docility.
+
+"What do you propose to your mother to do?" Rowland asked.
+
+"Propose?" said Roderick, absently. "Oh, I propose nothing."
+
+The tone, the glance, the gesture with which this was said were horribly
+irritating (though obviously without the slightest intention of being
+so), and for an instant an imprecation rose to Rowland's lips. But he
+checked it, and he was afterwards glad he had done so. "You must do
+something," he said. "Choose, select, decide!"
+
+"My dear Rowland, how you talk!" Roderick cried. "The very point of the
+matter is that I can't do anything. I will do as I 'm told, but I don't
+call that doing. We must leave Rome, I suppose, though I don't see why.
+We have got no money, and you have to pay money on the railroads."
+
+Mrs. Hudson surreptitiously wrung her hands. "Listen to him, please!"
+she cried. "Not leave Rome, when we have staid here later than any
+Christians ever did before! It 's this dreadful place that has made us
+so unhappy."
+
+"That 's very true," said Roderick, serenely. "If I had not come to
+Rome, I would n't have risen, and if I had not risen, I should n't have
+fallen."
+
+"Fallen--fallen!" murmured Mrs. Hudson. "Just hear him!"
+
+"I will do anything you say, Rowland," Roderick added. "I will do
+anything you want. I have not been unkind to my mother--have I, mother?
+I was unkind yesterday, without meaning it; for after all, all that had
+to be said. Murder will out, and my low spirits can't be hidden. But we
+talked it over and made it up, did n't we? It seemed to me we did.
+Let Rowland decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right
+thing." And Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the statues,
+got up again and went back to look at them.
+
+Mrs. Hudson fixed her eyes upon the floor in silence. There was not
+a trace in Roderick's face, or in his voice, of the bitterness of his
+emotion of the day before, and not a hint of his having the lightest
+weight upon his conscience. He looked at Rowland with his frank,
+luminous eye as if there had never been a difference of opinion between
+them; as if each had ever been for both, unalterably, and both for each.
+
+Rowland had received a few days before a letter from a lady of his
+acquaintance, a worthy Scotswoman domiciled in a villa upon one of the
+olive-covered hills near Florence. She held her apartment in the villa
+upon a long lease, and she enjoyed for a sum not worth mentioning the
+possession of an extraordinary number of noble, stone-floored rooms,
+with ceilings vaulted and frescoed, and barred windows commanding the
+loveliest view in the world. She was a needy and thrifty spinster, who
+never hesitated to declare that the lovely view was all very well, but
+that for her own part she lived in the villa for cheapness, and that
+if she had a clear three hundred pounds a year she would go and really
+enjoy life near her sister, a baronet's lady, at Glasgow. She was now
+proposing to make a visit to that exhilarating city, and she desired to
+turn an honest penny by sub-letting for a few weeks her historic Italian
+chambers. The terms on which she occupied them enabled her to ask a rent
+almost jocosely small, and she begged Rowland to do what she called a
+little genteel advertising for her. Would he say a good word for her
+rooms to his numerous friends, as they left Rome? He said a good word
+for them now to Mrs. Hudson, and told her in dollars and cents how cheap
+a summer's lodging she might secure. He dwelt upon the fact that she
+would strike a truce with tables-d'hote and have a cook of her own,
+amenable possibly to instruction in the Northampton mysteries. He
+had touched a tender chord; Mrs. Hudson became almost cheerful. Her
+sentiments upon the table-d'hote system and upon foreign household
+habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had space for it, would
+repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul to the Puritanic
+canons of cookery quite lightened the burden of her depression. While
+Rowland set forth his case Roderick was slowly walking round the
+magnificent Adam, with his hands in his pockets. Rowland waited for him
+to manifest an interest in their discussion, but the statue seemed to
+fascinate him and he remained calmly heedless. Rowland was a practical
+man; he possessed conspicuously what is called the sense of detail. He
+entered into Mrs. Hudson's position minutely, and told her exactly why
+it seemed good that she should remove immediately to the Florentine
+villa. She received his advice with great frigidity, looking hard at the
+floor and sighing, like a person well on her guard against an insidious
+optimism. But she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received
+her permission to write to his friend that he had let the rooms.
+
+Roderick assented to this decision without either sighs or smiles. "A
+Florentine villa is a good thing!" he said. "I am at your service."
+
+"I 'm sure I hope you 'll get better there," moaned his mother,
+gathering her shawl together.
+
+Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed to
+Rowland's statues. "Better or worse, remember this: I did those things!"
+he said.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, "Remember it
+yourself!"
+
+"They are horribly good!" said Roderick.
+
+Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him that he
+had nothing more to say. But as the others were going, a last light
+pulsation of the sense of undischarged duty led him to address to
+Roderick a few words of parting advice. "You 'll find the Villa
+Pandolfini very delightful, very comfortable," he said. "You ought to
+be very contented there. Whether you work or whether you loaf, it 's a
+place for an artist to be happy in. I hope you will work."
+
+"I hope I may!" said Roderick with a magnificent smile.
+
+"When we meet again, have something to show me."
+
+"When we meet again? Where the deuce are you going?" Roderick demanded.
+
+"Oh, I hardly know; over the Alps."
+
+"Over the Alps! You 're going to leave me?" Roderick cried.
+
+Rowland had most distinctly meant to leave him, but his resolution
+immediately wavered. He glanced at Mrs. Hudson and saw that her eyebrows
+were lifted and her lips parted in soft irony. She seemed to accuse him
+of a craven shirking of trouble, to demand of him to repair his
+cruel havoc in her life by a solemn renewal of zeal. But Roderick's
+expectations were the oddest! Such as they were, Rowland asked himself
+why he should n't make a bargain with them. "You desire me to go with
+you?" he asked.
+
+"If you don't go, I won't--that 's all! How in the world shall I get
+through the summer without you?"
+
+"How will you get through it with me? That 's the question."
+
+"I don't pretend to say; the future is a dead blank. But without you it
+'s not a blank--it 's certain damnation!"
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" murmured Mrs. Hudson.
+
+Rowland made an effort to stand firm, and for a moment succeeded. "If I
+go with you, will you try to work?"
+
+Roderick, up to this moment, had been looking as unperturbed as if the
+deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at
+these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all
+his passion returned. "Try to work!" he cried. "Try--try! work--work! In
+God's name don't talk that way, or you 'll drive me mad! Do you suppose
+I 'm trying not to work? Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun
+of it? Don't you suppose I would try to work for myself before I tried
+for you?"
+
+"Mr. Mallet," cried Mrs. Hudson, piteously, "will you leave me alone
+with this?"
+
+Rowland turned to her and informed her, gently, that he would go with
+her to Florence. After he had so pledged himself he thought not at all
+of the pain of his position as mediator between the mother's resentful
+grief and the son's incurable weakness; he drank deep, only, of the
+satisfaction of not separating from Mary Garland. If the future was a
+blank to Roderick, it was hardly less so to himself. He had at moments
+a lively foreboding of impending calamity. He paid it no especial
+deference, but it made him feel indisposed to take the future into his
+account. When, on his going to take leave of Madame Grandoni, this lady
+asked at what time he would come back to Rome, he answered that he was
+coming back either never or forever. When she asked him what he meant,
+he said he really could n't tell her, and parted from her with much
+genuine emotion; the more so, doubtless, that she blessed him in a quite
+loving, maternal fashion, and told him she honestly believed him to be
+the best fellow in the world.
+
+The Villa Pandolfini stood directly upon a small grass-grown piazza,
+on the top of a hill which sloped straight from one of the gates of
+Florence. It offered to the outer world a long, rather low facade,
+colored a dull, dark yellow, and pierced with windows of various sizes,
+no one of which, save those on the ground floor, was on the same level
+with any other. Within, it had a great, cool, gray cortile, with high,
+light arches around it, heavily-corniced doors, of majestic altitude,
+opening out of it, and a beautiful mediaeval well on one side of it.
+Mrs. Hudson's rooms opened into a small garden supported on immense
+substructions, which were planted on the farther side of the hill, as
+it sloped steeply away. This garden was a charming place. Its south wall
+was curtained with a dense orange vine, a dozen fig-trees offered you
+their large-leaved shade, and over the low parapet the soft, grave
+Tuscan landscape kept you company. The rooms themselves were as high as
+chapels and as cool as royal sepulchres. Silence, peace, and security
+seemed to abide in the ancient house and make it an ideal refuge for
+aching hearts. Mrs. Hudson had a stunted, brown-faced Maddalena, who
+wore a crimson handkerchief passed over her coarse, black locks and tied
+under her sharp, pertinacious chin, and a smile which was as brilliant
+as a prolonged flash of lightning. She smiled at everything in life,
+especially the things she did n't like and which kept her talent for
+mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient
+to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful she-wolf. This
+inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her dealings with
+her melancholy mistress, to whom she had been bequeathed by the late
+occupant of the apartment, and who, to Rowland's satisfaction,
+promised to be diverted from her maternal sorrows by the still
+deeper perplexities of Maddalena's theory of roasting, sweeping, and
+bed-making.
+
+Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence, whence in
+the summer mornings he had five minutes' walk in the sharp, black,
+shadow-strip projected by winding, flower-topped walls, to join his
+friends. The life at the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined
+itself, was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from
+exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm. If a sensible shadow rested
+upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice; it was feigning a
+repose which it very scantily felt. Roderick had lost no time in giving
+the full measure of his uncompromising chagrin, and as he was the
+central figure of the little group, as he held its heart-strings all in
+his own hand, it reflected faithfully the eclipse of his own genius. No
+one had ventured upon the cheerful commonplace of saying that the change
+of air and of scene would restore his spirits; this would have had,
+under the circumstances, altogether too silly a sound. The change in
+question had done nothing of the sort, and his companions had, at least,
+the comfort of their perspicacity. An essential spring had dried up
+within him, and there was no visible spiritual law for making it flow
+again. He was rarely violent, he expressed little of the irritation and
+ennui that he must have constantly felt; it was as if he believed that
+a spiritual miracle for his redemption was just barely possible, and was
+therefore worth waiting for. The most that one could do, however, was
+to wait grimly and doggedly, suppressing an imprecation as, from time to
+time, one looked at one's watch. An attitude of positive urbanity toward
+life was not to be expected; it was doing one's duty to hold one's
+tongue and keep one's hands off one's own windpipe, and other people's.
+Roderick had long silences, fits of profound lethargy, almost of
+stupefaction. He used to sit in the garden by the hour, with his head
+thrown back, his legs outstretched, his hands in his pockets, and his
+eyes fastened upon the blinding summer sky. He would gather a dozen
+books about him, tumble them out on the ground, take one into his lap,
+and leave it with the pages unturned. These moods would alternate with
+hours of extreme restlessness, during which he mysteriously absented
+himself. He bore the heat of the Italian summer like a salamander, and
+used to start off at high noon for long walks over the hills. He often
+went down into Florence, rambled through her close, dim streets, and
+lounged away mornings in the churches and galleries. On many of these
+occasions Rowland bore him company, for they were the times when he
+was most like his former self. Before Michael Angelo's statues and the
+pictures of the early Tuscans, he quite forgot his own infelicities, and
+picked up the thread of his old aesthetic loquacity. He had a particular
+fondness for Andrea del Sarto, and affirmed that if he had been a
+painter he would have taken the author of the Madonna del Sacco for his
+model. He found in Florence some of his Roman friends, and went down on
+certain evenings to meet them. More than once he asked Mary Garland to
+go with him into town, and showed her the things he most cared for. He
+had some modeling clay brought up to the villa and deposited in a room
+suitable for his work; but when this had been done he turned the key in
+the door and the clay never was touched. His eye was heavy and his hand
+cold, and his mother put up a secret prayer that he might be induced
+to see a doctor. But on a certain occasion, when her prayer became
+articulate, he had a great outburst of anger and begged her to know,
+once for all, that his health was better than it had ever been. On
+the whole, and most of the time, he was a sad spectacle; he looked so
+hopelessly idle. If he was not querulous and bitter, it was because he
+had taken an extraordinary vow not to be; a vow heroic, for him, a vow
+which those who knew him well had the tenderness to appreciate. Talking
+with him was like skating on thin ice, and his companions had a constant
+mental vision of spots designated "dangerous."
+
+This was a difficult time for Rowland; he said to himself that he would
+endure it to the end, but that it must be his last adventure of the
+kind. Mrs. Hudson divided her time between looking askance at her son,
+with her hands tightly clasped about her pocket-handkerchief, as if she
+were wringing it dry of the last hour's tears, and turning her eyes
+much more directly upon Rowland, in the mutest, the feeblest, the most
+intolerable reproachfulness. She never phrased her accusations, but he
+felt that in the unillumined void of the poor lady's mind they loomed
+up like vaguely-outlined monsters. Her demeanor caused him the acutest
+suffering, and if, at the outset of his enterprise, he had seen, how
+dimly soever, one of those plaintive eye-beams in the opposite scale,
+the brilliancy of Roderick's promises would have counted for little.
+They made their way to the softest spot in his conscience and kept it
+chronically aching. If Mrs. Hudson had been loquacious and vulgar, he
+would have borne even a less valid persecution with greater fortitude.
+But somehow, neat and noiseless and dismally lady-like, as she sat
+there, keeping her grievance green with her soft-dropping tears, her
+displeasure conveyed an overwhelming imputation of brutality. He felt
+like a reckless trustee who has speculated with the widow's mite, and is
+haunted with the reflection of ruin that he sees in her tearful eyes. He
+did everything conceivable to be polite to Mrs. Hudson, and to treat her
+with distinguished deference. Perhaps his exasperated nerves made him
+overshoot the mark, and rendered his civilities a trifle peremptory. She
+seemed capable of believing that he was trying to make a fool of her;
+she would have thought him cruelly recreant if he had suddenly
+departed in desperation, and yet she gave him no visible credit for his
+constancy. Women are said by some authorities to be cruel; I don't know
+how true this is, but it may at least be pertinent to remark that Mrs.
+Hudson was very much of a woman. It often seemed to Rowland that he
+had too decidedly forfeited his freedom, and that there was something
+positively grotesque in a man of his age and circumstances living in
+such a moral bondage.
+
+But Mary Garland had helped him before, and she helped him now--helped
+him not less than he had assured himself she would when he found himself
+drifting to Florence. Yet her help was rendered in the same unconscious,
+unacknowledged fashion as before; there was no explicit change in their
+relations. After that distressing scene in Rome which had immediately
+preceded their departure, it was of course impossible that there should
+not be on Miss Garland's part some frankness of allusion to Roderick's
+sad condition. She had been present, the reader will remember, during
+only half of his unsparing confession, and Rowland had not seen her
+confronted with any absolute proof of Roderick's passion for Christina
+Light. But he knew that she knew far too much for her happiness;
+Roderick had told him, shortly after their settlement at the Villa
+Pandolfini, that he had had a "tremendous talk" with his cousin. Rowland
+asked no questions about it; he preferred not to know what had passed
+between them. If their interview had been purely painful, he wished
+to ignore it for Miss Garland's sake; and if it had sown the seeds of
+reconciliation, he wished to close his eyes to it for his own--for the
+sake of that unshaped idea, forever dismissed and yet forever present,
+which hovered in the background of his consciousness, with a hanging
+head, as it were, and yet an unshamed glance, and whose lightest motions
+were an effectual bribe to patience. Was the engagement broken? Rowland
+wondered, yet without asking. But it hardly mattered, for if, as was
+more than probable, Miss Garland had peremptorily released her cousin,
+her own heart had by no means recovered its liberty. It was very certain
+to Rowland's mind that if she had given him up she had by no means
+ceased to care for him passionately, and that, to exhaust her charity
+for his weaknesses, Roderick would have, as the phrase is, a long row to
+hoe. She spoke of Roderick as she might have done of a person suffering
+from a serious malady which demanded much tenderness; but if Rowland
+had found it possible to accuse her of dishonesty he would have said now
+that she believed appreciably less than she pretended to in her victim's
+being an involuntary patient. There are women whose love is care-taking
+and patronizing, and who rather prefer a weak man because he gives them
+a comfortable sense of strength. It did not in the least please Rowland
+to believe that Mary Garland was one of these; for he held that such
+women were only males in petticoats, and he was convinced that Miss
+Garland's heart was constructed after the most perfect feminine model.
+That she was a very different woman from Christina Light did not at all
+prove that she was less a woman, and if the Princess Casamassima had
+gone up into a high place to publish her disrelish of a man who lacked
+the virile will, it was very certain that Mary Garland was not a person
+to put up, at any point, with what might be called the princess's
+leavings. It was Christina's constant practice to remind you of the
+complexity of her character, of the subtlety of her mind, of her
+troublous faculty of seeing everything in a dozen different lights. Mary
+Garland had never pretended not to be simple; but Rowland had a theory
+that she had really a more multitudinous sense of human things, a more
+delicate imagination, and a finer instinct of character. She did you the
+honors of her mind with a grace far less regal, but was not that faculty
+of quite as remarkable an adjustment? If in poor Christina's strangely
+commingled nature there was circle within circle, and depth beneath
+depth, it was to be believed that Mary Garland, though she did not amuse
+herself with dropping stones into her soul, and waiting to hear them
+fall, laid quite as many sources of spiritual life under contribution.
+She had believed Roderick was a fine fellow when she bade him farewell
+beneath the Northampton elms, and this belief, to her young, strenuous,
+concentrated imagination, had meant many things. If it was to grow cold,
+it would be because disenchantment had become total and won the battle
+at each successive point.
+
+Miss Garland had even in her face and carriage something of the
+preoccupied and wearied look of a person who is watching at a sick-bed;
+Roderick's broken fortunes, his dead ambitions, were a cruel burden to
+the heart of a girl who had believed that he possessed "genius," and
+supposed that genius was to one's spiritual economy what full pockets
+were to one's domestic. And yet, with her, Rowland never felt, as
+with Mrs. Hudson, that undercurrent of reproach and bitterness toward
+himself, that impertinent implication that he had defrauded her of
+happiness. Was this justice, in Miss Garland, or was it mercy? The
+answer would have been difficult, for she had almost let Rowland feel
+before leaving Rome that she liked him well enough to forgive him an
+injury. It was partly, Rowland fancied, that there were occasional
+lapses, deep and sweet, in her sense of injury. When, on arriving
+at Florence, she saw the place Rowland had brought them to in their
+trouble, she had given him a look and said a few words to him that
+had seemed not only a remission of guilt but a positive reward.
+This happened in the court of the villa--the large gray quadrangle,
+overstretched, from edge to edge of the red-tiled roof, by the soft
+Italian sky. Mary had felt on the spot the sovereign charm of the
+place; it was reflected in her deeply intelligent glance, and Rowland
+immediately accused himself of not having done the villa justice. Miss
+Garland took a mighty fancy to Florence, and used to look down wistfully
+at the towered city from the windows and garden. Roderick having now no
+pretext for not being her cicerone, Rowland was no longer at liberty, as
+he had been in Rome, to propose frequent excursions to her. Roderick's
+own invitations, however, were not frequent, and Rowland more than once
+ventured to introduce her to a gallery or a church. These expeditions
+were not so blissful, to his sense, as the rambles they had taken
+together in Rome, for his companion only half surrendered herself to her
+enjoyment, and seemed to have but a divided attention at her command.
+Often, when she had begun with looking intently at a picture, her
+silence, after an interval, made him turn and glance at her. He usually
+found that if she was looking at the picture still, she was not seeing
+it. Her eyes were fixed, but her thoughts were wandering, and an image
+more vivid than any that Raphael or Titian had drawn had superposed
+itself upon the canvas. She asked fewer questions than before, and
+seemed to have lost heart for consulting guide-books and encyclopaedias.
+From time to time, however, she uttered a deep, full murmur of
+gratification. Florence in midsummer was perfectly void of travelers,
+and the dense little city gave forth its aesthetic aroma with a larger
+frankness, as the nightingale sings when the listeners have departed.
+The churches were deliciously cool, but the gray streets were stifling,
+and the great, dove-tailed polygons of pavement as hot to the tread as
+molten lava. Rowland, who suffered from intense heat, would have found
+all this uncomfortable in solitude; but Florence had never charmed him
+so completely as during these midsummer strolls with his preoccupied
+companion. One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow to the
+Academy. Miss Garland kept her appointment, but as soon as she appeared,
+Rowland saw that something painful had befallen her. She was doing her
+best to look at her ease, but her face bore the marks of tears. Rowland
+told her that he was afraid she was ill, and that if she preferred to
+give up the visit to Florence he would submit with what grace he might.
+She hesitated a moment, and then said she preferred to adhere to their
+plan. "I am not well," she presently added, "but it 's a moral malady,
+and in such cases I consider your company beneficial."
+
+"But if I am to be your doctor," said Rowland, "you must tell me how
+your illness began."
+
+"I can tell you very little. It began with Mrs. Hudson being unjust to
+me, for the first time in her life. And now I am already better!"
+
+I mention this incident because it confirmed an impression of Rowland's
+from which he had derived a certain consolation. He knew that Mrs.
+Hudson considered her son's ill-regulated passion for Christina Light a
+very regrettable affair, but he suspected that her manifest compassion
+had been all for Roderick, and not in the least for Mary Garland. She
+was fond of the young girl, but she had valued her primarily, during the
+last two years, as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick's shrine.
+Roderick had honored her by asking her to become his wife, but that poor
+Mary had any rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was quite incapable
+of perceiving. Her sentiment on the subject was of course not very
+vigorously formulated, but she was unprepared to admit that Miss Garland
+had any ground for complaint. Roderick was very unhappy; that was
+enough, and Mary's duty was to join her patience and her prayers to
+those of his doting mother. Roderick might fall in love with whom he
+pleased; no doubt that women trained in the mysterious Roman arts were
+only too proud and too happy to make it easy for him; and it was very
+presuming in poor, plain Mary to feel any personal resentment. Mrs.
+Hudson's philosophy was of too narrow a scope to suggest that a mother
+may forgive where a mistress cannot, and she thought herself greatly
+aggrieved that Miss Garland was not so disinterested as herself. She was
+ready to drop dead in Roderick's service, and she was quite capable
+of seeing her companion falter and grow faint, without a tremor of
+compassion. Mary, apparently, had given some intimation of her belief
+that if constancy is the flower of devotion, reciprocity is the
+guarantee of constancy, and Mrs. Hudson had rebuked her failing faith
+and called it cruelty. That Miss Garland had found it hard to reason
+with Mrs. Hudson, that she suffered deeply from the elder lady's
+softly bitter imputations, and that, in short, he had companionship
+in misfortune--all this made Rowland find a certain luxury in his
+discomfort.
+
+The party at Villa Pandolfini used to sit in the garden in the evenings,
+which Rowland almost always spent with them. Their entertainment was in
+the heavily perfumed air, in the dim, far starlight, in the crenelated
+tower of a neighboring villa, which loomed vaguely above them in the
+warm darkness, and in such conversation as depressing reflections
+allowed. Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless
+ghost, silent for the most part, but making from time to time a brief
+observation, characterized by the most fantastic cynicism. Roderick's
+contributions to the conversation were indeed always so fantastic that,
+though half the time they wearied him unspeakably, Rowland made an
+effort to treat them humorously. With Rowland alone Roderick talked a
+great deal more; often about things related to his own work, or about
+artistic and aesthetic matters in general. He talked as well as ever,
+or even better; but his talk always ended in a torrent of groans and
+curses. When this current set in, Rowland straightway turned his back
+or stopped his ears, and Roderick now witnessed these movements with
+perfect indifference. When the latter was absent from the star-lit
+circle in the garden, as often happened, Rowland knew nothing of his
+whereabouts; he supposed him to be in Florence, but he never learned
+what he did there. All this was not enlivening, but with an even,
+muffled tread the days followed each other, and brought the month
+of August to a close. One particular evening at this time was most
+enchanting; there was a perfect moon, looking so extraordinarily large
+that it made everything its light fell upon seem small; the heat was
+tempered by a soft west wind, and the wind was laden with the odors of
+the early harvest. The hills, the vale of the Arno, the shrunken river,
+the domes of Florence, were vaguely effaced by the dense moonshine; they
+looked as if they were melting out of sight like an exorcised vision.
+Rowland had found the two ladies alone at the villa, and he had sat with
+them for an hour. He felt absolutely hushed by the solemn splendor of
+the scene, but he had risked the remark that, whatever life might yet
+have in store for either of them, this was a night that they would never
+forget.
+
+"It 's a night to remember on one's death-bed!" Miss Garland exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Mary, how can you!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, to whom this savored
+of profanity, and to whose shrinking sense, indeed, the accumulated
+loveliness of the night seemed to have something shameless and defiant.
+
+They were silent after this, for some time, but at last Rowland
+addressed certain idle words to Miss Garland. She made no reply, and he
+turned to look at her. She was sitting motionless, with her head pressed
+to Mrs. Hudson's shoulder, and the latter lady was gazing at him through
+the silvered dusk with a look which gave a sort of spectral solemnity to
+the sad, weak meaning of her eyes. She had the air, for the moment, of
+a little old malevolent fairy. Miss Garland, Rowland perceived in an
+instant, was not absolutely motionless; a tremor passed through her
+figure. She was weeping, or on the point of weeping, and she could not
+trust herself to speak. Rowland left his place and wandered to another
+part of the garden, wondering at the motive of her sudden tears. Of
+women's sobs in general he had a sovereign dread, but these, somehow,
+gave him a certain pleasure. When he returned to his place Miss Garland
+had raised her head and banished her tears. She came away from Mrs.
+Hudson, and they stood for a short time leaning against the parapet.
+
+"It seems to you very strange, I suppose," said Rowland, "that there
+should be any trouble in such a world as this."
+
+"I used to think," she answered, "that if any trouble came to me I would
+bear it like a stoic. But that was at home, where things don't speak to
+us of enjoyment as they do here. Here it is such a mixture; one does n't
+know what to choose, what to believe. Beauty stands there--beauty such
+as this night and this place, and all this sad, strange summer, have
+been so full of--and it penetrates to one's soul and lodges there, and
+keeps saying that man was not made to suffer, but to enjoy. This place
+has undermined my stoicism, but--shall I tell you? I feel as if I were
+saying something sinful--I love it!"
+
+"If it is sinful, I absolve you," said Rowland, "in so far as I have
+power. We are made, I suppose, both to suffer and to enjoy. As you say,
+it 's a mixture. Just now and here, it seems a peculiarly strange one.
+But we must take things in turn."
+
+His words had a singular aptness, for he had hardly uttered them when
+Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood. He
+stood for a moment gazing hard at the view.
+
+"It 's a very beautiful night, my son," said his mother, going to him
+timidly, and touching his arm.
+
+He passed his hand through his hair and let it stay there, clasping
+his thick locks. "Beautiful?" he cried; "of course it 's beautiful!
+Everything is beautiful; everything is insolent, defiant, atrocious with
+beauty. Nothing is ugly but me--me and my poor dead brain!"
+
+"Oh, my dearest son," pleaded poor Mrs. Hudson, "don't you feel any
+better?"
+
+Roderick made no immediate answer; but at last he spoke in a different
+voice. "I came expressly to tell you that you need n't trouble
+yourselves any longer to wait for something to turn up. Nothing will
+turn up! It 's all over! I said when I came here I would give it a
+chance. I have given it a chance. Have n't I, eh? Have n't I, Rowland?
+It 's no use; the thing 's a failure! Do with me now what you please. I
+recommend you to set me up there at the end of the garden and shoot me."
+
+"I feel strongly inclined," said Rowland gravely, "to go and get my
+revolver."
+
+"Oh, mercy on us, what language!" cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"Why not?" Roderick went on. "This would be a lovely night for it, and I
+should be a lucky fellow to be buried in this garden. But bury me alive,
+if you prefer. Take me back to Northampton."
+
+"Roderick, will you really come?" cried his mother.
+
+"Oh yes, I 'll go! I might as well be there as anywhere--reverting to
+idiocy and living upon alms. I can do nothing with all this; perhaps I
+should really like Northampton. If I 'm to vegetate for the rest of my
+days, I can do it there better than here."
+
+"Oh, come home, come home," Mrs. Hudson said, "and we shall all be safe
+and quiet and happy. My dearest son, come home with your poor mother!"
+
+"Let us go, then, and go quickly!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson flung herself upon his neck for gratitude. "We 'll go
+to-morrow!" she cried. "The Lord is very good to me!"
+
+Mary Garland said nothing to this; but she looked at Rowland, and her
+eyes seemed to contain a kind of alarmed appeal. Rowland noted it with
+exultation, but even without it he would have broken into an eager
+protest.
+
+"Are you serious, Roderick?" he demanded.
+
+"Serious? of course not! How can a man with a crack in his brain be
+serious? how can a muddlehead reason? But I 'm not jesting, either; I
+can no more make jokes than utter oracles!"
+
+"Are you willing to go home?"
+
+"Willing? God forbid! I am simply amenable to force; if my mother
+chooses to take me, I won't resist. I can't! I have come to that!"
+
+"Let me resist, then," said Rowland. "Go home as you are now? I can't
+stand by and see it."
+
+It may have been true that Roderick had lost his sense of humor, but he
+scratched his head with a gesture that was almost comical in its effect.
+"You are a queer fellow! I should think I would disgust you horribly."
+
+"Stay another year," Rowland simply said.
+
+"Doing nothing?"
+
+"You shall do something. I am responsible for your doing something."
+
+"To whom are you responsible?"
+
+Rowland, before replying, glanced at Miss Garland, and his glance made
+her speak quickly. "Not to me!"
+
+"I 'm responsible to myself," Rowland declared.
+
+"My poor, dear fellow!" said Roderick.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Mallet, are n't you satisfied?" cried Mrs. Hudson, in the tone
+in which Niobe may have addressed the avenging archers, after she had
+seen her eldest-born fall. "It 's out of all nature keeping him here.
+When we 're in a poor way, surely our own dear native land is the place
+for us. Do leave us to ourselves, sir!"
+
+This just failed of being a dismissal in form, and Rowland bowed his
+head to it. Roderick was silent for some moments; then, suddenly, he
+covered his face with his two hands. "Take me at least out of this
+terrible Italy," he cried, "where everything mocks and reproaches and
+torments and eludes me! Take me out of this land of impossible beauty
+and put me in the midst of ugliness. Set me down where nature is coarse
+and flat, and men and manners are vulgar. There must be something
+awfully ugly in Germany. Pack me off there!"
+
+Rowland answered that if he wished to leave Italy the thing might be
+arranged; he would think it over and submit a proposal on the morrow.
+He suggested to Mrs. Hudson, in consequence, that she should spend the
+autumn in Switzerland, where she would find a fine tonic climate, plenty
+of fresh milk, and several pensions at three francs and a half a day.
+Switzerland, of course, was not ugly, but one could not have everything.
+
+Mrs. Hudson neither thanked him nor assented; but she wept and packed
+her trunks. Rowland had a theory, after the scene which led to these
+preparations, that Mary Garland was weary of waiting for Roderick to
+come to his senses, that the faith which had bravely borne his manhood
+company hitherto, on the tortuous march he was leading it, had begun
+to believe it had gone far enough. This theory was not vitiated by
+something she said to him on the day before that on which Mrs. Hudson
+had arranged to leave Florence.
+
+"Cousin Sarah, the other evening," she said, "asked you to please leave
+us. I think she hardly knew what she was saying, and I hope you have not
+taken offense."
+
+"By no means; but I honestly believe that my leaving you would
+contribute greatly to Mrs. Hudson's comfort. I can be your hidden
+providence, you know; I can watch you at a distance, and come upon the
+scene at critical moments."
+
+Miss Garland looked for a moment at the ground; and then, with sudden
+earnestness, "I beg you to come with us!" she said.
+
+It need hardly be added that after this Rowland went with them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. The Princess Casamassima
+
+Rowland had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn, accessible
+with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once spent a blissful
+ten days. He had at that time been trudging, knapsack on back, over half
+Switzerland, and not being, on his legs, a particularly light weight,
+it was no shame to him to confess that he was mortally tired. The inn
+of which I speak presented striking analogies with a cow-stable; but
+in spite of this circumstance, it was crowded with hungry tourists.
+It stood in a high, shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine meadows
+sloping down to it from the base of certain rugged rocks whose outlines
+were grotesque against the evening sky. Rowland had seen grander places
+in Switzerland that pleased him less, and whenever afterwards he wished
+to think of Alpine opportunities at their best, he recalled this grassy
+concave among the mountain-tops, and the August days he spent there,
+resting deliciously, at his length, in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder,
+with the light cool air stirring about his temples, the wafted odors of
+the pines in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells in his ears,
+the vast progression of the mountain shadows before his eyes, and a
+volume of Wordsworth in his pocket. His face, on the Swiss hill-sides,
+had been scorched to within a shade of the color nowadays called
+magenta, and his bed was a pallet in a loft, which he shared with a
+German botanist of colossal stature--every inch of him quaking at an
+open window. These had been drawbacks to felicity, but Rowland hardly
+cared where or how he was lodged, for he spent the livelong day under
+the sky, on the crest of a slope that looked at the Jungfrau. He
+remembered all this on leaving Florence with his friends, and he
+reflected that, as the midseason was over, accommodations would be more
+ample, and charges more modest. He communicated with his old friend the
+landlord, and, while September was yet young, his companions established
+themselves under his guidance in the grassy valley.
+
+He had crossed the Saint Gothard Pass with them, in the same carriage.
+During the journey from Florence, and especially during this portion
+of it, the cloud that hung over the little party had been almost
+dissipated, and they had looked at each other, in the close contiguity
+of the train and the posting-carriage, without either accusing or
+consoling glances. It was impossible not to enjoy the magnificent
+scenery of the Apennines and the Italian Alps, and there was a tacit
+agreement among the travelers to abstain from sombre allusions. The
+effect of this delicate compact seemed excellent; it ensured them a
+week's intellectual sunshine. Roderick sat and gazed out of the window
+with a fascinated stare, and with a perfect docility of attitude. He
+concerned himself not a particle about the itinerary, or about any
+of the wayside arrangements; he took no trouble, and he gave none. He
+assented to everything that was proposed, talked very little, and led
+for a week a perfectly contemplative life. His mother rarely removed
+her eyes from him; and if, a while before, this would have extremely
+irritated him, he now seemed perfectly unconscious of her observation
+and profoundly indifferent to anything that might befall him. They spent
+a couple of days on the Lake of Como, at a hotel with white porticoes
+smothered in oleander and myrtle, and the terrace-steps leading down
+to little boats with striped awnings. They agreed it was the earthly
+paradise, and they passed the mornings strolling through the perfumed
+alleys of classic villas, and the evenings floating in the moonlight in
+a circle of outlined mountains, to the music of silver-trickling
+oars. One day, in the afternoon, the two young men took a long stroll
+together. They followed the winding footway that led toward Como, close
+to the lake-side, past the gates of villas and the walls of vineyards,
+through little hamlets propped on a dozen arches, and bathing their feet
+and their pendant tatters in the gray-green ripple; past frescoed walls
+and crumbling campaniles and grassy village piazzas, and the mouth
+of soft ravines that wound upward, through belts of swinging vine and
+vaporous olive and splendid chestnut, to high ledges where white chapels
+gleamed amid the paler boskage, and bare cliff-surfaces, with their
+sun-cracked lips, drank in the azure light. It all was confoundingly
+picturesque; it was the Italy that we know from the steel engravings in
+old keepsakes and annuals, from the vignettes on music-sheets and
+the drop-curtains at theatres; an Italy that we can never confess to
+ourselves--in spite of our own changes and of Italy's--that we have
+ceased to believe in. Rowland and Roderick turned aside from the little
+paved footway that clambered and dipped and wound and doubled beside
+the lake, and stretched themselves idly beneath a fig-tree, on a grassy
+promontory. Rowland had never known anything so divinely soothing as the
+dreamy softness of that early autumn afternoon. The iridescent mountains
+shut him in; the little waves, beneath him, fretted the white pebbles at
+the laziest intervals; the festooned vines above him swayed just visibly
+in the all but motionless air.
+
+Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his hands
+under his head. "This suits me," he said; "I could be happy here and
+forget everything. Why not stay here forever?" He kept his position for
+a long time and seemed lost in his thoughts. Rowland spoke to him, but
+he made vague answers; at last he closed his eyes. It seemed to Rowland,
+also, a place to stay in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the
+disagreeable. Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it
+in his arms. There had been something passionate in his movement; but
+Rowland was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back
+into a sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes.
+Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the
+lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his
+heart was too full for utterance.
+
+"Pity me, sir; pity me!" he presently cried. "Look at this lovely world,
+and think what it must be to be dead to it!"
+
+"Dead?" said Rowland.
+
+"Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave, where you lie
+staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and
+hearing all nature live and grow above you! That 's the way I feel!"
+
+"I am glad to hear it," said Rowland. "Death of that sort is very near
+to resurrection."
+
+"It 's too horrible," Roderick went on; "it has all come over me here
+tremendously! If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears. For
+one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!"
+
+"Never mind what you have been; be something better!"
+
+"I shall never be anything again: it 's no use talking! But I don't know
+what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here. Something
+in my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and
+desire. I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible! Mind you,
+I know it, I feel it! Remember that hereafter. Don't say that he
+was stupefied and senseless; that his perception was dulled and his
+aspiration dead. Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of
+the beauty and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested and
+shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open, and his heart
+beating to madness; that he clung to every blade of grass and every
+way-side thorn as he passed; that it was the most horrible spectacle you
+ever witnessed; that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!"
+
+"Good heavens, man, are you insane?" Rowland cried.
+
+"I never have been saner. I don't want to be bad company, and in this
+beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break
+the charm. But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor, to
+life! I only want to assure you that I know what I lose. I know it in
+every pulse of my heart! Here, where these things are all loveliest, I
+take leave of them. Farewell, farewell!"
+
+During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented himself
+much of the time from the carriage, and rambled far in advance, along
+the huge zigzags of the road. He displayed an extraordinary activity;
+his light weight and slender figure made him an excellent pedestrian,
+and his friends frequently saw him skirting the edge of plunging chasms,
+loosening the stones on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against
+the sky, from the top of rocky pinnacles. Mary Garland walked a great
+deal, but she remained near the carriage to be with Mrs. Hudson. Rowland
+remained near it to be with Miss Garland. He trudged by her side up that
+magnificent ascent from Italy, and found himself regretting that the
+Alps were so low, and that their trudging was not to last a week. She
+was exhilarated; she liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until
+within the last few weeks, she had seen nothing greater than Mount
+Holyoke, and she found that the Alps amply justified their reputation.
+Rowland knew that she loved nature, but he was struck afresh with the
+vivacity of her observation of it, and with her knowledge of plants and
+stones. At that season the wild flowers had mostly departed, but a few
+of them lingered, and Miss Garland never failed to espy them in their
+outlying corners. They interested her greatly; she was charmed when
+they were old friends, and charmed even more when they were new. She
+displayed a very light foot in going in quest of them, and had soon
+covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle of strange
+vegetation. Rowland of course was alert in her service, and he gathered
+for her several botanical specimens which at first seemed inaccessible.
+One of these, indeed, had at first appeared easier of capture than his
+attempt attested, and he had paused a moment at the base of the little
+peak on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther pursuit. Suddenly,
+as he stood there, he remembered Roderick's defiance of danger and of
+Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized with a strong desire to
+test the courage of his companion. She had just scrambled up a grassy
+slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach. As he
+prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing
+was impossible! Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved,
+enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes,
+what became of him. He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he
+was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.
+
+"I can get the flower," he called to her. "Will you trust me?"
+
+"I don't want it; I would rather not have it!" she cried.
+
+"Will you trust me?" he repeated, looking at her.
+
+She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would
+shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done. "I wish it were something
+better!" she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to
+clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise
+was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow
+foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize.
+He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to
+descend. There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded
+them all. It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and
+that was all he had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when
+he offered Miss Garland the flower, and she was visibly pale. She had
+watched him without moving. All this had passed without the knowledge
+of Mrs. Hudson, who was dozing beneath the hood of the carriage. Mary
+Garland's eyes did not perhaps display that ardent admiration which
+was formerly conferred by the queen of beauty at a tournament; but they
+expressed something in which Rowland found his reward. "Why did you do
+that?" she asked, gravely.
+
+He hesitated. He felt that it was physically possible to say, "Because
+I love you!" but that it was not morally possible. He lowered his pitch
+and answered, simply, "Because I wanted to do something for you."
+
+"Suppose you had fallen," said Miss Garland.
+
+"I believed I would not fall. And you believed it, I think."
+
+"I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me."
+
+"Quod erat demonstrandum!" cried Rowland. "I think you know Latin."
+
+When our four friends were established in what I have called their
+grassy valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both
+grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a
+great many long walks, and, thanks to the lucid mountain air, not a
+little exhilaration. Mrs. Hudson was obliged to intermit her suspicions
+of the deleterious atmosphere of the old world, and to acknowledge the
+edifying purity of the breezes of Engelthal. She was certainly more
+placid than she had been in Italy; having always lived in the country,
+she had missed in Rome and Florence that social solitude mitigated by
+bushes and rocks which is so dear to the true New England temperament.
+The little unpainted inn at Engelthal, with its plank partitions, its
+milk-pans standing in the sun, its "help," in the form of angular young
+women of the country-side, reminded her of places of summer sojourn
+in her native land; and the beautiful historic chambers of the Villa
+Pandolfini passed from her memory without a regret, and without having
+in the least modified her ideal of domiciliary grace. Roderick had
+changed his sky, but he had not changed his mind; his humor was still
+that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse in that tragic explosion on
+the Lake of Como. He kept his despair to himself, and he went doggedly
+about the ordinary business of life; but it was easy to see that his
+spirit was mortally heavy, and that he lived and moved and talked simply
+from the force of habit. In that sad half-hour among the Italian olives
+there had been such a fierce sincerity in his tone, that Rowland
+began to abdicate the critical attitude. He began to feel that it was
+essentially vain to appeal to the poor fellow's will; there was no will
+left; its place was an impotent void. This view of the case indeed was
+occasionally contravened by certain indications on Roderick's part of
+the power of resistance to disagreeable obligations: one might still
+have said, if one had been disposed to be didactic at any hazard,
+that there was a method in his madness, that his moral energy had its
+sleeping and its waking hours, and that, in a cause that pleased it, it
+was capable of rising with the dawn. But on the other hand, pleasure, in
+this case, was quite at one with effort; evidently the greatest bliss in
+life, for Roderick, would have been to have a plastic idea. And then, it
+was impossible not to feel tenderly to a despair which had so ceased to
+be aggressive--not to forgive a great deal of apathy to a temper
+which had so unlearned its irritability. Roderick said frankly that
+Switzerland made him less miserable than Italy, and the Alps seemed less
+to mock at his enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in
+long rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy
+places, where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself
+on the never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging
+away the hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with
+him; though Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his
+society. Rowland now made it a rule to treat him like a perfectly sane
+man, to assume that all things were well with him, and never to allude
+to the prosperity he had forfeited or to the work he was not doing. He
+would have still said, had you questioned him, that Roderick's condition
+was a mood--certainly a puzzling one. It might last yet for many a weary
+hour; but it was a long lane that had no turning. Roderick's blues would
+not last forever. Rowland's interest in Miss Garland's relations with
+her cousin was still profoundly attentive, and perplexed as he was on
+all sides, he found nothing transparent here. After their arrival at
+Engelthal, Roderick appeared to seek the young girl's society more than
+he had done hitherto, and this revival of ardor could not fail to set
+his friend a-wondering. They sat together and strolled together, and
+Miss Garland often read aloud to him. One day, on their coming to
+dinner, after he had been lying half the morning at her feet, in the
+shadow of a rock, Rowland asked him what she had been reading.
+
+"I don't know," Roderick said, "I don't heed the sense." Miss Garland
+heard this, and Rowland looked at her. She looked at Roderick sharply
+and with a little blush. "I listen to Mary," Roderick continued,
+"for the sake of her voice. It 's distractingly sweet!" At this Miss
+Garland's blush deepened, and she looked away.
+
+Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination to
+wander in the direction of certain conjectures which the reader may deem
+unflattering to Miss Garland's constancy. He had asked himself whether
+her faith in Roderick had not faltered, and that demand of hers which
+had brought about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost
+equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe. Rowland
+was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk the supposition that
+Miss Garland had contrasted him with Roderick to his own advantage; but
+he had a certain consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed
+itself to fancy, at moments, that it might be not illogically rewarded
+by the bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm as had crumbled away
+from her estimate of his companion. If some day she had declared, in a
+sudden burst of passion, that she was outwearied and sickened, and that
+she gave up her recreant lover, Rowland's expectation would have gone
+half-way to meet her. And certainly if her passion had taken this course
+no generous critic would utterly condemn her. She had been neglected,
+ignored, forsaken, treated with a contempt which no girl of a fine
+temper could endure. There were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that
+of Burd Helen in the ballad, lay in clinging to the man of their love
+through thick and thin, and in bowing their head to all hard usage. This
+attitude had often an exquisite beauty of its own, but Rowland deemed
+that he had solid reason to believe it never could be Mary Garland's.
+She was not a passive creature; she was not soft and meek and grateful
+for chance bounties. With all her reserve of manner she was proud and
+eager; she asked much and she wanted what she asked; she believed in
+fine things and she never could long persuade herself that fine things
+missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved. Once Rowland passed an
+angry day. He had dreamed--it was the most insubstantial of dreams--that
+she had given him the right to believe that she looked to him to
+transmute her discontent. And yet here she was throwing herself back
+into Roderick's arms at his lightest overture, and playing with his own
+half fearful, half shameful hopes! Rowland declared to himself that
+his position was essentially detestable, and that all the philosophy
+he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable nor
+comfortable. He would go away and make an end of it. He did not go away;
+he simply took a long walk, stayed away from the inn all day, and on his
+return found Miss Garland sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.
+
+Rowland, communing with himself during the restless ramble in question,
+had determined that he would at least cease to observe, to heed, or
+to care for what Miss Garland and Roderick might do or might not do
+together. Nevertheless, some three days afterward, the opportunity
+presenting itself, he deliberately broached the subject with Roderick.
+He knew this was inconsistent and faint-hearted; it was indulgence
+to the fingers that itched to handle forbidden fruit. But he said to
+himself that it was really more logical to be inconsistent than the
+reverse; for they had formerly discussed these mysteries very candidly.
+Was it not perfectly reasonable that he should wish to know the sequel
+of the situation which Roderick had then delineated? Roderick had made
+him promises, and it was to be expected that he should ascertain how
+the promises had been kept. Rowland could not say to himself that if
+the promises had been extorted for Mary Garland's sake, his present
+attention to them was equally disinterested; and so he had to admit
+that he was indeed faint-hearted. He may perhaps be deemed too narrow
+a casuist, but we have repeated more than once that he was solidly
+burdened with a conscience.
+
+"I imagine," he said to Roderick, "that you are not sorry, at present,
+to have allowed yourself to be dissuaded from making a final rupture
+with Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick eyed him with the vague and absent look which had lately become
+habitual to his face, and repeated "Dissuaded?"
+
+"Don't you remember that, in Rome, you wished to break your engagement,
+and that I urged you to respect it, though it seemed to hang by so
+slender a thread? I wished you to see what would come of it? If I am not
+mistaken, you are reconciled to it."
+
+"Oh yes," said Roderick, "I remember what you said; you made it a
+kind of personal favor to yourself that I should remain faithful. I
+consented, but afterwards, when I thought of it, your attitude greatly
+amused me. Had it ever been seen before?--a man asking another man to
+gratify him by not suspending his attentions to a pretty girl!"
+
+"It was as selfish as anything else," said Rowland. "One man puts his
+selfishness into one thing, and one into another. It would have utterly
+marred my comfort to see Miss Garland in low spirits."
+
+"But you liked her--you admired her, eh? So you intimated."
+
+"I admire her profoundly."
+
+"It was your originality then--to do you justice you have a great deal,
+of a certain sort--to wish her happiness secured in just that fashion.
+Many a man would have liked better himself to make the woman he admired
+happy, and would have welcomed her low spirits as an opening for
+sympathy. You were awfully queer about it."
+
+"So be it!" said Rowland. "The question is, Are you not glad I was
+queer? Are you not finding that your affection for Miss Garland has a
+permanent quality which you rather underestimated?"
+
+"I don't pretend to say. When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n't
+care for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug
+about it. If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be
+gained by having a little humbug, I was willing to try it! I don't see
+that the situation is really changed. Mary Garland is all that she ever
+was--more than all. But I don't care for her! I don't care for anything,
+and I don't find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor. The
+only difference is that I don't care now, whether I care for her or not.
+Of course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question
+for any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume
+that she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials."
+
+"Oh, you 're in love!" said Rowland, not very logically. It must be
+confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made for the sole
+purpose of hearing Roderick deny it.
+
+But it quite failed of its aim. Roderick gave a liberal shrug of his
+shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head. "Call it what you
+please! I am past caring for names."
+
+Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly
+disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he
+had argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was
+again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue
+in Mary's presence, indisposed though he was to admit it. He had said,
+shortly before, that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a
+promising beginning. If her voice was sweet it was probable that her
+glance was not amiss, that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her
+whole personal presence had learned the art of not being irritating.
+So Rowland reasoned, and invested Mary Garland with a still finer
+loveliness.
+
+It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions,
+and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy touches
+were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply a matter of the
+conscience. He watched for signs that she rejoiced in Roderick's renewed
+acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him that she was on her
+guard against interpreting it too largely. It was now her turn--he
+fancied that he sometimes gathered from certain nameless indications of
+glance and tone and gesture--it was now her turn to be indifferent, to
+care for other things. Again and again Rowland asked himself what these
+things were that Miss Garland might be supposed to care for, to the
+injury of ideal constancy; and again, having designated them, he divided
+them into two portions. One was that larger experience, in general,
+which had come to her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne
+in upon her imagination, that there were more things one might do with
+one's life than youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of; the
+revision of old pledges in the light of new emotions. The other was the
+experience, in especial, of Rowland's--what? Here Rowland always paused,
+in perfect sincerity, to measure afresh his possible claim to the young
+girl's regard. What might he call it? It had been more than civility and
+yet it had been less than devotion. It had spoken of a desire to serve,
+but it had said nothing of a hope of reward. Nevertheless, Rowland's
+fancy hovered about the idea that it was recompensable, and his
+reflections ended in a reverie which perhaps did not define it, but
+at least, on each occasion, added a little to its volume. Since Miss
+Garland had asked him as a sort of favor to herself to come also to
+Switzerland, he thought it possible she might let him know whether he
+seemed to have effectively served her. The days passed without her doing
+so, and at last Rowland walked away to an isolated eminence some
+five miles from the inn and murmured to the silent rocks that she was
+ungrateful. Listening nature seemed not to contradict him, so that,
+on the morrow, he asked the young girl, with an infinitesimal touch of
+irony, whether it struck her that his deflection from his Florentine
+plan had been attended with brilliant results.
+
+"Why, we are delighted that you are with us!" she answered.
+
+He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply that she had
+forgotten that she had solemnly asked him to come. He reminded her
+of her request, and recalled the place and time. "That evening on the
+terrace, late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed, and Roderick being
+absent."
+
+She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her. "I am
+afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you," she said. "You
+wanted very much to do something else."
+
+"I wanted above all things to oblige you, and I made no sacrifice. But
+if I had made an immense one, it would be more than made up to me by any
+assurance that I have helped Roderick into a better mood."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, "Why do you ask me?" she said. "You
+are able to judge quite as well as I."
+
+Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious
+manner. "The truth is," he said, "that I am afraid I care only in the
+second place for Roderick's holding up his head. What I care for in the
+first place is your happiness."
+
+"I don't know why that should be," she answered. "I have certainly
+done nothing to make you so much my friend. If you were to tell me you
+intended to leave us to-morrow, I am afraid that I should not venture
+to ask you to stay. But whether you go or stay, let us not talk of
+Roderick!"
+
+"But that," said Rowland, "does n't answer my question. Is he better?"
+
+"No!" she said, and turned away.
+
+He was careful not to tell her that he intended to leave them. One day,
+shortly after this, as the two young men sat at the inn-door watching
+the sunset, which on that evening was very striking and lurid, Rowland
+made an attempt to sound his companion's present sentiment touching
+Christina Light. "I wonder where she is," he said, "and what sort of a
+life she is leading her prince."
+
+Roderick at first made no response. He was watching a figure on
+the summit of some distant rocks, opposite to them. The figure was
+apparently descending into the valley, and in relief against the crimson
+screen of the western sky, it looked gigantic. "Christina Light?"
+Roderick at last repeated, as if arousing himself from a reverie. "Where
+she is? It 's extraordinary how little I care!"
+
+"Have you, then, completely got over it?"
+
+To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while. "She 's
+a humbug!" he presently exclaimed.
+
+"Possibly!" said Rowland. "But I have known worse ones."
+
+"She disappointed me!" Roderick continued in the same tone.
+
+"Had she, then, really given you hopes?"
+
+"Oh, don't recall it!" Roderick cried. "Why the devil should I think
+of it? It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years."
+His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his
+own accord. "I believed there was a future in it all! She pleased
+me--pleased me; and when an artist--such as I was--is pleased, you
+know!" And he paused again. "You never saw her as I did; you never heard
+her in her great moments. But there is no use talking about that! At
+first she would n't regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light
+of me. But at last I forced her to admit I was a great man. Think of
+that, sir! Christina Light called me a great man. A great man was what
+she was looking for, and we agreed to find our happiness for life in
+each other. To please me she promised not to marry till I gave her
+leave. I was not in a marrying way myself, but it was damnation to think
+of another man possessing her. To spare my sensibilities, she promised
+to turn off her prince, and the idea of her doing so made me as happy as
+to see a perfect statue shaping itself in the block. You have seen how
+she kept her promise! When I learned it, it was as if the statue had
+suddenly cracked and turned hideous. She died for me, like that!" And
+he snapped his fingers. "Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire,
+betrayed confidence? I am sure I don't know; you certainly have some
+name for it."
+
+"The poor girl did the best she could," said Rowland.
+
+"If that was her best, so much the worse for her! I have hardly thought
+of her these two months, but I have not forgiven her."
+
+"Well, you may believe that you are avenged. I can't think of her as
+happy."
+
+"I don't pity her!" said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and
+the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward
+along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. "Who is this mighty man,"
+cried Roderick at last, "and what is he coming down upon us for? We are
+small people here, and we can't undertake to keep company with giants."
+
+"Wait till we meet him on our own level," said Rowland, "and perhaps he
+will not overtop us."
+
+"For ten minutes, at least," Roderick rejoined, "he will have been a
+great man!" At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon line
+and became invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly Roderick said, "I
+would like to see her once more--simply to look at her."
+
+"I would not advise it," said Rowland.
+
+"It was her beauty that did it!" Roderick went on. "It was all her
+beauty; in comparison, the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to
+think of it as my property! And I had made it mine--no one else had
+studied it as I had, no one else understood it. What does that stick of
+a Casamassima know about it at this hour? I should like to see it just
+once more; it 's the only thing in the world of which I can say so."
+
+"I would not advise it," Rowland repeated.
+
+"That 's right, dear Rowland," said Roderick; "don't advise! That 's no
+use now."
+
+The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived a figure
+approaching them across the open space in front of the house. Suddenly
+it stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows,
+and they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was
+the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was
+made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity--it was
+the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried
+a knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest
+welcome. He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way of
+luggage his knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a second shirt, he
+produced from it a dozen admirable sketches. He had been trudging over
+half Switzerland and making everywhere the most vivid pictorial notes.
+They were mostly in a box at Interlaken, and in gratitude for Rowland's
+appreciation, he presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to
+the excellent Swiss method, was punctually delivered by post. The nights
+were cold, and our friends, with three or four other chance sojourners,
+sat in-doors over a fire of logs. Even with Roderick sitting moodily in
+the outer shadow they made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned
+over Singleton's drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner,
+blushing and grinning, with his feet on the rounds of his chair. He had
+been pedestrianizing for six weeks, and he was glad to rest awhile at
+Engelthal. It was an economic repose, however, for he sallied forth
+every morning, with his sketching tools on his back, in search of
+material for new studies. Roderick's hilarity, after the first evening,
+had subsided, and he watched the little painter's serene activity with a
+gravity that was almost portentous. Singleton, who was not in the secret
+of his personal misfortunes, still treated him with timid frankness as
+the rising star of American art. Roderick had said to Rowland, at
+first, that Singleton reminded him of some curious little insect with a
+remarkable mechanical instinct in its antennae; but as the days went by
+it was apparent that the modest landscapist's unflagging industry grew
+to have an oppressive meaning for him. It pointed a moral, and Roderick
+used to sit and con the moral as he saw it figured in Singleton's bent
+back, on the hot hill-sides, protruding from beneath his white umbrella.
+One day he wandered up a long slope and overtook him as he sat at work;
+Singleton related the incident afterwards to Rowland, who, after giving
+him in Rome a hint of Roderick's aberrations, had strictly kept his own
+counsel.
+
+"Are you always like this?" said Roderick, in almost sepulchral accents.
+
+"Like this?" repeated Singleton, blinking confusedly, with an alarmed
+conscience.
+
+"You remind me of a watch that never runs down. If one listens hard one
+hears you always--tic-tic, tic-tic."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Singleton, beaming ingenuously. "I am very equable."
+
+"You are very equable, yes. And do you find it pleasant to be equable?"
+
+Singleton turned and grinned more brightly, while he sucked the water
+from his camel's-hair brush. Then, with a quickened sense of his
+indebtedness to a Providence that had endowed him with intrinsic
+facilities, "Oh, delightful!" he exclaimed.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him a moment. "Damnation!" he said at last,
+solemnly, and turned his back.
+
+One morning, shortly after this, Rowland and Roderick took a long walk.
+They had walked before in a dozen different directions, but they had not
+yet crossed a charming little wooded pass, which shut in their valley
+on one side and descended into the vale of Engelberg. In coming from
+Lucerne they had approached their inn by this path, and, feeling that
+they knew it, had hitherto neglected it in favor of untrodden ways. But
+at last the list of these was exhausted, and Rowland proposed the walk
+to Engelberg as a novelty. The place is half bleak and half pastoral; a
+huge white monastery rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley
+and complicates its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss
+scenery. Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual
+appurtenances of a prosperous Swiss resort--lean brown guides in baggy
+homespun, lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks
+in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars. Our two
+friends sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a pint of wine,
+and then Roderick, who was indefatigable, announced his intention of
+climbing to a certain rocky pinnacle which overhung the valley, and,
+according to the testimony of one of the guides, commanded a view of the
+Lake of Lucerne. To go and come back was only a matter of an hour, but
+Rowland, with the prospect of his homeward trudge before him, confessed
+to a preference for lounging on his bench, or at most strolling a trifle
+farther and taking a look at the monastery. Roderick went off alone, and
+his companion after a while bent his steps to the monasterial church. It
+was remarkable, like most of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for
+a hideous style of devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and
+musty picturesqueness, and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness
+for Alpine piety. While he was near the high-altar some people came in
+at the west door; but he did not notice them, and was presently engaged
+in deciphering a curious old German epitaph on one of the mural tablets.
+At last he turned away, wondering whether its syntax or its theology was
+the more uncomfortable, and, to this infinite surprise, found himself
+confronted with the Prince and Princess Casamassima.
+
+The surprise on Christina's part, for an instant, was equal, and at
+first she seemed disposed to turn away without letting it give place to
+a greeting. The prince, however, saluted gravely, and then Christina, in
+silence, put out her hand. Rowland immediately asked whether they were
+staying at Engelberg, but Christina only looked at him without speaking.
+The prince answered his questions, and related that they had been
+making a month's tour in Switzerland, that at Lucerne his wife had been
+somewhat obstinately indisposed, and that the physician had recommended
+a week's trial of the tonic air and goat's milk of Engelberg. The
+scenery, said the prince, was stupendous, but the life was terribly
+sad--and they had three days more! It was a blessing, he urbanely added,
+to see a good Roman face.
+
+Christina's attitude, her solemn silence and her penetrating gaze
+seemed to Rowland, at first, to savor of affectation; but he presently
+perceived that she was profoundly agitated, and that she was afraid of
+betraying herself. "Do let us leave this hideous edifice," she said;
+"there are things here that set one's teeth on edge." They moved slowly
+to the door, and when they stood outside, in the sunny coolness of the
+valley, she turned to Rowland and said, "I am extremely glad to see
+you." Then she glanced about her and observed, against the wall of the
+church, an old stone seat. She looked at Prince Casamassima a moment,
+and he smiled more intensely, Rowland thought, than the occasion
+demanded. "I wish to sit here," she said, "and speak to Mr.
+Mallet--alone."
+
+"At your pleasure, dear friend," said the prince.
+
+The tone of each was measured, to Rowland's ear; but that of Christina
+was dry, and that of her husband was splendidly urbane. Rowland
+remembered that the Cavaliere Giacosa had told him that Mrs. Light's
+candidate was thoroughly a prince, and our friend wondered how he
+relished a peremptory accent. Casamassima was an Italian of the
+undemonstrative type, but Rowland nevertheless divined that, like other
+princes before him, he had made the acquaintance of the thing called
+compromise. "Shall I come back?" he asked with the same smile.
+
+"In half an hour," said Christina.
+
+In the clear outer light, Rowland's first impression of her was that she
+was more beautiful than ever. And yet in three months she could hardly
+have changed; the change was in Rowland's own vision of her, which that
+last interview, on the eve of her marriage, had made unprecedentedly
+tender.
+
+"How came you here?" she asked. "Are you staying in this place?"
+
+"I am staying at Engelthal, some ten miles away; I walked over."
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"I am with Mr. Hudson."
+
+"Is he here with you?"
+
+"He went half an hour ago to climb a rock for a view."
+
+"And his mother and that young girl, where are they?"
+
+"They also are at Engelthal."
+
+"What do you do there?"
+
+"What do you do here?" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"I count the minutes till my week is up. I hate mountains; they depress
+me to death. I am sure Miss Garland likes them."
+
+"She is very fond of them, I believe."
+
+"You believe--don't you know? But I have given up trying to imitate Miss
+Garland," said Christina.
+
+"You surely need imitate no one."
+
+"Don't say that," she said gravely. "So you have walked ten miles this
+morning? And you are to walk back again?"
+
+"Back again to supper."
+
+"And Mr. Hudson too?"
+
+"Mr. Hudson especially. He is a great walker."
+
+"You men are happy!" Christina cried. "I believe I should enjoy the
+mountains if I could do such things. It is sitting still and having them
+scowl down at you! Prince Casamassina never rides. He only goes on a
+mule. He was carried up the Faulhorn on a litter."
+
+"On a litter?" said Rowland.
+
+"In one of those machines--a chaise a porteurs--like a woman."
+
+Rowland received this information in silence; it was equally unbecoming
+to either relish or deprecate its irony.
+
+"Is Mr. Hudson to join you again? Will he come here?" Christina asked.
+
+"I shall soon begin to expect him."
+
+"What shall you do when you leave Switzerland?" Christina continued.
+"Shall you go back to Rome?"
+
+"I rather doubt it. My plans are very uncertain."
+
+"They depend upon Mr. Hudson, eh?"
+
+"In a great measure."
+
+"I want you to tell me about him. Is he still in that perverse state of
+mind that afflicted you so much?"
+
+Rowland looked at her mistrustfully, without answering. He was
+indisposed, instinctively, to tell her that Roderick was unhappy; it was
+possible she might offer to help him back to happiness. She immediately
+perceived his hesitation.
+
+"I see no reason why we should not be frank," she said. "I should think
+we were excellently placed for that sort of thing. You remember that
+formerly I cared very little what I said, don't you? Well, I care
+absolutely not at all now. I say what I please, I do what I please! How
+did Mr. Hudson receive the news of my marriage?"
+
+"Very badly," said Rowland.
+
+"With rage and reproaches?" And as Rowland hesitated again--"With silent
+contempt?"
+
+"I can tell you but little. He spoke to me on the subject, but I stopped
+him. I told him it was none of his business, or of mine."
+
+"That was an excellent answer!" said Christina, softly. "Yet it was a
+little your business, after those sublime protestations I treated you
+to. I was really very fine that morning, eh?"
+
+"You do yourself injustice," said Rowland. "I should be at liberty now
+to believe you were insincere."
+
+"What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not? I can't
+conceive of anything mattering less. I was very fine--is n't it true?"
+
+"You know what I think of you," said Rowland. And for fear of being
+forced to betray his suspicion of the cause of her change, he took
+refuge in a commonplace. "Your mother, I hope, is well."
+
+"My mother is in the enjoyment of superb health, and may be seen
+every evening at the Casino, at the Baths of Lucca, confiding to every
+new-comer that she has married her daughter to a pearl of a prince."
+
+Rowland was anxious for news of Mrs. Light's companion, and the natural
+course was frankly to inquire about him. "And the Cavaliere Giacosa is
+well?" he asked.
+
+Christina hesitated, but she betrayed no other embarrassment. "The
+Cavaliere has retired to his native city of Ancona, upon a pension, for
+the rest of his natural life. He is a very good old man!"
+
+"I have a great regard for him," said Rowland, gravely, at the same time
+that he privately wondered whether the Cavaliere's pension was paid
+by Prince Casamassima for services rendered in connection with his
+marriage. Had the Cavaliere received his commission? "And what do you
+do," Rowland continued, "on leaving this place?"
+
+"We go to Italy--we go to Naples." She rose and stood silent a moment,
+looking down the valley. The figure of Prince Casamassima appeared in
+the distance, balancing his white umbrella. As her eyes rested upon it,
+Rowland imagined that he saw something deeper in the strange expression
+which had lurked in her face while he talked to her. At first he had
+been dazzled by her blooming beauty, to which the lapse of weeks had
+only added splendor; then he had seen a heavier ray in the light of her
+eye--a sinister intimation of sadness and bitterness. It was the outward
+mark of her sacrificed ideal. Her eyes grew cold as she looked at her
+husband, and when, after a moment, she turned them upon Rowland, they
+struck him as intensely tragical. He felt a singular mixture of sympathy
+and dread; he wished to give her a proof of friendship, and yet it
+seemed to him that she had now turned her face in a direction where
+friendship was impotent to interpose. She half read his feelings,
+apparently, and she gave a beautiful, sad smile. "I hope we may never
+meet again!" she said. And as Rowland gave her a protesting look--"You
+have seen me at my best. I wish to tell you solemnly, I was sincere! I
+know appearances are against me," she went on quickly. "There is a great
+deal I can't tell you. Perhaps you have guessed it; I care very little.
+You know, at any rate, I did my best. It would n't serve; I was beaten
+and broken; they were stronger than I. Now it 's another affair!"
+
+"It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet," said
+Rowland, vaguely.
+
+"Happiness? I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for bliss
+ineffable! You remember I told you that I was, in part, the world's and
+the devil's. Now they have taken me all. It was their choice; may they
+never repent!"
+
+"I shall hear of you," said Rowland.
+
+"You will hear of me. And whatever you do hear, remember this: I was
+sincere!"
+
+Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a
+good deal of simple compassion as a part of that "world" against which
+Christina had launched her mysterious menace. It was obvious that he
+was a good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be
+a positively bad husband; but his distinguished inoffensiveness only
+deepened the infelicity of Christina's situation by depriving her
+defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice. So long as she had
+been free to choose, she had esteemed him: but from the moment she was
+forced to marry him she had detested him. Rowland read in the young
+man's elastic Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and
+as he found there also a record of other curious things--of pride, of
+temper, of bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive
+traditions--he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two
+companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.
+
+"You are going to Naples?" Rowland said to the prince by way of
+conversation.
+
+"We are going to Paris," Christina interposed, slowly and softly.
+"We are going to London. We are going to Vienna. We are going to St.
+Petersburg."
+
+Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point
+of his umbrella. While he engaged Rowland's attention Christina turned
+away. When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her
+face; she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes
+by the angle of the church-wall. In a moment Roderick stepped into
+sight.
+
+He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded, his
+garments dusty. He looked at Christina from head to foot, and then,
+slowly, his cheek flushed and his eye expanded. Christina returned his
+gaze, and for some moments there was a singular silence. "You don't look
+well!" Christina said at last.
+
+Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been
+a statue. "You are no less beautiful!" he presently cried.
+
+She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley;
+Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima. Christina then put out her hand
+to Rowland. "Farewell," she said. "If you are near me in future,
+don't try to see me!" And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, "I was
+sincere!" She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some
+commonplace about his walk. But he said nothing; he only looked at
+her. Rowland at first had expected an outbreak of reproach, but it was
+evident that the danger was every moment diminishing. He was forgetting
+everything but her beauty, and as she stood there and let him feast upon
+it, Rowland was sure that she knew it. "I won't say farewell to you,"
+she said; "we shall meet again!" And she moved gravely away. Prince
+Casamassima took leave courteously of Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed
+a bow of exaggerated civility. Roderick appeared not to see it; he
+was still watching Christina, as she passed over the grass. His eyes
+followed her until she reached the door of her inn. Here she stopped and
+looked back at him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Switzerland
+
+On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved a silence which
+Rowland allowed to make him uneasy. Early on the morrow Roderick,
+saying nothing of his intentions, started off on a walk; Rowland saw
+him striding with light steps along the rugged path to Engelberg. He was
+absent all day and he gave no account of himself on his return. He said
+he was deadly tired, and he went to bed early. When he had left the room
+Miss Garland drew near to Rowland.
+
+"I wish to ask you a question," she said. "What happened to Roderick
+yesterday at Engelberg?"
+
+"You have discovered that something happened?" Rowland answered.
+
+"I am sure of it. Was it something painful?"
+
+"I don't know how, at the present moment, he judges it. He met the
+Princess Casamassima."
+
+"Thank you!" said Miss Garland, simply, and turned away.
+
+The conversation had been brief, but, like many small things, it
+furnished Rowland with food for reflection. When one is looking for
+symptoms one easily finds them. This was the first time Mary Garland had
+asked Rowland a question which it was in Roderick's power to answer,
+the first time she had frankly betrayed Roderick's reticence. Rowland
+ventured to think it marked an era.
+
+The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those
+altitudes, was oppressively heavy. Rowland lounged on the grass a while,
+near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella, within view of
+the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky
+ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau. To-day, however, the
+white summits were invisible; their heads were muffled in sullen clouds
+and the valleys beneath them curtained in dun-colored mist. Rowland had
+a book in his pocket, and he took it out and opened it. But his page
+remained unturned; his own thoughts were more importunate. His interview
+with Christina Light had made a great impression upon him, and he was
+haunted with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness, and of all
+that was tragic and fatal in her latest transformation. These things
+were immensely appealing, and Rowland thought with infinite impatience
+of Roderick's having again encountered them. It required little
+imagination to apprehend that the young sculptor's condition had
+also appealed to Christina. His consummate indifference, his supreme
+defiance, would make him a magnificent trophy, and Christina had
+announced with sufficient distinctness that she had said good-by to
+scruples. It was her fancy at present to treat the world as a garden of
+pleasure, and if, hitherto, she had played with Roderick's passion on
+its stem, there was little doubt that now she would pluck it with an
+unfaltering hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness. And why the
+deuce need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction? Rowland's
+meditations, even when they began in rancor, often brought him peace;
+but on this occasion they ushered in a quite peculiar quality of unrest.
+He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his moral energy; a current
+that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength seemed at last
+to pause and evaporate. Rowland looked away at the stagnant vapors on
+the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol of the dreariness which
+his own generosity had bequeathed him. At last he had arrived at the
+uttermost limit of the deference a sane man might pay to other people's
+folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it; he had been befooled on a
+gigantic scale. He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience,
+but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away. He pulled
+his hat over his eyes, and tried to wonder, dispassionately, whether
+atmospheric conditions had not something to do with his ill-humor. He
+remained for some time in this attitude, but was finally aroused from
+it by a singular sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had
+approached him. He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the
+turf. His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt
+like uttering an uncivil speech. Roderick stood looking at him with an
+expression of countenance which had of late become rare. There was an
+unfamiliar spark in his eye and a certain imperious alertness in his
+carriage. Confirmed habit, with Rowland, came speedily to the front.
+"What is it now?" he asked himself, and invited Roderick to sit down.
+Roderick had evidently something particular to say, and if he remained
+silent for a time it was not because he was ashamed of it.
+
+"I would like you to do me a favor," he said at last. "Lend me some
+money."
+
+"How much do you wish?" Rowland asked.
+
+"Say a thousand francs."
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment. "I don't wish to be indiscreet, but may I
+ask what you propose to do with a thousand francs?"
+
+"To go to Interlaken."
+
+"And why are you going to Interlaken?"
+
+Roderick replied without a shadow of wavering, "Because that woman is to
+be there."
+
+Rowland burst out laughing, but Roderick remained serenely grave. "You
+have forgiven her, then?" said Rowland.
+
+"Not a bit of it!"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Neither do I. I only know that she is incomparably beautiful, and that
+she has waked me up amazingly. Besides, she asked me to come."
+
+"She asked you?"
+
+"Yesterday, in so many words."
+
+"Ah, the jade!"
+
+"Exactly. I am willing to take her for that."
+
+"Why in the name of common sense did you go back to her?"
+
+"Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had just stepped
+out of her cloud? Why did I look at her? Before I knew where I was, the
+harm was done."
+
+Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back on the grass and
+lay for some time staring up at the sky. At last, raising himself, "Are
+you perfectly serious?" he asked.
+
+"Deadly serious."
+
+"Your idea is to remain at Interlaken some time?"
+
+"Indefinitely!" said Roderick; and it seemed to his companion that the
+tone in which he said this made it immensely well worth hearing.
+
+"And your mother and cousin, meanwhile, are to remain here? It will soon
+be getting very cold, you know."
+
+"It does n't seem much like it to-day."
+
+"Very true; but to-day is a day by itself."
+
+"There is nothing to prevent their going back to Lucerne. I depend upon
+your taking charge of them."
+
+At this Rowland reclined upon the grass again; and again, after
+reflection, he faced his friend. "How would you express," he asked, "the
+character of the profit that you expect to derive from your excursion?"
+
+"I see no need of expressing it. The proof of the pudding is in the
+eating! The case is simply this. I desire immensely to be near Christina
+Light, and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring
+something, that I propose to drift with the current. As I say, she has
+waked me up, and it is possible something may come of it. She makes me
+feel as if I were alive again. This," and he glanced down at the inn, "I
+call death!"
+
+"That I am very grateful to hear. You really feel as if you might do
+something?"
+
+"Don't ask too much. I only know that she makes my heart beat, makes me
+see visions."
+
+"You feel encouraged?"
+
+"I feel excited."
+
+"You are really looking better."
+
+"I am glad to hear it. Now that I have answered your questions, please
+to give me the money."
+
+Rowland shook his head. "For that purpose, I can't!"
+
+"You can't?"
+
+"It 's impossible. Your plan is rank folly. I can't help you in it."
+
+Roderick flushed a little, and his eye expanded. "I will borrow what
+money I can, then, from Mary!" This was not viciously said; it had
+simply the ring of passionate resolution.
+
+Instantly it brought Rowland to terms. He took a bunch of keys from
+his pocket and tossed it upon the grass. "The little brass one opens my
+dressing-case," he said. "You will find money in it."
+
+Roderick let the keys lie; something seemed to have struck him; he
+looked askance at his friend. "You are awfully gallant!"
+
+"You certainly are not. Your proposal is an outrage."
+
+"Very likely. It 's a proof the more of my desire."
+
+"If you have so much steam on, then, use it for something else. You say
+you are awake again. I am delighted; only be so in the best sense. Is
+n't it very plain? If you have the energy to desire, you have also the
+energy to reason and to judge. If you can care to go, you can also care
+to stay, and staying being the more profitable course, the inspiration,
+on that side, for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again,
+should be greater."
+
+Roderick, plainly, did not relish this simple logic, and his eye grew
+angry as he listened to its echo. "Oh, the devil!" he cried.
+
+Rowland went on. "Do you believe that hanging about Christina Light will
+do you any good? Do you believe it won't? In either case you should keep
+away from her. If it won't, it 's your duty; and if it will, you can get
+on without it."
+
+"Do me good?" cried Roderick. "What do I want of 'good'--what should I
+do with 'good'? I want what she gives me, call it by what name you will.
+I want to ask no questions, but to take what comes and let it fill the
+impossible hours! But I did n't come to discuss the matter."
+
+"I have not the least desire to discuss it," said Rowland. "I simply
+protest."
+
+Roderick meditated a moment. "I have never yet thought twice of
+accepting a favor of you," he said at last; "but this one sticks in my
+throat."
+
+"It is not a favor; I lend you the money only under compulsion."
+
+"Well, then, I will take it only under compulsion!" Roderick exclaimed.
+And he sprang up abruptly and marched away.
+
+His words were ambiguous; Rowland lay on the grass, wondering what they
+meant. Half an hour had not elapsed before Roderick reappeared, heated
+with rapid walking, and wiping his forehead. He flung himself down and
+looked at his friend with an eye which expressed something purer than
+bravado and yet baser than conviction.
+
+"I have done my best!" he said. "My mother is out of money; she is
+expecting next week some circular notes from London. She had only ten
+francs in her pocket. Mary Garland gave me every sou she possessed in
+the world. It makes exactly thirty-four francs. That 's not enough."
+
+"You asked Miss Garland?" cried Rowland.
+
+"I asked her."
+
+"And told her your purpose?"
+
+"I named no names. But she knew!"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Not a syllable. She simply emptied her purse."
+
+Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms. He felt a movement
+of irrepressible elation, and he barely stifled a cry of joy. Now,
+surely, Roderick had shattered the last link in the chain that bound
+Mary to him, and after this she would be free!... When he turned about
+again, Roderick was still sitting there, and he had not touched the keys
+which lay on the grass.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter with me," said Roderick, "but I have an
+insurmountable aversion to taking your money."
+
+"The matter, I suppose, is that you have a grain of wisdom left."
+
+"No, it 's not that. It 's a kind of brute instinct. I find it extremely
+provoking!" He sat there for some time with his head in his hands and
+his eyes on the ground. His lips were compressed, and he was evidently,
+in fact, in a state of profound irritation. "You have succeeded in
+making this thing excessively unpleasant!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I am sorry," said Rowland, "but I can't see it in any other way."
+
+"That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending to
+be the limit of my action. You can't feel for me nor judge for me, and
+there are certain things you know nothing about. I have suffered, sir!"
+Roderick went on with increasing emphasis. "I have suffered damnable
+torments. Have I been such a placid, contented, comfortable man this
+last six months, that when I find a chance to forget my misery, I should
+take such pains not to profit by it? You ask too much, for a man who
+himself has no occasion to play the hero. I don't say that invidiously;
+it 's your disposition, and you can't help it. But decidedly, there are
+certain things you know nothing about."
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if
+he had been less intent upon his own eloquence, would probably have
+perceived that he turned pale. "These things--what are they?" Rowland
+asked.
+
+"They are women, principally, and what relates to women. Women for
+you, by what I can make out, mean nothing. You have no imagination--no
+sensibility!"
+
+"That 's a serious charge," said Rowland, gravely.
+
+"I don't make it without proof!"
+
+"And what is your proof?"
+
+Roderick hesitated a moment. "The way you treated Christina Light. I
+call that grossly obtuse."
+
+"Obtuse?" Rowland repeated, frowning.
+
+"Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune."
+
+"My good fortune?"
+
+"There it is--it 's all news to you! You had pleased her. I don't say
+she was dying of love for you, but she took a fancy to you."
+
+"We will let this pass!" said Rowland, after a silence.
+
+"Oh, I don't insist. I have only her own word for it."
+
+"She told you this?"
+
+"You noticed, at least, I suppose, that she was not afraid to speak. I
+never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious
+to see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself."
+
+"I frankly confess it would have lasted forever. And yet I don't
+consider that my insensibility is proved."
+
+"Oh, don't say that," cried Roderick, "or I shall begin to suspect--what
+I must do you the justice to say that I never have suspected--that you
+are a trifle conceited. Upon my word, when I think of all this, your
+protest, as you call it, against my following Christina Light seems
+to me thoroughly offensive. There is something monstrous in a man's
+pretending to lay down the law to a sort of emotion with which he is
+quite unacquainted--in his asking a fellow to give up a lovely woman for
+conscience' sake, when he has never had the impulse to strike a blow for
+one for passion's!"
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.
+
+"All that 's very easy to say," Roderick went on; "but you must remember
+that there are such things as nerves, and senses, and imagination, and
+a restless demon within that may sleep sometimes for a day, or for six
+months, but that sooner or later wakes up and thumps at your ribs till
+you listen to him! If you can't understand it, take it on trust, and let
+a poor imaginative devil live his life as he can!"
+
+Roderick's words seemed at first to Rowland like something heard in a
+dream; it was impossible they had been actually spoken--so supreme an
+expression were they of the insolence of egotism. Reality was never so
+consistent as that! But Roderick sat there balancing his beautiful
+head, and the echoes of his strident accent still lingered along the
+half-muffled mountain-side. Rowland suddenly felt that the cup of his
+chagrin was full to overflowing, and his long-gathered bitterness surged
+into the simple, wholesome passion of anger for wasted kindness. But
+he spoke without violence, and Roderick was probably at first far from
+measuring the force that lay beneath his words.
+
+"You are incredibly ungrateful," he said. "You are talking arrogant
+nonsense. What do you know about my sensibilities and my imagination?
+How do you know whether I have loved or suffered? If I have held my
+tongue and not troubled you with my complaints, you find it the most
+natural thing in the world to put an ignoble construction on my silence.
+I loved quite as well as you; indeed, I think I may say rather better. I
+have been constant. I have been willing to give more than I received. I
+have not forsaken one mistress because I thought another more beautiful,
+nor given up the other and believed all manner of evil about her because
+I had not my way with her. I have been a good friend to Christina Light,
+and it seems to me my friendship does her quite as much honor as your
+love!"
+
+"Your love--your suffering--your silence--your friendship!" cried
+Roderick. "I declare I don't understand!"
+
+"I dare say not. You are not used to understanding such things--you are
+not used to hearing me talk of my feelings. You are altogether too
+much taken up with your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always
+respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose
+to leave you an open field, don't, by way of thanking me, come and call
+me an idiot."
+
+"Oh, you claim then that you have made sacrifices?"
+
+"Several! You have never suspected it?"
+
+"If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed it?" cried Roderick.
+
+"They were the sacrifices of friendship and they were easily made; only
+I don't enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth."
+
+This was, under the circumstances, a sufficiently generous speech; but
+Roderick was not in the humor to take it generously. "Come, be more
+definite," he said. "Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched."
+
+Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity, he should have
+full justice. "It 's a perpetual sacrifice," he said, "to live with a
+perfect egotist."
+
+"I am an egotist?" cried Roderick.
+
+"Did it never occur to you?"
+
+"An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?" He repeated
+the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly
+indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem) a sudden
+violent curiosity for news about himself.
+
+"You are selfish," said Rowland; "you think only of yourself and believe
+only in yourself. You regard other people only as they play into your
+own hands. You have always been very frank about it, and the thing
+seemed so mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure
+of your mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good
+and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no
+worse. But if one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon
+it."
+
+Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and
+crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes. In this attitude, for a
+moment, he sat looking coldly at his friend. "So I have made you very
+uncomfortable?" he went on.
+
+"Extremely so."
+
+"I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent,
+cruel?"
+
+"I have accused you, mentally, of all these things, with the exception
+of vanity."
+
+"You have often hated me?"
+
+"Never. I should have parted company with you before coming to that."
+
+"But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be
+hanged!"
+
+"Repeatedly. Then I have had patience and forgiven you."
+
+"Forgiven me, eh? Suffering all the while?"
+
+"Yes, you may call it suffering."
+
+"Why did you never tell me all this before?"
+
+"Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because
+I preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had, myself, in a
+measure, launched you in the world and thrown you into temptations; and
+because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could
+have made me say these painful things."
+
+Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it; Rowland
+was puzzled by his expression and manner. They seemed strangely cynical;
+there was something revolting in his deepening calmness. "I must have
+been hideous," Roderick presently resumed.
+
+"I am not talking for your entertainment," said Rowland.
+
+"Of course not. For my edification!" As Roderick said these words there
+was not a ray of warmth in his brilliant eye.
+
+"I have spoken for my own relief," Rowland went on, "and so that you
+need never again go so utterly astray as you have done this morning."
+
+"It has been a terrible mistake, then?" What his tone expressed was not
+willful mockery, but a kind of persistent irresponsibility which Rowland
+found equally exasperating. He answered nothing.
+
+"And all this time," Roderick continued, "you have been in love? Tell me
+the woman."
+
+Rowland felt an immense desire to give him a visible, palpable pang.
+"Her name is Mary Garland," he said.
+
+Apparently he succeeded. The surprise was great; Roderick colored as he
+had never done. "Mary Garland? Heaven forgive us!"
+
+Rowland observed the "us;" Roderick threw himself back on the turf. The
+latter lay for some time staring at the sky. At last he sprang to his
+feet, and Rowland rose also, rejoicing keenly, it must be confessed, in
+his companion's confusion.
+
+"For how long has this been?" Roderick demanded.
+
+"Since I first knew her."
+
+"Two years! And you have never told her?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You have told no one?"
+
+"You are the first person."
+
+"Why have you been silent?"
+
+"Because of your engagement."
+
+"But you have done your best to keep that up."
+
+"That 's another matter!"
+
+"It 's very strange!" said Roderick, presently. "It 's like something in
+a novel."
+
+"We need n't expatiate on it," said Rowland. "All I wished to do was to
+rebut your charge that I am an abnormal being."
+
+But still Roderick pondered. "All these months, while I was going on! I
+wish you had mentioned it."
+
+"I acted as was necessary, and that 's the end of it."
+
+"You have a very high opinion of her?"
+
+"The highest."
+
+"I remember now your occasionally expressing it and my being struck with
+it. But I never dreamed you were in love with her. It 's a pity she does
+n't care for you!"
+
+Rowland had made his point and he had no wish to prolong the
+conversation; but he had a desire to hear more of this, and he remained
+silent.
+
+"You hope, I suppose, that some day she may?"
+
+"I should n't have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do."
+
+"I don't believe it. She idolizes me, and if she never were to see me
+again she would idolize my memory."
+
+This might be profound insight, and it might be profound fatuity.
+Rowland turned away; he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you horrible.
+Altogether, I must have appeared simply hideous."
+
+"Do you really care," Rowland asked, "what you appeared?"
+
+"Certainly. I have been damnably stupid. Is n't an artist supposed to be
+a man of perceptions? I am hugely disgusted."
+
+"Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh."
+
+"And yet," said Roderick, "though you have suffered, in a degree, I
+don't believe you have suffered so much as some other men would have
+done."
+
+"Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult."
+
+Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground.
+"Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous," he repeated--"hideous." He
+turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.
+
+They were both silent for some time, and at last Roderick gave a heavy
+sigh and began to walk away. "Where are you going?" Rowland then asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't care! To walk; you have given me something to think
+of." This seemed a salutary impulse, and yet Rowland felt a nameless
+perplexity. "To have been so stupid damns me more than anything!"
+Roderick went on. "Certainly, I can shut up shop now."
+
+Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could
+almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism
+still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but
+never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let
+him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became
+conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse--a desire to stop
+him, to have another word with him--not to lose sight of him. He called
+him and Roderick turned. "I should like to go with you," said Rowland.
+
+"I am fit only to be alone. I am damned!"
+
+"You had better not think of it at all," Rowland cried, "than think in
+that way."
+
+"There is only one way. I have been hideous!" And he broke off and
+marched away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick. Rowland
+watched him and at the end of a moment called to him. Roderick stopped
+and looked at him in silence, and then abruptly turned, and disappeared
+below the crest of a hill.
+
+Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably. He was half
+irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having been
+placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause. Roderick did not
+come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding away the
+hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit. Mrs. Hudson
+appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that Roderick's
+demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress. Little
+Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner. Miss Garland,
+Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance to her
+kinsman's pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort. The
+effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill
+that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon
+it. They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.
+
+"I have a headache," she said. And then suddenly, looking about at the
+menacing sky and motionless air, "It 's this horrible day!"
+
+Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia,
+but his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon the
+paper but a single line. "I believe there is such a thing as being too
+reasonable. But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?" He
+had occasion to use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket; they
+were missing, and he remembered that he had left them lying on the
+hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick. He went forth in
+search of them and found them where he had thrown them. He flung
+himself down in the same place again; he felt indisposed to walk. He
+was conscious that his mood had vastly changed since the morning;
+his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights had been replaced by the
+familiar, chronic sense of his duties. Only, his duties now seemed
+impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his arms. He lay
+so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all was that
+Roderick had beaten him. At last he was startled by an extraordinary
+sound; it took him a moment to perceive that it was a portentous growl
+of thunder. He roused himself and saw that the whole face of the sky had
+altered. The clouds that had hung motionless all day were moving from
+their stations, and getting into position, as it were, for a battle. The
+wind was rising; the sallow vapors were turning dark and consolidating
+their masses. It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland judged best to
+observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent. He took his way
+down to the inn and found Singleton still at his post, profiting by the
+last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study, and yet at the
+same time taking rapid notes of the actual condition of the clouds.
+
+"We are going to have a most interesting storm," the little painter
+gleefully cried. "I should like awfully to do it."
+
+Rowland adjured him to pack up his tools and decamp, and repaired to
+the house. The air by this time had become portentously dark, and the
+thunder was incessant and tremendous; in the midst of it the lightning
+flashed and vanished, like the treble shrilling upon the bass. The
+innkeeper and his servants had crowded to the doorway, and were looking
+at the scene with faces which seemed a proof that it was unprecedented.
+As Rowland approached, the group divided, to let some one pass from
+within, and Mrs. Hudson came forth, as white as a corpse and trembling
+in every limb.
+
+"My boy, my boy, where is my boy?" she cried. "Mr. Mallet, why are you
+here without him? Bring him to me!"
+
+"Has no one seen Mr. Hudson?" Rowland asked of the others. "Has he not
+returned?"
+
+Each one shook his head and looked grave, and Rowland attempted to
+reassure Mrs. Hudson by saying that of course he had taken refuge in a
+chalet.
+
+"Go and find him, go and find him!" she cried, insanely. "Don't stand
+there and talk, or I shall die!" It was now as dark as evening, and
+Rowland could just distinguish the figure of Singleton scampering
+homeward with his box and easel. "And where is Mary?" Mrs. Hudson went
+on; "what in mercy's name has become of her? Mr. Mallet, why did you
+ever bring us here?"
+
+There came a prodigious flash of lightning, and the limitless tumult
+about them turned clearer than midsummer noonday. The brightness lasted
+long enough to enable Rowland to see a woman's figure on the top of
+an eminence near the house. It was Mary Garland, questioning the lurid
+darkness for Roderick. Rowland sprang out to interrupt her vigil, but in
+a moment he encountered her, retreating. He seized her hand and hurried
+her to the house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered
+gallery, Mrs. Hudson fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
+
+"Did you see nothing,--nothing?" she cried. "Tell Mr. Mallet he must go
+and find him, with some men, some lights, some wrappings. Go, go, go,
+sir! In mercy, go!"
+
+Rowland was extremely perturbed by the poor lady's vociferous folly, for
+he deemed her anxiety superfluous. He had offered his suggestion with
+sincerity; nothing was more probable than that Roderick had found
+shelter in a herdsman's cabin. These were numerous on the neighboring
+mountains, and the storm had given fair warning of its approach. Miss
+Garland stood there very pale, saying nothing, but looking at him. He
+expected that she would check her cousin's importunity. "Could you find
+him?" she suddenly asked. "Would it be of use?"
+
+The question seemed to him a flash intenser than the lightning that was
+raking the sky before them. It shattered his dream that he weighed in
+the scale! But before he could answer, the full fury of the storm was
+upon them; the rain descended in sounding torrents. Every one fell back
+into the house. There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little
+uncarpeted parlor, in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt Mary's hand
+upon his arm. For a moment it had an eloquent pressure; it seemed to
+retract her senseless challenge, and to say that she believed, for
+Roderick, what he believed. But nevertheless, thought Rowland, the cry
+had come, her heart had spoken; her first impulse had been to sacrifice
+him. He had been uncertain before; here, at least, was the comfort of
+certainty!
+
+It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little
+to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening. There was a noisy
+crowd about him in the room--noisy even with the accompaniment of the
+continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling,
+and bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the
+tempest and by vociferating their alarm. In the disorder, it was some
+time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was
+swung from the ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson, who was being
+carried out of the room in a swoon by two stout maid-servants, with Mary
+Garland forcing a passage. He rendered what help he could, but when they
+had laid the poor woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away.
+
+"I think you make her worse," she said.
+
+Rowland went to his own chamber. The partitions in Swiss mountain-inns
+are thin, and from time to time he heard Mrs. Hudson moaning, three
+rooms off. Considering its great fury, the storm took long to expend
+itself; it was upwards of three hours before the thunder ceased. But
+even then the rain continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had
+come on, was impenetrably black. This lasted till near midnight. Rowland
+thought of Mary Garland's challenge in the porch, but he thought even
+more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may
+offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible
+music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick's voice. At
+midnight, through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star, and he
+immediately went downstairs and out into the gallery. The rain had
+ceased, the cloud-masses were dissevered here and there, and several
+stars were visible. In a few minutes he heard a step behind him, and,
+turning, saw Miss Garland. He asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that
+she was sleeping, exhausted by her fruitless lamentations. Miss Garland
+kept scanning the darkness, but she said nothing to cast doubt on
+Roderick's having found a refuge. Rowland noticed it. "This also have I
+guaranteed!" he said to himself. There was something that Mary wished to
+learn, and a question presently revealed it.
+
+"What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?" she asked. "I saw him
+at eleven o'clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep."
+
+"On his way to Interlaken?" Rowland said.
+
+"Yes," she answered, under cover of the darkness.
+
+"We had some talk," said Rowland, "and he seemed, for the day, to have
+given up Interlaken."
+
+"Did you dissuade him?"
+
+"Not exactly. We discussed another question, which, for the time,
+superseded his plan."
+
+Miss Garland was silent. Then--"May I ask whether your discussion was
+violent?" she said.
+
+"I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us."
+
+"And Roderick left you in--in irritation?"
+
+"I offered him my company on his walk. He declined it."
+
+Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.
+"If he had gone to Engelberg," she said, "he would have reached the
+hotel before the storm began."
+
+Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity. "Oh, if you like," he
+cried, "he can start for Interlaken as soon as he comes back!"
+
+But she did not even notice his wrath. "Will he come back early?" she
+went on.
+
+"We may suppose so."
+
+"He will know how anxious we are, and he will start with the first
+light!"
+
+Rowland was on the point of declaring that Roderick's readiness to throw
+himself into the feelings of others made this extremely probable; but he
+checked himself and said, simply, "I expect him at sunrise."
+
+Miss Garland bent her eyes once more upon the irresponsive darkness, and
+then, in silence, went into the house. Rowland, it must be averred, in
+spite of his resolution not to be nervous, found no sleep that night.
+When the early dawn began to tremble in the east, he came forth again
+into the open air. The storm had completely purged the atmosphere, and
+the day gave promise of cloudless splendor. Rowland watched the early
+sun-shafts slowly reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick
+did not come back to breakfast, there were two things to be taken
+into account. One was the heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides,
+saturated with the rain; this would make him walk slowly: the other
+was the fact that, speaking without irony, he was not remarkable for
+throwing himself into the sentiments of others. Breakfast, at the inn,
+was early, and by breakfast-time Roderick had not appeared. Then Rowland
+admitted that he was nervous. Neither Mrs. Hudson nor Miss Garland had
+left their apartment; Rowland had a mental vision of them sitting there
+praying and listening; he had no desire to see them more directly. There
+were a couple of men who hung about the inn as guides for the ascent of
+the Titlis; Rowland sent each of them forth in a different direction,
+to ask the news of Roderick at every chalet door within a morning's
+walk. Then he called Sam Singleton, whose peregrinations had made him an
+excellent mountaineer, and whose zeal and sympathy were now unbounded,
+and the two started together on a voyage of research. By the time
+they had lost sight of the inn, Rowland was obliged to confess that,
+decidedly, Roderick had had time to come back.
+
+He wandered about for several hours, but he found only the sunny
+stillness of the mountain-sides. Before long he parted company with
+Singleton, who, to his suggestion that separation would multiply their
+resources, assented with a silent, frightened look which reflected too
+vividly his own rapidly-dawning thought. The day was magnificent; the
+sun was everywhere; the storm had lashed the lower slopes into a deeper
+flush of autumnal color, and the snow-peaks reared themselves against
+the near horizon in glaring blocks and dazzling spires. Rowland made his
+way to several chalets, but most of them were empty. He thumped at their
+low, foul doors with a kind of nervous, savage anger; he challenged the
+stupid silence to tell him something about his friend. Some of these
+places had evidently not been open in months. The silence everywhere
+was horrible; it seemed to mock at his impatience and to be a conscious
+symbol of calamity. In the midst of it, at the door of one of the
+chalets, quite alone, sat a hideous cretin, who grinned at Rowland over
+his goitre when, hardly knowing what he did, he questioned him. The
+creature's family was scattered on the mountain-sides; he could give
+Rowland no help to find them. Rowland climbed into many awkward
+places, and skirted, intently and peeringly, many an ugly chasm and
+steep-dropping ledge. But the sun, as I have said, was everywhere; it
+illumined the deep places over which, not knowing where to turn next,
+he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine
+void--nothing so human even as death. At noon he paused in his quest and
+sat down on a stone; the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst
+that was now possible was true. He suspended his search; he was afraid
+to go on. He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
+Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had
+happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten,
+became vividly present to his mind. He was aroused at last by the sound
+of a stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain. In a
+moment, on a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld a figure
+cautiously descending--a figure which was not Roderick. It was
+Singleton, who had seen him and began to beckon to him.
+
+"Come down--come down!" cried the painter, steadily making his own way
+down. Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold
+and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the
+cliff. This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from
+the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care
+sufficiently practicable.
+
+"What do you see?" cried Rowland.
+
+Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate; then,
+"Come down--come down!" he simply repeated.
+
+Rowland's course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
+precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
+It was a ten minutes' headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something
+that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below
+them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go,
+blindly, fiercely. Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine
+before him, and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland
+overtook him and his own legs collapsed. The thing that yesterday was
+his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it,
+and out of it Roderick's face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.
+
+He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little
+disfigured. The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes
+and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon
+the strand. An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture,
+some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking
+at him was only a strangely serene expression of life. The eyes were
+dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole
+face seemed to awake. The rain had washed away all blood; it was as if
+Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame. Roderick's
+face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.
+
+"He was a beautiful man!" said Singleton.
+
+They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had
+apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above
+him, with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were
+closed, and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish. At
+last they spoke of carrying him back to the inn. "There must be three or
+four men," Rowland said, "and they must be brought here quickly. I have
+not the least idea where we are."
+
+"We are at about three hours' walk from home," said Singleton. "I will
+go for help; I can find my way."
+
+"Remember," said Rowland, "whom you will have to face."
+
+"I remember," the excellent fellow answered. "There was nothing I could
+ever do for him in life; I will do what I can now."
+
+He went off, and Rowland stayed there alone. He watched for seven long
+hours, and his vigil was forever memorable. The most rational of men was
+for an hour the most passionate. He reviled himself with transcendent
+bitterness, he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would
+have lain down there in Roderick's place to unsay the words that had
+yesterday driven him forth on his lonely ramble. Roderick had been fond
+of saying that there are such things as necessary follies, and Rowland
+was now proving it. At last he grew almost used to the dumb exultation
+of the cliff above him. He saw that Roderick was a mass of hideous
+injury, and he tried to understand what had happened. Not that it helped
+him; before that confounding mortality one hypothesis after another
+faltered and swooned away. Roderick's passionate walk had carried him
+farther and higher than he knew; he had outstayed, supposably, the first
+menace of the storm, and perhaps even found a defiant entertainment
+in watching it. Perhaps he had simply lost himself. The tempest had
+overtaken him, and when he tried to return, it was too late. He
+had attempted to descend the cliff in the darkness, he had made the
+inevitable slip, and whether he had fallen fifty feet or three hundred
+little mattered. The condition of his body indicated the shorter fall.
+Now that all was over, Rowland understood how exclusively, for two
+years, Roderick had filled his life. His occupation was gone.
+
+Singleton came back with four men--one of them the landlord of the inn.
+They had formed a sort of rude bier of the frame of a chaise a porteurs,
+and by taking a very round-about course homeward were able to follow a
+tolerably level path and carry their burden with a certain decency. To
+Rowland it seemed as if the little procession would never reach the inn;
+but as they drew near it he would have given his right hand for a longer
+delay. The people of the inn came forward to meet them, in a little
+silent, solemn convoy. In the doorway, clinging together, appeared the
+two bereaved women. Mrs. Hudson tottered forward with outstretched hands
+and the expression of a blind person; but before she reached her son,
+Mary Garland had rushed past her, and, in the face of the staring,
+pitying, awe-stricken crowd, had flung herself, with the magnificent
+movement of one whose rights were supreme, and with a loud, tremendous
+cry, upon the senseless vestige of her love.
+
+That cry still lives in Rowland's ears. It interposes, persistently,
+against the reflection that when he sometimes--very rarely--sees her,
+she is unreservedly kind to him; against the memory that during the
+dreary journey back to America, made of course with his assistance,
+there was a great frankness in her gratitude, a great gratitude in her
+frankness. Miss Garland lives with Mrs. Hudson, at Northampton, where
+Rowland visits his cousin Cecilia more frequently than of old. When he
+calls upon Miss Garland he never sees Mrs. Hudson. Cecilia, who, having
+her shrewd impression that he comes to see Miss Garland as much as to
+see herself, does not feel obliged to seem unduly flattered, calls him,
+whenever he reappears, the most restless of mortals. But he always says
+to her in answer, "No, I assure you I am the most patient!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
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+
+
+
+
+
+RODERICK HUDSON
+
+by
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+
+CONTENTS
+            I. Rowland
+           II. Roderick
+          III. Rome
+           IV. Experience
+            V. Christina
+           VI. Frascati
+          VII. St. Cecilia's
+         VIII. Provocation
+           IX. Mary Garland
+            X. The Cavaliere
+           XI. Mrs. Hudson
+          XII. The Princess Casamassima
+         XIII. Switzerland
+
+
+CHAPTER I. Rowland
+
+Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first
+of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare,
+he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow
+of a nephew of his father.  He was urged by the reflection
+that an affectionate farewell might help to exonerate him
+from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this lady.
+It was not that the young man disliked her; on the contrary,
+he regarded her with a tender admiration, and he had not
+forgotten how, when his cousin had brought her home on her marriage,
+he had seemed to feel the upward sweep of the empty bough from
+which the golden fruit had been plucked, and had then and there
+accepted the prospect of bachelorhood.  The truth was, that, as it
+will be part of the entertainment of this narrative to exhibit,
+Rowland Mallet had an uncomfortably sensitive conscience, and that,
+in spite of the seeming paradox, his visits to Cecilia were rare
+because she and her misfortunes were often uppermost in it.
+Her misfortunes were three in number:  first, she had lost
+her husband; second, she had lost her money (or the greater part
+of it); and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts.
+Mallet's compassion was really wasted, because Cecilia was a very
+clever woman, and a most skillful counter-plotter to adversity.
+She had made herself a charming home, her economies were not obtrusive,
+and there was always a cheerful flutter in the folds of her crape.
+It was the consciousness of all this that puzzled Mallet whenever
+he felt tempted to put in his oar.  He had money and he had time,
+but he never could decide just how to place these gifts gracefully
+at Cecilia's service.  He no longer felt like marrying her:
+in these eight years that fancy had died a natural death.
+And yet her extreme cleverness seemed somehow to make charity
+difficult and patronage impossible.  He would rather chop off
+his hand than offer her a check, a piece of useful furniture,
+or a black silk dress; and yet there was some sadness in seeing
+such a bright, proud woman living in such a small, dull way.
+Cecilia had, moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was
+her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly
+phrase had a lurking scratch in it.  Rowland remembered that,
+for him, she was all smiles, and suspected, awkwardly, that he
+ministered not a little to her sense of the irony of things.
+And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his opportunities,
+what had he done?  He had an unaffected suspicion of his uselessness.
+Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was personally
+giving her little girl the education of a princess.
+
+This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough;
+for in the way of activity it was something definite, at least,
+to be going to Europe and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome.
+Cecilia met him in the early dusk at the gate of her little garden,
+amid a studied combination of floral perfumes.  A rosy widow
+of twenty-eight, half cousin, half hostess, doing the honors
+of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening, was a phenomenon
+to which the young man's imagination was able to do ample justice.
+Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was almost joyous.
+She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was a private
+reason for it--a reason quite distinct from her pleasure in receiving
+her honored kinsman.  The next day he flattered himself he was on
+the way to discover it.
+
+For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch,
+while Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she,
+enjoying her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime,
+Cecilia insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself.
+
+"What is it you mean to do in Europe?" she asked, lightly, giving a turn
+to the frill of her sleeve--just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to bring
+out all the latent difficulties of the question.
+
+"Why, very much what I do here," he answered.  "No great harm."
+
+"Is it true," Cecilia asked, "that here you do no great harm?
+Is not a man like you doing harm when he is not doing positive good?"
+
+"Your compliment is ambiguous," said Rowland.
+
+"No," answered the widow, "you know what I think of you.
+You have a particular aptitude for beneficence.  You have it in
+the first place in your character.  You are a benevolent person.
+Ask Bessie if you don't hold her more gently and comfortably
+than any of her other admirers."
+
+"He holds me more comfortably than Mr. Hudson," Bessie declared, roundly.
+
+Rowland, not knowing Mr. Hudson, could but half appreciate the eulogy,
+and Cecilia went on to develop her idea.  "Your circumstances,
+in the second place, suggest the idea of social usefulness.
+You are intelligent, you are well-informed, and your charity,
+if one may call it charity, would be discriminating.
+You are rich and unoccupied, so that it might be abundant.
+Therefore, I say, you are a person to do something on a large scale.
+Bestir yourself, dear Rowland, or we may be taught to think
+that virtue herself is setting a bad example."
+
+"Heaven forbid," cried Rowland, "that I should set the examples
+of virtue!  I am quite willing to follow them, however, and if I
+don't do something on the grand scale, it is that my genius is
+altogether imitative, and that I have not recently encountered
+any very striking models of grandeur.  Pray, what shall I do?
+Found an orphan asylum, or build a dormitory for Harvard College?
+I am not rich enough to do either in an ideally handsome way,
+and I confess that, yet awhile, I feel too young to strike
+my grand coup.  I am holding myself ready for inspiration.
+I am waiting till something takes my fancy irresistibly.
+If inspiration comes at forty, it will be a hundred pities
+to have tied up my money-bag at thirty."
+
+"Well, I give you till forty," said Cecilia.  "It 's only a word to the wise,
+a notification that you are expected not to run your course without having
+done something handsome for your fellow-men."
+
+Nine o'clock sounded, and Bessie, with each stroke, courted a
+closer embrace.  But a single winged word from her mother
+overleaped her successive intrenchments.  She turned and kissed
+her cousin, and deposited an irrepressible tear on his moustache.
+Then she went and said her prayers to her mother:  it was evident
+she was being admirably brought up.  Rowland, with the permission
+of his hostess, lighted a cigar and puffed it awhile in silence.
+Cecilia's interest in his career seemed very agreeable.
+That Mallet was without vanity I by no means intend to affirm;
+but there had been times when, seeing him accept, hardly less
+deferentially, advice even more peremptory than the widow's,
+you might have asked yourself what had become of his vanity.
+Now, in the sweet-smelling starlight, he felt gently wooed to egotism.
+There was a project connected with his going abroad which it was on
+his tongue's end to communicate.  It had no relation to hospitals
+or dormitories, and yet it would have sounded very generous.
+But it was not because it would have sounded generous that poor
+Mallet at last puffed it away in the fumes of his cigar.
+Useful though it might be, it expressed most imperfectly the young
+man's own personal conception of usefulness.  He was extremely
+fond of all the arts, and he had an almost passionate enjoyment
+of pictures.  He had seen many, and he judged them sagaciously.
+It had occurred to him some time before that it would be
+the work of a good citizen to go abroad and with all expedition
+and secrecy purchase certain valuable specimens of the Dutch
+and Italian schools as to which he had received private proposals,
+and then present his treasures out of hand to an American city,
+not unknown to ; aesthetic fame, in which at that time there
+prevailed a good deal of fruitless aspiration toward an art-museum.
+He had seen himself in imagination, more than once, in some mouldy
+old saloon of a Florentine palace, turning toward the deep embrasure
+of the window some scarcely-faded Ghirlandaio or Botticelli,
+while a host in reduced circumstances pointed out the lovely drawing
+of a hand.  But he imparted none of these visions to Cecilia,
+and he suddenly swept them away with the declaration that he was
+of course an idle, useless creature, and that he would probably
+be even more so in Europe than at home.  "The only thing is,"
+he said, "that there I shall seem to be doing something.
+I shall be better entertained, and shall be therefore,
+I suppose, in a better humor with life.  You may say that
+that is just the humor a useless man should keep out of.
+He should cultivate discontentment.  I did a good many things
+when I was in Europe before, but I did not spend a winter in Rome.
+Every one assures me that this is a peculiar refinement
+of bliss; most people talk about Rome in the same way.
+It is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing:
+a passive life in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality
+of one's impressions, takes on a very respectable likeness
+to activity.  It is still lotus-eating, only you sit down
+at table, and the lotuses are served up on rococo china.
+It 's all very well, but I have a distinct prevision of this--
+that if Roman life does n't do something substantial to make
+you happier, it increases tenfold your liability to moral misery.
+It seems to me a rash thing for a sensitive soul deliberately
+to cultivate its sensibilities by rambling too often among the ruins
+of the Palatine, or riding too often in the shadow of the aqueducts.
+In such recreations the chords of feeling grow tense,
+and after-life, to spare your intellectual nerves, must play
+upon them with a touch as dainty as the tread of Mignon when she
+danced her egg-dance."
+
+"I should have said, my dear Rowland," said Cecilia, with a laugh,
+"that your nerves were tough, that your eggs were hard!"
+
+"That being stupid, you mean, I might be happy?  Upon my word I am not.
+I am clever enough to want more than I 've got.  I am tired of myself,
+my own thoughts, my own affairs, my own eternal company.
+True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self;
+but the point is not only to get out--you must stay out;
+and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
+Unfortunately, I 've got no errand, and nobody will trust me with one.
+I want to care for something, or for some one.  And I want to care with
+a certain ardor; even, if you can believe it, with a certain passion.
+I can't just now feel ardent and passionate about a hospital or a dormitory.
+Do you know I sometimes think that I 'm a man of genius, half finished?
+The genius has been left out, the faculty of expression is wanting;
+but the need for expression remains, and I spend my days groping
+for the latch of a closed door."
+
+"What an immense number of words," said Cecilia after a pause,
+"to say you want to fall in love!  I 've no doubt you have as good
+a genius for that as any one, if you would only trust it."
+
+"Of course I 've thought of that, and I assure you I hold
+myself ready.  But, evidently, I 'm not inflammable.
+Is there in Northampton some perfect epitome of the graces?"
+
+"Of the graces?" said Cecilia, raising her eyebrows and suppressing too
+distinct a consciousness of being herself a rosy embodiment of several.
+"The household virtues are better represented.  There are some
+excellent girls, and there are two or three very pretty ones.
+I will have them here, one by one, to tea, if you like."
+
+"I should particularly like it; especially as I should give you a chance
+to see, by the profundity of my attention, that if I am not happy,
+it 's not for want of taking pains."
+
+Cecilia was silent a moment; and then, "On the whole,"
+she resumed, "I don't think there are any worth asking.
+There are none so very pretty, none so very pleasing."
+
+"Are you very sure?" asked the young man, rising and throwing
+away his cigar-end.
+
+"Upon my word," cried Cecilia, "one would suppose I wished to keep you
+for myself.  Of course I am sure!  But as the penalty of your insinuations,
+I shall invite the plainest and prosiest damsel that can be found,
+and leave you alone with her."
+
+Rowland smiled.  "Even against her," he said, "I should be sorry
+to conclude until I had given her my respectful attention."
+
+This little profession of ideal chivalry (which closed
+the conversation) was not quite so fanciful on Mallet's lips
+as it would have been on those of many another man; as a rapid
+glance at his antecedents may help to make the reader perceive.
+His life had been a singular mixture of the rough and the smooth.
+He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been
+brought up to think much more intently of the duties
+of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.
+His progenitors had submitted in the matter of dogmatic
+theology to the relaxing influences of recent years;
+but if Rowland's youthful consciousness was not chilled
+by the menace of long punishment for brief transgression,
+he had at least been made to feel that there ran through all
+things a strain of right and of wrong, as different, after all,
+in their complexions, as the texture, to the spiritual sense,
+of Sundays and week-days. His father was a chip of the primal
+Puritan block, a man with an icy smile and a stony frown.
+He had always bestowed on his son, on principle, more frowns
+than smiles, and if the lad had not been turned to stone himself,
+it was because nature had blessed him, inwardly, with a well
+of vivifying waters.  Mrs. Mallet had been a Miss Rowland,
+the daughter of a retired sea-captain, once famous
+on the ships that sailed from Salem and Newburyport.
+He had brought to port many a cargo which crowned
+the edifice of fortunes already almost colossal, but he had
+also done a little sagacious trading on his own account,
+and he was able to retire, prematurely for so sea-worthy
+a maritime organism, upon a pension of his own providing.
+He was to be seen for a year on the Salem wharves, smoking the best
+tobacco and eying the seaward horizon with an inveteracy
+which superficial minds interpreted as a sign of repentance.
+At last, one evening, he disappeared beneath it, as he had often
+done before; this time, however, not as a commissioned navigator,
+but simply as an amateur of an observing turn likely to
+prove oppressive to the officer in command of the vessel.
+Five months later his place at home knew him again, and made
+the acquaintance also of a handsome, blonde young woman,
+of redundant contours, speaking a foreign tongue.
+The foreign tongue proved, after much conflicting research,
+to be the idiom of Amsterdam, and the young woman,
+which was stranger still, to be Captain Rowland's wife.
+Why he had gone forth so suddenly across the seas to marry her,
+what had happened between them before, and whether--though it was
+of questionable propriety for a good citizen to espouse a young
+person of mysterious origin, who did her hair in fantastically
+elaborate plaits, and in whose appearance "figure" enjoyed
+such striking predominance--he would not have had a heavy weight
+on his conscience if he had remained an irresponsible bachelor;
+these questions and many others, bearing with varying
+degrees of immediacy on the subject, were much propounded
+but scantily answered, and this history need not be charged
+with resolving them.  Mrs. Rowland, for so handsome a woman,
+proved a tranquil neighbor and an excellent housewife.
+Her extremely fresh complexion, however, was always suffused
+with an air of apathetic homesickness, and she played her part
+in American society chiefly by having the little squares
+of brick pavement in front of her dwelling scoured and polished
+as nearly as possible into the likeness of Dutch tiles.
+Rowland Mallet remembered having seen her, as a child--
+an immensely stout, white-faced lady, wearing a high cap
+of very stiff tulle, speaking English with a formidable accent,
+and suffering from dropsy.  Captain Rowland was a little
+bronzed and wizened man, with eccentric opinions.
+He advocated the creation of a public promenade along the sea,
+with arbors and little green tables for the consumption of beer,
+and a platform, surrounded by Chinese lanterns, for dancing.
+He especially desired the town library to be opened on Sundays,
+though, as he never entered it on week-days, it was easy to turn
+the proposition into ridicule.  If, therefore, Mrs. Mallet
+was a woman of an exquisite moral tone, it was not that she had
+inherited her temper from an ancestry with a turn for casuistry.
+Jonas Mallet, at the time of his marriage, was conducting
+with silent shrewdness a small, unpromising business.
+Both his shrewdness and his silence increased with his years,
+and at the close of his life he was an extremely well-dressed,
+wellbrushed gentleman, with a frigid gray eye, who said
+little to anybody, but of whom everybody said that he had
+a very handsome fortune.  He was not a sentimental father,
+and the roughness I just now spoke of in Rowland's life dated
+from his early boyhood.  Mr. Mallet, whenever he looked at
+his son, felt extreme compunction at having made a fortune.
+He remembered that the fruit had not dropped ripe from
+the tree into his own mouth, and determined it should
+be no fault of his if the boy was corrupted by luxury.
+Rowland, therefore, except for a good deal of expensive
+instruction in foreign tongues and abstruse sciences,
+received the education of a poor man's son.  His fare was plain,
+his temper familiar with the discipline of patched trousers,
+and his habits marked by an exaggerated simplicity which it
+really cost a good deal of money to preserve unbroken.
+He was kept in the country for months together, in the midst
+of servants who had strict injunctions to see that he suffered
+no serious harm, but were as strictly forbidden to wait upon him.
+As no school could be found conducted on principles
+sufficiently rigorous, he was attended at home by a master who set
+a high price on the understanding that he was to illustrate
+the beauty of abstinence not only by precept but by example.
+Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly,
+during his younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy
+who had inherited nothing whatever that was to make life easy.
+He was passive, pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books,
+and inordinately fond of trout-fishing. His hair, a memento
+of his Dutch ancestry, was of the fairest shade of yellow,
+his complexion absurdly rosy, and his measurement around the waist,
+when he was about ten years old, quite alarmingly large.
+This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he became
+afterwards a fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was
+never accused of anything worse than a tendency to corpulence.
+He emerged from childhood a simple, wholesome, round-eyed lad,
+with no suspicion that a less roundabout course might have
+been taken to make him happy, but with a vague sense that his
+young experience was not a fair sample of human freedom,
+and that he was to make a great many discoveries.
+When he was about fifteen, he achieved a momentous one.
+He ascertained that his mother was a saint.  She had always
+been a very distinct presence in his life, but so ineffably
+gentle a one that his sense was fully opened to it only
+by the danger of losing her.  She had an illness which for
+many months was liable at any moment to terminate fatally,
+and during her long-arrested convalescence she removed
+the mask which she had worn for years by her husband's order.
+Rowland spent his days at her side and felt before long
+as if he had made a new friend.  All his impressions at this
+period were commented and interpreted at leisure in the future,
+and it was only then that he understood that his mother
+had been for fifteen years a perfectly unhappy woman.
+Her marriage had been an immitigable error which she had
+spent her life in trying to look straight in the face.
+She found nothing to oppose to her husband's will of steel
+but the appearance of absolute compliance; her spirit sank,
+and she lived for a while in a sort of helpless moral torpor.
+But at last, as her child emerged from babyhood, she began to feel
+a certain charm in patience, to discover the uses of ingenuity,
+and to learn that, somehow or other, one can always arrange
+one's life.  She cultivated from this time forward a little private
+plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded precinct that,
+before her death, she gave her son the key.  Rowland's allowance
+at college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently,
+and as soon as he graduated, he was taken into his father's
+counting-house, to do small drudgery on a proportionate salary.
+For three years he earned his living as regularly as
+the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office.
+Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency
+was known only on his death.  He left but a third of his property
+to his son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions
+and local charities.  Rowland's third was an easy competence,
+and he never felt a moment's jealousy of his fellow-pensioners;
+but when one of the establishments which had figured most
+advantageously in his father's will bethought itself to affirm
+the existence of a later instrument, in which it had been
+still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a sudden
+passionate need to repel the claim by process of law.
+There was a lively tussle, but he gained his case;
+immediately after which he made, in another quarter,
+a donation of the contested sum.  He cared nothing for the money,
+but he had felt an angry desire to protest against a destiny
+which seemed determined to be exclusively salutary.
+It seemed to him that he would bear a little spoiling.
+And yet he treated himself to a very modest quantity, and submitted
+without reserve to the great national discipline which began in 1861.
+When the Civil War broke out he immediately obtained a commission,
+and did his duty for three long years as a citizen soldier.
+His duty was obscure, but he never lost a certain private
+satisfaction in remembering that on two or three occasions
+it had been performed with something of an ideal precision.
+He had disentangled himself from business, and after the war
+he felt a profound disinclination to tie the knot again.
+He had no desire to make money, he had money enough;
+and although he knew, and was frequently reminded, that a young
+man is the better for a fixed occupation, he could discover
+no moral advantage in driving a lucrative trade.  Yet few young
+men of means and leisure ever made less of a parade of idleness,
+and indeed idleness in any degree could hardly be laid at
+the door of a young man who took life in the serious, attentive,
+reasoning fashion of our friend.  It often seemed to Mallet
+that he wholly lacked the prime requisite of a graceful flaneur--
+the simple, sensuous, confident relish of pleasure.
+He had frequent fits of extreme melancholy, in which he declared
+that he was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring.
+He was neither an irresponsibly contemplative nature nor a sturdily
+practical one, and he was forever looking in vain for the uses
+of the things that please and the charm of the things that sustain.
+He was an awkward mixture of strong moral impulse and restless
+aesthetic curiosity, and yet he would have made a most ineffective
+reformer and a very indifferent artist.  It seemed to him
+that the glow of happiness must be found either in action,
+of some immensely solid kind, on behalf of an idea, or in producing
+a masterpiece in one of the arts.  Oftenest, perhaps, he wished
+he were a vigorous young man of genius, without a penny.
+As it was, he could only buy pictures, and not paint them;
+and in the way of action, he had to content himself with making
+a rule to render scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples
+of it in others.  On the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty.
+With his blooming complexion and his serene gray eye,
+he felt the friction of existence more than was suspected;
+but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he assumed
+that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no
+excuse for taking an ill-natured view of life, and he undertook
+constantly to believe that all women were fair, all men
+were brave, and the world was a delightful place of sojourn,
+until the contrary had been distinctly proved.
+
+Cecilia's blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to repose
+and a cigar, that she reproached him the next morning with indifference to
+her little parlor, not less, in its way, a monument to her ingenious taste.
+"And by the way," she added as he followed her in, "if I refused last night
+to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show you a pretty boy."
+
+She threw open a window and pointed to a statuette which occupied
+the place of honor among the ornaments of the room.  Rowland looked
+at it a moment and then turned to her with an exclamation of surprise.
+She gave him a rapid glance, perceived that her statuette was of
+altogether exceptional merit, and then smiled, knowingly, as if this
+had long been an agreeable certainty.
+
+"Who did it? where did you get it?"  Rowland demanded.
+
+"Oh," said Cecilia, adjusting the light, "it 's a little thing
+of Mr. Hudson's."
+
+"And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland.  But he was absorbed;
+he lost her immediate reply.  The statuette, in bronze, something less
+than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd.
+The attitude was perfectly simple.  The lad was squarely planted on
+his feet, with his legs a little apart; his back was slightly hollowed,
+his head thrown back, and both hands raised to support the rustic cup.
+There was a loosened fillet of wild flowers about his head,
+and his eyes, under their drooped lids, looked straight into the cup.
+On the base was scratched the Greek word ;aa;gD;gi;gc;ga, Thirst.
+The figure might have been some beautiful youth of ancient fable,--
+Hylas or Narcissus, Paris or Endymion.  Its beauty was the beauty
+of natural movement; nothing had been sought to be represented but
+the perfection of an attitude.  This had been most attentively studied,
+and it was exquisitely rendered.  Rowland demanded more light,
+dropped his head on this side and that, uttered vague exclamations.
+He said to himself, as he had said more than once in the Louvre
+and the Vatican, "We ugly mortals, what beautiful creatures we are!"
+Nothing, in a long time, had given him so much pleasure.
+"Hudson--Hudson," he asked again; "who is Hudson?"
+
+"A young man of this place," said Cecilia.
+
+"A young man?  How old?"
+
+"I suppose he is three or four and twenty."
+
+"Of this place, you say--of Northampton, Massachusetts?"
+
+"He lives here, but he comes from Virginia."
+
+"Is he a sculptor by profession?"
+
+"He 's a law-student."
+
+Rowland burst out laughing.  "He has found something in Blackstone that I
+never did.  He makes statues then simply for his pleasure?"
+
+Cecilia, with a smile, gave a little toss of her head.  "For mine!"
+
+"I congratulate you," said Rowland.  "I wonder whether he could
+be induced to do anything for me?"
+
+"This was a matter of friendship.  I saw the figure when
+he had modeled it in clay, and of course greatly admired it.
+He said nothing at the time, but a week ago, on my birthday,
+he arrived in a buggy, with this.  He had had it cast at the foundry
+at Chicopee; I believe it 's a beautiful piece of bronze.
+He begged me to accept."
+
+"Upon my word," said Mallet, "he does things handsomely!"
+And he fell to admiring the statue again.
+
+"So then," said Cecilia, "it 's very remarkable?"
+
+"Why, my dear cousin," Rowland answered, "Mr. Hudson,
+of Virginia, is an extraordinary--" Then suddenly stopping:
+"Is he a great friend of yours?" he asked.
+
+"A great friend?" and Cecilia hesitated.  "I regard him as a child!"
+
+"Well," said Rowland, "he 's a very clever child.
+Tell me something about him:  I should like to see him."
+
+Cecilia was obliged to go to her daughter's music-lesson, but she assured
+Rowland that she would arrange for him a meeting with the young sculptor.
+He was a frequent visitor, and as he had not called for some days it
+was likely he would come that evening.  Rowland, left alone, examined the
+statuette at his leisure, and returned more than once during the day to take
+another look at it.  He discovered its weak points, but it wore well.
+It had the stamp of genius.  Rowland envied the happy youth who, in a New
+England village, without aid or encouragement, without models or resources,
+had found it so easy to produce a lovely work.
+
+In the evening, as he was smoking his cigar on the veranda, a light,
+quick step pressed the gravel of the garden path, and in a moment
+a young man made his bow to Cecilia.  It was rather a nod than a bow,
+and indicated either that he was an old friend, or that he was scantily
+versed in the usual social forms.  Cecilia, who was sitting near the steps,
+pointed to a neighboring chair, but the young man seated himself abruptly
+on the floor at her feet, began to fan himself vigorously with his hat,
+and broke out into a lively objurgation upon the hot weather.
+"I 'm dripping wet!" he said, without ceremony.
+
+"You walk too fast," said Cecilia.  "You do everything too fast."
+
+"I know it, I know it!" he cried, passing his hand through his
+abundant dark hair and making it stand out in a picturesque shock.
+"I can't be slow if I try.  There 's something inside of me that drives me.
+A restless fiend!"
+
+Cecilia gave a light laugh, and Rowland leaned forward in his hammock.
+He had placed himself in it at Bessie's request, and was playing
+that he was her baby and that she was rocking him to sleep.
+She sat beside him, swinging the hammock to and fro, and singing a lullaby.
+When he raised himself she pushed him back and said that the baby
+must finish its nap.  "But I want to see the gentleman with the fiend
+inside of him," said Rowland.
+
+"What is a fiend?"  Bessie demanded.  "It 's only Mr. Hudson."
+
+"Very well, I want to see him."
+
+"Oh, never mind him!" said Bessie, with the brevity of contempt.
+
+"You speak as if you did n't like him."
+
+"I don't!" Bessie affirmed, and put Rowland to bed again.
+
+The hammock was swung at the end of the veranda, in the thickest
+shade of the vines, and this fragment of dialogue had
+passed unnoticed.  Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled,
+and contented himself with listening to Mr. Hudson's voice.
+It was a soft and not altogether masculine organ, and was pitched
+on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive and pettish key.
+The young man's mood seemed fretful; he complained of the heat,
+of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand
+a mile to the other side of the town and found the person he was
+in search of had left Northampton an hour before.
+
+"Won't you have a cup of tea?"  Cecilia asked.  "Perhaps that will
+restore your equanimity."
+
+"Aye, by keeping me awake all night!" said Hudson.
+"At the best, it 's hard enough to go down to the office.
+With my nerves set on edge by a sleepless night, I should
+perforce stay at home and be brutal to my poor mother."
+
+"Your mother is well, I hope."
+
+"Oh, she 's as usual."
+
+"And Miss Garland?"
+
+"She 's as usual, too.  Every one, everything, is as usual.
+Nothing ever happens, in this benighted town."
+
+"I beg your pardon; things do happen, sometimes," said Cecilia.
+"Here is a dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to congratulate
+you on your statuette."  And she called to Rowland to come and be
+introduced to Mr. Hudson.  The young man sprang up with alacrity,
+and Rowland, coming forward to shake hands, had a good look
+at him in the light projected from the parlor window.
+Something seemed to shine out of Hudson's face as a warning
+against a "compliment" of the idle, unpondered sort.
+
+"Your statuette seems to me very good," Rowland said gravely.
+"It has given me extreme pleasure."
+
+"And my cousin knows what is good," said Cecilia.
+"He 's a connoisseur."
+
+Hudson smiled and stared.  "A connoisseur?" he cried, laughing.  "He 's
+the first I 've ever seen!  Let me see what they look like;" and he drew
+Rowland nearer to the light.  "Have they all such good heads as that?
+I should like to model yours."
+
+"Pray do," said Cecilia.  "It will keep him a while.
+He is running off to Europe."
+
+"Ah, to Europe!"  Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence,
+as they sat down.  "Happy man!"
+
+But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random,
+for he perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity
+of his later talk.  Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow,
+with a singularly mobile and intelligent face.
+Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity,
+but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome.
+The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank
+smile played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers.
+The fault of the young man's whole structure was an excessive
+want of breadth.  The forehead, though it was high and rounded,
+was narrow; the jaw and the shoulders were narrow;
+and the result was an air of insufficient physical substance.
+But Mallet afterwards learned that this fair, slim youth could draw
+indefinitely upon a mysterious fund of nervous force, which outlasted
+and outwearied the endurance of many a sturdier temperament.
+And certainly there was life enough in his eye to furnish
+an immortality!  It was a generous dark gray eye, in which
+there came and went a sort of kindling glow, which would
+have made a ruder visage striking, and which gave at times
+to Hudson's harmonious face an altogether extraordinary beauty.
+There was to Rowland's sympathetic sense a slightly
+pitiful disparity between the young sculptor's delicate
+countenance and the shabby gentility of his costume.
+He was dressed for a visit--a visit to a pretty woman.
+He was clad from head to foot in a white linen suit,
+which had never been remarkable for the felicity of its cut,
+and had now quite lost that crispness which garments of this
+complexion can as ill spare as the back-scene of a theatre
+the radiance of the footlights.  He wore a vivid blue cravat,
+passed through a ring altogether too splendid to be valuable;
+he pulled and twisted, as he sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves;
+he emphasized his conversation with great dashes and flourishes
+of a light, silver-tipped walking-stick, and he kept constantly
+taking off and putting on one of those slouched sombreros
+which are the traditional property of the Virginian or Carolinian
+of romance.  When this was on, he was very picturesque,
+in spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off,
+and he sat nursing it and turning it about and not knowing
+what to do with it, he could hardly be said to be awkward.
+He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant accessories,
+and appropriated what came to his hand.  This was visible
+in his talk, which abounded in the florid and sonorous.
+He liked words with color in them.
+
+Rowland, who was but a moderate talker, sat by in silence,
+while Cecilia, who had told him that she desired his
+opinion upon her friend, used a good deal of characteristic
+finesse in leading the young man to expose himself.
+She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for an hour
+with a volubility in which boyish unconsciousness and manly
+shrewdness were singularly combined.  He gave his opinion on
+twenty topics, he opened up an endless budget of local gossip,
+he described his repulsive routine at the office of Messrs.
+Striker and Spooner, counselors at law, and he gave with great
+felicity and gusto an account of the annual boat-race between
+Harvard and Yale, which he had lately witnessed at Worcester.
+He had looked at the straining oarsmen and the swaying crowd
+with the eye of the sculptor.  Rowland was a good deal
+amused and not a little interested.  Whenever Hudson uttered
+some peculiarly striking piece of youthful grandiloquence,
+Cecilia broke into a long, light, familiar laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" the young man then demanded.
+"Have I said anything so ridiculous?"
+
+"Go on, go on," Cecilia replied.  "You are too delicious!
+Show Mr. Mallet how Mr. Striker read the Declaration of Independence."
+
+Hudson, like most men with a turn for the plastic arts, was an
+excellent mimic, and he represented with a great deal of humor
+the accent and attitude of a pompous country lawyer sustaining
+the burden of this customary episode of our national festival.
+The sonorous twang, the see-saw gestures, the odd pronunciation,
+were vividly depicted.  But Cecilia's manner, and the young man's
+quick response, ruffled a little poor Rowland's paternal conscience.
+He wondered whether his cousin was not sacrificing the faculty
+of reverence in her clever protege to her need for amusement.
+Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland's compliment
+on his statuette until he rose to go.  Rowland wondered
+whether he had forgotten it, and supposed that the oversight
+was a sign of the natural self-sufficiency of genius.
+But Hudson stood a moment before he said good night,
+twirled his sombrero, and hesitated for the first time.
+He gave Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then,
+with a wonderfully frank, appealing smile:  "You really meant,"
+he asked, "what you said a while ago about that thing of mine?
+It is good--essentially good?"
+
+"I really meant it," said Rowland, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder.
+"It is very good indeed.  It is, as you say, essentially good.
+That is the beauty of it."
+
+Hudson's eyes glowed and expanded; he looked at Rowland for some time
+in silence.  "I have a notion you really know," he said at last.
+"But if you don't, it does n't much matter."
+
+"My cousin asked me to-day," said Cecilia, "whether I supposed
+you knew yourself how good it is."
+
+Hudson stared, blushing a little.  "Perhaps not!" he cried.
+
+"Very likely," said Mallet.  "I read in a book the other day that great
+talent in action--in fact the book said genius--is a kind of somnambulism.
+The artist performs great feats, in a dream.  We must not wake him up,
+lest he should lose his balance."
+
+"Oh, when he 's back in bed again!"  Hudson answered with a laugh.
+"Yes, call it a dream.  It was a very happy one!"
+
+"Tell me this," said Rowland.  "Did you mean anything
+by your young Water-drinker? Does he represent an idea?
+Is he a symbol?"
+
+Hudson raised his eyebrows and gently scratched his head.
+"Why, he 's youth, you know; he 's innocence, he 's health,
+he 's strength, he 's curiosity.  Yes, he 's a good many things."
+
+"And is the cup also a symbol?"
+
+"The cup is knowledge, pleasure, experience.  Anything of that kind!"
+
+"Well, he 's guzzling in earnest," said Rowland.
+
+Hudson gave a vigorous nod.  "Aye, poor fellow, he 's thirsty!"
+And on this he cried good night, and bounded down the garden path.
+
+"Well, what do you make of him?" asked Cecilia, returning a short
+time afterwards from a visit of investigation as to the sufficiency
+of Bessie's bedclothes.
+
+"I confess I like him," said Rowland.  "He 's very immature,--
+but there 's stuff in him."
+
+"He 's a strange being," said Cecilia, musingly.
+
+"Who are his people? what has been his education?"  Rowland asked.
+
+"He has had no education, beyond what he has picked up,
+with little trouble, for himself.  His mother is a widow,
+of a Massachusetts country family, a little timid, tremulous woman,
+who is always on pins and needles about her son.  She had some
+property herself, and married a Virginian gentleman of good estates.
+He turned out, I believe, a very licentious personage, and made
+great havoc in their fortune.  Everything, or almost everything,
+melted away, including Mr. Hudson himself.  This is literally true,
+for he drank himself to death.  Ten years ago his wife was left
+a widow, with scanty means and a couple of growing boys.
+She paid her husband's debts as best she could, and came
+to establish herself here, where by the death of a charitable
+relative she had inherited an old-fashioned ruinous house.
+Roderick, our friend, was her pride and joy, but Stephen, the elder,
+was her comfort and support.  I remember him, later; he was
+an ugly, sturdy, practical lad, very different from his brother,
+and in his way, I imagine, a very fine fellow.  When the war broke
+out he found that the New England blood ran thicker in his veins
+than the Virginian, and immediately obtained a commission.
+He fell in some Western battle and left his mother inconsolable.
+Roderick, however, has given her plenty to think about,
+and she has induced him, by some mysterious art, to abide,
+nominally at least, in a profession that he abhors, and for which
+he is about as fit, I should say, as I am to drive a locomotive.
+He grew up a la grace de Dieu, and was horribly spoiled.
+Three or four years ago he graduated at a small college in
+this neighborhood, where I am afraid he had given a good deal more
+attention to novels and billiards than to mathematics and Greek.
+Since then he has been reading law, at the rate of a page a day.
+If he is ever admitted to practice I 'm afraid my friendship won't
+avail to make me give him my business.  Good, bad, or indifferent,
+the boy is essentially an artist--an artist to his fingers' ends."
+
+"Why, then," asked Rowland, "does n't he deliberately take up the chisel?"
+
+"For several reasons.  In the first place, I don't think he more
+than half suspects his talent.  The flame is smouldering,
+but it is never fanned by the breath of criticism.
+He sees nothing, hears nothing, to help him to self-knowledge. He
+'s hopelessly discontented, but he does n't know where to look
+for help.  Then his mother, as she one day confessed to me,
+has a holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively,
+as she supposes, in making figures of people without
+their clothes on.  Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious
+form of immorality, and for a young man of a passionate
+disposition she considers the law a much safer investment.
+Her father was a judge, she has two brothers at the bar,
+and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in
+the same line.  She wishes the tradition to be perpetuated.
+I 'm pretty sure the law won't make Roderick's fortune,
+and I 'm afraid it will, in the long run, spoil his temper."
+
+"What sort of a temper is it?"
+
+"One to be trusted, on the whole.  It is quick, but it is generous.
+I have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o'clock in the evening,
+and soft, sweet music early on the morrow.  It 's a very entertaining
+temper to observe.  I, fortunately, can do so dispassionately,
+for I 'm the only person in the place he has not quarreled with."
+
+"Has he then no society?  Who is Miss Garland, whom you asked about?"
+
+"A young girl staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin;
+a good plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor's eye.
+Roderick has a goodly share of the old Southern arrogance;
+he has the aristocratic temperament.  He will have nothing
+to do with the small towns-people; he says they 're 'ignoble.'
+He cannot endure his mother's friends--the old ladies and
+the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to death.
+So he comes and lounges here and rails at everything and every one."
+
+This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later,
+and confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland's part.
+He was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly,
+and asked Rowland a number of rather naif questions about
+the condition of the fine arts in New York and Boston.
+Cecilia, when he had gone, said that this was the wholesome effect
+of Rowland's praise of his statuette.  Roderick was acutely sensitive,
+and Rowland's tranquil commendation had stilled his restless pulses.
+He was ruminating the full-flavored verdict of culture.  Rowland felt
+an irresistible kindness for him, a mingled sense of his personal
+charm and his artistic capacity.  He had an indefinable attraction--
+the something divine of unspotted, exuberant, confident youth.
+The next day was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they should
+take a long walk and that Roderick should show him the country.
+The young man assented gleefully, and in the morning,
+as Rowland at the garden gate was giving his hostess Godspeed
+on her way to church, he came striding along the grassy margin
+of the road and out-whistling the music of the church bells.
+It was one of those lovely days of August when you feel the complete
+exuberance of summer just warned and checked by autumn.
+"Remember the day, and take care you rob no orchards," said Cecilia,
+as they separated.
+
+The young men walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale,
+through woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy
+elevation studded with mossy rocks and red cedars.  Just beneath them,
+in a great shining curve, flowed the goodly Connecticut.
+They flung themselves on the grass and tossed stones into the river;
+they talked like old friends.  Rowland lit a cigar, and Roderick
+refused one with a grimace of extravagant disgust.  He thought them
+vile things; he did n't see how decent people could tolerate them.
+Rowland was amused, and wondered what it was that made this ill-mannered
+speech seem perfectly inoffensive on Roderick's lips.  He belonged
+to the race of mortals, to be pitied or envied according as we view
+the matter, who are not held to a strict account for their aggressions.
+Looking at him as he lay stretched in the shade, Rowland vaguely
+likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless, bright-eyed animal,
+whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the tremulous delicacy
+of its structure, and be graceful even when they were most inconvenient.
+Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke, listened to
+the gurgle of the river, and sniffed the balsam of the pines.
+A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits, and brought
+the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river meadows.
+He sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading view.
+It seemed to him beautiful, and suddenly a strange feeling of prospective
+regret took possession of him.  Something seemed to tell him that later,
+in a foreign land, he would remember it lovingly and penitently.
+
+"It 's a wretched business," he said, "this practical quarrel of ours
+with our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it.
+Is one's only safety then in flight?  This is an American day,
+an American landscape, an American atmosphere.  It certainly has
+its merits, and some day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy,
+I shall accuse myself of having slighted them."
+
+Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that America was good
+enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an honest
+citizen to stand by his own country and help it along.  He had evidently
+thought nothing whatever about it, and was launching his doctrine on
+the inspiration of the moment.  The doctrine expanded with the occasion,
+and he declared that he was above all an advocate for American art.
+He did n't see why we should n't produce the greatest works in the world.
+We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the biggest conceptions.
+The biggest conceptions of course would bring forth in time the
+biggest performances.  We had only to be true to ourselves, to pitch
+in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our eyes upon
+our National Individuality.  "I declare," he cried, "there 's a career
+for a man, and I 've twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to embrace it--
+to be the consummate, typical, original, national American artist!
+It 's inspiring!"
+
+Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice
+better than his theory, and that a saner impulse than this had
+inspired his little Water-drinker. Roderick took no offense,
+and three minutes afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme,
+but half heeded by his companion, who had returned to his cogitations.
+At last Rowland delivered himself of the upshot of these.
+"How would you like," he suddenly demanded, "to go to Rome?"
+
+Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our National
+Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it reasonably well.
+"And I should like, by the same token," he added, "to go to Athens,
+to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of Benares, where there
+is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall."
+
+"Nay," said Rowland soberly, "if you were to go to Rome,
+you should settle down and work.  Athens might help you,
+but for the present I should n't recommend Benares."
+
+"It will be time to arrange details when I pack my trunk," said Hudson.
+
+"If you mean to turn sculptor, the sooner you pack your trunk the better."
+
+"Oh, but I 'm a practical man!  What is the smallest sum per annum,
+on which one can keep alive the sacred fire in Rome?"
+
+"What is the largest sum at your disposal?"
+
+Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then
+announced with mock pomposity:  "Three hundred dollars!"
+
+"The money question could be arranged," said Rowland.
+"There are ways of raising money."
+
+"I should like to know a few!  I never yet discovered one."
+
+"One consists," said Rowland, "in having a friend with a good deal
+more than he wants, and not being too proud to accept a part of it.
+"
+
+Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed.  "Do you mean--
+do you mean?".... he stammered.  He was greatly excited.
+
+Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet.
+"In three words, if you are to be a sculptor, you ought to go
+to Rome and study the antique.  To go to Rome you need money.
+I 'm fond of fine statues, but unfortunately I can't make them myself.
+I have to order them.  I order a dozen from you, to be executed
+at your convenience.  To help you, I pay you in advance."
+
+Roderick pushed off his hat and wiped his forehead, still gazing
+at his companion.  "You believe in me!" he cried at last.
+
+"Allow me to explain," said Rowland.  "I believe in you,
+if you are prepared to work and to wait, and to struggle,
+and to exercise a great many virtues.  And then, I 'm afraid
+to say it, lest I should disturb you more than I should help you.
+You must decide for yourself.  I simply offer you an opportunity."
+
+Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative.
+"You have not seen my other things," he said suddenly.
+"Come and look at them."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes, we 'll walk home.  We 'll settle the question."
+
+He passed his hand through Rowland's arm and they retraced their steps.
+They reached the town and made their way along a broad
+country street, dusky with the shade of magnificent elms.
+Rowland felt his companion's arm trembling in his own.
+They stopped at a large white house, flanked with melancholy hemlocks,
+and passed through a little front garden, paved with moss-coated
+bricks and ornamented with parterres bordered with high box hedges.
+The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but it had seen
+its best days, and evidently sheltered a shrunken household.
+Mrs. Hudson, Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden
+of a morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves,
+engaged in frugal horticulture.  Roderick's studio was behind,
+in the basement; a large, empty room, with the paper peeling off
+the walls.  This represented, in the fashion of fifty years ago,
+a series of small fantastic landscapes of a hideous pattern,
+and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away in great scraps,
+in moments of aesthetic exasperation.  On a board in a corner
+was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall, stood some
+dozen medallions, busts, and figures, in various stages of completion.
+To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on
+the end of a long packing-box, which served as a pedestal.
+He did so silently, making no explanations, and looking
+at them himself with a strange air of quickened curiosity.
+Most of the things were portraits; and the three at which he looked
+longest were finished busts.  One was a colossal head of a negro,
+tossed back, defiant, with distended nostrils; one was the portrait
+of a young man whom Rowland immediately perceived, by the resemblance,
+to be his deceased brother; the last represented a gentleman with
+a pointed nose, a long, shaved upper lip, and a tuft on the end
+of his chin.  This was a face peculiarly unadapted to sculpture;
+but as a piece of modeling it was the best, and it was admirable.
+It reminded Rowland in its homely veracity, its artless artfulness,
+of the works of the early Italian Renaissance.  On the pedestal
+was cut the name--Barnaby Striker, Esq. Rowland remembered that this
+was the appellation of the legal luminary from whom his companion
+had undertaken to borrow a reflected ray, and although in the bust
+there was naught flagrantly set down in malice, it betrayed,
+comically to one who could relish the secret, that the features
+of the original had often been scanned with an irritated eye.
+Besides these there were several rough studies of the nude,
+and two or three figures of a fanciful kind.  The most noticeable
+(and it had singular beauty) was a small modeled design for
+a sepulchral monument; that, evidently, of Stephen Hudson.
+The young soldier lay sleeping eternally, with his hand on his sword,
+like an old crusader in a Gothic cathedral.
+
+Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgment.
+"Upon my word," cried Hudson at last, "they seem to me very good."
+
+And in truth, as Rowland looked, he saw they were good.
+They were youthful, awkward, and ignorant; the effort,
+often, was more apparent than the success.  But the effort
+was signally powerful and intelligent; it seemed to Rowland
+that it needed only to let itself go to compass great things.
+Here and there, too, success, when grasped, had something masterly.
+Rowland turned to his companion, who stood with his hands in his
+pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance.
+The light of admiration was in Rowland's eyes, and it speedily
+kindled a wonderful illumination on Hudson's handsome brow.
+Rowland said at last, gravely, "You have only to work!"
+
+"I think I know what that means," Roderick answered.
+He turned away, threw himself on a rickety chair, and sat for some
+moments with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
+"Work--work?" he said at last, looking up, "ah, if I could only begin!"
+He glanced round the room a moment and his eye encountered on
+the mantel-shelf the vivid physiognomy of Mr. Barnaby Striker.
+His smile vanished, and he stared at it with an air of concentrated enmity.
+"I want to begin," he cried, "and I can't make a better beginning than this!
+Good-by, Mr. Striker!"  He strode across the room, seized a mallet
+that lay at hand, and before Rowland could interfere, in the interest
+of art if not of morals, dealt a merciless blow upon Mr. Striker's skull.
+The bust cracked into a dozen pieces, which toppled with a great crash
+upon the floor.  Rowland relished neither the destruction of the image
+nor his companion's look in working it, but as he was about to express
+his displeasure the door opened and gave passage to a young girl.
+She came in with a rapid step and startled face, as if she had
+been summoned by the noise.  Seeing the heap of shattered clay
+and the mallet in Roderick's hand, she gave a cry of horror.
+Her voice died away when she perceived that Rowland was a stranger,
+but she murmured reproachfully, "Why, Roderick, what have you done?"
+
+Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments.
+"I 've driven the money-changers out of the temple!" he cried.
+
+The traces retained shape enough to be recognized, and she gave a little
+moan of pity.  She seemed not to understand the young man's allegory,
+but yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must
+be an evil one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion,
+and to perceive that Rowland was in some way accountable for it.
+She looked at him with a sharp, frank mistrust, and turned away through
+the open door.  Rowland looked after her with extraordinary interest.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  Roderick
+
+Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend.
+Roderick was in a state of extreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by a
+certain amount of righteous wrath.  He had had a domestic struggle,
+but he had remained master of the situation.  He had shaken the dust
+of Mr. Striker's office from his feet.
+
+"I had it out last night with my mother," he said.
+"I dreaded the scene, for she takes things terribly hard.
+She does n't scold nor storm, and she does n't argue nor insist.
+She sits with her eyes full of tears that never fall, and looks at me,
+when I displease her, as if I were a perfect monster of depravity.
+And the trouble is that I was born to displease her.
+She does n't trust me; she never has and she never will.
+I don't know what I have done to set her against me, but ever
+since I can remember I have been looked at with tears.
+The trouble is," he went on, giving a twist to his moustache,
+"I 've been too absurdly docile.  I 've been sprawling all my
+days by the maternal fireside, and my dear mother has grown used
+to bullying me.  I 've made myself cheap!  If I 'm not in my bed
+by eleven o'clock, the girl is sent out to explore with a lantern.
+When I think of it, I fairly despise my amiability.  It 's rather
+a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner!
+I should like for six months to lead Mrs. Hudson the life
+some fellows lead their mothers!"
+
+"Allow me to believe," said Rowland, "that you would like nothing of
+the sort.  If you have been a good boy, don't spoil it by pretending you don't
+like it.  You have been very happy, I suspect, in spite of your virtues,
+and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too well.
+I have not had the pleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay you
+a wager that that is the trouble.  She is passionately fond of you,
+and her hopes, like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears."
+Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful
+young fellow must be loved by his female relatives.
+
+Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, "I do her justice,"
+he cried.  "May she never do me less!"  Then after a moment's
+hesitation, "I 'll tell you the perfect truth," he went on.
+"I have to fill a double place.  I have to be my brother as well
+as myself.  It 's a good deal to ask of a man, especially when
+he has so little talent as I for being what he is not.
+When we were both young together I was the curled darling.
+I had the silver mug and the biggest piece of pudding,
+and I stayed in-doors to be kissed by the ladies while he made
+mud-pies in the garden and was never missed, of course.
+Really, he was worth fifty of me!  When he was brought
+home from Vicksburg with a piece of shell in his skull,
+my poor mother began to think she had n't loved him enough.
+I remember, as she hung round my neck sobbing, before his coffin,
+she told me that I must be to her everything that he would have been.
+I swore in tears and in perfect good faith that I would, but naturally
+I have not kept my promise.  I have been utterly different.
+I have been idle, restless, egotistical, discontented.
+I have done no harm, I believe, but I have done no good.
+My brother, if he had lived, would have made fifty
+thousand dollars and put gas and water into the house.
+My mother, brooding night and day on her bereavement,
+has come to fix her ideal in offices of that sort.
+Judged by that standard I 'm nowhere!"
+
+Rowland was at loss how to receive this account of his friend's
+domestic circumstances; it was plaintive, and yet the manner
+seemed to him over-trenchant. "You must lose no time in making
+a masterpiece," he answered; "then with the proceeds you can
+give her gas from golden burners."
+
+"So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece
+or in proceeds.  She can see no good in my making statues;
+they seem to her a snare of the enemy.  She would fain see me
+all my life tethered to the law, like a browsing goat to a stake.
+In that way I 'm in sight.  'It 's a more regular occupation!'
+that 's all I can get out of her.  A more regular damnation!
+Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such wicked men?
+I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n't
+confute her with an example.  She had the advantage of me,
+because she formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond,
+who did her miniature in black lace mittens (you may see it on
+the parlor table), who used to drink raw brandy and beat his wife.
+I promised her that, whatever I might do to my wife, I would never beat
+my mother, and that as for brandy, raw or diluted, I detested it.
+She sat silently crying for an hour, during which I expended
+treasures of eloquence.  It 's a good thing to have to reckon
+up one's intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my cause,
+I was most agreeably impressed with the elevated character of my own.
+I kissed her solemnly at last, and told her that I had said
+everything and that she must make the best of it.  This morning she
+has dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is n't a cheerful house.
+I long to be out of it!"
+
+"I 'm extremely sorry," said Rowland, "to have been the prime
+cause of so much suffering.  I owe your mother some amends;
+will it be possible for me to see her?"
+
+"If you 'll see her, it will smooth matters vastly;
+though to tell the truth she 'll need all her courage to face you,
+for she considers you an agent of the foul fiend.  She does
+n't see why you should have come here and set me by the ears:
+you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and desolate doting mothers.
+I leave it to you, personally, to answer these charges.
+You see, what she can't forgive--what she 'll not
+really ever forgive--is your taking me off to Rome.
+Rome is an evil word, in my mother's vocabulary, to be said
+in a whisper, as you 'd say 'damnation.'  Northampton is in
+the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying dusk,
+into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate.
+And there was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository
+of every virtue, Mr. Striker's office!"
+
+"And does Mr. Striker know of your decision?" asked Rowland.
+
+"To a certainty!  Mr. Striker, you must know, is not
+simply a good-natured attorney, who lets me dog's-ear his
+law-books. He's a particular friend and general adviser.
+He looks after my mother's property and kindly consents
+to regard me as part of it.  Our opinions have always been
+painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his zealous attempts
+to unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part before.
+He never understood me, and it was useless to try to make him.
+We speak a different language--we 're made of a different clay.
+I had a fit of rage yesterday when I smashed his bust,
+at the thought of all the bad blood he had stirred up in me;
+it did me good, and it 's all over now.  I don't hate him any more;
+I 'm rather sorry for him.  See how you 've improved me!
+I must have seemed to him wilfully, wickedly stupid, and I 'm sure
+he only tolerated me on account of his great regard for my mother.
+This morning I grasped the bull by the horns.  I took an armful
+of law-books that have been gathering the dust in my room for
+the last year and a half, and presented myself at the office.
+'Allow me to put these back in their places,' I said.
+'I shall never have need for them more--never more, never more,
+never more!'  'So you 've learned everything they contain?'
+asked Striker, leering over his spectacles.  'Better late
+than never.'  'I 've learned nothing that you can teach me,'
+I cried.  'But I shall tax your patience no longer.
+I 'm going to be a sculptor.  I 'm going to Rome.
+I won't bid you good-by just yet; I shall see you again.
+But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four detested walls--
+to this living tomb!  I did n't know till now how I hated it!
+My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you
+have not made of me!' "
+
+"I 'm glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again,"
+Rowland answered, correcting a primary inclination to smile.
+"You certainly owe him a respectful farewell, even if he has
+not understood you.  I confess you rather puzzle me.
+There is another person," he presently added, "whose opinion
+as to your new career I should like to know.  What does
+Miss Garland think?"
+
+Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush.
+Then, with a conscious smile, "What makes you suppose she
+thinks anything?" he asked.
+
+"Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday,
+she struck me as a very intelligent person, and I am sure
+she has opinions."
+
+The smile on Roderick's mobile face passed rapidly into a frown.
+"Oh, she thinks what I think!" he answered.
+
+Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give
+as harmonious a shape as possible to his companion's scheme.
+"I have launched you, as I may say," he said, "and I feel as if I ought
+to see you into port.  I am older than you and know the world better,
+and it seems well that we should voyage a while together.
+It 's on my conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you
+through the Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay.
+I sail on the fifth of September; can you make your preparations
+to start with me?"
+
+Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence
+in his friend's wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges.
+"I have no preparations to make," he said with a smile,
+raising his arms and letting them fall, as if to indicate his
+unencumbered condition.  "What I am to take with me I carry here!"
+and he tapped his forehead.
+
+"Happy man!" murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light stowage,
+in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and of the heavy
+one in deposit at his banker's, of bags and boxes.
+
+When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia.
+She was sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low
+chintz-covered chair.  He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with
+her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder.
+At last he told her of Roderick's decision and of his own influence in it.
+Cecilia, besides an extreme surprise, exhibited a certain fine displeasure
+at his not having asked her advice.
+
+"What would you have said, if I had?" he demanded.
+
+"I would have said in the first place, 'Oh for pity's sake don't
+carry off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!'
+I would have said in the second place, 'Nonsense! the boy is doing
+very well.  Let well alone!' "
+
+"That in the first five minutes.  What would you have said later?"
+
+"That for a man who is generally averse to meddling, you were
+suddenly rather officious."
+
+Rowland's countenance fell.  He frowned in silence.
+Cecilia looked at him askance; gradually the spark of irritation
+faded from her eye.
+
+"Excuse my sharpness," she resumed at last.
+"But I am literally in despair at losing Roderick Hudson.
+His visits in the evening, for the past year, have kept me alive.
+They have given a silver tip to leaden days.  I don't say
+he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he is
+of a different one.  Of course, however, that I shall miss him
+sadly is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune.
+Men must work and women must weep!"
+
+"Decidedly not!" said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.
+He had suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia had
+treated herself to a private social luxury; he had then discovered
+that she found it in Hudson's lounging visits and boyish chatter,
+and he had felt himself wondering at last whether, judiciously viewed,
+her gain in the matter was not the young man's loss.
+It was evident that Cecilia was not judicious, and that her good sense,
+habitually rigid under the demands of domestic economy, indulged itself
+with a certain agreeable laxity on this particular point.
+She liked her young friend just as he was; she humored him, flattered him,
+laughed at him, caressed him--did everything but advise him.
+It was a flirtation without the benefits of a flirtation.
+She was too old to let him fall in love with her, which might
+have done him good; and her inclination was to keep him young,
+so that the nonsense he talked might never transgress a certain line.
+It was quite conceivable that poor Cecilia should relish a pastime;
+but if one had philanthropically embraced the idea that something
+considerable might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not
+to see that her friendship was not what might be called tonic.
+So Rowland reflected, in the glow of his new-born sympathy.
+There was a later time when he would have been grateful if Hudson's
+susceptibility to the relaxing influence of lovely women might
+have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as he rendered
+the excellent Cecilia.
+
+"I only desire to remind you," she pursued, "that you are likely
+to have your hands full."
+
+"I 've thought of that, and I rather like the idea; liking, as I do, the man.
+I told you the other day, you know, that I longed to have something on
+my hands.  When it first occurred to me that I might start our young friend
+on the path of glory, I felt as if I had an unimpeachable inspiration.
+Then I remembered there were dangers and difficulties, and asked myself
+whether I had a right to step in between him and his obscurity.
+My sense of his really having the divine flame answered the question.
+He is made to do the things that humanity is the happier for!
+I can't do such things myself, but when I see a young man of genius
+standing helpless and hopeless for want of capital, I feel--and it 's
+no affectation of humility, I assure you--as if it would give at least
+a reflected usefulness to my own life to offer him his opportunity."
+
+"In the name of humanity, I suppose, I ought to thank you.
+But I want, first of all, to be happy myself.  You guarantee
+us at any rate, I hope, the masterpieces."
+
+"A masterpiece a year," said Rowland smiling, "for the next quarter
+of a century."
+
+"It seems to me that we have a right to ask more:  to demand
+that you guarantee us not only the development of the artist,
+but the security of the man."
+
+Rowland became grave again.  "His security?"
+
+"His moral, his sentimental security.  Here, you see,
+it 's perfect.  We are all under a tacit compact to preserve it.
+Perhaps you believe in the necessary turbulence of genius,
+and you intend to enjoin upon your protege the importance
+of cultivating his passions."
+
+"On the contrary, I believe that a man of genius owes as much deference
+to his passions as any other man, but not a particle more, and I confess I
+have a strong conviction that the artist is better for leading a quiet life.
+That is what I shall preach to my protege, as you call him, by example
+as well as by precept.  You evidently believe," he added in a moment,
+"that he will lead me a dance."
+
+"Nay, I prophesy nothing.  I only think that circumstances,
+with our young man, have a great influence; as is proved
+by the fact that although he has been fuming and fretting here
+for the last five years, he has nevertheless managed to make
+the best of it, and found it easy, on the whole, to vegetate.
+Transplanted to Rome, I fancy he 'll put forth a denser leafage.
+I should like vastly to see the change.  You must write me
+about it, from stage to stage.  I hope with all my heart
+that the fruit will be proportionate to the foliage.
+Don't think me a bird of ill omen; only remember that you
+will be held to a strict account."
+
+"A man should make the most of himself, and be helped if he needs help,"
+Rowland answered, after a long pause.  "Of course when a body
+begins to expand, there comes in the possibility of bursting;
+but I nevertheless approve of a certain tension of one's being.
+It 's what a man is meant for.  And then I believe in the essential
+salubrity of genius--true genius."
+
+"Very good," said Cecilia, with an air of resignation which
+made Rowland, for the moment, seem to himself culpably eager.
+"We 'll drink then to-day at dinner to the health of our friend."
+
+* * *
+
+Having it much at heart to convince Mrs. Hudson of the purity of
+his intentions, Rowland waited upon her that evening.  He was ushered into
+a large parlor, which, by the light of a couple of candles, he perceived
+to be very meagrely furnished and very tenderly and sparingly used.
+The windows were open to the air of the summer night, and a circle
+of three persons was temporarily awed into silence by his appearance.
+One of these was Mrs. Hudson, who was sitting at one of the windows,
+empty-handed save for the pocket-handkerchief in her lap,
+which was held with an air of familiarity with its sadder uses.
+Near her, on the sofa, half sitting, half lounging, in the attitude
+of a visitor outstaying ceremony, with one long leg flung over the other
+and a large foot in a clumsy boot swinging to and fro continually,
+was a lean, sandy-haired gentleman whom Rowland recognized as the original
+of the portrait of Mr. Barnaby Striker.  At the table, near the candles,
+busy with a substantial piece of needle-work, sat the young girl
+of whom he had had a moment's quickened glimpse in Roderick's studio,
+and whom he had learned to be Miss Garland, his companion's kinswoman.
+This young lady's limpid, penetrating gaze was the most effective
+greeting he received.  Mrs. Hudson rose with a soft, vague sound
+of distress, and stood looking at him shrinkingly and waveringly,
+as if she were sorely tempted to retreat through the open window.
+Mr. Striker swung his long leg a trifle defiantly.  No one, evidently,
+was used to offering hollow welcomes or telling polite fibs.
+Rowland introduced himself; he had come, he might say, upon business.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Hudson tremulously; "I know--my son has told me.
+I suppose it is better I should see you.  Perhaps you will take a seat."
+
+With this invitation Rowland prepared to comply, and, turning,
+grasped the first chair that offered itself.
+
+"Not that one," said a full, grave voice; whereupon he perceived
+that a quantity of sewing-silk had been suspended and entangled
+over the back, preparatory to being wound on reels.
+He felt the least bit irritated at the curtness of the warning,
+coming as it did from a young woman whose countenance he had
+mentally pronounced interesting, and with regard to whom
+he was conscious of the germ of the inevitable desire to produce
+a responsive interest.  And then he thought it would break
+the ice to say something playfully urbane.
+
+"Oh, you should let me take the chair," he answered, "and have the pleasure
+of holding the skeins myself!"
+
+For all reply to this sally he received a stare of
+undisguised amazement from Miss Garland, who then looked
+across at Mrs. Hudson with a glance which plainly said:
+"You see he 's quite the insidious personage we feared."
+The elder lady, however, sat with her eyes fixed on the ground
+and her two hands tightly clasped.  But touching her Rowland
+felt much more compassion than resentment; her attitude
+was not coldness, it was a kind of dread, almost a terror.
+She was a small, eager woman, with a pale, troubled face,
+which added to her apparent age.  After looking at her for some
+minutes Rowland saw that she was still young, and that she must
+have been a very girlish bride.  She had been a pretty one, too,
+though she probably had looked terribly frightened at the altar.
+She was very delicately made, and Roderick had come honestly
+by his physical slimness and elegance.  She wore no cap,
+and her flaxen hair, which was of extraordinary fineness,
+was smoothed and confined with Puritanic precision.
+She was excessively shy, and evidently very humble-minded;
+it was singular to see a woman to whom the experience
+of life had conveyed so little reassurance as to her own
+resources or the chances of things turning out well.
+Rowland began immediately to like her, and to feel impatient
+to persuade her that there was no harm in him, and that,
+twenty to one, her son would make her a well-pleased woman yet.
+He foresaw that she would be easy to persuade, and that a benevolent
+conversational tone would probably make her pass, fluttering,
+from distrust into an oppressive extreme of confidence.
+But he had an indefinable sense that the person who was testing
+that strong young eyesight of hers in the dim candle-light was less
+readily beguiled from her mysterious feminine preconceptions.
+Miss Garland, according to Cecilia's judgment, as Rowland remembered,
+had not a countenance to inspire a sculptor; but it seemed
+to Rowland that her countenance might fairly inspire a man who
+was far from being a sculptor.  She was not pretty, as the eye
+of habit judges prettiness, but when you made the observation
+you somehow failed to set it down against her, for you had
+already passed from measuring contours to tracing meanings.
+In Mary Garland's face there were many possible ones,
+and they gave you the more to think about that it was not--
+like Roderick Hudson's, for instance--a quick and mobile face,
+over which expression flickered like a candle in a wind.
+They followed each other slowly, distinctly, gravely, sincerely,
+and you might almost have fancied that, as they came and went,
+they gave her a sort of pain.  She was tall and slender,
+and had an air of maidenly strength and decision.
+She had a broad forehead and dark eyebrows, a trifle thicker than
+those of classic beauties; her gray eye was clear but not brilliant,
+and her features were perfectly irregular.  Her mouth was large,
+fortunately for the principal grace of her physiognomy was
+her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent amplitude.
+Rowland, indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something
+assured him that her rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart.
+She wore a scanty white dress, and had a nameless rustic air
+which would have led one to speak of her less as a young lady
+than as a young woman.  She was evidently a girl of a great
+personal force, but she lacked pliancy.  She was hemming
+a kitchen towel with the aid of a large steel thimble.
+She bent her serious eyes at last on her work again, and let
+Rowland explain himself.
+
+"I have become suddenly so very intimate with your son,"
+he said at last, addressing himself to Mrs. Hudson, "that it
+seems just I should make your acquaintance."
+
+"Very just," murmured the poor lady, and after a moment's hesitation was
+on the point of adding something more; but Mr. Striker here interposed,
+after a prefatory clearance of the throat.
+
+"I should like to take the liberty," he said, "of addressing you
+a simple question.  For how long a period of time have you been
+acquainted with our young friend?"  He continued to kick the air,
+but his head was thrown back and his eyes fixed on the opposite wall,
+as if in aversion to the spectacle of Rowland's inevitable confusion.
+
+"A very short time, I confess.  Hardly three days."
+
+"And yet you call yourself intimate, eh?  I have been seeing Mr. Roderick
+daily these three years, and yet it was only this morning that I felt
+as if I had at last the right to say that I knew him.  We had a few moments'
+conversation in my office which supplied the missing links in the evidence.
+So that now I do venture to say I 'm acquainted with Mr. Roderick!
+But wait three years, sir, like me!" and Mr. Striker laughed, with a closed
+mouth and a noiseless shake of all his long person.
+
+Mrs. Hudson smiled confusedly, at hazard; Miss Garland kept her eyes on
+her stitches.  But it seemed to Rowland that the latter colored a little.
+"Oh, in three years, of course," he said, "we shall know each other better.
+Before many years are over, madam," he pursued, "I expect the world
+to know him.  I expect him to be a great man!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious
+device for increasing her distress by the assistance of irony.
+Then reassured, little by little, by Rowland's benevolent visage,
+she gave him an appealing glance and a timorous "Really?"
+
+But before Rowland could respond, Mr. Striker again intervened.
+"Do I fully apprehend your expression?" he asked.
+"Our young friend is to become a great man?"
+
+"A great artist, I hope," said Rowland.
+
+"This is a new and interesting view," said Mr. Striker, with an assumption
+of judicial calmness.  "We have had hopes for Mr. Roderick, but I confess,
+if I have rightly understood them, they stopped short of greatness.
+We should n't have taken the responsibility of claiming it for him.
+What do you say, ladies?  We all feel about him here--his mother,
+Miss Garland, and myself--as if his merits were rather in the line
+of the"--and Mr. Striker waved his hand with a series of fantastic
+flourishes in the air--"of the light ornamental!"  Mr. Striker bore
+his recalcitrant pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both
+to be fair and to respect the susceptibilities of his companions.
+But he was unversed in the mysterious processes of feminine emotion.
+Ten minutes before, there had been a general harmony of sombre views;
+but on hearing Roderick's limitations thus distinctly formulated to
+a stranger, the two ladies mutely protested.  Mrs. Hudson uttered a short,
+faint sigh, and Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate
+and visited him with a short, cold glance.
+
+"I 'm afraid, Mrs. Hudson," Rowland pursued, evading the discussion of
+Roderick's possible greatness, "that you don't at all thank me for stirring
+up your son's ambition on a line which leads him so far from home.
+I suspect I have made you my enemy."
+
+Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked
+painfully perplexed between the desire to confess the truth
+and the fear of being impolite.  "My cousin is no one's enemy,"
+Miss Garland hereupon declared, gently, but with that same fine
+deliberateness with which she had made Rowland relax his grasp
+of the chair.
+
+"Does she leave that to you?"  Rowland ventured to ask,
+with a smile.
+
+"We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments,"
+said Mr. Striker; "Miss Garland perhaps most of all.  Miss Garland,"
+and Mr. Striker waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction
+which had been regrettably omitted, "is the daughter of a minister,
+the granddaughter of a minister, the sister of a minister."
+Rowland bowed deferentially, and the young girl went on with her sewing,
+with nothing, apparently, either of embarrassment or elation
+at the promulgation of these facts.  Mr. Striker continued:
+"Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated to converse with
+you freely.  She will allow me to address you a few questions.
+Would you kindly inform her, as exactly as possible, just what you
+propose to do with her son?"
+
+The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland's face
+and seemed to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire,
+though she herself would have expressed it less defiantly.
+But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker's many-wrinkled light blue eye,
+shrewd at once and good-natured, that he had no intention of defiance,
+and that he was simply pompous and conceited and sarcastically
+compassionate of any view of things in which Roderick Hudson
+was regarded in a serious light.
+
+"Do, my dear madam?" demanded Rowland.  "I don't propose to do anything.
+He must do for himself.  I simply offer him the chance.  He 's to study,
+to work--hard, I hope."
+
+"Not too hard, please," murmured Mrs. Hudson, pleadingly,
+wheeling about from recent visions of dangerous leisure.
+"He 's not very strong, and I 'm afraid the climate of Europe
+is very relaxing."
+
+"Ah, study?" repeated Mr. Striker.  "To what line of study is he to direct
+his attention?"  Then suddenly, with an impulse of disinterested curiosity
+on his own account, "How do you study sculpture, anyhow?"
+
+"By looking at models and imitating them."
+
+"At models, eh?  To what kind of models do you refer?"
+
+"To the antique, in the first place."
+
+"Ah, the antique," repeated Mr. Striker, with a jocose intonation.
+"Do you hear, madam?  Roderick is going off to Europe to learn
+to imitate the antique."
+
+"I suppose it 's all right," said Mrs. Hudson, twisting herself
+in a sort of delicate anguish.
+
+"An antique, as I understand it," the lawyer continued,
+"is an image of a pagan deity, with considerable dirt
+sticking to it, and no arms, no nose, and no clothing.
+A precious model, certainly!"
+
+"That 's a very good description of many," said Rowland,
+with a laugh.
+
+"Mercy!  Truly?" asked Mrs. Hudson, borrowing courage from his urbanity.
+
+"But a sculptor's studies, you intimate, are not confined to the antique,"
+Mr. Striker resumed.  "After he has been looking three or four years
+at the objects I describe"--
+
+"He studies the living model," said Rowland.
+
+"Does it take three or four years?" asked Mrs. Hudson, imploringly.
+
+"That depends upon the artist's aptitude.  After twenty years
+a real artist is still studying."
+
+"Oh, my poor boy!" moaned Mrs. Hudson, finding the prospect,
+under every light, still terrible.
+
+"Now this study of the living model," Mr. Striker pursued.
+"Inform Mrs. Hudson about that."
+
+"Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Hudson, shrinkingly.
+
+"That too," said Rowland, "is one of the reasons for studying in Rome.
+It 's a handsome race, you know, and you find very well-made people."
+
+"I suppose they 're no better made than a good tough Yankee,"
+objected Mr. Striker, transposing his interminable legs.
+"The same God made us."
+
+"Surely," sighed Mrs. Hudson, but with a questioning glance at her
+visitor which showed that she had already begun to concede much
+weight to his opinion.  Rowland hastened to express his assent
+to Mr. Striker's proposition.
+
+Miss Garland looked up, and, after a moment's hesitation:
+"Are the Roman women very beautiful?" she asked.
+
+Rowland too, in answering, hesitated; he was looking straight
+at the young girl.  "On the whole, I prefer ours," he said.
+
+She had dropped her work in her lap; her hands were crossed
+upon it, her head thrown a little back.  She had evidently
+expected a more impersonal answer, and she was dissatisfied.
+For an instant she seemed inclined to make a rejoinder,
+but she slowly picked up her work in silence and drew
+her stitches again.
+
+Rowland had for the second time the feeling that she judged him
+to be a person of a disagreeably sophisticated tone.  He noticed
+too that the kitchen towel she was hemming was terribly coarse.
+And yet his answer had a resonant inward echo, and he repeated
+to himself, "Yes, on the whole, I prefer ours."
+
+"Well, these models," began Mr. Striker.  "You put them into
+an attitude, I suppose."
+
+"An attitude, exactly."
+
+"And then you sit down and look at them."
+
+"You must not sit too long.  You must go at your clay and try
+to build up something that looks like them."
+
+"Well, there you are with your model in an attitude on
+one side, yourself, in an attitude too, I suppose, on the other,
+and your pile of clay in the middle, building up, as you say.
+So you pass the morning.  After that I hope you go out and take
+a walk, and rest from your exertions."
+
+"Unquestionably.  But to a sculptor who loves his work there is no time lost.
+Everything he looks at teaches or suggests something."
+
+"That 's a tempting doctrine to young men with a taste for sitting
+by the hour with the page unturned, watching the flies buzz,
+or the frost melt on the window-pane. Our young friend, in this way,
+must have laid up stores of information which I never suspected!"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland, with an unresentful smile, "he will prove
+some day the completer artist for some of those lazy reveries."
+
+This theory was apparently very grateful to Mrs. Hudson, who had
+never had the case put for her son with such ingenious hopefulness,
+and found herself disrelishing the singular situation of seeming
+to side against her own flesh and blood with a lawyer whose
+conversational tone betrayed the habit of cross-questioning.
+
+"My son, then," she ventured to ask, "my son has great--
+what you would call great powers?"
+
+"To my sense, very great powers."
+
+Poor Mrs. Hudson actually smiled, broadly, gleefully, and glanced
+at Miss Garland, as if to invite her to do likewise.
+But the young girl's face remained serious, like the eastern
+sky when the opposite sunset is too feeble to make it glow.
+"Do you really know?" she asked, looking at Rowland.
+
+"One cannot know in such a matter save after proof, and proof takes time.
+But one can believe."
+
+"And you believe?"
+
+"I believe."
+
+But even then Miss Garland vouchsafed no smile.
+Her face became graver than ever.
+
+"Well, well," said Mrs. Hudson, "we must hope that it is all for the best."
+
+Mr. Striker eyed his old friend for a moment with a look of
+some displeasure; he saw that this was but a cunning feminine
+imitation of resignation, and that, through some untraceable process
+of transition, she was now taking more comfort in the opinions
+of this insinuating stranger than in his own tough dogmas.
+He rose to his feet, without pulling down his waistcoat,
+but with a wrinkled grin at the inconsistency of women.
+"Well, sir, Mr. Roderick's powers are nothing to me," he said,
+"nor no use he makes of them.  Good or bad, he 's no son of mine.
+But, in a friendly way, I 'm glad to hear so fine an account of him.
+I 'm glad, madam, you 're so satisfied with the prospect.
+Affection, sir, you see, must have its guarantees!"
+He paused a moment, stroking his beard, with his head
+inclined and one eye half-closed, looking at Rowland.
+The look was grotesque, but it was significant, and it
+puzzled Rowland more than it amused him.  "I suppose you 're
+a very brilliant young man," he went on, "very enlightened,
+very cultivated, quite up to the mark in the fine arts
+and all that sort of thing.  I 'm a plain, practical old boy,
+content to follow an honorable profession in a free country.
+I did n't go off to the Old World to learn my business;
+no one took me by the hand; I had to grease my wheels myself,
+and, such as I am, I 'm a self-made man, every inch of me!
+Well, if our young friend is booked for fame and fortune,
+I don't suppose his going to Rome will stop him.
+But, mind you, it won't help him such a long way, either.
+If you have undertaken to put him through, there 's a thing
+or two you 'd better remember.  The crop we gather depends upon
+the seed we sow.  He may be the biggest genius of the age:
+his potatoes won't come up without his hoeing them.
+If he takes things so almighty easy as--well, as one or two
+young fellows of genius I 've had under my eye--his produce
+will never gain the prize.  Take the word for it of a man who has
+made his way inch by inch, and does n't believe that we 'll
+wake up to find our work done because we 've lain all night
+a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!
+If your young protajay finds things easy and has a good time
+and says he likes the life, it 's a sign that--as I may say--
+you had better step round to the office and look at the books.
+That 's all I desire to remark.  No offense intended.
+I hope you 'll have a first-rate time."
+
+Rowland could honestly reply that this seemed pregnant sense,
+and he offered Mr. Striker a friendly hand-shake as the latter withdrew.
+But Mr. Striker's rather grim view of matters cast a momentary shadow
+on his companions, and Mrs. Hudson seemed to feel that it necessitated
+between them some little friendly agreement not to be overawed.
+
+Rowland sat for some time longer, partly because he wished to please
+the two women and partly because he was strangely pleased himself.
+There was something touching in their unworldly fears and diffident hopes,
+something almost terrible in the way poor little Mrs. Hudson
+seemed to flutter and quiver with intense maternal passion.
+She put forth one timid conversational venture after another,
+and asked Rowland a number of questions about himself, his age,
+his family, his occupations, his tastes, his religious opinions.
+Rowland had an odd feeling at last that she had begun to consider him
+very exemplary, and that she might make, later, some perturbing discovery.
+He tried, therefore, to invent something that would prepare
+her to find him fallible.  But he could think of nothing.
+It only seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly mistrusted him,
+and that he must leave her to render him the service, after he
+had gone, of making him the object of a little firm derogation.
+Mrs. Hudson talked with low-voiced eagerness about her son.
+
+"He 's very lovable, sir, I assure you.  When you come to know him
+you 'll find him very lovable.  He 's a little spoiled, of course;
+he has always done with me as he pleased; but he 's a good boy,
+I 'm sure he 's a good boy.  And every one thinks him very attractive:
+I 'm sure he 'd be noticed, anywhere.  Don't you think
+he 's very handsome, sir?  He features his poor father.
+I had another--perhaps you 've been told.  He was killed."
+And the poor little lady bravely smiled, for fear of doing worse.
+"He was a very fine boy, but very different from Roderick.
+Roderick is a little strange; he has never been an easy boy.
+Sometimes I feel like the goose--was n't it a goose, dear?"
+and startled by the audacity of her comparison she appealed to Miss
+Garland--"the goose, or the hen, who hatched a swan's egg.
+I have never been able to give him what he needs.  I have always
+thought that in more--in more brilliant circumstances he might
+find his place and be happy.  But at the same time I was afraid
+of the world for him; it was so large and dangerous and dreadful.
+No doubt I know very little about it.  I never suspected, I confess,
+that it contained persons of such liberality as yours."
+
+Rowland replied that, evidently, she had done the world but scanty justice.
+"No," objected Miss Garland, after a pause, "it is like something
+in a fairy tale."
+
+"What, pray?"
+
+"Your coming here all unknown, so rich and so polite, and carrying
+off my cousin in a golden cloud."
+
+If this was badinage Miss Garland had the best of it, for Rowland almost
+fell a-musing silently over the question whether there was a possibility
+of irony in that transparent gaze.  Before he withdrew, Mrs. Hudson
+made him tell her again that Roderick's powers were extraordinary.
+He had inspired her with a clinging, caressing faith in his wisdom.
+"He will really do great things," she asked, "the very greatest?"
+
+"I see no reason in his talent itself why he should not."
+
+"Well, we 'll think of that as we sit here alone," she rejoined.
+"Mary and I will sit here and talk about it.  So I give him up,"
+she went on, as he was going.  "I 'm sure you 'll be the best
+of friends to him, but if you should ever forget him, or grow
+tired of him, or lose your interest in him, and he should come
+to any harm or any trouble, please, sir, remember"--And she paused,
+with a tremulous voice.
+
+"Remember, my dear madam?"
+
+"That he is all I have--that he is everything--and that it would
+be very terrible."
+
+"In so far as I can help him, he shall succeed," was all Rowland could say.
+He turned to Miss Garland, to bid her good night, and she rose and put
+out her hand.  She was very straightforward, but he could see that if
+she was too modest to be bold, she was much too simple to be shy.
+"Have you no charge to lay upon me?" he asked--to ask her something.
+
+She looked at him a moment and then, although she was not shy, she blushed.
+"Make him do his best," she said.
+
+Rowland noted the soft intensity with which the words were uttered.
+"Do you take a great interest in him?" he demanded.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then, if he will not do his best for you, he will not do it for me."
+She turned away with another blush, and Rowland took his leave.
+
+He walked homeward, thinking of many things.  The great Northampton
+elms interarched far above in the darkness, but the moon had
+risen and through scattered apertures was hanging the dusky
+vault with silver lamps.  There seemed to Rowland something
+intensely serious in the scene in which he had just taken part.
+He had laughed and talked and braved it out in self-defense;
+but when he reflected that he was really meddling with
+the simple stillness of this little New England home,
+and that he had ventured to disturb so much living security
+in the interest of a far-away, fantastic hypothesis, he paused,
+amazed at his temerity.  It was true, as Cecilia had said,
+that for an unofficious man it was a singular position.
+There stirred in his mind an odd feeling of annoyance with
+Roderick for having thus peremptorily enlisted his sympathies.
+As he looked up and down the long vista, and saw the clear
+white houses glancing here and there in the broken moonshine,
+he could almost have believed that the happiest lot for any man
+was to make the most of life in some such tranquil spot as that.
+Here were kindness, comfort, safety, the warning voice of duty,
+the perfect hush of temptation.  And as Rowland looked along
+the arch of silvered shadow and out into the lucid air of the
+American night, which seemed so doubly vast, somehow, and strange
+and nocturnal, he felt like declaring that here was beauty too--
+beauty sufficient for an artist not to starve upon it.
+As he stood, lost in the darkness, he presently heard a rapid tread
+on the other side of the road, accompanied by a loud, jubilant whistle,
+and in a moment a figure emerged into an open gap of moonshine.
+He had no difficulty in recognizing Hudson, who was presumably
+returning from a visit to Cecilia.  Roderick stopped suddenly
+and stared up at the moon, with his face vividly illumined.
+He broke out into a snatch of song:--
+
+"The splendor falls on castle walls
+
+And snowy summits old in story!"
+
+And with a great, musical roll of his voice he went swinging off
+into the darkness again, as if his thoughts had lent him wings.
+He was dreaming of the inspiration of foreign lands,--of castled crags
+and historic landscapes.  What a pity, after all, thought Rowland,
+as he went his own way, that he should n't have a taste of it!
+
+It had been a very just remark of Cecilia's that Roderick would change
+with a change in his circumstances.  Rowland had telegraphed to New York
+for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came Hudson's
+spirits rose to incalculable heights.  He was radiant with good-humor,
+and his kindly jollity seemed the pledge of a brilliant future.
+He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old grievances,
+and seemed every way reconciled to a world in which he was going to count
+as an active force.  He was inexhaustibly loquacious and fantastic,
+and as Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that it was only
+to be feared he was going to start not for Europe but for heaven.
+He took long walks with Rowland, who felt more and more the fascination
+of what he would have called his giftedness.  Rowland returned several
+times to Mrs. Hudson's, and found the two ladies doing their best
+to be happy in their companion's happiness.  Miss Garland, he thought,
+was succeeding better than her demeanor on his first visit had promised.
+He tried to have some especial talk with her, but her extreme reserve
+forced him to content himself with such response to his rather urgent
+overtures as might be extracted from a keenly attentive smile.
+It must be confessed, however, that if the response was vague,
+the satisfaction was great, and that Rowland, after his second visit,
+kept seeing a lurking reflection of this smile in the most unexpected places.
+It seemed strange that she should please him so well at so slender
+a cost, but please him she did, prodigiously, and his pleasure
+had a quality altogether new to him.  It made him restless, and a
+trifle melancholy; he walked about absently, wondering and wishing.
+He wondered, among other things, why fate should have condemned him
+to make the acquaintance of a girl whom he would make a sacrifice
+to know better, just as he was leaving the country for years.
+It seemed to him that he was turning his back on a chance of happiness--
+happiness of a sort of which the slenderest germ should be cultivated.
+He asked himself whether, feeling as he did, if he had only himself
+to please, he would give up his journey and--wait.  He had Roderick
+to please now, for whom disappointment would be cruel; but he said
+to himself that certainly, if there were no Roderick in the case,
+the ship should sail without him.  He asked Hudson several questions
+about his cousin, but Roderick, confidential on most points,
+seemed to have reasons of his own for being reticent on this one.
+His measured answers quickened Rowland's curiosity, for Miss Garland,
+with her own irritating half-suggestions, had only to be a subject
+of guarded allusion in others to become intolerably interesting.
+He learned from Roderick that she was the daughter of a country minister,
+a far-away cousin of his mother, settled in another part of the State;
+that she was one of a half-a-dozen daughters, that the family was
+very poor, and that she had come a couple of months before to pay
+his mother a long visit.  "It is to be a very long one now," he said,
+"for it is settled that she is to remain while I am away."
+
+The fermentation of contentment in Roderick's soul reached its climax
+a few days before the young men were to make their farewells.
+He had been sitting with his friends on Cecilia's veranda,
+but for half an hour past he had said nothing.  Lounging back against
+a vine-wreathed column and gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling
+softly to himself with that indifference to ceremony for which he always
+found allowance, and which in him had a sort of pleading grace.
+At last, springing up:  "I want to strike out, hard!" he exclaimed.
+"I want to do something violent, to let off steam!"
+
+"I 'll tell you what to do, this lovely weather," said Cecilia.
+"Give a picnic.  It can be as violent as you please, and it will
+have the merit of leading off our emotion into a safe channel,
+as well as yours."
+
+Roderick laughed uproariously at Cecilia's very practical
+remedy for his sentimental need, but a couple of days later,
+nevertheless, the picnic was given.  It was to be a family party,
+but Roderick, in his magnanimous geniality, insisted on inviting
+Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland mentally applauded.
+"And we 'll have Mrs. Striker, too," he said, "if she 'll come,
+to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we 'll have
+Miss Striker--the divine Petronilla!"  The young lady thus
+denominated formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland, and Cecilia,
+the feminine half of the company.  Mr. Striker presented himself,
+sacrificing a morning's work, with a magnanimity greater
+even than Roderick's, and foreign support was further secured
+in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the young Orthodox minister.
+Roderick had chosen the feasting-place; he knew it well and had
+passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his length on
+the grass and gazing at the blue undulations of the horizon.
+It was a meadow on the edge of a wood, with mossy rocks protruding
+through the grass and a little lake on the other side.
+It was a cloudless August day; Rowland always remembered it,
+and the scene, and everything that was said and done,
+with extraordinary distinctness.  Roderick surpassed himself
+in friendly jollity, and at one moment, when exhilaration
+was at the highest, was seen in Mr. Striker's high white hat,
+drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup to Mr. Striker's health.
+Miss Striker had her father's pale blue eye; she was dressed as if
+she were going to sit for her photograph, and remained for a long
+time with Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake.
+Mrs. Hudson sat all day with a little meek, apprehensive smile.
+She was afraid of an "accident," though unless Miss Striker
+(who indeed was a little of a romp) should push Roderick
+into the lake, it was hard to see what accident could occur.
+Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and uncrumpled at the end
+of the festival as at the beginning.  Mr. Whitefoot,
+who but a twelvemonth later became a convert to episcopacy
+and was already cultivating a certain conversational sonority,
+devoted himself to Cecilia.  He had a little book in his pocket,
+out of which he read to her at intervals, lying stretched at her feet,
+and it was a lasting joke with Cecilia, afterwards, that she
+would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot's little book had been.
+Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland, while the feasting
+went forward on the grass.  She wore a so-called gypsy hat--
+a little straw hat, tied down over her ears, so as to cast
+her eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it.
+When the company dispersed, after lunch, he proposed to her
+to take a stroll in the wood.  She hesitated a moment and looked
+toward Mrs. Hudson, as if for permission to leave her.
+But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker, who sat gossiping
+to her with relaxed magniloquence, his waistcoat unbuttoned
+and his hat on his nose.
+
+"You can give your cousin your society at any time," said Rowland.
+"But me, perhaps, you 'll never see again."
+
+"Why then should we wish to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?"
+she asked, with homely logic.  But by this time she had consented,
+and they were treading the fallen pine-needles.
+
+"Oh, one must take all one can get," said Rowland.
+"If we can be friends for half an hour, it 's so much gained."
+
+"Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?"
+
+" 'Never' is a good deal to say.  But I go to Europe for a long stay."
+
+"Do you prefer it so much to your own country?"
+
+"I will not say that.  But I have the misfortune to be a rather idle man,
+and in Europe the burden of idleness is less heavy than here."
+
+She was silent for a few minutes; then at last,
+"In that, then, we are better than Europe," she said.
+To a certain point Rowland agreed with her, but he demurred,
+to make her say more.
+
+"Would n't it be better," she asked, "to work to get reconciled to America,
+than to go to Europe to get reconciled to idleness?"
+
+"Doubtless; but you know work is hard to find."
+
+"I come from a little place where every one has plenty,"
+said Miss Garland.  "We all work; every one I know works.
+And really," she added presently, "I look at you with curiosity;
+you are the first unoccupied man I ever saw."
+
+"Don't look at me too hard," said Rowland, smiling.  "I shall sink
+into the earth.  What is the name of your little place?"
+
+"West Nazareth," said Miss Garland, with her usual sobriety.
+"It is not so very little, though it 's smaller than Northampton."
+
+"I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth," Rowland said.
+
+"You would not like it," Miss Garland declared reflectively.
+"Though there are far finer woods there than this.
+We have miles and miles of woods."
+
+"I might chop down trees," said Rowland.  "That is, if you allow it."
+
+"Allow it?  Why, where should we get our firewood?"
+Then, noticing that he had spoken jestingly, she glanced at
+him askance, though with no visible diminution of her gravity.
+"Don't you know how to do anything?  Have you no profession?"
+
+Rowland shook his head.  "Absolutely none."
+
+"What do you do all day?"
+
+"Nothing worth relating.  That 's why I am going to Europe.
+There, at least, if I do nothing, I shall see a great deal;
+and if I 'm not a producer, I shall at any rate be an observer."
+
+"Can't we observe everywhere?"
+
+"Certainly; and I really think that in that way I make the most of
+my opportunities.  Though I confess," he continued, "that I often remember
+there are things to be seen here to which I probably have n't done justice.
+I should like, for instance, to see West Nazareth."
+
+She looked round at him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she
+exactly supposed he was jesting, for the expression
+of such a desire was not necessarily facetious;
+but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior motive.
+In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives.
+The girl beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that
+her charm was essentially her own and not reflected from
+social circumstance, he wished to give himself the satisfaction
+of contrasting her with the meagre influences of her education.
+Miss Garland's second movement was to take him at his word.
+"Since you are free to do as you please, why don't you go there?"
+
+"I am not free to do as I please now.  I have offered your cousin
+to bear him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm,
+and I cannot retract."
+
+"Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?"
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment.  "I think I may almost say so."
+
+Miss Garland walked along in silence.  "Do you mean to do a great deal
+for him?" she asked at last.
+
+"What I can.  But my power of helping him is very small beside
+his power of helping himself."
+
+For a moment she was silent again.  "You are very generous,"
+she said, almost solemnly.
+
+"No, I am simply very shrewd.  Roderick will repay me.
+It 's an investment.  At first, I think," he added shortly
+afterwards, "you would not have paid me that compliment.
+You distrusted me."
+
+She made no attempt to deny it.  "I did n't see why you should wish to make
+Roderick discontented.  I thought you were rather frivolous."
+
+"You did me injustice.  I don't think I 'm that."
+
+"It was because you are unlike other men--those, at least,
+whom I have seen."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why, as you describe yourself.  You have no duties, no profession, no home.
+You live for your pleasure."
+
+"That 's all very true.  And yet I maintain I 'm not frivolous."
+
+"I hope not," said Miss Garland, simply.  They had reached a point
+where the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks
+which lost themselves in a verdurous tangle.  Miss Garland seemed
+to think that the difficulty of choice between them was a reason
+for giving them up and turning back.  Rowland thought otherwise,
+and detected agreeable grounds for preference in the left-hand path.
+As a compromise, they sat down on a fallen log.  Looking about him,
+Rowland espied a curious wild shrub, with a spotted crimson leaf;
+he went and plucked a spray of it and brought it to Miss Garland.
+He had never observed it before, but she immediately called it
+by its name.  She expressed surprise at his not knowing it;
+it was extremely common.  He presently brought her a specimen
+of another delicate plant, with a little blue-streaked flower.
+"I suppose that 's common, too," he said, "but I have never seen it--
+or noticed it, at least."  She answered that this one was rare,
+and meditated a moment before she could remember its name.
+At last she recalled it, and expressed surprise at his having found
+the plant in the woods; she supposed it grew only in open marshes.
+Rowland complimented her on her fund of useful information.
+
+"It 's not especially useful," she answered; "but I like to
+know the names of plants as I do those of my acquaintances.
+When we walk in the woods at home--which we do so much--
+it seems as unnatural not to know what to call the flowers
+as it would be to see some one in the town with whom we were
+not on speaking terms."
+
+"Apropos of frivolity," Rowland said, "I 'm sure you have very little of it,
+unless at West Nazareth it is considered frivolous to walk in the woods
+and nod to the nodding flowers.  Do kindly tell me a little about yourself."
+And to compel her to begin, "I know you come of a race of theologians,"
+he went on.
+
+"No," she replied, deliberating; "they are not theologians, though they
+are ministers.  We don't take a very firm stand upon doctrine;
+we are practical, rather.  We write sermons and preach them,
+but we do a great deal of hard work beside."
+
+"And of this hard work what has your share been?"
+
+"The hardest part:  doing nothing."
+
+"What do you call nothing?"
+
+"I taught school a while:  I must make the most of that.
+But I confess I did n't like it.  Otherwise, I have only done
+little things at home, as they turned up."
+
+"What kind of things?"
+
+"Oh, every kind.  If you had seen my home, you would understand."
+
+Rowland would have liked to make her specify; but he felt a more
+urgent need to respect her simplicity than he had ever felt to defer
+to the complex circumstance of certain other women.  "To be happy,
+I imagine," he contented himself with saying, "you need to be occupied.
+You need to have something to expend yourself upon."
+
+"That is not so true as it once was; now that I am older, I am sure
+I am less impatient of leisure.  Certainly, these two months that I
+have been with Mrs. Hudson, I have had a terrible amount of it.
+And yet I have liked it!  And now that I am probably to be with her
+all the while that her son is away, I look forward to more with a
+resignation that I don't quite know what to make of."
+
+"It is settled, then, that you are to remain with your cousin?"
+
+"It depends upon their writing from home that I may stay.
+But that is probable.  Only I must not forget," she said, rising,
+"that the ground for my doing so is that she be not left alone."
+
+"I am glad to know," said Rowland, "that I shall probably often
+hear about you.  I assure you I shall often think about you!"
+These words were half impulsive, half deliberate.
+They were the simple truth, and he had asked himself why he should
+not tell her the truth.  And yet they were not all of it;
+her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she received this.
+She received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without a shadow
+of coquetry, of any apparent thought of listening to it gracefully,
+but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation,
+which seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step.
+Evidently, if Rowland was to take pleasure in hearing about her,
+it would have to be a highly disinterested pleasure.
+She answered nothing, and Rowland too, as he walked beside her,
+was silent; but as he looked along the shadow-woven wood-path, what
+he was really facing was a level three years of disinterestedness.
+He ushered them in by talking composed civility until he had
+brought Miss Garland back to her companions.
+
+He saw her but once again.  He was obliged to be in New York a couple
+of days before sailing, and it was arranged that Roderick should
+overtake him at the last moment.  The evening before he left Northampton
+he went to say farewell to Mrs. Hudson.  The ceremony was brief.
+Rowland soon perceived that the poor little lady was in the melting
+mood, and, as he dreaded her tears, he compressed a multitude
+of solemn promises into a silent hand-shake and took his leave.
+Miss Garland, she had told him, was in the back-garden with Roderick:
+he might go out to them.  He did so, and as he drew near he heard
+Roderick's high-pitched voice ringing behind the shrubbery.
+In a moment, emerging, he found Miss Garland leaning against
+a tree, with her cousin before her talking with great emphasis.
+He asked pardon for interrupting them, and said he wished only to bid
+her good-by. She gave him her hand and he made her his bow in silence.
+"Don't forget," he said to Roderick, as he turned away.
+"And don't, in this company, repent of your bargain."
+
+"I shall not let him," said Miss Garland, with something very
+like gayety.  "I shall see that he is punctual.  He must go!
+I owe you an apology for having doubted that he ought to."
+And in spite of the dusk Rowland could see that she had an even
+finer smile than he had supposed.
+
+Roderick was punctual, eagerly punctual, and they went.
+Rowland for several days was occupied with material cares,
+and lost sight of his sentimental perplexities.
+But they only slumbered, and they were sharply awakened.
+The weather was fine, and the two young men always sat together
+upon deck late into the evening.  One night, toward the last,
+they were at the stern of the great ship, watching her grind
+the solid blackness of the ocean into phosphorescent foam.
+They talked on these occasions of everything conceivable,
+and had the air of having no secrets from each other.
+But it was on Roderick's conscience that this air belied him,
+and he was too frank by nature, moreover, for permanent
+reticence on any point.
+
+"I must tell you something," he said at last.  "I should like you to know it,
+and you will be so glad to know it.  Besides, it 's only a question
+of time; three months hence, probably, you would have guessed it.
+I am engaged to Mary Garland."
+
+Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm, it seemed to him
+that the ship gave a great dizzying lurch.  But in a moment
+he contrived to answer coherently:  "Engaged to Miss Garland!
+I never supposed--I never imagined"--
+
+"That I was in love with her?"  Roderick interrupted.
+"Neither did I, until this last fortnight.  But you came and put
+me into such ridiculous good-humor that I felt an extraordinary
+desire to tell some woman that I adored her.  Miss Garland is
+a magnificent girl; you know her too little to do her justice.
+I have been quietly learning to know her, these past three months,
+and have been falling in love with her without being conscious of it.
+It appeared, when I spoke to her, that she had a kindness for me.
+So the thing was settled.  I must of course make some money
+before we can marry.  It 's rather droll, certainly, to engage
+one's self to a girl whom one is going to leave the next day,
+for years.  We shall be condemned, for some time to come,
+to do a terrible deal of abstract thinking about each other.
+But I wanted her blessing on my career and I could not help
+asking for it.  Unless a man is unnaturally selfish he needs
+to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure I shall
+run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that fine
+creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news of my greatness.
+If ever I am a dull companion and over-addicted to moping,
+remember in justice to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart
+is five thousand miles away."
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a sort of feeling
+that fortune had played him an elaborately-devised trick.
+It had lured him out into mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and
+stilled the winds and given him a singularly sympathetic comrade,
+and then it had turned and delivered him a thumping blow
+in mid-chest. "Yes," he said, after an attempt at the usual
+formal congratulation, "you certainly ought to do better--
+with Miss Garland waiting for you at Northampton."
+
+Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was eloquent and rung
+a hundred changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man.
+Then at last, suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that
+he must go to bed.  Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late,
+between sea and sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  Rome
+
+One warm, still day, late in the Roman autumn, our two young men were
+sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed pines of the Villa Ludovisi.
+They had been spending an hour in the mouldy little garden-house, where
+the colossal mask of the famous Juno looks out with blank eyes from that
+dusky corner which must seem to her the last possible stage of a lapse
+from Olympus.  Then they had wandered out into the gardens, and were
+lounging away the morning under the spell of their magical picturesqueness.
+Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that, after the Juno,
+it was a profanation to look at anything but sky and trees.
+There was a fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had seen
+it on his former visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects.
+But Roderick, though he had never seen it, declared that it could n't
+be worth a fig, and that he did n't care to look at ugly things.
+He remained stretched on his overcoat, which he had spread on the grass,
+while Rowland went off envying the intellectual comfort of genius,
+which can arrive at serene conclusions without disagreeable processes.
+When the latter came back, his friend was sitting with his elbows on his
+knees and his head in his hands.  Rowland, in the geniality of a mood
+attuned to the mellow charm of a Roman villa, found a good word to say
+for the Guercino; but he chiefly talked of the view from the little
+belvedere on the roof of the casino, and how it looked like the prospect
+from a castle turret in a fairy tale.
+
+"Very likely," said Roderick, throwing himself back with a yawn.
+"But I must let it pass.  I have seen enough for the present;
+I have reached the top of the hill.  I have an indigestion
+of impressions; I must work them off before I go in for any more.
+I don't want to look at any more of other people's works, for a month--
+not even at Nature's own.  I want to look at Roderick Hudson's.
+The result of it all is that I 'm not afraid.  I can but try,
+as well as the rest of them!  The fellow who did that gazing goddess
+yonder only made an experiment.  The other day, when I was looking
+at Michael Angelo's Moses, I was seized with a kind of defiance--
+a reaction against all this mere passive enjoyment of grandeur.
+It was a rousing great success, certainly, that rose there before me,
+but somehow it was not an inscrutable mystery, and it seemed to me,
+not perhaps that I should some day do as well, but that at
+least I might!"
+
+"As you say, you can but try," said Rowland.  "Success is
+only passionate effort."
+
+"Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely.
+It came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since I
+left Northampton.  I can't believe it!"
+
+"It certainly seems more."
+
+"It seems like ten years.  What an exquisite ass I was!"
+
+"Do you feel so wise now?"
+
+"Verily!  Don't I look so?  Surely I have n't the same face.
+Have n't I a different eye, a different expression,
+a different voice?"
+
+"I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition.
+But it 's very likely.  You are, in the literal sense of the word,
+more civilized.  I dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland
+would think so."
+
+"That 's not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted."
+
+Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always
+listened narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations.
+
+"Are you very sure?" he replied.
+
+"Why, she 's a stern moralist, and she would infer from
+my appearance that I had become a cynical sybarite."
+Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian watch-chain round his
+neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third finger
+of his left hand.
+
+"Will you think I take a liberty," asked Rowland, "if I say you
+judge her superficially?"
+
+"For heaven's sake," cried Roderick, laughing, "don't tell me
+she 's not a moralist!  It was for that I fell in love with her,
+and with rigid virtue in her person."
+
+"She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one.
+That 's more than a difference in degree; it 's a difference in kind.
+I don't know whether I ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely.
+There is nothing narrow about her but her experience; everything else
+is large.  My impression of her is of a person of great capacity,
+as yet wholly unmeasured and untested.  Some day or other, I 'm sure,
+she will judge fairly and wisely of everything."
+
+"Stay a bit!" cried Roderick; "you 're a better Catholic than the Pope.
+I shall be content if she judges fairly of me--of my merits, that is.
+The rest she must not judge at all.  She 's a grimly devoted little creature;
+may she always remain so!  Changed as I am, I adore her none the less.
+What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions," he went on,
+after a long pause, "all the material of thought that life pours
+into us at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these?
+There are twenty moments a week--a day, for that matter, some days--
+that seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate,
+that appear to form an intellectual era.  But others come treading
+on their heels and sweeping them along, and they all melt like water
+into water and settle the question of precedence among themselves.
+The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has
+space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home
+who live in the different corners of a room, and take boarders."
+
+"I fancy it is our peculiar good luck that we don't see the limits
+of our minds," said Rowland.  "We are young, compared with what we may
+one day be.  That belongs to youth; it is perhaps the best part of it.
+They say that old people do find themselves at last face to face
+with a solid blank wall, and stand thumping against it in vain.
+It resounds, it seems to have something beyond it, but it won't move!
+That 's only a reason for living with open doors as long as we can!"
+
+"Open doors?" murmured Roderick.  "Yes, let us close no doors
+that open upon Rome.  For this, for the mind, is eternal summer!
+But though my doors may stand open to-day," he presently added,
+"I shall see no visitors.  I want to pause and breathe; I want
+to dream of a statue.  I have been working hard for three months;
+I have earned a right to a reverie."
+
+Rowland, on his side, was not without provision for reflection,
+and they lingered on in broken, desultory talk.  Rowland felt
+the need for intellectual rest, for a truce to present care
+for churches, statues, and pictures, on even better grounds than
+his companion, inasmuch as he had really been living Roderick's
+intellectual life the past three months, as well as his own.
+As he looked back on these full-flavored weeks, he drew a long
+breath of satisfaction, almost of relief.  Roderick, thus far,
+had justified his confidence and flattered his perspicacity;
+he was rapidly unfolding into an ideal brilliancy.
+He was changed even more than he himself suspected;
+he had stepped, without faltering, into his birthright,
+and was spending money, intellectually, as lavishly
+as a young heir who has just won an obstructive lawsuit.
+Roderick's glance and voice were the same, doubtless,
+as when they enlivened the summer dusk on Cecilia's veranda,
+but in his person, generally, there was an indefinable
+expression of experience rapidly and easily assimilated.
+Rowland had been struck at the outset with the instinctive
+quickness of his observation and his free appropriation of
+whatever might serve his purpose.  He had not been, for instance,
+half an hour on English soil before he perceived that he was
+dressed like a rustic, and he had immediately reformed his
+toilet with the most unerring tact.  His appetite for novelty
+was insatiable, and for everything characteristically foreign,
+as it presented itself, he had an extravagant greeting;
+but in half an hour the novelty had faded, he had guessed
+the secret, he had plucked out the heart of the mystery and
+was clamoring for a keener sensation.  At the end of a month,
+he presented, mentally, a puzzling spectacle to his companion.
+He had caught, instinctively, the key-note of the old world.
+He observed and enjoyed, he criticised and rhapsodized,
+but though all things interested him and many delighted him,
+none surprised him; he had divined their logic and measured
+their proportions, and referred them infallibly to their categories.
+Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution
+on the general spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments
+felt vaguely uneasy for the future; the boy was living
+too fast, he would have said, and giving alarming pledges
+to ennui in his later years.  But we must live as our pulses
+are timed, and Roderick's struck the hour very often.
+He was, by imagination, though he never became in manner,
+a natural man of the world; he had intuitively, as an artist,
+what one may call the historic consciousness.  He had a relish
+for social subtleties and mysteries, and, in perception,
+when occasion offered him an inch he never failed to take an ell.
+A single glimpse of a social situation of the elder type enabled
+him to construct the whole, with all its complex chiaroscuro,
+and Rowland more than once assured him that he made him
+believe in the metempsychosis, and that he must have lived in
+European society, in the last century, as a gentleman in a cocked
+hat and brocaded waistcoat.  Hudson asked Rowland questions
+which poor Rowland was quite unable to answer, and of which he was
+equally unable to conceive where he had picked up the data.
+Roderick ended by answering them himself, tolerably to
+his satisfaction, and in a short time he had almost turned
+the tables and become in their walks and talks the accredited
+source of information.  Rowland told him that when he turned
+sculptor a capital novelist was spoiled, and that to match his
+eye for social detail one would have to go to Honore de Balzac.
+In all this Rowland took a generous pleasure; he felt an especial
+kindness for his comrade's radiant youthfulness of temperament.
+He was so much younger than he himself had ever been!
+And surely youth and genius, hand in hand, were the most
+beautiful sight in the world.  Roderick added to this
+the charm of his more immediately personal qualities.
+The vivacity of his perceptions, the audacity of his imagination,
+the picturesqueness of his phrase when he was pleased,--
+and even more when he was displeased,--his abounding good-humor,
+his candor, his unclouded frankness, his unfailing impulse
+to share every emotion and impression with his friend;
+all this made comradeship a pure felicity, and interfused
+with a deeper amenity their long evening talks at cafe doors
+in Italian towns.
+
+They had gone almost immediately to Paris, and had spent
+their days at the Louvre and their evenings at the theatre.
+Roderick was divided in mind as to whether Titian or Mademoiselle
+Delaporte was the greater artist.  They had come down through
+France to Genoa and Milan, had spent a fortnight in Venice
+and another in Florence, and had now been a month in Rome.
+Roderick had said that he meant to spend three months in simply
+looking, absorbing, and reflecting, without putting pencil to paper.
+He looked indefatigably, and certainly saw great things--
+things greater, doubtless, at times, than the intentions of
+the artist.  And yet he made few false steps and wasted little
+time in theories of what he ought to like and to dislike.
+He judged instinctively and passionately, but never vulgarly.
+At Venice, for a couple of days, he had half a fit of
+melancholy over the pretended discovery that he had missed
+his way, and that the only proper vestment of plastic
+conceptions was the coloring of Titian and Paul Veronese.
+Then one morning the two young men had themselves rowed out
+to Torcello, and Roderick lay back for a couple of hours watching
+a brown-breasted gondolier making superb muscular movements,
+in high relief, against the sky of the Adriatic, and at the end
+jerked himself up with a violence that nearly swamped the gondola,
+and declared that the only thing worth living for was to make
+a colossal bronze and set it aloft in the light of a public square.
+In Rome his first care was for the Vatican; he went there again
+and again.  But the old imperial and papal city altogether
+delighted him; only there he really found what he had been looking
+for from the first--the complete antipodes of Northampton.
+And indeed Rome is the natural home of those spirits with which we
+just now claimed fellowship for Roderick--the spirits with a deep
+relish for the artificial element in life and the infinite
+superpositions of history.  It is the immemorial city of convention.
+The stagnant Roman air is charged with convention;
+it colors the yellow light and deepens the chilly shadows.
+And in that still recent day the most impressive convention
+in all history was visible to men's eyes, in the Roman streets,
+erect in a gilded coach drawn by four black horses.
+Roderick's first fortnight was a high aesthetic revel.
+He declared that Rome made him feel and understand more things
+than he could express:  he was sure that life must have there,
+for all one's senses, an incomparable fineness; that more
+interesting things must happen to one than anywhere else.
+And he gave Rowland to understand that he meant to live freely
+and largely, and be as interested as occasion demanded.
+Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of dissipation,
+because, in the first place, there was in all dissipation,
+refine it as one might, a grossness which would disqualify
+it for Roderick's favor, and because, in the second,
+the young sculptor was a man to regard all things in the light
+of his art, to hand over his passions to his genius to be
+dealt with, and to find that he could live largely enough
+without exceeding the circle of wholesome curiosity.
+Rowland took immense satisfaction in his companion's deep
+impatience to make something of all his impressions.
+Some of these indeed found their way into a channel which did
+not lead to statues, but it was none the less a safe one.
+He wrote frequent long letters to Miss Garland;
+when Rowland went with him to post them he thought wistfully
+of the fortune of the great loosely-written missives,
+which cost Roderick unconscionable sums in postage.
+He received punctual answers of a more frugal form,
+written in a clear, minute hand, on paper vexatiously thin.
+If Rowland was present when they came, he turned away and
+thought of other things--or tried to.  These were the only
+moments when his sympathy halted, and they were brief.
+For the rest he let the days go by unprotestingly, and enjoyed
+Roderick's serene efflorescence as he would have done a beautiful
+summer sunrise.  Rome, for the past month, had been delicious.
+The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and sunny
+leisure seemed to brood over the city.
+
+Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento
+of the great Juno.  Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel,
+and the young men, looking up, saw three persons advancing.
+One was a woman of middle age, with a rather grand air
+and a great many furbelows.  She looked very hard at our
+friends as she passed, and glanced back over her shoulder,
+as if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed her.
+She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed
+she must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not
+just then in a hospitable mood.  Beside her walked a little
+elderly man, tightly buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with
+a flower in his lappet, and a pair of soiled light gloves.
+He was a grotesque-looking personage, and might have passed
+for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by adversity to playing
+cicerone to foreigners of distinction.  He had a little black
+eye which glittered like a diamond and rolled about like a ball
+of quicksilver, and a white moustache, cut short and stiff,
+like a worn-out brush.  He was smiling with extreme urbanity,
+and talking in a low, mellifluous voice to the lady, who evidently
+was not listening to him.  At a considerable distance behind
+this couple strolled a young girl, apparently of about twenty.
+She was tall and slender, and dressed with extreme elegance;
+she led by a cord a large poodle of the most fantastic aspect.
+He was combed and decked like a ram for sacrifice;
+his trunk and haunches were of the most transparent pink,
+his fleecy head and shoulders as white as jeweler's cotton,
+and his tail and ears ornamented with long blue ribbons.
+He stepped along stiffly and solemnly beside his mistress,
+with an air of conscious elegance.  There was something at first
+slightly ridiculous in the sight of a young lady gravely appended
+to an animal of these incongruous attributes, and Roderick, with his
+customary frankness, greeted the spectacle with a confident smile.
+The young girl perceived it and turned her face full upon him,
+with a gaze intended apparently to enforce greater deference.
+It was not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled,
+submissive admiration; Roderick's smile fell dead, and he sat
+eagerly staring.  A pair of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass
+of dusky hair over a low forehead, a blooming oval of perfect purity,
+a flexible lip, just touched with disdain, the step and carriage
+of a tired princess--these were the general features of his vision.
+The young lady was walking slowly and letting her long dress
+rustle over the gravel; the young men had time to see her
+distinctly before she averted her face and went her way.
+She left a vague, sweet perfume behind her as she passed.
+
+"Immortal powers!" cried Roderick, "what a vision!  In the name
+of transcendent perfection, who is she?"  He sprang up and stood
+looking after her until she rounded a turn in the avenue.
+"What a movement, what a manner, what a poise of the head!
+I wonder if she would sit to me."
+
+"You had better go and ask her," said Rowland, laughing.
+"She is certainly most beautiful."
+
+"Beautiful?  She 's beauty itself--she 's a revelation.
+I don't believe she is living--she 's a phantasm,
+a vapor, an illusion!"
+
+"The poodle," said Rowland, "is certainly alive."
+
+"Nay, he too may be a grotesque phantom, like the black dog in Faust."
+
+"I hope at least that the young lady has nothing in common
+with Mephistopheles.  She looked dangerous."
+
+"If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton,"
+said Roderick, "she is the incarnation of evil.  The mamma and
+the queer old gentleman, moreover, are a pledge of her reality.
+Who are they all?"
+
+"The Prince and Princess Ludovisi and the principessina," suggested Rowland.
+
+"There are no such people," said Roderick.  "Besides, the little
+old man is not the papa."  Rowland smiled, wondering how he had
+ascertained these facts, and the young sculptor went on.
+"The old man is a Roman, a hanger-on of the mamma,
+a useful personage who now and then gets asked to dinner.
+The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country;
+I won't say which."
+
+"Perhaps from the State of Maine," said Rowland.
+
+"No, she 's not an American, I 'll lay a wager on that.
+She 's a daughter of this elder world.  We shall see her again,
+I pray my stars; but if we don't, I shall have done something I
+never expected to--I shall have had a glimpse of ideal beauty."
+He sat down again and went on with his sketch of the Juno, scrawled away
+for ten minutes, and then handed the result in silence to Rowland.
+Rowland uttered an exclamation of surprise and applause.
+The drawing represented the Juno as to the position of the head,
+the brow, and the broad fillet across the hair; but the eyes,
+the mouth, the physiognomy were a vivid portrait of the young girl
+with the poodle.  "I have been wanting a subject," said Roderick:
+"there 's one made to my hand!  And now for work!"
+
+They saw no more of the young girl, though Roderick looked hopefully,
+for some days, into the carriages on the Pincian.  She had evidently been
+but passing through Rome; Naples or Florence now happily possessed her,
+and she was guiding her fleecy companion through the Villa Reale
+or the Boboli Gardens with the same superb defiance of irony.
+Roderick went to work and spent a month shut up in his studio;
+he had an idea, and he was not to rest till he had embodied it.
+He had established himself in the basement of a huge, dusky,
+dilapidated old house, in that long, tortuous, and preeminently Roman
+street which leads from the Corso to the Bridge of St. Angelo.
+The black archway which admitted you might have served as the portal
+of the Augean stables, but you emerged presently upon a mouldy
+little court, of which the fourth side was formed by a narrow terrace,
+overhanging the Tiber.  Here, along the parapet, were stationed half
+a dozen shapeless fragments of sculpture, with a couple of meagre
+orange-trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an oleander that never flowered.
+The unclean, historic river swept beneath; behind were dusky, reeking walls,
+spotted here and there with hanging rags and flower-pots in windows;
+opposite, at a distance, were the bare brown banks of the stream,
+the huge rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with its seraphic statue,
+the dome of St. Peter's, and the broad-topped pines of the Villa Doria.
+The place was crumbling and shabby and melancholy, but the river
+was delightful, the rent was a trifle, and everything was picturesque.
+Roderick was in the best humor with his quarters from the first,
+and was certain that the working mood there would be intenser in an hour
+than in twenty years of Northampton.  His studio was a huge, empty room
+with a vaulted ceiling, covered with vague, dark traces of an old fresco,
+which Rowland, when he spent an hour with his friend, used to stare at vainly
+for some surviving coherence of floating draperies and clasping arms.
+Roderick had lodged himself economically in the same quarter.
+He occupied a fifth floor on the Ripetta, but he was only at home to sleep,
+for when he was not at work he was either lounging in Rowland's more
+luxurious rooms or strolling through streets and churches and gardens.
+
+Rowland had found a convenient corner in a stately old palace
+not far from the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home
+to which books and pictures and prints and odds and ends
+of curious furniture gave an air of leisurely permanence.
+He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half his afternoons
+ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers,
+and often made his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart
+of impecunious Roman households, which had been prevailed upon
+to listen--with closed doors and an impenetrably wary smile--
+to proposals for an hereditary "antique."  In the evening,
+often, under the lamp, amid dropped curtains and the scattered
+gleam of firelight upon polished carvings and mellow paintings,
+the two friends sat with their heads together, criticising intaglios
+and etchings, water-color drawings and illuminated missals.
+Roderick's quick appreciation of every form of artistic
+beauty reminded his companion of the flexible temperament
+of those Italian artists of the sixteenth century who were
+indifferently painters and sculptors, sonneteers and engravers.
+At times when he saw how the young sculptor's day passed
+in a single sustained pulsation, while his own was broken
+into a dozen conscious devices for disposing of the hours,
+and intermingled with sighs, half suppressed, some of them,
+for conscience' sake, over what he failed of in action and missed
+in possession--he felt a pang of something akin to envy.
+But Rowland had two substantial aids for giving patience
+the air of contentment:  he was an inquisitive reader and a
+passionate rider.  He plunged into bulky German octavos on
+Italian history, and he spent long afternoons in the saddle,
+ranging over the grassy desolation of the Campagna.
+As the season went on and the social groups began to
+constitute themselves, he found that he knew a great many
+people and that he had easy opportunity for knowing others.
+He enjoyed a quiet corner of a drawing-room beside an agreeable woman,
+and although the machinery of what calls itself society seemed
+to him to have many superfluous wheels, he accepted invitations
+and made visits punctiliously, from the conviction that the only
+way not to be overcome by the ridiculous side of most of
+such observances is to take them with exaggerated gravity.
+He introduced Roderick right and left, and suffered him to make
+his way himself--an enterprise for which Roderick very soon
+displayed an all-sufficient capacity.  Wherever he went he made,
+not exactly what is called a favorable impression, but what,
+from a practical point of view, is better--a puzzling one.
+He took to evening parties as a duck to water, and before the winter
+was half over was the most freely and frequently discussed young
+man in the heterogeneous foreign colony.  Rowland's theory
+of his own duty was to let him run his course and play his cards,
+only holding himself ready to point out shoals and pitfalls,
+and administer a friendly propulsion through tight places.
+Roderick's manners on the precincts of the Pincian were
+quite the same as his manners on Cecilia's veranda:
+that is, they were no manners at all.  But it remained
+as true as before that it would have been impossible,
+on the whole, to violate ceremony with less of lasting offense.
+He interrupted, he contradicted, he spoke to people
+he had never seen, and left his social creditors without
+the smallest conversational interest on their loans;
+he lounged and yawned, he talked loud when he should have
+talked low, and low when he should have talked loud.
+Many people, in consequence, thought him insufferably conceited,
+and declared that he ought to wait till he had something to show
+for his powers, before he assumed the airs of a spoiled celebrity.
+But to Rowland and to most friendly observers this judgment
+was quite beside the mark, and the young man's undiluted
+naturalness was its own justification.  He was impulsive,
+spontaneous, sincere; there were so many people at dinner-tables
+and in studios who were not, that it seemed worth while to
+allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action.
+If Roderick took the words out of your mouth when you were
+just prepared to deliver them with the most effective accent,
+he did it with a perfect good conscience and with no pretension
+of a better right to being heard, but simply because he was full
+to overflowing of his own momentary thought and it sprang from
+his lips without asking leave.  There were persons who waited
+on your periods much more deferentially, who were a hundred
+times more capable than Roderick of a reflective impertinence.
+Roderick received from various sources, chiefly feminine,
+enough finely-adjusted advice to have established him in life
+as an embodiment of the proprieties, and he received it,
+as he afterwards listened to criticisms on his statues,
+with unfaltering candor and good-humor. Here and there,
+doubtless, as he went, he took in a reef in his sail;
+but he was too adventurous a spirit to be successfully tamed,
+and he remained at most points the florid, rather strident
+young Virginian whose serene inflexibility had been the despair
+of Mr. Striker.  All this was what friendly commentators
+(still chiefly feminine) alluded to when they spoke of his
+delightful freshness, and critics of harsher sensibilities
+(of the other sex) when they denounced his damned impertinence.
+His appearance enforced these impressions--his handsome face,
+his radiant, unaverted eyes, his childish, unmodulated voice.
+Afterwards, when those who loved him were in tears, there was
+something in all this unspotted comeliness that seemed to lend
+a mockery to the causes of their sorrow.
+
+Certainly, among the young men of genius who, for so
+many ages, have gone up to Rome to test their powers,
+none ever made a fairer beginning than Roderick.
+He rode his two horses at once with extraordinary good fortune;
+he established the happiest modus vivendi betwixt work and play.
+He wrestled all day with a mountain of clay in his studio,
+and chattered half the night away in Roman drawing-rooms.
+It all seemed part of a kind of divine facility.
+He was passionately interested, he was feeling his powers;
+now that they had thoroughly kindled in the glowing aesthetic
+atmosphere of Rome, the ardent young fellow should be pardoned
+for believing that he never was to see the end of them.
+He enjoyed immeasurably, after the chronic obstruction of home,
+the downright act of production.  He kept models in his studio
+till they dropped with fatigue; he drew, on other days,
+at the Capitol and the Vatican, till his own head swam
+with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the cold.
+He had promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called
+an "Adam," and was pushing it rapidly toward completion.
+There were naturally a great many wiseheads who smiled
+at his precipitancy, and cited him as one more example of
+Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to the great army of those
+who wish to dance before they can walk.  They were right,
+but Roderick was right too, for the success of his statue was not
+to have been foreseen; it partook, really, of the miraculous.
+He never surpassed it afterwards, and a good judge here and there
+has been known to pronounce it the finest piece of sculpture
+of our modern era.  To Rowland it seemed to justify superbly
+his highest hopes of his friend, and he said to himself
+that if he had invested his happiness in fostering a genius,
+he ought now to be in possession of a boundless complacency.
+There was something especially confident and masterly in the
+artist's negligence of all such small picturesque accessories
+as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar apprehension.
+If it represented the father of the human race and the primal
+embodiment of human sensation, it did so in virtue
+of its look of balanced physical perfection, and deeply,
+eagerly sentient vitality.  Rowland, in fraternal zeal, traveled up
+to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most magnificent
+block of marble he could find, and when it came down to Rome,
+the two young men had a "celebration."  They drove out to Albano,
+breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn,
+and lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo.
+Roderick's head was full of ideas for other works,
+which he described with infinite spirit and eloquence,
+as vividly as if they were ranged on their pedestals before him.
+He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in the streets,
+in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw just
+missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his
+mind as a kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until,
+in some form or other, he had taken up the glove and set his
+lance in rest.
+
+The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it.
+Of the criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record;
+over many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month,
+and certain of the formulas of the connoisseurs, restrictive or indulgent,
+furnished Roderick with a permanent supply of humorous catch-words.
+But people enough spoke flattering good-sense to make Roderick feel
+as if he were already half famous.  The statue passed formally into
+Rowland's possession, and was paid for as if an illustrious name had been
+chiseled on the pedestal.  Poor Roderick owed every franc of the money.
+It was not for this, however, but because he was so gloriously in
+the mood, that, denying himself all breathing-time, on the same day
+he had given the last touch to the Adam, he began to shape the rough
+contour of an Eve.  This went forward with equal rapidity and success.
+Roderick lost his temper, time and again, with his models, who offered
+but a gross, degenerate image of his splendid ideal; but his ideal,
+as he assured Rowland, became gradually such a fixed, vivid presence,
+that he had only to shut his eyes to behold a creature far more to his
+purpose than the poor girl who stood posturing at forty sous an hour.
+The Eve was finished in a month, and the feat was extraordinary,
+as well as the statue, which represented an admirably beautiful woman.
+When the spring began to muffle the rugged old city with its
+clambering festoons, it seemed to him that he had done a handsome
+winter's work and had fairly earned a holiday.  He took a liberal one,
+and lounged away the lovely Roman May, doing nothing.  He looked
+very contented; with himself, perhaps, at times, a trifle too obviously.
+But who could have said without good reason?  He was "flushed
+with triumph;" this classic phrase portrayed him, to Rowland's sense.
+He would lose himself in long reveries, and emerge from them with a
+quickened smile and a heightened color.  Rowland grudged him none
+of his smiles, and took an extreme satisfaction in his two statues.
+He had the Adam and the Eve transported to his own apartment, and one
+warm evening in May he gave a little dinner in honor of the artist.
+It was small, but Rowland had meant it should be very agreeably composed.
+He thought over his friends and chose four.  They were all persons
+with whom he lived in a certain intimacy.
+
+One of them was an American sculptor of French extraction,
+or remotely, perhaps, of Italian, for he rejoiced in the somewhat
+fervid name of Gloriani.  He was a man of forty, he had been
+living for years in Paris and in Rome, and he now drove a very
+pretty trade in sculpture of the ornamental and fantastic sort.
+In his youth he had had money; but he had spent it recklessly,
+much of it scandalously, and at twenty-six had found himself obliged
+to make capital of his talent.  This was quite inimitable, and fifteen
+years of indefatigable exercise had brought it to perfection.
+Rowland admitted its power, though it gave him very little pleasure;
+what he relished in the man was the extraordinary vivacity
+and frankness, not to call it the impudence, of his ideas.
+He had a definite, practical scheme of art, and he knew at least
+what he meant.  In this sense he was solid and complete.
+There were so many of the aesthetic fraternity who were floundering
+in unknown seas, without a notion of which way their noses were turned,
+that Gloriani, conscious and compact, unlimitedly intelligent
+and consummately clever, dogmatic only as to his own duties,
+and at once gracefully deferential and profoundly indifferent
+to those of others, had for Rowland a certain intellectual
+refreshment quite independent of the character of his works.
+These were considered by most people to belong to a very corrupt,
+and by many to a positively indecent school.  Others thought them
+tremendously knowing, and paid enormous prices for them; and indeed,
+to be able to point to one of Gloriani's figures in a shady corner
+of your library was tolerable proof that you were not a fool.
+Corrupt things they certainly were; in the line of sculpture they
+were quite the latest fruit of time.  It was the artist's opinion
+that there is no essential difference between beauty and ugliness;
+that they overlap and intermingle in a quite inextricable manner;
+that there is no saying where one begins and the other ends;
+that hideousness grimaces at you suddenly from out of the very bosom
+of loveliness, and beauty blooms before your eyes in the lap of vileness;
+that it is a waste of wit to nurse metaphysical distinctions,
+and a sadly meagre entertainment to caress imaginary lines;
+that the thing to aim at is the expressive, and the way to reach
+it is by ingenuity; that for this purpose everything may serve,
+and that a consummate work is a sort of hotch-potch of the pure
+and the impure, the graceful and the grotesque.  Its prime duty is
+to amuse, to puzzle, to fascinate, to savor of a complex imagination.
+Gloriani's statues were florid and meretricious; they looked
+like magnified goldsmith's work.  They were extremely elegant,
+but they had no charm for Rowland.  He never bought one,
+but Gloriani was such an honest fellow, and withal was so deluged
+with orders, that this made no difference in their friendship.
+The artist might have passed for a Frenchman.  He was a great talker,
+and a very picturesque one; he was almost bald; he had a small,
+bright eye, a broken nose, and a moustache with waxed ends.
+When sometimes he received you at his lodging, he introduced
+you to a lady with a plain face whom he called Madame Gloriani--
+which she was not.
+
+Rowland's second guest was also an artist, but of a very different type.
+His friends called him Sam Singleton; he was an American, and he had
+been in Rome a couple of years.  He painted small landscapes,
+chiefly in water-colors: Rowland had seen one of them in a shop window,
+had liked it extremely, and, ascertaining his address, had gone
+to see him and found him established in a very humble studio near
+the Piazza Barberini, where, apparently, fame and fortune had not
+yet found him out.  Rowland took a fancy to him and bought several
+of his pictures; Singleton made few speeches, but was grateful.
+Rowland heard afterwards that when he first came to Rome he painted
+worthless daubs and gave no promise of talent.  Improvement had come,
+however, hand in hand with patient industry, and his talent,
+though of a slender and delicate order, was now incontestable.
+It was as yet but scantily recognized, and he had hard work to live.
+Rowland hung his little water-colors on the parlor wall, and found that,
+as he lived with them, he grew very fond of them.  Singleton was
+a diminutive, dwarfish personage; he looked like a precocious child.
+He had a high, protuberant forehead, a transparent brown eye,
+a perpetual smile, an extraordinary expression of modesty and patience.
+He listened much more willingly than he talked, with a little fixed,
+grateful grin; he blushed when he spoke, and always offered his ideas
+in a sidelong fashion, as if the presumption were against them.
+His modesty set them off, and they were eminently to the point.
+He was so perfect an example of the little noiseless,
+laborious artist whom chance, in the person of a moneyed patron,
+has never taken by the hand, that Rowland would have liked to befriend
+him by stealth.  Singleton had expressed a fervent admiration
+for Roderick's productions, but had not yet met the young master.
+Roderick was lounging against the chimney-piece when he came in,
+and Rowland presently introduced him.  The little water-colorist
+stood with folded hands, blushing, smiling, and looking up at him
+as if Roderick were himself a statue on a pedestal.  Singleton began
+to murmur something about his pleasure, his admiration; the desire
+to make his compliment smoothly gave him a kind of grotesque formalism.
+Roderick looked down at him surprised, and suddenly burst into a laugh.
+Singleton paused a moment and then, with an intenser smile, went on:
+"Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all the same!"
+
+Rowland's two other guests were ladies, and one of them,
+Miss Blanchard, belonged also to the artistic fraternity.
+She was an American, she was young, she was pretty,
+and she had made her way to Rome alone and unaided.
+She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed
+old serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly
+neighbor in the person of a certain Madame Grandoni,
+who in various social emergencies lent her a protecting wing,
+and had come with her to Rowland's dinner.  Miss Blanchard had
+a little money, but she was not above selling her pictures.
+These represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses,
+with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine,
+and a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it.
+She did backs very well, but she was a little weak in faces.
+Flowers, however, were her speciality, and though her touch
+was a little old-fashioned and finical, she painted them with
+remarkable skill.  Her pictures were chiefly bought by the English.
+Rowland had made her acquaintance early in the winter, and as she
+kept a saddle horse and rode a great deal, he had asked permission
+to be her cavalier.  In this way they had become almost intimate.
+Miss Blanchard's name was Augusta; she was slender, pale,
+and elegant looking; she had a very pretty head and brilliant
+auburn hair, which she braided with classical simplicity.
+She talked in a sweet, soft voice, used language at times
+a trifle superfine, and made literary allusions.  These had
+often a patriotic strain, and Rowland had more than once been
+irritated by her quotations from Mrs. Sigourney in the cork-woods
+of Monte Mario, and from Mr. Willis among the ruins of Veii.
+Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her, and was
+half surprised, at times, to find himself treating it
+as a matter of serious moment whether he liked her or not.
+He admired her, and indeed there was something admirable in her
+combination of beauty and talent, of isolation and tranquil
+self-support. He used sometimes to go into the little,
+high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and find
+her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement,
+profiled against the deep blue Roman sky.  She received him
+with a meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint
+on a church window, receiving the daylight in all her being.
+The breath of reproach passed her by with folded wings.
+And yet Rowland wondered why he did not like her better.
+If he failed, the reason was not far to seek.  There was
+another woman whom he liked better, an image in his heart
+which refused to yield precedence.
+
+On that evening to which allusion has been made, when Rowland
+was left alone between the starlight and the waves with the sudden
+knowledge that Mary Garland was to become another man's wife,
+he had made, after a while, the simple resolution to forget her.
+And every day since, like a famous philosopher who wished
+to abbreviate his mourning for a faithful servant, he had said
+to himself in substance--"Remember to forget Mary Garland."
+Sometimes it seemed as if he were succeeding; then, suddenly,
+when he was least expecting it, he would find her name, inaudibly,
+on his lips, and seem to see her eyes meeting his eyes.  All this
+made him uncomfortable, and seemed to portend a possible discord.
+Discord was not to his taste; he shrank from imperious passions,
+and the idea of finding himself jealous of an unsuspecting
+friend was absolutely repulsive.  More than ever, then, the path
+of duty was to forget Mary Garland, and he cultivated oblivion,
+as we may say, in the person of Miss Blanchard.
+Her fine temper, he said to himself, was a trifle cold
+and conscious, her purity prudish, perhaps, her culture pedantic.
+But since he was obliged to give up hopes of Mary Garland,
+Providence owed him a compensation, and he had fits of angry sadness
+in which it seemed to him that to attest his right to sentimental
+satisfaction he would be capable of falling in love with a woman
+he absolutely detested, if she were the best that came in his way.
+And what was the use, after all, of bothering about a possible
+which was only, perhaps, a dream?  Even if Mary Garland had been free,
+what right had he to assume that he would have pleased her?
+The actual was good enough.  Miss Blanchard had beautiful hair,
+and if she was a trifle old-maidish, there is nothing like matrimony
+for curing old-maidishness.
+
+Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland's
+rides an alliance which might have been called defensive on
+the part of the former and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard,
+was an excessively ugly old lady, highly esteemed in Roman society
+for her homely benevolence and her shrewd and humorous good sense.
+She had been the widow of a German archaeologist, who had come to Rome in
+the early ages as an attache of the Prussian legation on the Capitoline.
+Her good sense had been wanting on but a single occasion,
+that of her second marriage.  This occasion was certainly a
+momentous one, but these, by common consent, are not test cases.
+A couple of years after her first husband's death, she had accepted
+the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years
+younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The
+marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected
+of using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction.
+He had finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to
+be hoped, had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title.
+He was believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small
+black spot in Madame Grandoni's life, and for ten years she had not
+mentioned his name.  She wore a light flaxen wig, which was never very
+artfully adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no secret of it.
+She used to say, "I was not always so ugly as this; as a young
+girl I had beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig."
+She had worn from time immemorial an old blue satin dress,
+and a white crape shawl embroidered in colors; her appearance
+was ridiculous, but she had an interminable Teutonic pedigree,
+and her manners, in every presence, were easy and jovial, as became
+a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer to Frederick Barbarossa.
+Thirty years' observation of Roman society had sharpened her wits
+and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but she had beneath
+her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic sentiment,
+which she communicated only to the objects of her particular favor.
+Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing
+him to get married.  She never saw him without whispering to him
+that Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
+
+It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss
+Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind
+the central bouquet at his circular dinner-table. The dinner was very
+prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast.
+He had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this
+occasion he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory.
+He drank freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with
+his hands in his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence.
+Singleton sat gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person
+were talking.  Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident
+disposition to draw Roderick out.  Rowland was rather regretful,
+for he knew that theory was not his friend's strong point, and that it
+was never fair to take his measure from his talk.
+
+"As you have begun with Adam and Eve," said Gloriani,
+"I suppose you are going straight through the Bible."
+He was one of the persons who thought Roderick delightfully fresh.
+
+"I may make a David," said Roderick, "but I shall not try
+any more of the Old Testament people.  I don't like the Jews;
+I don't like pendulous noses.  David, the boy David, is rather
+an exception; you can think of him and treat him as a young Greek.
+Standing forth there on the plain of battle between the contending armies,
+rushing forward to let fly his stone, he looks like a beautiful runner
+at the Olympic games.  After that I shall skip to the New Testament.
+I mean to make a Christ."
+
+"You 'll put nothing of the Olympic games into him, I hope," said Gloriani.
+
+"Oh, I shall make him very different from the Christ
+of tradition; more--more"--and Roderick paused a moment to think.
+This was the first that Rowland had heard of his Christ.
+
+"More rationalistic, I suppose," suggested Miss Blanchard.
+
+"More idealistic!" cried Roderick.  "The perfection of form,
+you know, to symbolize the perfection of spirit."
+
+"For a companion piece," said Miss Blanchard, "you ought to make a Judas."
+
+"Never!  I mean never to make anything ugly.  The Greeks never
+made anything ugly, and I 'm a Hellenist; I 'm not a Hebraist!
+I have been thinking lately of making a Cain, but I should never
+dream of making him ugly.  He should be a very handsome fellow,
+and he should lift up the murderous club with the beautiful
+movement of the fighters in the Greek friezes who are chopping
+at their enemies."
+
+"There 's no use trying to be a Greek," said Gloriani.
+"If Phidias were to come back, he would recommend you to give it up.
+I am half Italian and half French, and, as a whole, a Yankee.
+What sort of a Greek should I make?  I think the Judas is a capital
+idea for a statue.  Much obliged to you, madame, for the suggestion.
+What an insidious little scoundrel one might make of him,
+sitting there nursing his money-bag and his treachery!
+There can be a great deal of expression in a pendulous nose,
+my dear sir, especially when it is cast in green bronze."
+
+"Very likely," said Roderick.  "But it is not the sort of expression
+I care for.  I care only for perfect beauty.  There it is, if you
+want to know it!  That 's as good a profession of faith as another.
+In future, so far as my things are not positively beautiful,
+you may set them down as failures.  For me, it 's either
+that or nothing.  It 's against the taste of the day, I know;
+we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty in the large,
+ideal way.  We stand like a race with shrunken muscles,
+staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted.
+But I don't hesitate to proclaim it--I mean to lift them again!
+I mean to go in for big things; that 's my notion of my art.
+I mean to do things that will be simple and vast and infinite.
+You 'll see if they won't be infinite!  Excuse me if I brag a little;
+all those Italian fellows in the Renaissance used to brag.
+There was a sensation once common, I am sure, in the human breast--
+a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble image newly
+created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity.
+When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses
+unveiled in the temples of the ;aEgean, don't you suppose there
+was a passionate beating of hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror?
+I mean to bring it back; I mean to thrill the world again!
+I mean to produce a Juno that will make you tremble, a Venus
+that will make you swoon!"
+
+"So that when we come and see you," said Madame Grandoni,
+"we must be sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray
+have a few soft sofas conveniently placed."
+
+"Phidias and Praxiteles," Miss Blanchard remarked, "had the advantage
+of believing in their goddesses.  I insist on believing, for myself,
+that the pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno
+and Apollo and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city
+of Rome where we sit talking nineteenth century English."
+
+"Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!" cried Madame Grandoni.
+"Mr. Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno--
+that 's you and I--arrived to-day in a very dirty cab;
+and were cheated by the driver, too."
+
+"But, my dear fellow," objected Gloriani, "you don't mean to say
+you are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded
+Apollos and Hebes."
+
+"It won't matter what you call them," said Roderick.
+"They shall be simply divine forms.  They shall be Beauty;
+they shall be Wisdom; they shall be Power; they shall be Genius;
+they shall be Daring.  That 's all the Greek divinities were."
+
+"That 's rather abstract, you know," said Miss Blanchard.
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Gloriani, "you 're delightfully young."
+
+"I hope you 'll not grow any older," said Singleton,
+with a flush of sympathy across his large white forehead.
+"You can do it if you try."
+
+"Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,"
+Roderick went on.  "I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night!
+I mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind.
+I mean to make a magnificent statue of America!"
+
+"America--the Mountains--the Moon!" said Gloriani.
+"You 'll find it rather hard, I 'm afraid, to compress such
+subjects into classic forms."
+
+"Oh, there 's a way," cried Roderick, "and I shall think it out.
+My figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean
+a tremendous deal."
+
+"I 'm sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo,"
+said Madame Grandoni.  "Perhaps you don't approve of him."
+
+"Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!" said Roderick, with sublimity.
+There was a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done
+some fine things.
+
+Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small
+portfolio of prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick's
+little statue of the youth drinking.  It pleased him to see
+his friend sitting there in radiant ardor, defending idealism
+against so knowing an apostle of corruption as Gloriani,
+and he wished to help the elder artist to be confuted.
+He silently handed him the photograph.
+
+"Bless me!" cried Gloriani, "did he do this?"
+
+"Ages ago," said Roderick.
+
+Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.
+
+"It 's deucedly pretty," he said at last.  "But, my dear young friend,
+you can't keep this up."
+
+"I shall do better," said Roderick.
+
+"You will do worse!  You will become weak.  You will have to take
+to violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This
+sort of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat
+of his trousers.  He may stand on tiptoe, but he can't do more.
+Here you stand on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can't fly;
+there 's no use trying."
+
+"My 'America' shall answer you!" said Roderick, shaking toward
+him a tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.
+
+Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little
+murmur of delight.
+
+"Was this done in America?" he asked.
+
+"In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts,"
+Roderick answered.
+
+"Dear old white wooden houses!" said Miss Blanchard.
+
+"If you could do as well as this there," said Singleton, blushing and smiling,
+"one might say that really you had only to lose by coming to Rome."
+
+"Mallet is to blame for that," said Roderick.  "But I am willing
+to risk the loss."
+
+The photograph had been passed to Madame Grandoni.
+"It reminds me," she said, "of the things a young man used
+to do whom I knew years ago, when I first came to Rome.
+He was a German, a pupil of Overbeck and a votary of spiritual art.
+He used to wear a black velvet tunic and a very low shirt collar;
+he had a neck like a sickly crane, and let his hair grow
+down to his shoulders.  His name was Herr Schafgans.
+He never painted anything so profane as a man taking a drink,
+but his figures were all of the simple and slender and angular
+pattern, and nothing if not innocent--like this one of yours.
+He would not have agreed with Gloriani any more than you.
+He used to come and see me very often, and in those days I thought
+his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of genius.
+His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions;
+he lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock
+of Saint Somebody's hair in a little bag round his neck.
+If he was not a Beato Angelico, it was not his own fault.
+I hope with all my heart that Mr. Hudson will do the fine things
+he talks about, but he must bear in mind the history of dear
+Mr. Schafgans as a warning against high-flown pretensions.
+One fine day this poor young man fell in love with a Roman model,
+though she had never sat to him, I believe, for she was a buxom,
+bold-faced, high-colored creature, and he painted none but pale,
+sickly women.  He offered to marry her, and she looked at him
+from head to foot, gave a shrug, and consented.  But he was ashamed
+to set up his menage in Rome.  They went to Naples, and there,
+a couple of years afterwards, I saw him.  The poor fellow was ruined.
+His wife used to beat him, and he had taken to drinking.
+He wore a ragged black coat, and he had a blotchy, red face.
+Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go and fetch
+the dirty linen.  His talent had gone heaven knows where!
+He was getting his living by painting views of Vesuvius
+in eruption on the little boxes they sell at Sorrento."
+
+"Moral:  don't fall in love with a buxom Roman model," said Roderick.
+"I 'm much obliged to you for your story, but I don't mean to fall
+in love with any one."
+
+Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was
+looking at it curiously.  "It 's a happy bit of youth," he said.
+"But you can't keep it up--you can't keep it up!"
+
+The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner,
+in the drawing-room. Rowland left them to have it out in a corner,
+where Roderick's Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight,
+in vague white beauty, like the guardian angel of the
+young idealist.  Singleton was listening to Madame Grandoni,
+and Rowland took his place on the sofa, near Miss Blanchard.
+They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk.
+Every now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them.
+Miss Blanchard at last asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick:
+who he was, where he came from, whether it was true,
+as she had heard, that Rowland had discovered him and brought
+him out at his own expense.  Rowland answered her questions;
+to the last he gave a vague affirmative.  Finally, after a pause,
+looking at him, "You 're very generous," Miss Blanchard said.
+The declaration was made with a certain richness of tone,
+but it brought to Rowland's sense neither delight nor confusion.
+He had heard the words before; he suddenly remembered the grave
+sincerity with which Miss Garland had uttered them as he
+strolled with her in the woods the day of Roderick's picnic.
+They had pleased him then; now he asked Miss Blanchard whether
+she would have some tea.
+
+When the two ladies withdrew, he attended them to their carriage.
+Coming back to the drawing-room, he paused outside the open door;
+he was struck by the group formed by the three men.  They were standing
+before Roderick's statue of Eve, and the young sculptor had lifted up
+the lamp and was showing different parts of it to his companions.
+He was talking ardently, and the lamplight covered his head and face.
+Rowland stood looking on, for the group struck him with its
+picturesque symbolism.  Roderick, bearing the lamp and glowing
+in its radiant circle, seemed the beautiful image of a genius which
+combined sincerity with power.  Gloriani, with his head on one side,
+pulling his long moustache and looking keenly from half-closed
+eyes at the lighted marble, represented art with a worldly motive,
+skill unleavened by faith, the mere base maximum of cleverness.
+Poor little Singleton, on the other side, with his hands behind him,
+his head thrown back, and his eyes following devoutly the course of
+Roderick's elucidation, might pass for an embodiment of aspiring candor,
+with feeble wings to rise on.  In all this, Roderick's was certainly
+the beau role.
+
+Gloriani turned to Rowland as he came up, and pointed back
+with his thumb to the statue, with a smile half sardonic,
+half good-natured. "A pretty thing--a devilish pretty thing,"
+he said.  "It 's as fresh as the foam in the milk-pail. He
+can do it once, he can do it twice, he can do it at a stretch
+half a dozen times.  But--but"
+
+He was returning to his former refrain, but Rowland intercepted him.
+"Oh, he will keep it up," he said, smiling, "I will answer for him."
+
+Gloriani was not encouraging, but Roderick had listened smiling.
+He was floating unperturbed on the tide of his deep self-confidence. Now,
+suddenly, however, he turned with a flash of irritation in his eye,
+and demanded in a ringing voice, "In a word, then, you prophesy that I
+am to fail?"
+
+Gloriani answered imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder.
+"My dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed.
+Some fine day every artist finds himself sitting face to face
+with his lump of clay, with his empty canvas, with his sheet
+of blank paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to be made,
+for the Muse to descend.  He must learn to do without the Muse!
+When the fickle jade forgets the way to your studio, don't waste
+any time in tearing your hair and meditating on suicide.
+Come round and see me, and I will show you how to console yourself."
+
+"If I break down," said Roderick, passionately, "I shall stay down.
+If the Muse deserts me, she shall at least have her infidelity
+on her conscience."
+
+"You have no business," Rowland said to Gloriani, "to talk lightly
+of the Muse in this company.  Mr. Singleton, too, has received
+pledges from her which place her constancy beyond suspicion."
+And he pointed out on the wall, near by, two small landscapes
+by the modest water-colorist.
+
+The sculptor examined them with deference, and Singleton
+himself began to laugh nervously; he was trembling
+with hope that the great Gloriani would be pleased.
+"Yes, these are fresh too," Gloriani said; "extraordinarily fresh!
+How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-six, sir," said Singleton.
+
+"For twenty-six they are famously fresh.  They must have taken
+you a long time; you work slowly."
+
+"Yes, unfortunately, I work very slowly.  One of them took me six weeks,
+the other two months."
+
+"Upon my word!  The Muse pays you long visits."  And Gloriani turned
+and looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors.
+Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard.
+"Oh, you!" said the sculptor; "you 'll keep it up!"
+
+A week after his dinner-party, Rowland went into Roderick's
+studio and found him sitting before an unfinished piece of work,
+with a hanging head and a heavy eye.  He could have fancied
+that the fatal hour foretold by Gloriani had struck.
+Roderick rose with a sombre yawn and flung down his tools.
+"It 's no use," he said, "I give it up!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I have struck a shallow!  I have been sailing bravely, but for the last day
+or two my keel has been crunching the bottom."
+
+"A difficult place?"  Rowland asked, with a sympathetic inflection,
+looking vaguely at the roughly modeled figure.
+
+"Oh, it 's not the poor clay!"  Roderick answered.
+"The difficult place is here!"  And he struck a blow on his heart.
+"I don't know what 's the matter with me.  Nothing comes;
+all of a sudden I hate things.  My old things look ugly;
+everything looks stupid."
+
+Rowland was perplexed.  He was in the situation of a man
+who has been riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop,
+and of a sudden feels him stumble and balk.  As yet,
+he reflected, he had seen nothing but the sunshine of genius;
+he had forgotten that it has its storms.  Of course it had!
+And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which
+would float them both safely through the worst weather.
+"Why, you 're tired!" he said.  "Of course you 're tired.
+You have a right to be!"
+
+"Do you think I have a right to be?"  Roderick asked, looking at him.
+
+"Unquestionably, after all you have done."
+
+"Well, then, right or wrong, I am tired.  I certainly have done
+a fair winter's work.  I want a change."
+
+Rowland declared that it was certainly high time they
+should be leaving Rome.  They would go north and travel.
+They would go to Switzerland, to Germany, to Holland, to England.
+Roderick assented, his eye brightened, and Rowland talked
+of a dozen things they might do.  Roderick walked up and down;
+he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring out.
+He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered, and at last
+asked him what was on his mind.  Roderick stopped before him,
+frowning a little.
+
+"I have such unbounded faith in your good-will," he said,
+"that I believe nothing I can say would offend you."
+
+"Try it," said Rowland.
+
+"Well, then, I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone.
+I need n't say I prefer your society to that of any man living.
+For the last six months it has been everything to me.
+But I have a perpetual feeling that you are expecting something of me,
+that you are measuring my doings by a terrifically high standard.
+You are watching me; I don't want to be watched.  I want to go my own way;
+to work when I choose and to loaf when I choose.  It is not that I
+don't know what I owe you; it is not that we are not friends.
+It is simply that I want a taste of absolutely unrestricted freedom.
+Therefore, I say, let us separate."
+
+Rowland shook him by the hand.  "Willingly.  Do as you desire,
+I shall miss you, and I venture to believe you 'll pass
+some lonely hours.  But I have only one request to make:
+that if you get into trouble of any kind whatever, you will
+immediately let me know."
+
+They began their journey, however, together, and crossed the Alps side
+by side, muffled in one rug, on the top of the St. Gothard coach.
+Rowland was going to England to pay some promised visits; his companion
+had no plan save to ramble through Switzerland and Germany as fancy
+guided him.  He had money, now, that would outlast the summer;
+when it was spent he would come back to Rome and make another statue.
+At a little mountain village by the way, Roderick declared that he would stop;
+he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade
+of the pine forests.  The coach was changing horses; the two young men
+walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills,
+breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain
+and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland,
+as he prepared to mount, felt an almost overmastering reluctance.
+
+"Say the word," he exclaimed, "and I will stop too."
+
+Roderick frowned.  "Ah, you don't trust me; you don't think I 'm able
+to take care of myself.  That proves that I was right in feeling
+as if I were watched!"
+
+"Watched, my dear fellow!" said Rowland.  "I hope you may never have anything
+worse to complain of than being watched in the spirit in which I watch you.
+But I will spare you even that.  Good-by!" Standing in his place, as the coach
+rolled away, he looked back at his friend lingering by the roadside.
+A great snow-mountain, behind Roderick, was beginning to turn pink
+in the sunset.  The young man waved his hat, still looking grave.
+Rowland settled himself in his place, reflecting after all that this was
+a salubrious beginning of independence.  He was among forests and glaciers,
+leaning on the pure bosom of nature.  And then--and then--was it not in itself
+a guarantee against folly to be engaged to Mary Garland?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  Experience
+
+Rowland passed the summer in England, staying with several
+old friends and two or three new ones.  On his arrival,
+he felt it on his conscience to write to Mrs. Hudson and
+inform her that her son had relieved him of his tutelage.
+He felt that she considered him an incorruptible Mentor,
+following Roderick like a shadow, and he wished to let her know
+the truth.  But he made the truth very comfortable, and gave
+a succinct statement of the young man's brilliant beginnings.
+He owed it to himself, he said, to remind her that he had
+not judged lightly, and that Roderick's present achievements
+were more profitable than his inglorious drudgery at Messrs.
+Striker & Spooner's. He was now taking a well-earned
+holiday and proposing to see a little of the world.
+He would work none the worse for this; every artist
+needed to knock about and look at things for himself.
+They had parted company for a couple of months, for Roderick was
+now a great man and beyond the need of going about with a keeper.
+But they were to meet again in Rome in the autumn,
+and then he should be able to send her more good news.
+Meanwhile, he was very happy in what Roderick had already done--
+especially happy in the happiness it must have brought to her.
+He ventured to ask to be kindly commended to Miss Garland.
+
+His letter was promptly answered--to his surprise in Miss Garland's
+own hand.  The same mail brought also an epistle from Cecilia.
+The latter was voluminous, and we must content ourselves with
+giving an extract.
+
+"Your letter was filled with an echo of that brilliant
+Roman world, which made me almost ill with envy.  For a week
+after I got it I thought Northampton really unpardonably tame.
+But I am drifting back again to my old deeps of resignation,
+and I rush to the window, when any one passes, with all my old
+gratitude for small favors.  So Roderick Hudson is already
+a great man, and you turn out to be a great prophet?
+My compliments to both of you; I never heard of anything
+working so smoothly.  And he takes it all very quietly,
+and does n't lose his balance nor let it turn his head?
+You judged him, then, in a day better than I had done in six months,
+for I really did not expect that he would settle down into such
+a jog-trot of prosperity.  I believed he would do fine things,
+but I was sure he would intersperse them with a good
+many follies, and that his beautiful statues would spring up
+out of the midst of a straggling plantation of wild oats.
+But from what you tell me,
+Mr. Striker may now go hang himself..... There is one thing, 
+however, to say as a friend, in the way of warning.
+That candid soul can keep a secret, and he may have private
+designs on your equanimity which you don't begin to suspect.
+What do you think of his being engaged to Miss Garland?
+The two ladies had given no hint of it all winter, but a fortnight ago,
+when those big photographs of his statues arrived, they first
+pinned them up on the wall, and then trotted out into the town,
+made a dozen calls, and announced the news.  Mrs. Hudson did,
+at least; Miss Garland, I suppose, sat at home writing letters.
+To me, I confess, the thing was a perfect surprise.
+I had not a suspicion that all the while he was coming so regularly
+to make himself agreeable on my veranda, he was quietly preferring
+his cousin to any one else.  Not, indeed, that he was ever at
+particular pains to make himself agreeable!  I suppose he has
+picked up a few graces in Rome.  But he must not acquire too many:
+if he is too polite when he comes back, Miss Garland will count
+him as one of the lost.  She will be a very good wife for a man
+of genius, and such a one as they are often shrewd enough to take.
+She 'll darn his stockings and keep his accounts, and sit at home
+and trim the lamp and keep up the fire while he studies the Beautiful
+in pretty neighbors at dinner-parties. The two ladies are evidently
+very happy, and, to do them justice, very humbly grateful to you.
+Mrs. Hudson never speaks of you without tears in her eyes, and I am
+sure she considers you a specially patented agent of Providence.
+Verily, it 's a good thing for a woman to be in love:
+Miss Garland has grown almost pretty.  I met her the other night
+at a tea-party; she had a white rose in her hair, and sang
+a sentimental ballad in a fine contralto voice."
+
+Miss Garland's letter was so much shorter that we may give it entire:--
+
+My dear Sir,--Mrs. Hudson, as I suppose you know, has been
+for some time unable to use her eyes.  She requests me,
+therefore, to answer your favor of the 22d of June.
+She thanks you extremely for writing, and wishes me to say that she
+considers herself in every way under great obligations to you.
+Your account of her son's progress and the high estimation
+in which he is held has made her very happy, and she earnestly
+prays that all may continue well with him.  He sent us,
+a short time ago, several large photographs of his two statues,
+taken from different points of view.  We know little about
+such things, but they seem to us wonderfully beautiful.
+We sent them to Boston to be handsomely framed, and the man,
+on returning them, wrote us that he had exhibited them for a week
+in his store, and that they had attracted great attention.
+The frames are magnificent, and the pictures now hang in a row
+on the parlor wall.  Our only quarrel with them is that they make
+the old papering and the engravings look dreadfully shabby.
+Mr. Striker stood and looked at them the other day full five minutes,
+and said, at last, that if Roderick's head was running on such
+things it was no wonder he could not learn to draw up a deed.
+We lead here so quiet and monotonous a life that I am
+afraid I can tell you nothing that will interest you.
+Mrs. Hudson requests me to say that the little more or less
+that may happen to us is of small account, as we live
+in our thoughts and our thoughts are fixed on her dear son.
+She thanks Heaven he has so good a friend.  Mrs. Hudson says
+that this is too short a letter, but I can say nothing more.
+
+Yours most respectfully,
+
+Mary Garland.
+
+It is a question whether the reader will know why, but this
+letter gave Rowland extraordinary pleasure.  He liked its very
+brevity and meagreness, and there seemed to him an exquisite
+modesty in its saying nothing from the young girl herself.
+He delighted in the formal address and conclusion;
+they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular gesture
+in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting.
+The letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined
+with an almost rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had
+personally given him.  And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid
+reflection of a life concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed
+warrant from her companion to say, in a single devoted idea.
+The monotonous days of the two women seemed to Rowland's fancy
+to follow each other like the tick-tick of a great time-piece,
+marking off the hours which separated them from the supreme
+felicity of clasping the far-away son and lover to lips sealed
+with the excess of joy.  He hoped that Roderick, now that
+he had shaken off the oppression of his own importunate faith,
+was not losing a tolerant temper for the silent prayers
+of the two women at Northampton.
+
+He was left to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick's actual
+moods and occupations.  He knew he was no letter-writer, and that,
+in the young sculptor's own phrase, he had at any time rather
+build a monument than write a note.  But when a month had passed
+without news of him, he began to be half anxious and half angry,
+and wrote him three lines, in the care of a Continental banker,
+begging him at least to give some sign of whether he was alive or dead.
+A week afterwards came an answer--brief, and dated Baden-Baden. "I
+know I have been a great brute," Roderick wrote, "not to have sent
+you a word before; but really I don't know what has got into me.
+I have lately learned terribly well how to be idle.  I am afraid
+to think how long it is since I wrote to my mother or to Mary.
+Heaven help them--poor, patient, trustful creatures!
+I don't know how to tell you what I am doing.  It seems all amusing
+enough while I do it, but it would make a poor show in a narrative
+intended for your formidable eyes.  I found Baxter in Switzerland,
+or rather he found me, and he grabbed me by the arm and brought me here.
+I was walking twenty miles a day in the Alps, drinking milk
+in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep, and thinking it
+was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never do,
+that the Alps were 'd----d rot,' that Baden-Baden was the place,
+and that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him.
+It is a wonderful place, certainly, though, thank the Lord,
+Baxter departed last week, blaspheming horribly at trente et quarante.
+But you know all about it and what one does--what one is liable to do.
+I have succumbed, in a measure, to the liabilities, and I wish
+I had some one here to give me a thundering good blowing up.
+Not you, dear friend; you would draw it too mild; you have too
+much of the milk of human kindness.  I have fits of horrible
+homesickness for my studio, and I shall be devoutly grateful
+when the summer is over and I can go back and swing a chisel.
+I feel as if nothing but the chisel would satisfy me;
+as if I could rush in a rage at a block of unshaped marble.
+There are a lot of the Roman people here, English and American;
+I live in the midst of them and talk nonsense from morning till night.
+There is also some one else; and to her I don't talk sense, nor,
+thank heaven, mean what I say.  I confess, I need a month's work
+to recover my self-respect."
+
+These lines brought Rowland no small perturbation;
+the more, that what they seemed to point to surprised him.
+During the nine months of their companionship Roderick had shown
+so little taste for dissipation that Rowland had come to think
+of it as a canceled danger, and it greatly perplexed him to learn
+that his friend had apparently proved so pliant to opportunity.
+But Roderick's allusions were ambiguous, and it was possible they
+might simply mean that he was out of patience with a frivolous
+way of life and fretting wholesomely over his absent work.
+It was a very good thing, certainly, that idleness should prove,
+on experiment, to sit heavily on his conscience.  Nevertheless, the letter
+needed, to Rowland's mind, a key:  the key arrived a week later.
+"In common charity," Roderick wrote, "lend me a hundred pounds!
+I have gambled away my last franc--I have made a mountain of debts.
+Send me the money first; lecture me afterwards!"  Rowland sent
+the money by return of mail; then he proceeded, not to lecture,
+but to think.  He hung his head; he was acutely disappointed.
+He had no right to be, he assured himself; but so it was.
+Roderick was young, impulsive, unpracticed in stoicism; it was a
+hundred to one that he was to pay the usual vulgar tribute to folly.
+But his friend had regarded it as securely gained to his own
+belief in virtue that he was not as other foolish youths are,
+and that he would have been capable of looking at folly in the face
+and passing on his way.  Rowland for a while felt a sore sense of wrath.
+What right had a man who was engaged to that fine girl in Northampton
+to behave as if his consciousness were a common blank, to be overlaid
+with coarse sensations?  Yes, distinctly, he was disappointed.
+He had accompanied his missive with an urgent recommendation to leave
+Baden-Baden immediately, and an offer to meet Roderick at any point
+he would name.  The answer came promptly; it ran as follows:
+"Send me another fifty pounds!  I have been back to the tables.
+I will leave as soon as the money comes, and meet you at Geneva.
+There I will tell you everything."
+
+There is an ancient terrace at Geneva, planted with trees and studded
+with benches, overlooked by gravely aristocratic old dwellings
+and overlooking the distant Alps.  A great many generations have made
+it a lounging-place, a great many friends and lovers strolled there,
+a great many confidential talks and momentous interviews gone forward.
+Here, one morning, sitting on one of the battered green benches,
+Roderick, as he had promised, told his friend everything.
+He had arrived late the night before; he looked tired, and yet flushed
+and excited.  He made no professions of penitence, but he practiced
+an unmitigated frankness, and his self-reprobation might be taken
+for granted.  He implied in every phrase that he had done with it all,
+and that he was counting the hours till he could get back to work.
+We shall not rehearse his confession in detail; its main outline
+will be sufficient.  He had fallen in with some very idle people,
+and had discovered that a little example and a little practice were capable
+of producing on his own part a considerable relish for their diversions.
+What could he do?  He never read, and he had no studio; in one way
+or another he had to pass the time.  He passed it in dangling about
+several very pretty women in wonderful Paris toilets, and reflected
+that it was always something gained for a sculptor to sit under a tree,
+looking at his leisure into a charming face and saying things that made
+it smile and play its muscles and part its lips and show its teeth.
+Attached to these ladies were certain gentlemen who walked about in clouds
+of perfume, rose at midday, and supped at midnight.  Roderick had
+found himself in the mood for thinking them very amusing fellows.
+He was surprised at his own taste, but he let it take its course.
+It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who expect you
+to present them with expensive bouquets, to ride with them in the Black
+Forest on well-looking horses, to come into their opera-boxes on nights
+when Patti sang and prices were consequent, to propose little light
+suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or drives by moonlight
+to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed, trinketed and gloved,--
+that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a privilege,
+was a privilege with a penalty attached.  But the tables made such
+things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables.  Roderick tried
+them and found that at first they smoothed his path delightfully.
+This simplification of matters, however, was only momentary,
+for he soon perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it
+in fact, exposed a good-looking young man to peculiar liabilities.
+At this point of his friend's narrative, Rowland was reminded of
+Madame de Cruchecassee in The Newcomes, and though he had listened
+in tranquil silence to the rest of it, he found it hard not to say
+that all this had been, under the circumstances, a very bad business.
+Roderick admitted it with bitterness, and then told how much--
+measured simply financially--it had cost him.  His luck had changed;
+the tables had ceased to back him, and he had found himself up
+to his knees in debt.  Every penny had gone of the solid sum which
+had seemed a large equivalent of those shining statues in Rome.
+He had been an ass, but it was not irreparable; he could make another
+statue in a couple of months.
+
+Rowland frowned.  "For heaven's sake," he said, "don't play such
+dangerous games with your facility.  If you have got facility,
+revere it, respect it, adore it, treasure it--don't speculate on it."
+And he wondered what his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done
+if there had been no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand.
+But he did not formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency
+seemed not to have presented itself to Roderick's imagination.
+The young sculptor reverted to his late adventures again in the evening,
+and this time talked of them more objectively, as the phrase is;
+more as if they had been the adventures of another person.
+He related half a dozen droll things that had happened to him,
+and, as if his responsibility had been disengaged by all this
+free discussion, he laughed extravagantly at the memory of them.
+Rowland sat perfectly grave, on principle.  Then Roderick began
+to talk of half a dozen statues that he had in his head, and set forth
+his design, with his usual vividness.  Suddenly, as it was relevant,
+he declared that his Baden doings had not been altogether fruitless,
+for that the lady who had reminded Rowland of Madame de Cruchecassee
+was tremendously statuesque.  Rowland at last said that it
+all might pass if he felt that he was really the wiser for it.
+"By the wiser," he added, "I mean the stronger in purpose, in will."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about will!"  Roderick answered, throwing back his head
+and looking at the stars.  This conversation also took place in the open air,
+on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has
+a monument.  "The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries.
+Who can answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it 's strong?
+There are all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between
+one's will and one's inclinations.  People talk as if the two things
+were essentially distinct; on different sides of one's organism,
+like the heart and the liver.  Mine, I know, are much nearer together.
+It all depends upon circumstances.  I believe there is a certain group
+of circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined
+to snap like a dry twig."
+
+"My dear boy," said Rowland, "don't talk about the will being 'destined.'
+The will is destiny itself.  That 's the way to look at it."
+
+"Look at it, my dear Rowland," Roderick answered, "as you
+find most comfortable.  One conviction I have gathered from
+my summer's experience," he went on--"it 's as well to look
+it frankly in the face--is that I possess an almost unlimited
+susceptibility to the influence of a beautiful woman."
+
+Rowland stared, then strolled away, softly whistling to himself.
+He was unwilling to admit even to himself that this speech
+had really the sinister meaning it seemed to have.
+In a few days the two young men made their way back to Italy,
+and lingered a while in Florence before going on to Rome.
+In Florence Roderick seemed to have won back his old innocence
+and his preference for the pleasures of study over any others.
+Rowland began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream,
+or at the worst as a mere sporadic piece of disorder,
+without roots in his companion's character.
+They passed a fortnight looking at pictures and exploring
+for out the way bits of fresco and carving, and Roderick
+recovered all his earlier fervor of appreciation and comment.
+In Rome he went eagerly to work again, and finished in a month
+two or three small things he had left standing on his departure.
+He talked the most joyous nonsense about finding himself back
+in his old quarters.  On the first Sunday afternoon following
+their return, on their going together to Saint Peter's, he delivered
+himself of a lyrical greeting to the great church and to the city
+in general, in a tone of voice so irrepressibly elevated
+that it rang through the nave in rather a scandalous fashion,
+and almost arrested a procession of canons who were marching
+across to the choir.  He began to model a new statue--
+a female figure, of which he had said nothing to Rowland.
+It represented a woman, leaning lazily back in her chair,
+with her head drooping as if she were listening, a vague smile
+on her lips, and a pair of remarkably beautiful arms folded
+in her lap.  With rather less softness of contour, it would
+have resembled the noble statue of Agrippina in the Capitol.
+Rowland looked at it and was not sure he liked it.
+"Who is it? what does it mean?" he asked.
+
+"Anything you please!" said Roderick, with a certain petulance.
+"I call it A Reminiscence."
+
+Rowland then remembered that one of the Baden ladies had been
+"statuesque," and asked no more questions.  This, after all,
+was a way of profiting by experience.  A few days later he took
+his first ride of the season on the Campagna, and as, on his
+homeward way, he was passing across the long shadow of a ruined tower,
+he perceived a small figure at a short distance, bent over a
+sketch-book. As he drew near, he recognized his friend Singleton.
+The honest little painter's face was scorched to flame-color
+by the light of southern suns, and borrowed an even deeper crimson
+from his gleeful greeting of his most appreciative patron.
+He was making a careful and charming little sketch.
+On Rowland's asking him how he had spent his summer, he gave
+an account of his wanderings which made poor Mallet sigh with a
+sense of more contrasts than one.  He had not been out of Italy,
+but he had been delving deep into the picturesque heart of
+the lovely land, and gathering a wonderful store of subjects.
+He had rambled about among the unvisited villages of the Apennines,
+pencil in hand and knapsack on back, sleeping on straw and eating black
+bread and beans, but feasting on local color, rioting, as it were,
+on chiaroscuro, and laying up a treasure of pictorial observations.
+He took a devout satisfaction in his hard-earned wisdom and his
+happy frugality.  Rowland went the next day, by appointment,
+to look at his sketches, and spent a whole morning turning them over.
+Singleton talked more than he had ever done before, explained them all,
+and told some quaintly humorous anecdote about the production of each.
+
+"Dear me, how I have chattered!" he said at last.  "I am afraid
+you had rather have looked at the things in peace and quiet.
+I did n't know I could talk so much.  But somehow, I feel very happy;
+I feel as if I had improved."
+
+"That you have," said Rowland.  "I doubt whether an artist
+ever passed a more profitable three months.  You must feel
+much more sure of yourself."
+
+Singleton looked for a long time with great intentness at a knot in
+the floor.  "Yes," he said at last, in a fluttered tone, "I feel much
+more sure of myself.  I have got more facility!"  And he lowered his voice
+as if he were communicating a secret which it took some courage to impart.
+"I hardly like to say it, for fear I should after all be mistaken.
+But since it strikes you, perhaps it 's true.  It 's a great happiness;
+I would not exchange it for a great deal of money."
+
+"Yes, I suppose it 's a great happiness," said Rowland.
+"I shall really think of you as living here in a state of
+scandalous bliss.  I don't believe it 's good for an artist
+to be in such brutally high spirits."
+
+Singleton stared for a moment, as if he thought Rowland was in earnest;
+then suddenly fathoming the kindly jest, he walked about the room,
+scratching his head and laughing intensely to himself.  "And Mr. Hudson?"
+he said, as Rowland was going; "I hope he is well and happy."
+
+"He is very well," said Rowland.  "He is back at work again."
+
+"Ah, there 's a man," cried Singleton, "who has taken his start once for all,
+and does n't need to stop and ask himself in fear and trembling every month
+or two whether he is advancing or not.  When he stops, it 's to rest!
+And where did he spend his summer?"
+
+"The greater part of it at Baden-Baden."
+
+"Ah, that 's in the Black Forest," cried Singleton, with profound simplicity.
+"They say you can make capital studies of trees there."
+
+"No doubt," said Rowland, with a smile, laying an almost
+paternal hand on the little painter's yellow head.
+"Unfortunately trees are not Roderick's line.  Nevertheless, he tells
+me that at Baden he made some studies.  Come when you can,
+by the way," he added after a moment, "to his studio,
+and tell me what you think of something he has lately begun."
+Singleton declared that he would come delightedly, and Rowland
+left him to his work.
+
+He met a number of his last winter's friends again, and called upon
+Madame Grandoni, upon Miss Blanchard, and upon Gloriani, shortly after
+their return.  The ladies gave an excellent account of themselves.
+Madame Grandoni had been taking sea-baths at Rimini, and Miss Blanchard
+painting wild flowers in the Tyrol.  Her complexion was somewhat browned,
+which was very becoming, and her flowers were uncommonly pretty.
+Gloriani had been in Paris and had come away in high good-humor,
+finding no one there, in the artist-world, cleverer than himself.
+He came in a few days to Roderick's studio, one afternoon when Rowland
+was present.  He examined the new statue with great deference, said it was
+very promising, and abstained, considerately, from irritating prophecies.
+But Rowland fancied he observed certain signs of inward jubilation
+on the clever sculptor's part, and walked away with him to learn
+his private opinion.
+
+"Certainly; I liked it as well as I said," Gloriani declared in answer
+to Rowland's anxious query; "or rather I liked it a great deal better.
+I did n't say how much, for fear of making your friend angry.
+But one can leave him alone now, for he 's coming round.  I told you he could
+n't keep up the transcendental style, and he has already broken down.
+Don't you see it yourself, man?"
+
+"I don't particularly like this new statue," said Rowland.
+
+"That 's because you 're a purist.  It 's deuced clever, it 's deuced knowing,
+it 's deuced pretty, but it is n't the topping high art of three months ago.
+He has taken his turn sooner than I supposed.  What has happened to him?
+Has he been disappointed in love?  But that 's none of my business.
+I congratulate him on having become a practical man."
+
+Roderick, however, was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken
+it into his head to believe.  He was discontented with his work,
+he applied himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did
+n't know what was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods.
+"Is this of necessity what a fellow must come to"--he asked of Rowland,
+with a sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which seemed to imply
+that his companion had undertaken to insure him against perplexities
+and was not fulfilling his contract--"this damnable uncertainty
+when he goes to bed at night as to whether he is going to wake up
+in a working humor or in a swearing humor?  Have we only a season,
+over before we know it, in which we can call our faculties our own?
+Six months ago I could stand up to my work like a man, day after day,
+and never dream of asking myself whether I felt like it.
+But now, some mornings, it 's the very devil to get going.
+My statue looks so bad when I come into the studio that I have twenty
+minds to smash it on the spot, and I lose three or four hours
+in sitting there, moping and getting used to it."
+
+Rowland said that he supposed that this sort of thing was the lot of
+every artist and that the only remedy was plenty of courage and faith.
+And he reminded him of Gloriani's having forewarned him against these
+sterile moods the year before.
+
+"Gloriani 's an ass!" said Roderick, almost fiercely.
+He hired a horse and began to ride with Rowland on the Campagna.
+This delicious amusement restored him in a measure to cheerfulness,
+but seemed to Rowland on the whole not to stimulate his industry.
+Their rides were always very long, and Roderick insisted on making
+them longer by dismounting in picturesque spots and stretching
+himself in the sun among a heap of overtangled stones.
+He let the scorching Roman luminary beat down upon him
+with an equanimity which Rowland found it hard to emulate.
+But in this situation Roderick talked so much amusing nonsense that,
+for the sake of his company, Rowland consented to be uncomfortable,
+and often forgot that, though in these diversions the days
+passed quickly, they brought forth neither high art nor low.
+And yet it was perhaps by their help, after all, that Roderick
+secured several mornings of ardent work on his new figure,
+and brought it to rapid completion.  One afternoon, when it
+was finished, Rowland went to look at it, and Roderick asked
+him for his opinion.
+
+"What do you think yourself?"  Rowland demanded, not from pusillanimity,
+but from real uncertainty.
+
+"I think it is curiously bad," Roderick answered.
+"It was bad from the first; it has fundamental vices.
+I have shuffled them in a measure out of sight, but I have not
+corrected them.  I can't--I can't--I can't!" he cried passionately.
+"They stare me in the face--they are all I see!"
+
+Rowland offered several criticisms of detail, and suggested certain
+practicable changes.  But Roderick differed with him on each of these points;
+the thing had faults enough, but they were not those faults.
+Rowland, unruffled, concluded by saying that whatever its faults might be,
+he had an idea people in general would like it.
+
+"I wish to heaven some person in particular would buy it,
+and take it off my hands and out of my sight!"  Roderick cried.
+"What am I to do now?" he went on.  "I have n't an idea.
+I think of subjects, but they remain mere lifeless names.
+They are mere words--they are not images.  What am I to do?"
+
+Rowland was a trifle annoyed.  "Be a man," he was on the point of saying,
+"and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice."
+But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the studio a loud,
+peremptory ring at the outer door.
+
+Roderick broke into a laugh.  "Talk of the devil,"
+he said, "and you see his horns!  If that 's not a customer,
+it ought to be."
+
+The door of the studio was promptly flung open, and a lady
+advanced to the threshold--an imposing, voluminous person,
+who quite filled up the doorway.  Rowland immediately felt
+that he had seen her before, but he recognized her only when she
+moved forward and disclosed an attendant in the person of a little
+bright-eyed, elderly gentleman, with a bristling white moustache.
+Then he remembered that just a year before he and his companion
+had seen in the Ludovisi gardens a wonderfully beautiful girl,
+strolling in the train of this conspicuous couple.
+He looked for her now, and in a moment she appeared, following her
+companions with the same nonchalant step as before, and leading
+her great snow-white poodle, decorated with motley ribbons.
+The elder lady offered the two young men a sufficiently gracious salute;
+the little old gentleman bowed and smiled with extreme alertness.
+The young girl, without casting a glance either at Roderick
+or at Rowland, looked about for a chair, and, on perceiving one,
+sank into it listlessly, pulled her poodle towards her,
+and began to rearrange his top-knot. Rowland saw that,
+even with her eyes dropped, her beauty was still dazzling.
+
+"I trust we are at liberty to enter," said the elder lady, with majesty.
+"We were told that Mr. Hudson had no fixed day, and that we might come
+at any time.  Let us not disturb you."
+
+Roderick, as one of the lesser lights of the Roman art-world, had
+not hitherto been subject to incursions from inquisitive tourists,
+and, having no regular reception day, was not versed in the usual
+formulas of welcome.  He said nothing, and Rowland, looking at him,
+saw that he was looking amazedly at the young girl and was apparently
+unconscious of everything else.  "By Jove!" he cried precipitately,
+"it 's that goddess of the Villa Ludovisi!"  Rowland in some confusion,
+did the honors as he could, but the little old gentleman begged him
+with the most obsequious of smiles to give himself no trouble.
+"I have been in many a studio!" he said, with his finger on his nose
+and a strong Italian accent.
+
+"We are going about everywhere," said his companion.
+"I am passionately fond of art!"
+
+Rowland smiled sympathetically, and let them turn to Roderick's statue.
+He glanced again at the young sculptor, to invite him to bestir himself,
+but Roderick was still gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful young
+mistress of the poodle, who by this time had looked up and was
+gazing straight at him.  There was nothing bold in her look;
+it expressed a kind of languid, imperturbable indifference.
+Her beauty was extraordinary; it grew and grew as the young
+man observed her.  In such a face the maidenly custom of
+averted eyes and ready blushes would have seemed an anomaly;
+nature had produced it for man's delight and meant that it
+should surrender itself freely and coldly to admiration.
+It was not immediately apparent, however, that the young lady
+found an answering entertainment in the physiognomy of her host;
+she turned her head after a moment and looked idly round the room,
+and at last let her eyes rest on the statue of the woman seated.
+It being left to Rowland to stimulate conversation, he began
+by complimenting her on the beauty of her dog.
+
+"Yes, he 's very handsome," she murmured.  "He 's a Florentine.
+The dogs in Florence are handsomer than the people."
+And on Rowland's caressing him:  "His name is Stenterello,"
+she added.  "Stenterello, give your hand to the gentleman."
+This order was given in Italian.  "Say buon giorno a lei."
+
+Stenterello thrust out his paw and gave four short, shrill barks;
+upon which the elder lady turned round and raised her forefinger.
+
+"My dear, my dear, remember where you are!  Excuse my foolish child,"
+she added, turning to Roderick with an agreeable smile.
+"She can think of nothing but her poodle."
+
+"I am teaching him to talk for me," the young girl went on,
+without heeding her mother; "to say little things in society.
+It will save me a great deal of trouble.  Stenterello, love,
+give a pretty smile and say tanti complimenti!"
+The poodle wagged his white pate--it looked like one of those
+little pads in swan's-down, for applying powder to the face--
+and repeated the barking process.
+
+"He is a wonderful beast," said Rowland.
+
+"He is not a beast," said the young girl.  "A beast is something
+black and dirty--something you can't touch."
+
+"He is a very valuable dog," the elder lady explained.
+"He was presented to my daughter by a Florentine nobleman."
+
+"It is not for that I care about him.  It is for himself.
+He is better than the prince."
+
+"My dear, my dear!" repeated the mother in deprecating accents,
+but with a significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak
+his attention to the glory of possessing a daughter who could
+deal in that fashion with the aristocracy.
+
+Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed
+before them, a year previous, in the Villa Ludovisi, Roderick and he had
+exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality.
+Roderick had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland
+now needed no telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a
+fellow-countrywoman. She was a person of what is called a great deal
+of presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there,
+of once brilliant beauty.  Her daughter had come lawfully by her loveliness,
+but Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was silly
+and that the daughter was not.  The mother had a very silly mouth--
+a mouth, Rowland suspected, capable of expressing an inordinate
+degree of unreason.  The young girl, in spite of her childish
+satisfaction in her poodle, was not a person of feeble understanding.
+Rowland received an impression that, for reasons of her own,
+she was playing a part.  What was the part and what were her reasons?
+She was interesting; Rowland wondered what were her domestic secrets.
+If her mother was a daughter of the great Republic, it was to be
+supposed that the young girl was a flower of the American soil;
+but her beauty had a robustness and tone uncommon in the somewhat
+facile loveliness of our western maidenhood.  She spoke with a vague
+foreign accent, as if she had spent her life in strange countries.
+The little Italian apparently divined Rowland's mute imaginings,
+for he presently stepped forward, with a bow like a master of ceremonies.
+"I have not done my duty," he said, "in not announcing these ladies.
+Mrs. Light, Miss Light!"
+
+Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick
+was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality.
+He altered the light, pulled forward two or three figures,
+and made an apology for not having more to show.  "I don't pretend
+to have anything of an exhibition--I am only a novice."
+
+"Indeed?--a novice!  For a novice this is very well," Mrs. Light declared.
+"Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this."
+
+The Cavaliere smiled rapturously.  "It is stupendous!" he murmured.
+"And we have been to all the studios."
+
+"Not to all--heaven forbid!" cried Mrs. Light.  "But to a number that I
+have had pointed out by artistic friends.  I delight in studios:
+they are the temples of the beautiful here below.  And if you are
+a novice, Mr. Hudson," she went on, "you have already great admirers.
+Half a dozen people have told us that yours were among the things to see."
+This gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across
+to the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light.
+"Ah, he 's gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first
+that has had his head turned," Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her
+voice to a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the
+shortness of their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate.
+"The artists are all crazy about her.  When she goes into a studio
+she is fatal to the pictures.  And when she goes into a ball-room
+what do the other women say?  Eh, Cavaliere?"
+
+"She is very beautiful," Rowland said, gravely.
+
+Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little
+at everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random
+murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot.
+She looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned
+to her as a feature of Roderick's establishment.  It was the gaze,
+Rowland felt, which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful
+daughter has always at her command for well-dressed young men of
+candid physiognomy.  Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory.
+"Are you also an artist?" she inquired with an almost caressing inflection.
+It was clear that what she meant was something of this kind:
+"Be so good as to assure me without delay that you are really the young
+man of substance and amiability that you appear."
+
+But Rowland answered simply the formal question--not the latent one.
+"Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson."
+
+Mrs. Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking
+the Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that she
+could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble.
+Rowland hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of
+Roderick's renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several
+of his friend's works and that she was welcome to come and see them
+at his rooms.  She bade the Cavaliere make a note of his address.
+"Ah, you 're a patron of the arts," she said.  "That 's what I should
+like to be if I had a little money.  I delight in beauty in every form.
+But all these people ask such monstrous prices.  One must be a millionaire,
+to think of such things, eh?  Twenty years ago my husband had my portrait
+painted, here in Rome, by Papucci, who was the great man in those days.
+I was in a ball dress, with all my jewels, my neck and arms, and all that.
+The man got six hundred francs, and thought he was very well treated.
+Those were the days when a family could live like princes in Italy for five
+thousand scudi a year.  The Cavaliere once upon a time was a great dandy--
+don't blush, Cavaliere; any one can see that, just as any one can see that I
+was once a pretty woman!  Get him to tell you what he made a figure upon.
+The railroads have brought in the vulgarians.  That 's what I call it now--
+the invasion of the vulgarians!  What are poor we to do?"
+
+Rowland had begun to murmur some remedial proposition,
+when he was interrupted by the voice of Miss Light calling
+across the room, "Mamma!"
+
+"My own love?"
+
+"This gentleman wishes to model my bust.  Please speak to him."
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little chuckle.  "Already?" he cried.
+
+Rowland looked round, equally surprised at the promptitude of the proposal.
+Roderick stood planted before the young girl with his arms folded,
+looking at her as he would have done at the Medicean Venus.
+He never paid compliments, and Rowland, though he had not heard him speak,
+could imagine the startling distinctness with which he made his request.
+
+"He saw me a year ago," the young girl went on, "and he has
+been thinking of me ever since."  Her tone, in speaking,
+was peculiar; it had a kind of studied inexpressiveness,
+which was yet not the vulgar device of a drawl.
+
+"I must make your daughter's bust--that 's all, madame!"
+cried Roderick, with warmth.
+
+"I had rather you made the poodle's," said the young girl.
+"Is it very tiresome?  I have spent half my life sitting for my photograph,
+in every conceivable attitude and with every conceivable coiffure.
+I think I have posed enough."
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Light, "it may be one's duty to pose.
+But as to my daughter's sitting to you, sir--to a young sculptor
+whom we don't know--it is a matter that needs reflection.
+It is not a favor that 's to be had for the mere asking."
+
+"If I don't make her from life," said Roderick, with energy,
+"I will make her from memory, and if the thing 's to be done,
+you had better have it done as well as possible."
+
+"Mamma hesitates," said Miss Light, "because she does n't
+know whether you mean she shall pay you for the bust.
+I can assure you that she will not pay you a sou."
+
+"My darling, you forget yourself," said Mrs. Light, with an attempt
+at majestic severity.  "Of course," she added, in a moment,
+with a change of note, "the bust would be my own property."
+
+"Of course!" cried Roderick, impatiently.
+
+"Dearest mother," interposed the young girl, "how can
+you carry a marble bust about the world with you?
+Is it not enough to drag the poor original?"
+
+"My dear, you 're nonsensical!" cried Mrs. Light, almost angrily.
+
+"You can always sell it," said the young girl, with the
+same artful artlessness.
+
+Mrs. Light turned to Rowland, who pitied her, flushed and irritated.
+"She is very wicked to-day!"
+
+The Cavaliere grinned in silence and walked away on tiptoe,
+with his hat to his lips, as if to leave the field clear for action.
+Rowland, on the contrary, wished to avert the coming storm.
+"You had better not refuse," he said to Miss Light,
+"until you have seen Mr. Hudson's things in the marble.
+Your mother is to come and look at some that I possess."
+
+"Thank you; I have no doubt you will see us.  I dare say
+Mr. Hudson is very clever; but I don't care for modern sculpture.
+I can't look at it!"
+
+"You shall care for my bust, I promise you!" cried Roderick,
+with a laugh.
+
+"To satisfy Miss Light," said the Cavaliere, "one of the old
+Greeks ought to come to life."
+
+"It would be worth his while," said Roderick, paying, to Rowland's knowledge,
+his first compliment.
+
+"I might sit to Phidias, if he would promise to be very amusing and make
+me laugh.  What do you say, Stenterello? would you sit to Phidias?"
+
+"We must talk of this some other time," said Mrs. Light.  "We are
+in Rome for the winter.  Many thanks.  Cavaliere, call the carriage."
+The Cavaliere led the way out, backing like a silver-stick, and
+Miss Light, following her mother, nodded, without looking at them,
+to each of the young men.
+
+"Immortal powers, what a head!" cried Roderick, when they had gone.
+"There 's my fortune!"
+
+"She is certainly very beautiful," said Rowland.
+"But I 'm sorry you have undertaken her bust."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"I suspect it will bring trouble with it."
+
+"What kind of trouble?"
+
+"I hardly know.  They are queer people.  The mamma, I suspect, is the least
+bit of an adventuress.  Heaven knows what the daughter is."
+
+"She 's a goddess!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Just so.  She is all the more dangerous."
+
+"Dangerous?  What will she do to me?  She does n't bite, I imagine."
+
+"It remains to be seen.  There are two kinds of women--
+you ought to know it by this time--the safe and the unsafe.
+Miss Light, if I am not mistaken, is one of the unsafe.
+A word to the wise!"
+
+"Much obliged!" said Roderick, and he began to whistle a triumphant air,
+in honor, apparently, of the advent of his beautiful model.
+
+In calling this young lady and her mamma "queer people,"
+Rowland but roughly expressed his sentiment.  They were so marked
+a variation from the monotonous troop of his fellow-country people
+that he felt much curiosity as to the sources of the change,
+especially since he doubted greatly whether, on the whole,
+it elevated the type.  For a week he saw the two ladies driving
+daily in a well-appointed landau, with the Cavaliere and the poodle
+in the front seat.  From Mrs. Light he received a gracious salute,
+tempered by her native majesty; but the young girl, looking straight
+before her, seemed profoundly indifferent to observers.
+Her extraordinary beauty, however, had already made observers
+numerous and given the habitues of the Pincian plenty to talk about.
+The echoes of their commentary reached Rowland's ears; but he had little
+taste for random gossip, and desired a distinctly veracious informant.
+He had found one in the person of Madame Grandoni, for whom
+Mrs. Light and her beautiful daughter were a pair of old friends.
+
+"I have known the mamma for twenty years," said this judicious critic,
+"and if you ask any of the people who have been living
+here as long as I, you will find they remember her well.
+I have held the beautiful Christina on my knee when she was a
+little wizened baby with a very red face and no promise of beauty
+but those magnificent eyes.  Ten years ago Mrs. Light disappeared,
+and has not since been seen in Rome, except for a few days
+last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples.
+Then it was you met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens.
+When I first knew her she was the unmarried but very marriageable
+daughter of an old American painter of very bad landscapes,
+which people used to buy from charity and use for fire-boards.
+His name was Savage; it used to make every one laugh,
+he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman.
+He had married a horrible wife, an Englishwoman who had been
+on the stage.  It was said she used to beat poor Savage
+with his mahl-stick and when the domestic finances were low
+to lock him up in his studio and tell him he should n't
+come out until he had painted half a dozen of his daubs.
+She had a good deal of showy beauty.  She would then go forth, and,
+her beauty helping, she would make certain people take the pictures.
+It helped her at last to make an English lord run away with her.
+At the time I speak of she had quite disappeared.
+Mrs. Light was then a very handsome girl, though by no means
+so handsome as her daughter has now become.  Mr. Light was an
+American consul, newly appointed at one of the Adriatic ports.
+He was a mild, fair-whiskered young man, with some little property,
+and my impression is that he had got into bad company at home,
+and that his family procured him his place to keep him
+out of harm's way.  He came up to Rome on a holiday,
+fell in love with Miss Savage, and married her on the spot.
+He had not been married three years when he was drowned
+in the Adriatic, no one ever knew how.  The young widow came
+back to Rome, to her father, and here shortly afterwards,
+in the shadow of Saint Peter's, her little girl was born.
+It might have been supposed that Mrs. Light would marry again,
+and I know she had opportunities.  But she overreached herself.
+She would take nothing less than a title and a fortune,
+and they were not forthcoming.  She was admired and very
+fond of admiration; very vain, very worldly, very silly.
+She remained a pretty widow, with a surprising variety
+of bonnets and a dozen men always in her train.
+Giacosa dates from this period.  He calls himself a Roman,
+but I have an impression he came up from Ancona with her.
+He was l'ami de la maison.  He used to hold her bouquets,
+clean her gloves (I was told), run her errands, get her
+opera-boxes, and fight her battles with the shopkeepers.
+For this he needed courage, for she was smothered in debt.
+She at last left Rome to escape her creditors.  Many of them must
+remember her still, but she seems now to have money to satisfy them.
+She left her poor old father here alone--helpless, infirm and
+unable to work.  A subscription was shortly afterwards taken
+up among the foreigners, and he was sent back to America,
+where, as I afterwards heard, he died in some sort of asylum.
+From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely of Mrs. Light
+as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places.
+Once came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage
+in England; then we heard that the gentleman had thought
+better of it and left her to keep afloat as she could.
+She was a terribly scatter-brained creature.  She pretends
+to be a great lady, but I consider that old Filomena,
+my washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one.
+But certainly, after all, she has been fortunate.
+She embarked at last on a lawsuit about some property,
+with her husband's family, and went to America to attend to it.
+She came back triumphant, with a long purse.  She reappeared
+in Italy, and established herself for a while in Venice.
+Then she came to Florence, where she spent a couple of years
+and where I saw her.  Last year she passed down to Naples,
+which I should have said was just the place for her, and this
+winter she has laid siege to Rome.  She seems very prosperous.
+She has taken a floor in the Palazzo F----, she keeps her carriage,
+and Christina and she, between them, must have a pretty
+milliner's bill.  Giacosa has turned up again, looking as if
+he had been kept on ice at Ancona, for her return."
+
+"What sort of education," Rowland asked, "do you imagine the mother's
+adventures to have been for the daughter?"
+
+"A strange school!  But Mrs. Light told me, in Florence, that she
+had given her child the education of a princess.  In other words,
+I suppose, she speaks three or four languages, and has read several
+hundred French novels.  Christina, I suspect, is very clever.
+When I saw her, I was amazed at her beauty, and, certainly, if there
+is any truth in faces, she ought to have the soul of an angel.
+Perhaps she has.  I don't judge her; she 's an extraordinary young person.
+She has been told twenty times a day by her mother, since she was
+five years old, that she is a beauty of beauties, that her face is
+her fortune, and that, if she plays her cards, she may marry a duke.
+If she has not been fatally corrupted, she is a very superior girl.
+My own impression is that she is a mixture of good and bad, of ambition
+and indifference.  Mrs. Light, having failed to make her own fortune
+in matrimony, has transferred her hopes to her daughter, and nursed
+them till they have become a kind of monomania.  She has a hobby,
+which she rides in secret; but some day she will let you see it.
+I 'm sure that if you go in some evening unannounced, you will find
+her scanning the tea-leaves in her cup, or telling her daughter's
+fortune with a greasy pack of cards, preserved for the purpose.
+She promises her a prince--a reigning prince.  But if Mrs. Light
+is silly, she is shrewd, too, and, lest considerations of state
+should deny her prince the luxury of a love-match, she keeps on
+hand a few common mortals.  At the worst she would take a duke,
+an English lord, or even a young American with a proper number
+of millions.  The poor woman must be rather uncomfortable.
+She is always building castles and knocking them down again--
+always casting her nets and pulling them in.  If her daughter were
+less of a beauty, her transparent ambition would be very ridiculous;
+but there is something in the girl, as one looks at her, that seems
+to make it very possible she is marked out for one of those wonderful
+romantic fortunes that history now and then relates.  'Who, after all,
+was the Empress of the French?'  Mrs. Light is forever saying.
+'And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!' "
+
+"And what does Christina say?"
+
+"She makes no scruple, as you know, of saying that her
+mother is a fool.  What she thinks, heaven knows.
+I suspect that, practically, she does not commit herself.
+She is excessively proud, and thinks herself good enough
+to occupy the highest station in the world; but she knows
+that her mother talks nonsense, and that even a beautiful
+girl may look awkward in making unsuccessful advances.
+So she remains superbly indifferent, and lets her mother take
+the risks.  If the prince is secured, so much the better;
+if he is not, she need never confess to herself that even
+a prince has slighted her."
+
+"Your report is as solid," Rowland said to Madame Grandoni,
+thanking her, "as if it had been prepared for the Academy of Sciences;
+" and he congratulated himself on having listened to it when, a couple
+of days later, Mrs. Light and her daughter, attended by the Cavaliere
+and the poodle, came to his rooms to look at Roderick's statues.
+It was more comfortable to know just with whom he was dealing.
+
+Mrs. Light was prodigiously gracious, and showered down compliments not
+only on the statues, but on all his possessions.  "Upon my word," she said,
+"you men know how to make yourselves comfortable.  If one of us poor women
+had half as many easy-chairs and knick-knacks, we should be famously abused.
+It 's really selfish to be living all alone in such a place as this.
+Cavaliere, how should you like this suite of rooms and a fortune to fill them
+with pictures and statues?  Christina, love, look at that mosaic table.
+Mr. Mallet, I could almost beg it from you.  Yes, that Eve is certainly
+very fine.  We need n't be ashamed of such a great-grandmother as that.
+If she was really such a beautiful woman, it accounts for the good looks
+of some of us.  Where is Mr. What 's-his-name, the young sculptor?
+Why is n't he here to be complimented?"
+
+Christina had remained but for a moment in the chair which Rowland
+had placed for her, had given but a cursory glance at the statues,
+and then, leaving her place, had begun to wander round the room--
+looking at herself in the mirror, touching the ornaments and curiosities,
+glancing at the books and prints.  Rowland's sitting-room was
+encumbered with bric-a-brac, and she found plenty of occupation.
+Rowland presently joined her, and pointed out some of the objects
+he most valued.
+
+"It 's an odd jumble," she said frankly.  "Some things are very pretty--
+some are very ugly.  But I like ugly things, when they have a
+certain look.  Prettiness is terribly vulgar nowadays, and it is
+not every one that knows just the sort of ugliness that has chic.
+But chic is getting dreadfully common too.  There 's a hint of it
+even in Madame Baldi's bonnets.  I like looking at people's things,"
+she added in a moment, turning to Rowland and resting her eyes on him.
+"It helps you to find out their characters."
+
+"Am I to suppose," asked Rowland, smiling, "that you have arrived
+at any conclusions as to mine?"
+
+"I am rather muddled; you have too many things; one seems
+to contradict another.  You are very artistic and yet you
+are very prosaic; you have what is called a 'catholic' taste
+and yet you are full of obstinate little prejudices and habits
+of thought, which, if I knew you, I should find very tiresome.
+I don't think I like you."
+
+"You make a great mistake," laughed Rowland; "I assure you I
+am very amiable."
+
+"Yes, I am probably wrong, and if I knew you, I should find out I
+was wrong, and that would irritate me and make me dislike you more.
+So you see we are necessary enemies."
+
+"No, I don't dislike you."
+
+"Worse and worse; for you certainly will not like me."
+
+"You are very discouraging."
+
+"I am fond of facing the truth, though some day you will deny that.
+Where is that queer friend of yours?"
+
+"You mean Mr. Hudson.  He is represented by these beautiful works."
+
+Miss Light looked for some moments at Roderick's statues.
+"Yes," she said, "they are not so silly as most of the things we have seen.
+They have no chic, and yet they are beautiful."
+
+"You describe them perfectly," said Rowland.  "They are beautiful,
+and yet they have no chic.  That 's it!"
+
+"If he will promise to put none into my bust, I have a mind to let him
+make it.  A request made in those terms deserves to be granted."
+
+"In what terms?"
+
+"Did n't you hear him?  'Mademoiselle, you almost satisfy
+my conception of the beautiful.  I must model your bust.'
+That almost should be rewarded.  He is like me; he likes
+to face the truth.  I think we should get on together."
+
+The Cavaliere approached Rowland, to express the pleasure
+he had derived from his beautiful "collection."  His smile was
+exquisitely bland, his accent appealing, caressing, insinuating.
+But he gave Rowland an odd sense of looking at a little waxen image,
+adjusted to perform certain gestures and emit certain sounds.
+It had once contained a soul, but the soul had leaked out.
+Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there are more profitless
+things than mere sound and gesture, in a consummate Italian.
+And the Cavaliere, too, had soul enough left to desire to speak a few
+words on his own account, and call Rowland's attention to the fact
+that he was not, after all, a hired cicerone, but an ancient
+Roman gentleman.  Rowland felt sorry for him; he hardly knew why.
+He assured him in a friendly fashion that he must come again;
+that his house was always at his service.  The Cavaliere bowed
+down to the ground.  "You do me too much honor," he murmured.
+"If you will allow me--it is not impossible!"
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had prepared to depart.  "If you are
+not afraid to come and see two quiet little women, we shall
+be most happy!" she said.  "We have no statues nor pictures--
+we have nothing but each other.  Eh, darling?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Christina.
+
+"Oh, and the Cavaliere," added her mother.
+
+"The poodle, please!" cried the young girl.
+
+Rowland glanced at the Cavaliere; he was smiling more blandly than ever.
+
+A few days later Rowland presented himself, as civility demanded,
+at Mrs. Light's door.  He found her living in one of the stately
+houses of the Via dell' Angelo Custode, and, rather to his surprise,
+was told she was at home.  He passed through half a dozen rooms
+and was ushered into an immense saloon, at one end of which sat
+the mistress of the establishment, with a piece of embroidery.
+She received him very graciously, and then, pointing mysteriously
+to a large screen which was unfolded across the embrasure
+of one of the deep windows, "I am keeping guard!" she said.
+Rowland looked interrogative; whereupon she beckoned him forward
+and motioned him to look behind the screen.  He obeyed, and for some
+moments stood gazing.  Roderick, with his back turned, stood before
+an extemporized pedestal, ardently shaping a formless mass of clay.
+Before him sat Christina Light, in a white dress, with her
+shoulders bare, her magnificent hair twisted into a classic coil,
+and her head admirably poised.  Meeting Rowland's gaze,
+she smiled a little, only with her deep gray eyes, without moving.
+She looked divinely beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. Christina
+
+The brilliant Roman winter came round again, and Rowland enjoyed it,
+in a certain way, more deeply than before.  He grew at last to feel
+that sense of equal possession, of intellectual nearness, which it
+belongs to the peculiar magic of the ancient city to infuse into minds
+of a cast that she never would have produced.  He became passionately,
+unreasoningly fond of all Roman sights and sensations, and to breathe
+the Roman atmosphere began to seem a needful condition of being.
+He could not have defined and explained the nature of his great love,
+nor have made up the sum of it by the addition of his calculable pleasures.
+It was a large, vague, idle, half-profitless emotion, of which perhaps
+the most pertinent thing that may be said is that it enforced a sort
+of oppressive reconciliation to the present, the actual, the sensuous--
+to life on the terms that there offered themselves.  It was perhaps
+for this very reason that, in spite of the charm which Rome flings
+over one's mood, there ran through Rowland's meditations an undertone
+of melancholy, natural enough in a mind which finds its horizon
+insidiously limited to the finite, even in very picturesque forms.
+Whether it is one that tacitly concedes to the Roman Church the monopoly
+of a guarantee of immortality, so that if one is indisposed to bargain
+with her for the precious gift, one must do without it altogether;
+or whether in an atmosphere so heavily weighted with echoes and memories
+one grows to believe that there is nothing in one's consciousness that
+is not foredoomed to moulder and crumble and become dust for the feet,
+and possible malaria for the lungs, of future generations--the fact
+at least remains that one parts half-willingly with one's hopes in Rome,
+and misses them only under some very exceptional stress of circumstance.
+For this reason one may perhaps say that there is no other place
+in which one's daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and none,
+at the same time, in which acute attacks of depression are more intolerable.
+Rowland found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision that to
+live in Rome was an education to one's senses and one's imagination,
+but he sometimes wondered whether this was not a questionable
+gain in case of one's not being prepared to live wholly by one's
+imagination and one's senses.  The tranquil profundity of his daily
+satisfaction seemed sometimes to turn, by a mysterious inward impulse,
+and face itself with questioning, admonishing, threatening eyes.
+"But afterwards.... ?" it seemed to ask, with a long reverberation;
+and he could give no answer but a shy affirmation that there was no
+such thing as afterwards, and a hope, divided against itself, that his
+actual way of life would last forever.  He often felt heavy-hearted;
+he was sombre without knowing why; there were no visible clouds in
+his heaven, but there were cloud-shadows on his mood.  Shadows projected,
+they often were, without his knowing it, by an undue apprehension
+that things after all might not go so ideally well with Roderick.
+When he understood his anxiety it vexed him, and he rebuked himself for
+taking things unmanfully hard.  If Roderick chose to follow a crooked path,
+it was no fault of his; he had given him, he would continue to give him,
+all that he had offered him--friendship, sympathy, advice.  He had
+not undertaken to provide him with unflagging strength of purpose,
+nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.
+
+If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil,
+Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the
+local influence.  More than once he declared to his companion
+that he meant to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter's,
+and that he cared little if he never again drew breath in American air.
+"For a man of my temperament, Rome is the only possible place,"
+he said; "it 's better to recognize the fact early than late.
+So I shall never go home unless I am absolutely forced."
+
+"What is your idea of 'force'?" asked Rowland, smiling.
+"It seems to me you have an excellent reason for going home
+some day or other."
+
+"Ah, you mean my engagement?"  Roderick answered with unaverted eyes.
+"Yes, I am distinctly engaged, in Northampton, and impatiently waited for!"
+And he gave a little sympathetic sigh.  "To reconcile Northampton
+and Rome is rather a problem.  Mary had better come out here.
+Even at the worst I have no intention of giving up Rome within six or
+eight years, and an engagement of that duration would be rather absurd."
+
+"Miss Garland could hardly leave your mother," Rowland observed.
+
+"Oh, of course my mother should come.  I think I will suggest it
+in my next letter.  It will take her a year or two to make up
+her mind to it, but if she consents it will brighten her up.
+It 's too small a life, over there, even for a timid old lady.
+It is hard to imagine," he added, "any change in Mary being
+a change for the better; but I should like her to take a look
+at the world and have her notions stretched a little.
+One is never so good, I suppose, but that one can improve a little."
+
+"If you wish your mother and Miss Garland to come," Rowland suggested,
+"you had better go home and bring them."
+
+"Oh, I can't think of leaving Europe, for many a day," Roderick answered.
+"At present it would quite break the charm.  I am just beginning
+to profit, to get used to things and take them naturally.
+I am sure the sight of Northampton Main Street would permanently
+upset me.  "
+
+It was reassuring to hear that Roderick, in his own view,
+was but "just beginning" to spread his wings, and Rowland,
+if he had had any forebodings, might have suffered them to be
+modified by this declaration.  This was the first time since their
+meeting at Geneva that Roderick had mentioned Miss Garland's name,
+but the ice being broken, he indulged for some time afterward
+in frequent allusions to his betrothed, which always had
+an accent of scrupulous, of almost studied, consideration.
+An uninitiated observer, hearing him, would have imagined her to be
+a person of a certain age--possibly an affectionate maiden aunt--
+who had once done him a kindness which he highly appreciated:
+perhaps presented him with a check for a thousand dollars.
+Rowland noted the difference between his present frankness
+and his reticence during the first six months of his engagement,
+and sometimes wondered whether it was not rather an anomaly
+that he should expatiate more largely as the happy event receded.
+He had wondered over the whole matter, first and last,
+in a great many different ways, and looked at it in all
+possible lights.  There was something terribly hard to explain
+in the fact of his having fallen in love with his cousin.
+She was not, as Rowland conceived her, the sort of girl he would
+have been likely to fancy, and the operation of sentiment,
+in all cases so mysterious, was particularly so in this one.
+Just why it was that Roderick should not logically have fancied
+Miss Garland, his companion would have been at loss to say,
+but I think the conviction had its roots in an unformulated
+comparison between himself and the accepted suitor.
+Roderick and he were as different as two men could be,
+and yet Roderick had taken it into his head to fall
+in love with a woman for whom he himself had been keeping
+in reserve, for years, a profoundly characteristic passion.
+That if he chose to conceive a great notion of the merits
+of Roderick's mistress, the irregularity here was hardly
+Roderick's, was a view of the case to which poor Rowland
+did scanty justice.  There were women, he said to himself,
+whom it was every one's business to fall in love with a little--
+women beautiful, brilliant, artful, easily fascinating.
+Miss Light, for instance, was one of these; every man who
+spoke to her did so, if not in the language, at least with
+something of the agitation, the divine tremor, of a lover.
+There were other women--they might have great beauty, they might
+have small; perhaps they were generally to be classified as plain--
+whose triumphs in this line were rare, but immutably permanent.
+Such a one pre; aueminently, was Mary Garland.
+Upon the doctrine of probabilities, it was unlikely that
+she had had an equal charm for each of them, and was it
+not possible, therefore, that the charm for Roderick had
+been simply the charm imagined, unquestioningly accepted:
+the general charm of youth, sympathy, kindness--of the
+present feminine, in short--enhanced indeed by several fine
+facial traits?  The charm in this case for Rowland was--
+the charm!--the mysterious, individual, essential woman.
+There was an element in the charm, as his companion saw it,
+which Rowland was obliged to recognize, but which he forbore
+to ponder; the rather important attraction, namely, of reciprocity.
+As to Miss Garland being in love with Roderick and becoming
+charming thereby, this was a point with which his imagination
+ventured to take no liberties; partly because it would have
+been indelicate, and partly because it would have been vain.
+He contented himself with feeling that the young girl was
+still as vivid an image in his memory as she had been five
+days after he left her, and with drifting nearer and nearer
+to the impression that at just that crisis any other girl
+would have answered Roderick's sentimental needs as well.
+Any other girl indeed would do so still!  Roderick had confessed
+as much to him at Geneva, in saying that he had been taking
+at Baden the measure of his susceptibility to female beauty.
+
+His extraordinary success in modeling the bust of the beautiful
+Miss Light was pertinent evidence of this amiable quality.
+She sat to him, repeatedly, for a fortnight, and the work was
+rapidly finished.  On one of the last days Roderick asked Rowland
+to come and give his opinion as to what was still wanting;
+for the sittings had continued to take place in Mrs. Light's apartment,
+the studio being pronounced too damp for the fair model.
+When Rowland presented himself, Christina, still in her white dress,
+with her shoulders bare, was standing before a mirror,
+readjusting her hair, the arrangement of which, on this occasion,
+had apparently not met the young sculptor's approval.
+He stood beside her, directing the operation with a peremptoriness
+of tone which seemed to Rowland to denote a considerable advance
+in intimacy.  As Rowland entered, Christina was losing patience.
+"Do it yourself, then!" she cried, and with a rapid movement
+unloosed the great coil of her tresses and let them fall
+over her shoulders.
+
+They were magnificent, and with her perfect face dividing their
+rippling flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend
+being led to martyrdom.  Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed
+his admiration, but her own manifested no consciousness of it.
+If Christina was a coquette, as the remarkable timeliness of this
+incident might have suggested, she was not a superficial one.
+
+"Hudson 's a sculptor," said Rowland, with warmth.
+"But if I were only a painter!"
+
+"Thank Heaven you are not!" said Christina.  "I am having quite
+enough of this minute inspection of my charms."
+
+"My dear young man, hands off!" cried Mrs. Light, coming forward and seizing
+her daughter's hair.  "Christina, love, I am surprised."
+
+"Is it indelicate?"  Christina asked.  "I beg Mr. Mallet's pardon."
+Mrs. Light gathered up the dusky locks and let them fall through
+her fingers, glancing at her visitor with a significant smile.
+Rowland had never been in the East, but if he had attempted
+to make a sketch of an old slave-merchant, calling attention
+to the "points" of a Circassian beauty, he would have depicted
+such a smile as Mrs. Light's. "Mamma 's not really shocked,"
+added Christina in a moment, as if she had guessed her mother's
+by-play. "She is only afraid that Mr. Hudson might have injured
+my hair, and that, per consequenza, I should sell for less."
+
+"You unnatural child!" cried mamma.  "You deserve that I should make
+a fright of you!"  And with half a dozen skillful passes she twisted
+the tresses into a single picturesque braid, placed high on the head,
+as a kind of coronal.
+
+"What does your mother do when she wants to do you justice?"
+Rowland asked, observing the admirable line of the young girl's neck.
+
+"I do her justice when I say she says very improper things.
+What is one to do with such a thorn in the flesh?"
+Mrs. Light demanded.
+
+"Think of it at your leisure, Mr. Mallet," said Christina,
+"and when you 've discovered something, let us hear.
+But I must tell you that I shall not willingly believe in any
+remedy of yours, for you have something in your physiognomy
+that particularly provokes me to make the remarks that my mother
+so sincerely deplores.  I noticed it the first time I saw you.
+I think it 's because your face is so broad.  For some reason or other,
+broad faces exasperate me; they fill me with a kind of rabbia.
+Last summer, at Carlsbad, there was an Austrian count,
+with enormous estates and some great office at court.
+He was very attentive--seriously so; he was really very far gone.
+Cela ne tenait qu' a moi!  But I could n't; he was impossible!
+He must have measured, from ear to ear, at least a yard and a half.
+And he was blond, too, which made it worse--as blond as Stenterello;
+pure fleece!  So I said to him frankly, 'Many thanks, Herr Graf;
+your uniform is magnificent, but your face is too fat.'  "
+
+"I am afraid that mine also," said Rowland, with a smile,
+"seems just now to have assumed an unpardonable latitude."
+
+"Oh, I take it you know very well that we are looking for a husband,
+and that none but tremendous swells need apply.  Surely, before
+these gentlemen, mamma, I may speak freely; they are disinterested.
+Mr. Mallet won't do, because, though he 's rich, he 's not rich enough.
+Mamma made that discovery the day after we went to see you, moved to it
+by the promising look of your furniture.  I hope she was right, eh?
+Unless you have millions, you know, you have no chance."
+
+"I feel like a beggar," said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, after mature reflection,
+that on the whole you have enough.  Mr. Hudson, of course, is nowhere;
+he has nothing but his genius and his beaux yeux."
+
+Roderick had stood looking at Christina intently while she delivered herself,
+softly and slowly, of this surprising nonsense.  When she had finished,
+she turned and looked at him; their eyes met, and he blushed a little.
+"Let me model you, and he who can may marry you!" he said, abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Light, while her daughter talked, had been adding a few touches
+to her coiffure.  "She is not so silly as you might suppose,"
+she said to Rowland, with dignity.  "If you will give me your arm,
+we will go and look at the bust."
+
+"Does that represent a silly girl?"  Christina demanded,
+when they stood before it.
+
+Rowland transferred his glance several times from the portrait
+to the original.  "It represents a young lady," he said,
+"whom I should not pretend to judge off-hand."
+
+"She may be a fool, but you are not sure.  Many thanks!
+You have seen me half a dozen times.  You are either very slow
+or I am very deep."
+
+"I am certainly slow," said Rowland.  "I don't expect to make
+up my mind about you within six months."
+
+"I give you six months if you will promise then a perfectly frank opinion.
+Mind, I shall not forget; I shall insist upon it."
+
+"Well, though I am slow, I am tolerably brave," said Rowland.
+"We shall see."
+
+Christina looked at the bust with a sigh.  "I am afraid, after all,"
+she said, "that there 's very little wisdom in it save what the artist
+has put there.  Mr. Hudson looked particularly wise while he was working;
+he scowled and growled, but he never opened his mouth.  It is very kind
+of him not to have represented me gaping."
+
+"If I had talked a lot of stuff to you," said Roderick, roundly, "the thing
+would not have been a tenth so good."
+
+"Is it good, after all?  Mr. Mallet is a famous connoisseur;
+has he not come here to pronounce?"
+
+The bust was in fact a very happy performance, and Roderick had risen
+to the level of his subject.  It was thoroughly a portrait, and not a vague
+fantasy executed on a graceful theme, as the busts of pretty women,
+in modern sculpture, are apt to be.  The resemblance was deep and vivid;
+there was extreme fidelity of detail and yet a noble simplicity.
+One could say of the head that, without idealization, it was a
+representation of ideal beauty.  Rowland, however, as we know, was not
+fond of exploding into superlatives, and, after examining the piece,
+contented himself with suggesting two or three alterations of detail.
+
+"Nay, how can you be so cruel?" demanded Mrs. Light,
+with soft reproachfulness.  "It is surely a wonderful thing!"
+
+"Rowland knows it 's a wonderful thing," said Roderick, smiling.
+"I can tell that by his face.  The other day I finished something
+he thought bad, and he looked very differently from this."
+
+"How did Mr. Mallet look?" asked Christina.
+
+"My dear Rowland," said Roderick, "I am speaking of my seated woman.
+You looked as if you had on a pair of tight boots."
+
+"Ah, my child, you 'll not understand that!" cried Mrs. Light.
+"You never yet had a pair that were small enough."
+
+"It 's a pity, Mr. Hudson," said Christina, gravely,
+"that you could not have introduced my feet into the bust.
+But we can hang a pair of slippers round the neck!"
+
+"I nevertheless like your statues, Roderick," Rowland rejoined,
+"better than your jokes.  This is admirable.  Miss Light,
+you may be proud!"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Mallet, for the permission," rejoined the young girl.
+
+"I am dying to see it in the marble, with a red velvet screen behind it,"
+said Mrs. Light.
+
+"Placed there under the Sassoferrato!"  Christina went on.
+"I hope you keep well in mind, Mr. Hudson, that you have not
+a grain of property in your work, and that if mamma chooses,
+she may have it photographed and the copies sold in the Piazza
+di Spagna, at five francs apiece, without your having a sou
+of the profits."
+
+"Amen!" said Roderick.  "It was so nominated in the bond.
+My profits are here!" and he tapped his forehead.
+
+"It would be prettier if you said here!"  And Christina touched her heart.
+
+"My precious child, how you do run on!" murmured Mrs. Light.
+
+"It is Mr. Mallet," the young girl answered.
+"I can't talk a word of sense so long as he is in the room.
+I don't say that to make you go," she added, "I say it simply
+to justify myself."
+
+Rowland bowed in silence.  Roderick declared that he must get at work
+and requested Christina to take her usual position, and Mrs. Light
+proposed to her visitor that they should adjourn to her boudoir.
+This was a small room, hardly more spacious than an alcove,
+opening out of the drawing-room and having no other issue.
+Here, as they entered, on a divan near the door, Rowland perceived
+the Cavaliere Giacosa, with his arms folded, his head dropped upon
+his breast, and his eyes closed.
+
+"Sleeping at his post!" said Rowland with a kindly laugh.
+
+"That 's a punishable offense," rejoined Mrs. Light, sharply.
+She was on the point of calling him, in the same tone,
+when he suddenly opened his eyes, stared a moment, and then
+rose with a smile and a bow.
+
+"Excuse me, dear lady," he said, "I was overcome by the--
+the great heat."
+
+"Nonsense, Cavaliere!" cried the lady, "you know we are perishing
+here with the cold!  You had better go and cool yourself in one
+of the other rooms."
+
+"I obey, dear lady," said the Cavaliere; and with another smile
+and bow to Rowland he departed, walking very discreetly on his toes.
+Rowland out-stayed him but a short time, for he was not fond of
+Mrs. Light, and he found nothing very inspiring in her frank intimation
+that if he chose, he might become a favorite.  He was disgusted
+with himself for pleasing her; he confounded his fatal urbanity.
+In the court-yard of the palace he overtook the Cavaliere, who had
+stopped at the porter's lodge to say a word to his little girl.
+She was a young lady of very tender years and she wore a very dirty pinafore.
+He had taken her up in his arms and was singing an infantine rhyme
+to her, and she was staring at him with big, soft Roman eyes.
+On seeing Rowland he put her down with a kiss, and stepped forward
+with a conscious grin, an unresentful admission that he was sensitive
+both to chubbiness and ridicule.  Rowland began to pity him again;
+he had taken his dismissal from the drawing-room so meekly.
+
+"You don't keep your promise," said Rowland, "to come and see me.
+Don't forget it.  I want you to tell me about Rome thirty years ago."
+
+"Thirty years ago?  Ah, dear sir, Rome is Rome still; a place
+where strange things happen!  But happy things too, since I
+have your renewed permission to call.  You do me too much honor.
+Is it in the morning or in the evening that I should least intrude?"
+
+"Take your own time, Cavaliere; only come, sometime.
+I depend upon you," said Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere thanked him with an humble obeisance.
+To the Cavaliere, too, he felt that he was, in Roman phrase,
+sympathetic, but the idea of pleasing this extremely reduced
+gentleman was not disagreeable to him.
+
+Miss Light's bust stood for a while on exhibition in
+Roderick's studio, and half the foreign colony came to see it.
+With the completion of his work, however, Roderick's visits
+at the Palazzo F---- by no means came to an end.
+He spent half his time in Mrs. Light's drawing-room,
+and began to be talked about as "attentive" to Christina.
+The success of the bust restored his equanimity, and in
+the garrulity of his good-humor he suffered Rowland to see
+that she was just now the object uppermost in his thoughts.
+Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener than speaker;
+partly because Roderick's own tone was so resonant and exultant,
+and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for having
+called her unsafe, he was too perplexed to defend himself.
+The impression remained that she was unsafe; that she was
+a complex, willful, passionate creature, who might easily engulf
+a too confiding spirit in the eddies of her capricious temper.
+And yet he strongly felt her charm; the eddies had a
+strange fascination!  Roderick, in the glow of that renewed
+admiration provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal,
+was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection
+of her beauty.
+
+"I had no idea of it," he said, "till I began to look at her
+with an eye to reproducing line for line and curve for curve.
+Her face is the most exquisite piece of modeling that ever came
+from creative hands.  Not a line without meaning, not a hair's
+breadth that is not admirably finished.  And then her mouth!
+It 's as if a pair of lips had been shaped to utter pure truth without
+doing it dishonor!"  Later, after he had been working for a week,
+he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain, she would still
+be the most fascinating of women.  "I 've quite forgotten her beauty,"
+he said, "or rather I have ceased to perceive it as something
+distinct and defined, something independent of the rest of her.
+She is all one, and all consummately interesting!"
+
+"What does she do--what does she say, that is so remarkable?"
+Rowland had asked.
+
+"Say?  Sometimes nothing--sometimes everything.  She is never the same.
+Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word,
+without a smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore.
+She hardly looks at me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work.
+On other days she laughs and chatters and asks endless questions,
+and pours out the most irresistible nonsense.  She is a creature of moods;
+you can't count upon her; she keeps observation on the stretch.
+And then, bless you, she has seen such a lot!  Her talk is full
+of the oddest allusions!"
+
+"It is altogether a very singular type of young lady,"
+said Rowland, after the visit which I have related at length.
+"It may be a charm, but it is certainly not the orthodox charm
+of marriageable maidenhood, the charm of shrinking innocence
+and soft docility.  Our American girls are accused of being more
+knowing than any others, and Miss Light is nominally an American.
+But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make her what she is.
+The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a product
+of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong."
+
+"Ah, she has an atmosphere," said Roderick, in the tone of high appreciation.
+
+"Young unmarried women," Rowland answered, "should be careful
+not to have too much!"
+
+"Ah, you don't forgive her," cried his companion, "for hitting you so hard!
+A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
+notice of him."
+
+"A man is never flattered at a woman's not liking him."
+
+"Are you sure she does n't like you?  That 's to the credit of your humility.
+A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade himself that
+he was in favor."
+
+"He would have also," said Rowland, laughing, "to be a fellow
+of remarkable ingenuity!"  He asked himself privately how the deuce
+Roderick reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more
+of the girl he was not engaged to than of the girl he was.
+But it amounted almost to arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland
+to pretend to know how often Roderick thought of Miss Garland.
+He wondered gloomily, at any rate, whether for men of his
+companion's large, easy power, there was not a larger moral law
+than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who, yielding Nature
+a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was), had no reason
+to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their accounts.
+Was it not a part of the eternal fitness of things that Roderick,
+while rhapsodizing about Miss Light, should have it at his command
+to look at you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded blue,
+and to shake off your musty imputations by a toss of his picturesque
+brown locks?  Or had he, in fact, no conscience to speak of?
+Happy fellow, either way!
+
+Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick
+on his model and what he had made of her.  "Devilish pretty,
+through and through!" he said as he looked at the bust.
+"Capital handling of the neck and throat; lovely work
+on the nose.  You 're a detestably lucky fellow, my boy!
+But you ought not to have squandered such material on a
+simple bust; you should have made a great imaginative figure.
+If I could only have got hold of her, I would have put her
+into a statue in spite of herself.  What a pity she is not
+a ragged Trasteverine, whom we might have for a franc an hour!
+I have been carrying about in my head for years a delicious
+design for a fantastic figure, but it has always stayed there
+for want of a tolerable model.  I have seen intimations
+of the type, but Miss Light is the perfection of it.
+As soon as I saw her I said to myself, 'By Jove, there 's
+my statue in the flesh!' "
+
+"What is your subject?" asked Roderick.
+
+"Don't take it ill," said Gloriani.  "You know I 'm the very deuce
+for observation.  She would make a magnificent Herodias!"
+
+If Roderick had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know
+he thought Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom),
+he might have been soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton,
+who came and sat for an hour in a sort of mental prostration before
+both bust and artist.  But Roderick's attitude before his patient
+little devotee was one of undisguised though friendly amusement;
+and, indeed, judged from a strictly plastic point of view,
+the poor fellow's diminutive stature, his enormous mouth,
+his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently ridiculous.
+"Nay, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton afterwards,
+on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of his own
+paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's talent.
+"You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters.
+Be contented with what you are and paint me another picture."
+
+"Oh, I don't envy Hudson anything he possesses," Singleton said,
+"because to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness.
+'Complete,' that 's what he is; while we little clevernesses
+are like half-ripened plums, only good eating on the side
+that has had a glimpse of the sun.  Nature has made him so,
+and fortune confesses to it!  He is the handsomest fellow in Rome,
+he has the most genius, and, as a matter of course, the most
+beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to be his model.
+If that is not completeness, where shall we find it?"
+
+One morning, going into Roderick's studio, Rowland found the young
+sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard--if this is not too flattering
+a description of his gracefully passive tolerance of her presence.
+He had never liked her and never climbed into her sky-studio to
+observe her wonderful manipulation of petals.  He had once quoted
+Tennyson against her:--
+
+"And is there any moral shut
+
+Within the bosom of the rose?"
+
+"In all Miss Blanchard's roses you may be sure there is a moral,"
+he had said.  "You can see it sticking out its head, and,
+if you go to smell the flower, it scratches your nose."
+But on this occasion she had come with a propitiatory gift--
+introducing her friend Mr. Leavenworth.  Mr. Leavenworth
+was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully
+brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored face,
+which seemed, somehow, to have more room in it than was occupied
+by a smile of superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth,
+white forehead) it bore a certain resemblance to a large parlor
+with a very florid carpet, but no pictures on the walls.
+He held his head high, talked sonorously, and told Roderick,
+within five minutes, that he was a widower, traveling to
+distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from
+the proprietorship of large mines of borax in Pennsylvania.
+Roderick supposed at first that, in his character
+of depressed widower, he had come to order a tombstone;
+but observing then the extreme blandness of his address
+to Miss Blanchard, he credited him with a judicious prevision
+that by the time the tombstone was completed, a monument
+of his inconsolability might have become an anachronism.
+But Mr. Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
+
+"You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,"
+he said.  "I am putting up a little shanty in my native town,
+and I propose to make a rather nice thing of it.
+It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me into mourning;
+but art has consolations!  In a tasteful home, surrounded by the
+memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.
+I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room.
+Do you think you could do something for my library?
+It is to be filled with well-selected authors, and I think a pure
+white image in this style,"--pointing to one of Roderick's
+statues,--"standing out against the morocco and gilt, would have
+a noble effect.  The subject I have already fixed upon.
+I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.
+Do you think, now," asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly,
+"you could rise to the conception?"
+
+"A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,"
+remarked Miss Blanchard.
+
+Roderick looked at her a moment, and then--"The simplest thing I could do,"
+he said, "would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss Blanchard.
+I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for the allegory."
+
+Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical;
+and there was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty
+in her opinion of Roderick's genius.  Mr. Leavenworth
+responded that with all deference to Miss Blanchard's beauty,
+he desired something colder, more monumental, more impersonal.
+"If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard,"
+he added, "I should prefer to have it in no factitious disguise!"
+
+Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were
+discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist.
+"Who is your friend?" he asked.
+
+"A very worthy man.  The architect of his own fortune--which is magnificent.
+One of nature's gentlemen!"
+
+This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust
+of Miss Light.  Like every one else in Rome, by this time,
+Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl's beauty,
+and, in her own fashion, she expressed it epigrammatically.
+"She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina," she said.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young sculptor
+good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron's conception.
+"His conception be hanged!"  Roderick exclaimed, after he had departed.
+"His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear and a photographic
+album in her hand.  I shall have to conceive, myself.  For the money,
+I ought to be able to!"
+
+Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society.
+"Heaven knows how!"  Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had
+mentioned to her several evidences of the lady's prosperity.
+"In such a case there is nothing like audacity.  A month ago
+she knew no one but her washerwoman, and now I am told that
+the cards of Roman princesses are to be seen on her table.
+She is evidently determined to play a great part, and she has
+the wit to perceive that, to make remunerative acquaintances,
+you must seem yourself to be worth knowing.  You must have
+striking rooms and a confusing variety of dresses, and give
+good dinners, and so forth.  She is spending a lot of money,
+and you 'll see that in two or three weeks she will take upon
+herself to open the season by giving a magnificent ball.
+Of course it is Christina's beauty that floats her.
+People go to see her because they are curious."
+
+"And they go again because they are charmed," said Rowland.
+"Miss Christina is a very remarkable young lady."
+
+"Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day.
+She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was
+deeply interesting.  I think she 's an actress, but she believes in her part
+while she is playing it.  She took it into her head the other day to believe
+that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are sitting,
+and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my eyes.
+She cried, herself, profusely, and as naturally as possible.
+She said she was weary of life and that she knew no one but me she
+could speak frankly to.  She must speak, or she would go mad.
+She sobbed as if her heart would break.  I assure you it 's well
+for you susceptible young men that you don't see her when she sobs.
+She said, in so many words, that her mother was an immoral woman.
+Heaven knows what she meant.  She meant, I suppose, that she makes debts
+that she knows she can't pay.  She said the life they led was horrible;
+that it was monstrous a poor girl should be dragged about the world
+to be sold to the highest bidder.  She was meant for better things;
+she could be perfectly happy in poverty.  It was not money she wanted.
+I might not believe her, but she really cared for serious things.
+Sometimes she thought of taking poison!"
+
+"What did you say to that?"
+
+"I recommended her," said Madame Grandoni, "to come and see me instead.
+I would help her about as much, and I was, on the whole, less unpleasant.
+Of course I could help her only by letting her talk herself out and kissing
+her and patting her beautiful hands and telling her to be patient and she
+would be happy yet.  About once in two months I expect her to reappear,
+on the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my existence.
+I believe I melted down to the point of telling her that I would find
+some good, quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she declared,
+almost with fury, that she was sick unto death of husbands, and begged I
+would never again mention the word.  And, in fact, it was a rash offer;
+for I am sure that there is not a man of the kind that might really
+make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle.
+Looked at in that way she is certainly very much to be pitied,
+and indeed, altogether, though I don't think she either means
+all she says or, by a great deal, says all that she means.
+I feel very sorry for her."
+
+Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments,
+and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendrissement.
+He imagined more than once that there had been a passionate
+scene between them about coming out, and wondered what arguments
+Mrs. Light had found effective.  But Christina's face told no tales,
+and she moved about, beautiful and silent, looking absently over
+people's heads, barely heeding the men who pressed about her,
+and suggesting somehow that the soul of a world-wearied mortal
+had found its way into the blooming body of a goddess.
+"Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is twenty,"
+observers asked, "to have left all her illusions behind?"
+And the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful,
+she was intolerably proud.  Young ladies to whom the former
+distinction was not conceded were free to reflect that she was
+"not at all liked."
+
+It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled
+this conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and,
+in especial, with the spectacle of Roderick's inveterate devotion.
+All Rome might behold that he, at least, "liked" Christina Light.
+Wherever she appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately
+followed her.  He was perpetually at her side, trying, apparently,
+to preserve the thread of a disconnected talk, the fate of which was,
+to judge by her face, profoundly immaterial to the young lady.
+People in general smiled at the radiant good faith of the handsome
+young sculptor, and asked each other whether he really supposed
+that beauties of that quality were meant to wed with poor artists.
+But although Christina's deportment, as I have said, was one of
+superb inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from Roderick no suspicion
+that he suffered from snubbing, and he was therefore surprised
+at an incident which befell one evening at a large musical party.
+Roderick, as usual, was in the field, and, on the ladies taking the chairs
+which had been arranged for them, he immediately placed himself
+beside Christina.  As most of the gentlemen were standing, his position
+made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at Ophelia's feet, at the play.
+Rowland was leaning, somewhat apart, against the chimney-piece. There
+was a long, solemn pause before the music began, and in the midst
+of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole length of the
+immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped before him.
+She was neither pale nor flushed; she had a soft smile.
+
+"Will you do me a favor?" she asked.
+
+"A thousand!"
+
+"Not now, but at your earliest convenience.  Please remind Mr. Hudson
+that he is not in a New England village--that it is not the custom
+in Rome to address one's conversation exclusively, night after night,
+to the same poor girl, and that"....
+
+The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice.
+She made a gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm
+and led her back to her seat.
+
+The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, who burst into
+joyous laughter.  "She 's a delightfully strange girl!" he cried.
+"She must do everything that comes into her head!"
+
+"Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?"
+
+"On the contrary, she has often said to me, 'Mind you now, I forbid
+you to leave me.  Here comes that tiresome So-and-so.' She cares
+as little about the custom as I do.  What could be a better proof
+than her walking up to you, with five hundred people looking at her?
+Is that the custom for young girls in Rome?"
+
+"Why, then, should she take such a step?"
+
+"Because, as she sat there, it came into her head.  That 's reason
+enough for her.  I have imagined she wishes me well, as they say here--
+though she has never distinguished me in such a way as that!"
+
+Madame Grandoni had foretold the truth; Mrs. Light, a couple
+of weeks later, convoked all Roman society to a brilliant ball.
+Rowland went late, and found the staircase so encumbered with
+flower-pots and servants that he was a long time making his way
+into the presence of the hostess.  At last he approached her, as she
+stood making courtesies at the door, with her daughter by her side.
+Some of Mrs. Light's courtesies were very low, for she had the happiness
+of receiving a number of the social potentates of the Roman world.
+She was rosy with triumph, to say nothing of a less metaphysical cause,
+and was evidently vastly contented with herself, with her company,
+and with the general promise of destiny.  Her daughter was less
+overtly jubilant, and distributed her greetings with impartial frigidity.
+She had never been so beautiful.  Dressed simply in vaporous white,
+relieved with half a dozen white roses, the perfection of her
+features and of her person and the mysterious depth of her
+expression seemed to glow with the white light of a splendid pearl.
+She recognized no one individually, and made her courtesy slowly,
+gravely, with her eyes on the ground.  Rowland fancied that,
+as he stood before her, her obeisance was slightly exaggerated,
+as with an intention of irony; but he smiled philosophically to himself,
+and reflected, as he passed into the room, that, if she disliked him,
+he had nothing to reproach himself with.  He walked about,
+had a few words with Miss Blanchard, who, with a fillet of cameos
+in her hair, was leaning on the arm of Mr. Leavenworth, and at last
+came upon the Cavaliere Giacosa, modestly stationed in a corner.
+The little gentleman's coat-lappet was decorated with an enormous
+bouquet and his neck encased in a voluminous white handkerchief
+of the fashion of thirty years ago.  His arms were folded,
+and he was surveying the scene with contracted eyelids, through which
+you saw the glitter of his intensely dark, vivacious pupil.
+He immediately embarked on an elaborate apology for not having
+yet manifested, as he felt it, his sense of the honor Rowland
+had done him.
+
+"I am always on service with these ladies, you see," he explained,
+"and that is a duty to which one would not willingly be faithless
+for an instant."
+
+"Evidently," said Rowland, "you are a very devoted friend.
+Mrs. Light, in her situation, is very happy in having you."
+
+"We are old friends," said the Cavaliere, gravely.  "Old friends.
+I knew the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest
+woman in Rome--or rather in Ancona, which is even better.
+The beautiful Christina, now, is perhaps the most beautiful
+young girl in Europe!"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland.
+
+"Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little
+hands to touch the piano keys."  And at these faded memories,
+the Cavaliere's eyes glittered more brightly.  Rowland half expected
+him to proceed, with a little flash of long-repressed passion,
+"And now--and now, sir, they treat me as you observed the other day!"
+But the Cavaliere only looked out at him keenly from among his wrinkles,
+and seemed to say, with all the vividness of the Italian glance,
+"Oh, I say nothing more.  I am not so shallow as to complain!"
+
+Evidently the Cavaliere was not shallow, and Rowland repeated respectfully,
+"You are a devoted friend."
+
+"That 's very true.  I am a devoted friend.  A man may do himself justice,
+after twenty years!"
+
+Rowland, after a pause, made some remark about the beauty of the ball.
+It was very brilliant.
+
+"Stupendous!" said the Cavaliere, solemnly.  "It is a great day.
+We have four Roman princes, to say nothing of others."  And he counted
+them over on his fingers and held up his hand triumphantly.
+"And there she stands, the girl to whom I--I, Giuseppe Giacosa--
+taught her alphabet and her piano-scales; there she stands in her
+incomparable beauty, and Roman princes come and bow to her.
+Here, in his corner, her old master permits himself to be proud."
+
+"It is very friendly of him," said Rowland, smiling.
+
+The Cavaliere contracted his lids a little more and gave another
+keen glance.  "It is very natural, signore.  The Christina is
+a good girl; she remembers my little services.  But here comes,"
+he added in a moment, "the young Prince of the Fine Arts.
+I am sure he has bowed lowest of all."
+
+Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room
+and casting about him his usual luminous, unshrinking looks.
+He presently joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere,
+and immediately demanded of Rowland, "Have you seen her?"
+
+"I have seen Miss Light," said Rowland.  "She 's magnificent."
+
+"I 'm half crazy!" cried Roderick; so loud that several persons turned round.
+
+Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid his hand on his arm.
+Roderick was trembling.  "If you will go away," Rowland said instantly,
+"I will go with you."
+
+"Go away?" cried Roderick, almost angrily.  "I intend to dance with her!"
+
+The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently laid his
+hand on his other arm.  "Softly, softly, dear young man," he said.
+"Let me speak to you as a friend."
+
+"Oh, speak even as an enemy and I shall not mind it,"
+Roderick answered, frowning.
+
+"Be very reasonable, then, and go away."
+
+"Why the deuce should I go away?"
+
+"Because you are in love," said the Cavaliere.
+
+"I might as well be in love here as in the streets."
+
+"Carry your love as far as possible from Christina.
+She will not listen to you--she can't."
+
+"She 'can't'?" demanded Roderick.  "She is not a person of whom you
+may say that.  She can if she will; she does as she chooses."
+
+"Up to a certain point.  It would take too long to explain; I only beg you
+to believe that if you continue to love Miss Light you will be very unhappy.
+Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune?  Otherwise you can
+never have her."
+
+And the Cavaliere folded his arms again, like a man who has done his duty.
+Roderick wiped his forehead and looked askance at Rowland; he seemed
+to be guessing his thoughts and they made him blush a little.
+But he smiled blandly, and addressing the Cavaliere, "I 'm much obliged
+to you for the information," he said.  "Now that I have obtained it,
+let me tell you that I am no more in love with Miss Light than you are.
+Mr. Mallet knows that.  I admire her--yes, profoundly.  But that 's no one's
+business but my own, and though I have, as you say, neither a princely
+title nor a princely fortune, I mean to suffer neither those advantages
+nor those who possess them to diminish my right."
+
+"If you are not in love, my dear young man," said the Cavaliere,
+with his hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, "so much the better.
+But let me entreat you, as an affectionate friend, to keep a watch on
+your emotions.  You are young, you are handsome, you have a brilliant
+genius and a generous heart, but--I may say it almost with authority--
+Christina is not for you!"
+
+Whether Roderick was in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently
+seemed to him an obtrusive negation of an inspiring possibility.
+"You speak as if she had made her choice!" he cried.
+"Without pretending to confidential information on the subject,
+I am sure she has not."
+
+"No, but she must make it soon," said the Cavaliere.
+And raising his forefinger, he laid it against his under lip.
+"She must choose a name and a fortune--and she will!"
+
+"She will do exactly as her inclination prompts!
+She will marry the man who pleases her, if he has n't a dollar!
+I know her better than you.  "
+
+The Cavaliere turned a little paler than usual, and smiled more urbanely.
+"No, no, my dear young man, you do not know her better than I. You have
+not watched her, day by day, for twenty years.  I too have admired her.
+She is a good girl; she has never said an unkind word to me; the blessed
+Virgin be thanked!  But she must have a brilliant destiny; it has been
+marked out for her, and she will submit.  You had better believe me;
+it may save you much suffering."
+
+"We shall see!" said Roderick, with an excited laugh.
+
+"Certainly we shall see.  But I retire from the discussion,"
+the Cavaliere added.  "I have no wish to provoke you to attempt
+to prove to me that I am wrong.  You are already excited."
+
+"No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance
+the cotillon with Miss Light."
+
+"The cotillon? has she promised?"
+
+Roderick patted the air with a grand confidence.  "You 'll see!"
+His gesture might almost have been taken to mean that the state
+of his relations with Miss Light was such that they quite dispensed
+with vain formalities.
+
+The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug.  "You make a great many mourners!"
+
+"He has made one already!"  Rowland murmured to himself.
+This was evidently not the first time that reference had been made
+between Roderick and the Cavaliere to the young man's possible passion,
+and Roderick had failed to consider it the simplest and most natural
+course to say in three words to the vigilant little gentleman
+that there was no cause for alarm--his affections were preoccupied.
+Rowland hoped, silently, with some dryness, that his motives
+were of a finer kind than they seemed to be.  He turned away;
+it was irritating to look at Roderick's radiant, unscrupulous eagerness.
+The tide was setting toward the supper-room and he drifted with it
+to the door.  The crowd at this point was dense, and he was
+obliged to wait for some minutes before he could advance.
+At last he felt his neighbors dividing behind him,
+and turning he saw Christina pressing her way forward alone.
+She was looking at no one, and, save for the fact of her being alone,
+you would not have supposed she was in her mother's house.
+As she recognized Rowland she beckoned to him, took his arm,
+and motioned him to lead her into the supper-room. She said nothing
+until he had forced a passage and they stood somewhat isolated.
+
+"Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find,"
+she then said, "and then go and get me a piece of bread."
+
+"Nothing more?  There seems to be everything conceivable."
+
+"A simple roll.  Nothing more, on your peril.  Only bring
+something for yourself."
+
+It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window
+(embrasures in Roman palaces are deep) was a retreat
+sufficiently obscure for Miss Light to execute whatever
+design she might have contrived against his equanimity.
+A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured.
+As he presented it, he remarked that, frankly speaking,
+he was at loss to understand why she should have selected
+for the honor of a tete-a-tete an individual for whom she
+had so little taste.
+
+"Ah yes, I dislike you," said Christina.  "To tell the truth,
+I had forgotten it.  There are so many people here whom I dislike more,
+that when I espied you just now, you seemed like an intimate friend.
+But I have not come into this corner to talk nonsense," she went on.
+"You must not think I always do, eh?"
+
+"I have never heard you do anything else," said Rowland, deliberately,
+having decided that he owed her no compliments.
+
+"Very good.  I like your frankness.  It 's quite true.  You see,
+I am a strange girl.  To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical.
+Don't flatter yourself you have said anything very clever
+if you ever take it into your head to tell me so.
+I know it much better than you.  So it is, I can't help it.
+I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess to get
+out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly
+more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
+If a person wished to do me a favor I would say to him,
+'I beg you, with tears in my eyes, to interest me.  Be strong,
+be positive, be imperious, if you will; only be something,--
+something that, in looking at, I can forget my detestable self!'
+Perhaps that is nonsense too.  If it is, I can't help it.
+I can only apologize for the nonsense I know to be such
+and that I talk--oh, for more reasons than I can tell you!
+I wonder whether, if I were to try, you would understand me."
+
+"I am afraid I should never understand," said Rowland,
+"why a person should willingly talk nonsense."
+
+"That proves how little you know about women.  But I like your frankness.
+When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea you
+were more formal,--how do you say it?--more guinde.  I am very capricious.
+To-night I like you better."
+
+"Oh, I am not guinde," said Rowland, gravely.
+
+"I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so.  Now I have an idea
+that you would make a useful friend--an intimate friend--
+a friend to whom one could tell everything.  For such a friend,
+what would n't I give!"
+
+Rowland looked at her in some perplexity.  Was this touching sincerity,
+or unfathomable coquetry?  Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid;
+but then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle.
+"I hesitate to recommend myself out and out for the office," he said,
+"but I believe that if you were to depend upon me for anything
+that a friend may do, I should not be found wanting."
+
+"Very good.  One of the first things one asks of a friend is
+to judge one not by isolated acts, but by one's whole conduct.
+I care for your opinion--I don't know why."
+
+"Nor do I, I confess," said Rowland with a laugh.
+
+"What do you think of this affair?" she continued, without heeding his laugh.
+
+"Of your ball?  Why, it 's a very grand affair."
+
+"It 's horrible--that 's what it is!  It 's a mere rabble!
+There are people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked.
+Mamma went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any
+one they knew, doing anything to have a crowd.  I hope she is satisfied!
+It is not my doing.  I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying.
+I have twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let
+mamma go through with it as she can.  By the way," she added in a moment,
+without a visible reason for the transition, "can you tell me
+something to read?"
+
+Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.
+
+"Can you recommend me some books?" she repeated.
+"I know you are a great reader.  I have no one else to ask.
+We can buy no books.  We can make debts for jewelry and bonnets
+and five-button gloves, but we can't spend a sou for ideas.
+And yet, though you may not believe it, I like ideas
+quite as well."
+
+"I shall be most happy to lend you some books," Rowland said.
+"I will pick some out to-morrow and send them to you."
+
+"No novels, please!  I am tired of novels.  I can imagine
+better stories for myself than any I read.  Some good poetry,
+if there is such a thing nowadays, and some memoirs and histories
+and books of facts."
+
+"You shall be served.  Your taste agrees with my own."
+
+She was silent a moment, looking at him.  Then suddenly--"Tell me something
+about Mr. Hudson," she demanded.  "You are great friends!"
+
+"Oh yes," said Rowland; "we are great friends."
+
+"Tell me about him.  Come, begin!"
+
+"Where shall I begin?  You know him for yourself."
+
+"No, I don't know him; I don't find him so easy to know.
+Since he has finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly,
+he has become a great talker.  He says very fine things;
+but does he mean all he says?"
+
+"Few of us do that."
+
+"You do, I imagine.  You ought to know, for he tells me you
+discovered him."  Rowland was silent, and Christina continued,
+"Do you consider him very clever?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"His talent is really something out of the common way?"
+
+"So it seems to me."
+
+"In short, he 's a man of genius?"
+
+"Yes, call it genius."
+
+"And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him
+by the hand and set him on his feet in Rome?"
+
+"Is that the popular legend?" asked Rowland.
+
+"Oh, you need n't be modest.  There was no great merit in it;
+there would have been none at least on my part in the same circumstances.
+Real geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in
+the wilderness, I would have brought him out into the market-place
+to see how he would behave.  It would be excessively amusing.
+You must find it so to watch Mr. Hudson, eh?  Tell me this:
+do you think he is going to be a great man--become famous,
+have his life written, and all that?"
+
+"I don't prophesy, but I have good hopes."
+
+Christina was silent.  She stretched out her bare arm
+and looked at it a moment absently, turning it so as to see--
+or almost to see--the dimple in her elbow.  This was apparently
+a frequent gesture with her; Rowland had already observed it.
+It was as coolly and naturally done as if she had been in her
+room alone.  "So he 's a man of genius," she suddenly resumed.
+"Don't you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have
+a man of genius perpetually hanging about?  He is the first I
+ever saw, but I should have known he was not a common mortal.
+There is something strange about him.  To begin with, he has
+no manners.  You may say that it 's not for me to blame him,
+for I have none myself.  That 's very true, but the difference
+is that I can have them when I wish to (and very charming ones too;
+I 'll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will never
+have them.  And yet, somehow, one sees he 's a gentleman.
+He seems to have something urging, driving, pushing him,
+making him restless and defiant.  You see it in his eyes.
+They are the finest, by the way, I ever saw.  When a person
+has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad manners.
+I suppose that is what they call the sacred fire."
+
+Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would
+have another roll.  She merely shook her head and went on:--
+
+"Tell me how you found him.  Where was he--how was he?"
+
+"He was in a place called Northampton.  Did you ever hear of it?
+He was studying law--but not learning it."
+
+"It appears it was something horrible, eh?"
+
+"Something horrible?"
+
+"This little village.  No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no life."
+
+"You have received a false impression.  Northampton is not as gay as Rome,
+but Roderick had some charming friends."
+
+"Tell me about them.  Who were they?"
+
+"Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance:
+a delightful woman."
+
+"Young--pretty?"
+
+"Yes, a good deal of both.  And very clever."
+
+"Did he make love to her?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Well, who else?"
+
+"He lived with his mother.  She is the best of women."
+
+"Ah yes, I know all that one's mother is.  But she does not count as society.
+And who else?"
+
+Rowland hesitated.  He wondered whether Christina's
+insistance was the result of a general interest in Roderick's
+antecedents or of a particular suspicion.  He looked at her;
+she was looking at him a little askance, waiting for his answer.
+As Roderick had said nothing about his engagement to the Cavaliere,
+it was probable that with this beautiful girl he had not
+been more explicit.  And yet the thing was announced,
+it was public; that other girl was happy in it, proud of it.
+Rowland felt a kind of dumb anger rising in his heart.
+He deliberated a moment intently.
+
+"What are you frowning at?"  Christina asked.
+
+"There was another person," he answered, "the most important of all:
+the young girl to whom he is engaged."
+
+Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows.
+"Ah, Mr. Hudson is engaged?" she said, very simply.
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"She is not called a beauty," said Rowland.  He meant to practice
+great brevity, but in a moment he added, "I have seen beauties,
+however, who pleased me less."
+
+"Ah, she pleases you, too?  Why don't they marry?"
+
+"Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry."
+
+Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple
+in her elbow.  "Ah, he 's engaged?" she repeated in the same tone.
+"He never told me."
+
+Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them
+were beginning to return to the dancing-room, and immediately
+afterwards he saw Roderick making his way toward themselves.
+Roderick presented himself before Miss Light.
+
+"I don't claim that you have promised me the cotillon," he said,
+"but I consider that you have given me hopes which warrant
+the confidence that you will dance with me."
+
+Christina looked at him a moment.  "Certainly I have made no promises,"
+she said.  "It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house,
+I should keep myself free and let it depend on circumstances."
+
+"I beseech you to dance with me!" said Roderick, with vehemence.
+
+Christina rose and began to laugh.  "You say that very well,
+but the Italians do it better."
+
+This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof.
+Mrs. Light hastily approached, leading, rather than led by,
+a tall, slim young man, of an unmistakably Southern physiognomy.
+"My precious love," she cried, "what a place to hide in!
+We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I have chosen
+a cavalier for you, and chosen well!"
+
+The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow,
+joined his two hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile,
+"May I venture to hope, dear signorina, for the honor
+of your hand?"
+
+"Of course you may!" said Mrs. Light.  "The honor is for us."
+
+Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a courtesy
+as profound as his own bow.  "You are very kind, but you are too late.
+I have just accepted!"
+
+"Ah, my own darling!" murmured--almost moaned--Mrs. Light.
+
+Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance--a glance
+brilliant on both sides.  She passed her hand into his arm;
+he tossed his clustering locks and led her away.
+
+A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she
+had rejected leaning against a doorway.  He was ugly, but what
+is called distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye,
+a sallow complexion, a long, thin neck; his hair was cropped
+en brosse.  He looked very young, yet extremely bored.
+He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an imperceptible moustache.
+Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by, and, having joined him,
+asked him the young man's name.
+
+"Oh," said the Cavaliere, "he 's a pezzo grosso!
+A Neapolitan.  Prince Casamassima."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  Frascati
+
+One day, on entering Roderick's lodging (not the modest rooms on
+the Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous
+apartment on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table
+addressed to himself.  It was from Roderick, and consisted
+of but three lines:  "I am gone to Frascati--for meditation.
+If I am not at home on Friday, you had better join me."
+On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to Frascati.
+Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending
+his days, according to his own account, lying under the trees
+of the Villa Mondragone, reading Ariosto.  He was in a
+sombre mood; "meditation" seemed not to have been fruitful.
+Nothing especially pertinent to our narrative had passed
+between the two young men since Mrs. Light's ball, save a
+few words bearing on an incident of that entertainment.
+Rowland informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told
+Miss Light of his engagement.  "I don't know whether you 'll
+thank me," he had said, "but it 's my duty to let you know it.
+Miss Light perhaps has already done so."
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly rising.
+"Why should n't I thank you?" he asked.  "I am not ashamed of my engagement."
+
+"As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason
+for not having it known."
+
+"A man does n't gossip about such a matter with strangers,"
+Roderick rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice.
+
+"With strangers--no!" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+Roderick continued his work; but after a moment, turning round with a frown:
+"If you supposed I had a reason for being silent, pray why should
+you have spoken?"
+
+"I did not speak idly, my dear Roderick.  I weighed the matter before I spoke,
+and promised myself to let you know immediately afterwards.  It seemed to me
+that Miss Light had better know that your affections are pledged."
+
+"The Cavaliere has put it into your head, then, that I am making
+love to her?"
+
+"No; in that case I would not have spoken to her first."
+
+"Do you mean, then, that she is making love to me?"
+
+"This is what I mean," said Rowland, after a pause.
+"That girl finds you interesting, and is pleased, even though
+she may play indifference, at your finding her so.
+I said to myself that it might save her some sentimental
+disappointment to know without delay that you are not at liberty
+to become indefinitely interested in other women."
+
+"You seem to have taken the measure of my liberty with
+extraordinary minuteness!" cried Roderick.
+
+"You must do me justice.  I am the cause of your separation
+from Miss Garland, the cause of your being exposed to temptations
+which she hardly even suspects.  How could I ever face her,"
+Rowland demanded, with much warmth of tone, "if at the end of it
+all she should be unhappy?"
+
+"I had no idea that Miss Garland had made such an impression on you.
+You are too zealous; I take it she did n't charge you to look
+after her interests."
+
+"If anything happens to you, I am accountable.  You must understand that."
+
+"That 's a view of the situation I can't accept; in your own interest,
+no less than in mine.  It can only make us both very uncomfortable.
+I know all I owe you; I feel it; you know that!  But I am not a small boy nor
+an outer barbarian any longer, and, whatever I do, I do with my eyes open.
+When I do well, the merit 's mine; if I do ill, the fault 's mine!
+The idea that I make you nervous is detestable.  Dedicate your nerves
+to some better cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a quarrel,
+we shall settle it between ourselves."
+
+Rowland had found himself wondering, shortly before, whether
+possibly his brilliant young friend was without a conscience;
+now it dimly occurred to him that he was without a heart.
+Rowland, as we have already intimated, was a man with a
+moral passion, and no small part of it had gone forth into
+his relations with Roderick.  There had been, from the first,
+no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland
+had implicitly offered everything that belongs to friendship,
+and Roderick had, apparently, as deliberately accepted it.
+Rowland, indeed, had taken an exquisite satisfaction in his
+companion's deep, inexpressive assent to his interest in him.
+"Here is an uncommonly fine thing," he said to himself:
+"a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship
+does the thing that love alone generally has the credit of--
+knocks the bottom out of pride!"  His reflective judgment
+of Roderick, as time went on, had indulged in a great many
+irrepressible vagaries; but his affection, his sense of something
+in his companion's whole personality that overmastered his heart
+and beguiled his imagination, had never for an instant faltered.
+He listened to Roderick's last words, and then he smiled
+as he rarely smiled--with bitterness.
+
+"I don't at all like your telling me I am too zealous," he said.
+"If I had not been zealous, I should never have cared a fig for you."
+
+Roderick flushed deeply, and thrust his modeling tool
+up to the handle into the clay.  "Say it outright!
+You have been a great fool to believe in me."
+
+"I desire to say nothing of the kind, and you don't honestly believe I do!"
+said Rowland.  "It seems to me I am really very good-natured even to reply
+to such nonsense."
+
+Roderick sat down, crossed his arms, and fixed his eyes on the floor.
+Rowland looked at him for some moments; it seemed to him that he had
+never so clearly read his companion's strangely commingled character--
+his strength and his weakness, his picturesque personal attractiveness
+and his urgent egoism, his exalted ardor and his puerile petulance.
+It would have made him almost sick, however, to think that, on the whole,
+Roderick was not a generous fellow, and he was so far from having ceased
+to believe in him that he felt just now, more than ever, that all this
+was but the painful complexity of genius.  Rowland, who had not a grain
+of genius either to make one say he was an interested reasoner,
+or to enable one to feel that he could afford a dangerous theory or two,
+adhered to his conviction of the essential salubrity of genius.
+Suddenly he felt an irresistible compassion for his companion; it seemed
+to him that his beautiful faculty of production was a double-edged instrument,
+susceptible of being dealt in back-handed blows at its possessor.
+Genius was priceless, inspired, divine; but it was also, at its hours,
+capricious, sinister, cruel; and men of genius, accordingly, were alternately
+very enviable and very helpless.  It was not the first time he had had
+a sense of Roderick's standing helpless in the grasp of his temperament.
+It had shaken him, as yet, but with a half good-humored wantonness;
+but, henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle him more roughly.
+These were not times, therefore, for a friend to have a short patience.
+
+"When you err, you say, the fault 's your own," he said at last.
+"It is because your faults are your own that I care about them."
+
+Rowland's voice, when he spoke with feeling, had an extraordinary amenity.
+Roderick sat staring a moment longer at the floor, then he sprang
+up and laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.
+"You are the best man in the world," he said, "and I am a vile brute.
+Only," he added in a moment, "you don't understand me!"  And he looked
+at him with eyes of such radiant lucidity that one might have said
+(and Rowland did almost say so, himself) that it was the fault of one's
+own grossness if one failed to read to the bottom of that beautiful soul.
+
+Rowland smiled sadly.  "What is it now?  Explain."
+
+"Oh, I can't explain!" cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work.
+"I have only one way of expressing my deepest feelings--it 's this!"
+And he swung his tool.  He stood looking at the half-wrought clay
+for a moment, and then flung the instrument down.  "And even this half
+the time plays me false!"
+
+Rowland felt that his irritation had not subsided,
+and he himself had no taste for saying disagreeable things.
+Nevertheless he saw no sufficient reason to forbear uttering
+the words he had had on his conscience from the beginning.
+"We must do what we can and be thankful," he said.
+"And let me assure you of this--that it won't help you to become
+entangled with Miss Light."
+
+Roderick pressed his hand to his forehead with vehemence and then shook
+it in the air, despairingly; a gesture that had become frequent with him
+since he had been in Italy.  "No, no, it 's no use; you don't understand me!
+But I don't blame you.  You can't!"
+
+"You think it will help you, then?" said Rowland, wondering.
+
+"I think that when you expect a man to produce beautiful and wonderful
+works of art, you ought to allow him a certain freedom of action,
+you ought to give him a long rope, you ought to let him follow his
+fancy and look for his material wherever he thinks he may find it!
+A mother can't nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist
+can't bring his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience.
+You demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds
+the imagination.  In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl;
+in life we must be mere machines.  It won't do.  When you have got an
+artist to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together.
+I don't say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with;
+I don't say they satisfy themselves any better than other people.
+I only say that if you want them to produce, you must let them conceive.
+If you want a bird to sing, you must not cover up its cage.
+Shoot them, the poor devils, drown them, exterminate them, if you will,
+in the interest of public morality; it may be morality would gain--
+I dare say it would!  But if you suffer them to live, let them live
+on their own terms and according to their own inexorable needs!"
+
+Rowland burst out laughing.  "I have no wish whatever either
+to shoot you or to drown you!" he said.  "Why launch such a
+tirade against a warning offered you altogether in the interest
+of your freest development?  Do you really mean that you have
+an inexorable need of embarking on a flirtation with Miss Light?--
+a flirtation as to the felicity of which there may be differences
+of opinion, but which cannot at best, under the circumstances,
+be called innocent.  Your last summer's adventures were more so!
+As for the terms on which you are to live, I had an idea you
+had arranged them otherwise!"
+
+"I have arranged nothing--thank God!  I don't pretend to arrange.
+I am young and ardent and inquisitive, and I admire Miss Light.
+That 's enough.  I shall go as far as admiration leads me.
+I am not afraid.  Your genuine artist may be sometimes half a madman,
+but he 's not a coward!"
+
+"Suppose that in your speculation you should come to grief,
+not only sentimentally but artistically?"
+
+"Come what come will!  If I 'm to fizzle out, the sooner
+I know it the better.  Sometimes I half suspect it.
+But let me at least go out and reconnoitre for the enemy,
+and not sit here waiting for him, cudgeling my brains for ideas
+that won't come!"
+
+Do what he would, Rowland could not think of Roderick's theory
+of unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case
+under discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion.
+But he saw it was vain to combat longer, for inclination
+was powerfully on Roderick's side.  He laid his hand on
+Roderick's shoulder, looked at him a moment with troubled eyes,
+then shook his head mournfully and turned away.
+
+"I can't work any more," said Roderick.  "You have upset me!
+I 'll go and stroll on the Pincian."  And he tossed aside
+his working-jacket and prepared himself for the street.
+As he was arranging his cravat before the glass,
+something occurred to him which made him thoughtful.
+He stopped a few moments afterward, as they were going out,
+with his hand on the door-knob. "You did, from your own point
+of view, an indiscreet thing," he said, "to tell Miss Light
+of my engagement."
+
+Rowland looked at him with a glance which was partly an interrogation,
+but partly, also, an admission.
+
+"If she 's the coquette you say," Roderick added, "you have given
+her a reason the more."
+
+"And that 's the girl you propose to devote yourself to?" cried Rowland.
+
+"Oh, I don't say it, mind!  I only say that she 's the most interesting
+creature in the world!  The next time you mean to render me a service,
+pray give me notice beforehand!"
+
+It was perfectly characteristic of Roderick that, a fortnight later, he should
+have let his friend know that he depended upon him for society at Frascati,
+as freely as if no irritating topic had ever been discussed between them.
+Rowland thought him generous, and he had at any rate a liberal faculty
+of forgetting that he had given you any reason to be displeased with him.
+It was equally characteristic of Rowland that he complied with his friend's
+summons without a moment's hesitation.  His cousin Cecilia had once told him
+that he was the dupe of his intense benevolence.  She put the case with too
+little favor, or too much, as the reader chooses; it is certain, at least,
+that he had a constitutional tendency towards magnanimous interpretations.
+Nothing happened, however, to suggest to him that he was deluded in thinking
+that Roderick's secondary impulses were wiser than his primary ones,
+and that the rounded total of his nature had a harmony perfectly attuned
+to the most amiable of its brilliant parts.  Roderick's humor, for the time,
+was pitched in a minor key; he was lazy, listless, and melancholy,
+but he had never been more friendly and kindly and appealingly submissive.
+Winter had begun, by the calendar, but the weather was divinely mild,
+and the two young men took long slow strolls on the hills and lounged away
+the mornings in the villas.  The villas at Frascati are delicious places,
+and replete with romantic suggestiveness.  Roderick, as he had said,
+was meditating, and if a masterpiece was to come of his meditations,
+Rowland was perfectly willing to bear him company and coax along the process.
+But Roderick let him know from the first that he was in a miserably
+sterile mood, and, cudgel his brains as he would, could think of nothing
+that would serve for the statue he was to make for Mr. Leavenworth.
+
+"It is worse out here than in Rome," he said, "for here
+I am face to face with the dead blank of my mind!
+There I could n't think of anything either, but there
+I found things to make me forget that I needed to."
+This was as frank an allusion to Christina Light as could have been
+expected under the circumstances; it seemed, indeed, to Rowland
+surprisingly frank, and a pregnant example of his companion's
+often strangely irresponsible way of looking at harmful facts.
+Roderick was silent sometimes for hours, with a puzzled look on his
+face and a constant fold between his even eyebrows; at other times
+he talked unceasingly, with a slow, idle, half-nonsensical drawl.
+Rowland was half a dozen times on the point of asking him what
+was the matter with him; he was afraid he was going to be ill.
+Roderick had taken a great fancy to the Villa Mondragone,
+and used to declaim fantastic compliments to it as they
+strolled in the winter sunshine on the great terrace which
+looks toward Tivoli and the iridescent Sabine mountains.
+He carried his volume of Ariosto in his pocket, and took
+it out every now and then and spouted half a dozen stanzas
+to his companion.  He was, as a general thing, very little
+of a reader; but at intervals he would take a fancy to one of
+the classics and peruse it for a month in disjointed scraps.
+He had picked up Italian without study, and had a wonderfully
+sympathetic accent, though in reading aloud he ruined
+the sense of half the lines he rolled off so sonorously.
+Rowland, who pronounced badly but understood everything,
+once said to him that Ariosto was not the poet for a man
+of his craft; a sculptor should make a companion of Dante.
+So he lent him the Inferno, which he had brought with him,
+and advised him to look into it.  Roderick took it
+with some eagerness; perhaps it would brighten his wits.
+He returned it the next day with disgust; he had found
+it intolerably depressing.
+
+"A sculptor should model as Dante writes--you 're right there," he said.
+"But when his genius is in eclipse, Dante is a dreadfully smoky lamp.
+By what perversity of fate," he went on, "has it come about that I am
+a sculptor at all?  A sculptor is such a confoundedly special genius;
+there are so few subjects he can treat, so few things in life that bear
+upon his work, so few moods in which he himself is inclined to it."
+(It may be noted that Rowland had heard him a dozen times affirm
+the flat reverse of all this.) "If I had only been a painter--
+a little quiet, docile, matter-of-fact painter, like our friend Singleton--
+I should only have to open my Ariosto here to find a subject, to find color
+and attitudes, stuffs and composition; I should only have to look up from
+the page at that mouldy old fountain against the blue sky, at that cypress
+alley wandering away like a procession of priests in couples, at the crags
+and hollows of the Sabine hills, to find myself grasping my brush.
+Best of all would be to be Ariosto himself, or one of his brotherhood.
+Then everything in nature would give you a hint, and every form
+of beauty be part of your stock.  You would n't have to look at
+things only to say,--with tears of rage half the time,--'Oh, yes,
+it 's wonderfully pretty, but what the deuce can I do with it?'
+But a sculptor, now!  That 's a pretty trade for a fellow who has got
+his living to make and yet is so damnably constituted that he can't work
+to order, and considers that, aesthetically, clock ornaments don't pay!
+You can't model the serge-coated cypresses, nor those mouldering old
+Tritons and all the sunny sadness of that dried-up fountain; you can't
+put the light into marble--the lovely, caressing, consenting Italian
+light that you get so much of for nothing.  Say that a dozen times in his
+life a man has a complete sculpturesque vision--a vision in which the
+imagination recognizes a subject and the subject kindles the imagination.
+It is a remunerative rate of work, and the intervals are comfortable!"
+
+One morning, as the two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed
+grass at the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa
+Mondragone, Roderick delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious
+speculations as to the possible mischances of one's genius.
+"What if the watch should run down," he asked, "and you
+should lose the key?  What if you should wake up some morning
+and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped?
+Such things have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have
+had to grin and bear it.  The whole matter of genius is a mystery.
+It bloweth where it listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism.
+If it gets out of order we can't mend it; if it breaks down
+altogether we can't set it going again.  We must let it choose
+its own pace, and hold our breath lest it should lose its balance.
+It 's dealt out in different doses, in big cups and little,
+and when you have consumed your portion it 's as naif to ask
+for more as it was for Oliver Twist to ask for more porridge.
+Lucky for you if you 've got one of the big cups; we drink
+them down in the dark, and we can't tell their size until
+we tip them up and hear the last gurgle.  Those of some men
+last for life; those of others for a couple of years.
+Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably?" he went on.
+"Nothing is more common than for an artist who has set out
+on his journey on a high-stepping horse to find himself all
+of a sudden dismounted and invited to go his way on foot.
+You can number them by the thousand--the people of two or
+three successes; the poor fellows whose candle burnt out in a night.
+Some of them groped their way along without it, some of them
+gave themselves up for blind and sat down by the wayside
+to beg.  Who shall say that I 'm not one of these?
+Who shall assure me that my credit is for an unlimited sum?
+Nothing proves it, and I never claimed it; or if I did, I did
+so in the mere boyish joy of shaking off the dust of Northampton.
+If you believed so, my dear fellow, you did so at your own risk!
+What am I, what are the best of us, but an experiment?  Do I succeed--
+do I fail?  It does n't depend on me.  I 'm prepared for failure.
+It won't be a disappointment, simply because I shan't survive it.
+The end of my work shall be the end of my life.  When I have
+played my last card, I shall cease to care for the game.
+I 'm not making vulgar threats of suicide; for destiny, I trust,
+won't add insult to injury by putting me to that abominable trouble.
+But I have a conviction that if the hour strikes here,"
+and he tapped his forehead, "I shall disappear, dissolve, be carried
+off in a cloud!  For the past ten days I have had the vision
+of some such fate perpetually swimming before my eyes.
+My mind is like a dead calm in the tropics, and my imagination
+as motionless as the phantom ship in the Ancient Mariner!"
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak, as he often had occasion to listen
+to Roderick's heated monologues, with a number of mental restrictions.
+Both in gravity and in gayety he said more than he meant, and you
+did him simple justice if you privately concluded that neither
+the glow of purpose nor the chill of despair was of so intense
+a character as his florid diction implied.  The moods of an artist,
+his exaltations and depressions, Rowland had often said to himself,
+were like the pen-flourishes a writing-master makes in the air
+when he begins to set his copy.  He may bespatter you with ink,
+he may hit you in the eye, but he writes a magnificent hand.
+It was nevertheless true that at present poor Roderick gave
+unprecedented tokens of moral stagnation, and as for genius being
+held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was at a loss
+to see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him.
+He sighed to himself, and wished that his companion had a
+trifle more of little Sam Singleton's evenness of impulse.
+But then, was Singleton a man of genius?  He answered that such
+reflections seemed to him unprofitable, not to say morbid;
+that the proof of the pudding was in the eating; that he did n't
+know about bringing a genius that had palpably spent its last
+breath back to life again, but that he was satisfied that vigorous
+effort was a cure for a great many ills that seemed far gone.
+"Don't heed your mood," he said, "and don't believe there is any
+calm so dead that your own lungs can't ruffle it with a breeze.
+If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work
+and you will feel like it."
+
+"Set to work and produce abortions!" cried Roderick with ire.
+"Preach that to others.  Production with me must be either
+pleasure or nothing.  As I said just now, I must either stay
+in the saddle or not go at all.  I won't do second-rate work;
+I can't if I would.  I have no cleverness, apart from inspiration.
+I am not a Gloriani!  You are right," he added after a while;
+"this is unprofitable talk, and it makes my head ache.
+I shall take a nap and see if I can dream of a bright idea or two."
+
+He turned his face upward to the parasol of the great pine,
+closed his eyes, and in a short time forgot his sombre fancies.
+January though it was, the mild stillness seemed to vibrate with faint
+midsummer sounds.  Rowland sat listening to them and wishing that,
+for the sake of his own felicity, Roderick's temper were graced
+with a certain absent ductility.  He was brilliant, but was he,
+like many brilliant things, brittle?  Suddenly, to his musing sense,
+the soft atmospheric hum was overscored with distincter sounds.
+He heard voices beyond a mass of shrubbery, at the turn of a
+neighboring path.  In a moment one of them began to seem familiar,
+and an instant later a large white poodle emerged into view.
+He was slowly followed by his mistress.  Miss Light paused a moment
+on seeing Rowland and his companion; but, though the former perceived
+that he was recognized, she made no bow.  Presently she walked
+directly toward him.  He rose and was on the point of waking Roderick,
+but she laid her finger on her lips and motioned him to forbear.
+She stood a moment looking at Roderick's handsome slumber.
+
+"What delicious oblivion!" she said.  "Happy man!  Stenterello"--and she
+pointed to his face--"wake him up!"
+
+The poodle extended a long pink tongue and began to lick Roderick's cheek.
+
+"Why," asked Rowland, "if he is happy?"
+
+"Oh, I want companions in misery!  Besides, I want to show off my dog."
+Roderick roused himself, sat up, and stared.  By this time Mrs. Light
+had approached, walking with a gentleman on each side of her.
+One of these was the Cavaliere Giacosa; the other was Prince Casamassima.
+"I should have liked to lie down on the grass and go to sleep,"
+Christina added.  "But it would have been unheard of."
+
+"Oh, not quite," said the Prince, in English, with a tone of great precision.
+"There was already a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!"
+
+"Charming!" cried Mrs. Light.  "Do you hear that, my dear?"
+
+"When the prince says a brilliant thing, it would be a pity
+to lose it," said the young girl.  "Your servant, sir!"
+And she smiled at him with a grace that might have reassured him,
+if he had thought her compliment ambiguous.
+
+Roderick meanwhile had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to exclaim
+on the oddity of their meeting and to explain that the day was so lovely
+that she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the country.
+And who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr. Hudson
+sleeping under a tree!
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon; I was not sleeping," said Rowland.
+
+"Don't you know that Mr. Mallet is Mr. Hudson's sheep-dog?" asked Christina.
+"He was mounting guard to keep away the wolves."
+
+"To indifferent purpose, madame!" said Rowland, indicating the young girl.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time?"  Christina demanded of Roderick.
+"I never yet happened to learn what men were doing when they supposed women
+were not watching them but it was something vastly below their reputation."
+
+"When, pray," said Roderick, smoothing his ruffled locks,
+"are women not watching them?"
+
+"We shall give you something better to do, at any rate.
+How long have you been here?  It 's an age since I have seen you.
+We consider you domiciled here, and expect you to play host
+and entertain us."
+
+Roderick said that he could offer them nothing but to show them
+the great terrace, with its view; and ten minutes later the group
+was assembled there.  Mrs. Light was extravagant in her satisfaction;
+Christina looked away at the Sabine mountains, in silence.
+The prince stood by, frowning at the rapture of the elder lady.
+
+"This is nothing," he said at last.  "My word of honor.
+Have you seen the terrace at San Gaetano?"
+
+"Ah, that terrace," murmured Mrs. Light, amorously.  "I suppose
+it is magnificent!"
+
+"It is four hundred feet long, and paved with marble.
+And the view is a thousand times more beautiful than this.
+You see, far away, the blue, blue sea and the little
+smoke of Vesuvio!"
+
+"Christina, love," cried Mrs. Light forthwith, "the prince has
+a terrace four hundred feet long, all paved with marble!"
+
+The Cavaliere gave a little cough and began to wipe his eye-glass.
+
+"Stupendous!" said Christina.  "To go from one end to
+the other, the prince must have out his golden carriage."
+This was apparently an allusion to one of the other items
+of the young man's grandeur.
+
+"You always laugh at me," said the prince.  "I know no more what to say!"
+
+She looked at him with a sad smile and shook her head.
+"No, no, dear prince, I don't laugh at you.  Heaven forbid!
+You are much too serious an affair.  I assure you I feel your importance.
+What did you inform us was the value of the hereditary diamonds
+of the Princess Casamassima?"
+
+"Ah, you are laughing at me yet!" said the poor young man,
+standing rigid and pale.
+
+"It does n't matter," Christina went on.  "We have a note of it;
+mamma writes all those things down in a little book!"
+
+"If you are laughed at, dear prince, at least it 's in company,"
+said Mrs. Light, caressingly; and she took his arm, as if to resist
+his possible displacement under the shock of her daughter's sarcasm.
+But the prince looked heavy-eyed toward Rowland and Roderick,
+to whom the young girl was turning, as if he had much rather his lot
+were cast with theirs.
+
+"Is the villa inhabited?"  Christina asked, pointing to the vast
+melancholy structure which rises above the terrace.
+
+"Not privately," said Roderick.  "It is occupied by a Jesuits'
+college, for little boys."
+
+"Can women go in?"
+
+"I am afraid not."  And Roderick began to laugh.
+"Fancy the poor little devils looking up from their Latin
+declensions and seeing Miss Light standing there!"
+
+"I should like to see the poor little devils, with their rosy
+cheeks and their long black gowns, and when they were pretty,
+I should n't scruple to kiss them.  But if I can't have that
+amusement I must have some other.  We must not stand planted on this
+enchanting terrace as if we were stakes driven into the earth.
+We must dance, we must feast, we must do something picturesque.
+Mamma has arranged, I believe, that we are to go back
+to Frascati to lunch at the inn.  I decree that we lunch
+here and send the Cavaliere to the inn to get the provisions!
+He can take the carriage, which is waiting below."
+
+Miss Light carried out this undertaking with unfaltering ardor.
+The Cavaliere was summoned, and he stook to receive her commands
+hat in hand, with his eyes cast down, as if she had been
+a princess addressing her major-domo. She, however, laid her hand
+with friendly grace upon his button-hole, and called him a dear,
+good old Cavaliere, for being always so willing.  Her spirits had
+risen with the occasion, and she talked irresistible nonsense.
+"Bring the best they have," she said, "no matter if it ruins us!
+And if the best is very bad, it will be all the more amusing.
+I shall enjoy seeing Mr. Mallet try to swallow it for propriety's sake!
+Mr. Hudson will say out like a man that it 's horrible stuff,
+and that he 'll be choked first!  Be sure you bring a dish of maccaroni;
+the prince must have the diet of the Neapolitan nobility.
+But I leave all that to you, my poor, dear Cavaliere; you know
+what 's good!  Only be sure, above all, you bring a guitar.
+Mr. Mallet will play us a tune, I 'll dance with Mr. Hudson,
+and mamma will pair off with the prince, of whom she is so fond!"
+
+And as she concluded her recommendations, she patted
+her bland old servitor caressingly on the shoulder.
+He looked askance at Rowland; his little black eye glittered;
+it seemed to say, "Did n't I tell you she was a good girl!"
+
+The Cavaliere returned with zealous speed, accompanied by one
+of the servants of the inn, laden with a basket containing
+the materials of a rustic luncheon.  The porter of the villa
+was easily induced to furnish a table and half a dozen chairs,
+and the repast, when set forth, was pronounced a perfect success;
+not so good as to fail of the proper picturesqueness,
+nor yet so bad as to defeat the proper function of repasts.
+Christina continued to display the most charming animation,
+and compelled Rowland to reflect privately that,
+think what one might of her, the harmonious gayety of a
+beautiful girl was the most beautiful sight in nature.
+Her good-humor was contagious.  Roderick, who an hour before had
+been descanting on madness and suicide, commingled his laughter
+with hers in ardent devotion; Prince Casamassima stroked his
+young moustache and found a fine, cool smile for everything;
+his neighbor, Mrs. Light, who had Rowland on the other side,
+made the friendliest confidences to each of the young men,
+and the Cavaliere contributed to the general hilarity by
+the solemnity of his attention to his plate.  As for Rowland,
+the spirit of kindly mirth prompted him to propose the health of this
+useful old gentleman, as the effective author of their pleasure.
+A moment later he wished he had held his tongue, for although
+the toast was drunk with demonstrative good-will, the Cavaliere
+received it with various small signs of eager self-effacement
+which suggested to Rowland that his diminished gentility
+but half relished honors which had a flavor of patronage.
+To perform punctiliously his mysterious duties toward
+the two ladies, and to elude or to baffle observation on his
+own merits--this seemed the Cavaliere's modest programme.
+Rowland perceived that Mrs. Light, who was not always remarkable
+for tact, seemed to have divined his humor on this point.
+She touched her glass to her lips, but offered him no compliment
+and immediately gave another direction to the conversation.
+He had brought no guitar, so that when the feast was over there
+was nothing to hold the little group together.  Christina wandered
+away with Roderick to another part of the terrace; the prince,
+whose smile had vanished, sat gnawing the head of his cane,
+near Mrs. Light, and Rowland strolled apart with the Cavaliere,
+to whom he wished to address a friendly word in compensation
+for the discomfort he had inflicted on his modesty.
+The Cavaliere was a mine of information upon all Roman places
+and people; he told Rowland a number of curious anecdotes
+about the old Villa Mondragone.  "If history could always be
+taught in this fashion!" thought Rowland.  "It 's the ideal--
+strolling up and down on the very spot commemorated,
+hearing sympathetic anecdotes from deeply indigenous lips."
+At last, as they passed, Rowland observed the mournful
+physiognomy of Prince Casamassima, and, glancing toward
+the other end of the terrace, saw that Roderick and Christina
+had disappeared from view.  The young man was sitting upright,
+in an attitude, apparently habitual, of ceremonious rigidity;
+but his lower jaw had fallen and was propped up with his cane,
+and his dull dark eye was fixed upon the angle of the villa
+which had just eclipsed Miss Light and her companion.
+His features were grotesque and his expression vacuous;
+but there was a lurking delicacy in his face which seemed
+to tell you that nature had been making Casamassimas for a great
+many centuries, and, though she adapted her mould to circumstances,
+had learned to mix her material to an extraordinary fineness
+and to perform the whole operation with extreme smoothness.
+The prince was stupid, Rowland suspected, but he imagined
+he was amiable, and he saw that at any rate he had the great
+quality of regarding himself in a thoroughly serious light.
+Rowland touched his companion's arm and pointed to
+the melancholy nobleman.
+
+"Why in the world does he not go after her and insist on
+being noticed!" he asked.
+
+"Oh, he 's very proud!" said the Cavaliere.
+
+"That 's all very well, but a gentleman who cultivates a passion
+for that young lady must be prepared to make sacrifices."
+
+"He thinks he has already made a great many.  He comes
+of a very great family--a race of princes who for six hundred
+years have married none but the daughters of princes.
+But he is seriously in love, and he would marry her to-morrow."
+
+"And she will not have him?"
+
+"Ah, she is very proud, too!"  The Cavaliere was silent
+a moment, as if he were measuring the propriety of frankness.
+He seemed to have formed a high opinion of Rowland's discretion,
+for he presently continued:  "It would be a great match, for she
+brings him neither a name nor a fortune--nothing but her beauty.
+But the signorina will receive no favors; I know her well!
+She would rather have her beauty blasted than seem to care
+about the marriage, and if she ever accepts the prince it
+will be only after he has implored her on his knees!"
+
+"But she does care about it," said Rowland, "and to bring him
+to his knees she is working upon his jealousy by pretending
+to be interested in my friend Hudson.  If you said more,
+you would say that, eh?"
+
+The Cavaliere's shrewdness exchanged a glance with Rowland's. "By no means.
+Miss Light is a singular girl; she has many romantic ideas.  She would be
+quite capable of interesting herself seriously in an interesting young man,
+like your friend, and doing her utmost to discourage a splendid suitor,
+like the prince.  She would act sincerely and she would go very far.
+But it would be unfortunate for the young man," he added, after a pause,
+"for at the last she would retreat!"
+
+"A singular girl, indeed!"
+
+"She would accept the more brilliant parti.  I can answer for it."
+
+"And what would be her motive?"
+
+"She would be forced.  There would be circumstances.... I can't
+tell you more."
+
+"But this implies that the rejected suitor would also come back.
+He might grow tired of waiting."
+
+"Oh, this one is good!  Look at him now."  Rowland looked,
+and saw that the prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was
+marching restlessly to and fro between the villa and the parapet
+of the terrace.  Every now and then he looked at his watch.
+"In this country, you know," said the Cavaliere, "a young
+lady never goes walking alone with a handsome young man.
+It seems to him very strange."
+
+"It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must
+be very much in love."
+
+"Oh, he will overlook it.  He is far gone."
+
+"Who is this exemplary lover, then; what is he?"
+
+"A Neapolitan; one of the oldest houses in Italy.  He is a prince
+in your English sense of the word, for he has a princely fortune.
+He is very young; he is only just of age; he saw the signorina
+last winter in Naples.  He fell in love with her from the first,
+but his family interfered, and an old uncle, an ecclesiastic,
+Monsignor B----, hurried up to Naples, seized him, and locked him up.
+Meantime he has passed his majority, and he can dispose of himself.
+His relations are moving heaven and earth to prevent his
+marrying Miss Light, and they have sent us word that he forfeits
+his property if he takes his wife out of a certain line.
+I have investigated the question minutely, and I find this is but a
+fiction to frighten us.  He is perfectly free; but the estates are
+such that it is no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands.
+For Italy, it is an extraordinary case of unincumbered property.
+The prince has been an orphan from his third year; he has therefore
+had a long minority and made no inroads upon his fortune.
+Besides, he is very prudent and orderly; I am only afraid that some day
+he will pull the purse-strings too tight.  All these years his affairs
+have been in the hands of Monsignor B----, who has managed them
+to perfection--paid off mortagages, planted forests, opened up mines.
+It is now a magnificent fortune; such a fortune as, with his name,
+would justify the young man in pretending to any alliance whatsoever.
+And he lays it all at the feet of that young girl who is wandering
+in yonder boschetto with a penniless artist."
+
+"He is certainly a phoenix of princes!  The signora must
+be in a state of bliss."
+
+The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave.  "The signora has a high
+esteem for his character."
+
+"His character, by the way," rejoined Rowland, with a smile;
+"what sort of a character is it?"
+
+"Eh, Prince Casamassima is a veritable prince!
+He is a very good young man.  He is not brilliant,
+nor witty, but he 'll not let himself be made a fool of.
+He 's very grave and very devout--though he does propose to marry
+a Protestant.  He will handle that point after marriage.
+He 's as you see him there:  a young man without many ideas,
+but with a very firm grasp of a single one--the conviction that
+Prince Casamassima is a very great person, that he greatly honors
+any young lady by asking for her hand, and that things are going
+very strangely when the young lady turns her back upon him.
+The poor young man, I am sure, is profoundly perplexed.
+But I whisper to him every day, 'Pazienza, Signor Principe!' "
+
+"So you firmly believe," said Rowland, in conclusion, "that Miss
+Light will accept him just in time not to lose him!"
+
+"I count upon it.  She would make too perfect a princess
+to miss her destiny."
+
+"And you hold that nevertheless, in the mean while,
+in listening to, say, my friend Hudson, she will have been
+acting in good faith?"
+
+The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable smile.
+"Eh, dear signore, the Christina is very romantic!"
+
+"So much so, you intimate, that she will eventually retract, in consequence
+not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward pressure?"
+
+"If everything else fails, there is that resource.
+But it is mysterious, as you say, and you need n't try to guess it.
+You will never know."
+
+"The poor signorina, then, will suffer!"
+
+"Not too much, I hope."
+
+"And the poor young man!  You maintain that there is nothing
+but disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses
+his heart to her!"
+
+The Cavaliere hesitated.  "He had better," he said in a moment,
+"go and pursue his studies in Florence.  There are very fine
+antiques in the Uffizi!"
+
+Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, to whom her restless
+protege had not yet returned.  "That 's right," she said;
+"sit down here; I have something serious to say to you.
+I am going to talk to you as a friend.  I want your assistance.
+In fact, I demand it; it 's your duty to render it.
+Look at that unhappy young man."
+
+"Yes," said Rowland, "he seems unhappy."
+
+"He is just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy
+and owns one of the greatest properties, and he is pining away with love
+for my daughter."
+
+"So the Cavaliere tells me."
+
+"The Cavaliere should n't gossip," said Mrs. Light dryly.
+"Such information should come from me.  The prince
+is pining, as I say; he 's consumed, he 's devoured.
+It 's a real Italian passion; I know what that means!"
+And the lady gave a speaking glance, which seemed to coquet
+for a moment with retrospect.  "Meanwhile, if you please,
+my daughter is hiding in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson.
+I could cry with rage."
+
+"If things are so bad as that," said Rowland, "it seems to me that you
+ought to find nothing easier than to dispatch the Cavaliere to bring
+the guilty couple back."
+
+"Never in the world!  My hands are tied.  Do you know what Christina
+would do?  She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business--
+Heaven forgive her!--and send me word that, if she had a mind to,
+she would walk in the woods till midnight.  Fancy the Cavaliere
+coming back and delivering such a message as that before the prince!
+Think of a girl wantonly making light of such a chance as hers!
+He would marry her to-morrow, at six o'clock in the morning!"
+
+"It is certainly very sad," said Rowland.
+
+"That costs you little to say.  If you had left your precious young
+meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me
+a world of distress!"
+
+"Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland.
+"You came and disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio."
+
+"In an evil hour!  I wish to Heaven you would talk with him."
+
+"I have done my best."
+
+"I wish, then, you would take him away.  You have plenty of money.
+Do me a favor.  Take him to travel.  Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo.
+Then, when Christina is Princess Casamassima," Mrs. Light added in a moment,
+"he may come back if he chooses."
+
+"Does she really care for him?"  Rowland asked, abruptly.
+
+"She thinks she does, possibly.  She is a living riddle.
+She must needs follow out every idea that comes into her head.
+Fortunately, most of them don't last long; but this one may last long
+enough to give the prince a chill.  If that were to happen, I don't
+know what I should do!  I should be the most miserable of women.
+It would be too cruel, after all I 've suffered to make her
+what she is, to see the labor of years blighted by a caprice.
+For I can assure you, sir," Mrs. Light went on, "that if my daughter
+is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the credit is mine."
+
+Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious.
+He saw that the lady's irritated nerves demanded comfort from
+flattering reminiscence, and he assumed designedly the attitude
+of a zealous auditor.  She began to retail her efforts,
+her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her disappointments,
+in the cause of her daughter's matrimonial fortunes.
+It was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince
+continued to pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum
+marking the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses.
+Mrs. Light evidently, at an early period, had gathered her
+maternal hopes into a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers
+and burnt incense to, and treated like a sort of fetish.
+They had been her religion; she had none other, and she performed
+her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the light of day.
+The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated,
+so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand,
+so dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over,
+that it had lost by this time much of its early freshness,
+and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity.
+But it was still brought forth in moments of trouble to have its
+tinseled petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar.
+Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had a genuine maternal conscience;
+she considered that she had been performing a sacred duty in bringing
+up Christina to set her cap for a prince, and when the future
+looked dark, she found consolation in thinking that destiny could
+never have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person.
+This conscience upside down presented to Rowland's fancy a real
+physical image; he was on the point, half a dozen times,
+of bursting out laughing.
+
+"I don't know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs. Light,
+"and I don't care!  I have had one for the last fifteen years.
+People have laughed at it, but they have n't laughed me out of it.
+It has been everything to me.  I could n't have lived without it.
+One must believe in something!  It came to me in a flash,
+when Christina was five years old.  I remember the day and
+the place, as if it were yesterday.  She was a very ugly baby;
+for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her,
+and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her.
+She had an Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted
+that she would grow up pretty.  I could n't believe her;
+I used to contradict her, and we were forever squabbling.
+I was just a little silly in those days--surely I may say it now--
+and I was very fond of being amused.  If my daughter was ugly,
+it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of amusement.
+People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl;
+if it was so, I 've made up for it since.  One day I went to drive
+on the Pincio in very low spirits.  A trusted friend had greatly
+disappointed me.  While I was there he passed me in a carriage,
+driving with a horrible woman who had made trouble between us.
+I got out of my carriage to walk about, and at last sat
+down on a bench.  I can show you the spot at this hour.
+While I sat there a child came wandering along the path--
+a little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed
+in crimson and orange.  She stopped in front of me and stared
+at me, and I stared at her queer little dress, which was
+a cheap imitation of the costume of one of these contadine.
+At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself, 'Bless me,
+what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes,
+what a magnificent head of hair!  If my poor Christina were
+only like that!'  The child turned away slowly, but looking
+back with its eyes fixed on me.  All of a sudden I gave a cry,
+pounced on it, pressed it in my arms, and covered it with kisses.
+It was Christina, my own precious child, so disguised
+by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself
+in making for her, that her own mother had not recognized her.
+She knew me, but she said afterwards that she had not spoken
+to me because I looked so angry.  Of course my face was sad.
+I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home post-haste,
+pulled off her rags, and, as I may say, wrapped her in cotton.
+I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature
+in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties,
+a priceless treasure!  Every day, after that, the certainty grew.
+From that time I lived only for my daughter.  I watched her,
+I caressed her from morning till night, I worshipped her.
+I went to see doctors about her, I took every sort of advice.
+I was determined she should be perfection.  The things that
+have been done for that girl, sir--you would n't believe them;
+they would make you smile!  Nothing was spared; if I had been
+told that she must have a bath every morning of molten pearls,
+I would have found means to give it to her.  She never raised
+a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but perfumes,
+she walked upon velvet.  She never was out of my sight,
+and from that day to this I have never said a sharp word to her.
+By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel,
+and so noticed wherever we went that I had to make her wear a veil,
+like a woman of twenty.  Her hair reached down to her feet;
+her hands were the hands of a princess.  Then I saw that she
+was as clever as she was beautiful, and that she had only
+to play her cards.  She had masters, professors, every
+educational advantage.  They told me she was a little prodigy.
+She speaks French, Italian, German, better than most natives.
+She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her
+fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise!
+I traveled all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel.
+The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child's
+party at Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give
+her up to him and let him have her educated for the ballet.
+I said, 'No, I thank you, sir; she is meant to be something
+finer than a princesse de theatre.'  I had a passionate
+belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose,
+that she might be a princess out and out.  It has never left
+me till this hour, and I can assure you that it has sustained
+me in many embarrassments.  Financial, some of them; I don't
+mind confessing it!  I have raised money on that girl's face!
+I 've taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil,
+and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe!
+She, of course, was too young to understand me.  And yet,
+as a child, you would have said she knew what was in store for her;
+before she could read, she had the manners, the tastes, the instincts
+of a little princess.  She would have nothing to do with shabby
+things or shabby people; if she stained one of her frocks,
+she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
+At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be
+sent for by all the great people to play with their children.
+She has played at kissing-games with people who now stand
+on the steps of thrones!  I have gone so far as to think
+at times that those childish kisses were a sign--a symbol--
+a portent.  You may laugh at me if you like, but have n't
+such things happened again and again without half as good
+a cause, and does n't history notoriously repeat itself?
+There was a little Spanish girl at a second-rate English
+boarding-school thirty years ago!.... The Empress certainly
+is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray?
+I 've dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month.
+I won't tell you I have been to consult those old women who
+advertise in the newspapers; you 'll call me an old imbecile.
+Imbecile if you please!  I have refused magnificent offers
+because I believed that somehow or other--if wars and revolutions
+were needed to bring it about--we should have nothing less
+than that.  There might be another coup d'etat somewhere,
+and another brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife!
+At last, however," Mrs. Light proceeded with incomparable gravity,
+"since the overturning of the poor king of Naples and that
+charming queen, and the expulsion of all those dear little
+old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the dreadful radical
+talk that is going on all over the world, it has come to seem
+to me that with Christina in such a position I should be
+really very nervous.  Even in such a position she would hold
+her head very high, and if anything should happen to her,
+she would make no concessions to the popular fury.
+The best thing, if one is prudent, seems to be a nobleman of
+the highest possible rank, short of belonging to a reigning stock.
+There you see one striding up and down, looking at his watch,
+and counting the minutes till my daughter reappears!"
+
+Rowland listened to all this with a huge compassion
+for the heroine of the tale.  What an education,
+what a history, what a school of character and of morals!
+He looked at the prince and wondered whether he too had
+heard Mrs. Light's story.  If he had he was a brave man.
+"I certainly hope you 'll keep him," he said to Mrs. Light.
+"You have played a dangerous game with your daughter;
+it would be a pity not to win.  But there is hope for you yet;
+here she comes at last!"
+
+Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her
+companion with the same indifferent tread with which she had departed.
+Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek
+which she had not carried away with her, and there was certainly
+a light in Roderick's eyes which he had not seen there for a week.
+
+"Bless my soul, how they are all looking at us!" she cried,
+as they advanced.  "One would think we were prisoners of
+the Inquisition!"  And she paused and glanced from the prince
+to her mother, and from Rowland to the Cavaliere, and then
+threw back her head and burst into far-ringing laughter.
+"What is it, pray?  Have I been very improper?  Am I ruined forever?
+Dear prince, you are looking at me as if I had committed
+the unpardonable sin!"
+
+"I myself," said the prince, "would never have ventured to ask
+you to walk with me alone in the country for an hour!"
+
+"The more fool you, dear prince, as the vulgar say!
+Our walk has been charming.  I hope you, on your side,
+have enjoyed each other's society."
+
+"My dear daughter," said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined
+son-in-law, "I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach home.
+We will go back to the carriage."
+
+"Something serious!  Decidedly, it is the Inquisition.
+Mr. Hudson, stand firm, and let us agree to make no
+confessions without conferring previously with each other!
+They may put us on the rack first.  Mr. Mallet, I see also,"
+Christina added, "has something serious to say to me!"
+
+Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his
+lately-stirred pity in his eyes.  "Possibly," he said.
+"But it must be for some other time."
+
+"I am at your service.  I see our good-humor is gone.
+And I only wanted to be amiable!  It is very discouraging.
+Cavaliere, you, only, look as if you had a little of the milk
+of human kindness left; from your venerable visage, at least;
+there is no telling what you think.  Give me your arm and
+take me away!"
+
+The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in the
+grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends farewell.
+Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes;
+a manoeuvre for which Rowland imagined the prince was grateful,
+as it enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his
+attitude of distinguished disapproval.Rowland found himself aroused
+from sleep early the next morning, to see Roderick standing before him,
+dressed for departure, with his bag in his hand.  "I am off," he said.
+"I am back to work.  I have an idea.  I must strike while the iron
+'s hot!  Farewell!"  And he departed by the first train.
+Rowland went alone by the next.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  Saint Cecilia's
+
+Rowland went often to the Coliseum; he never wearied of it.
+One morning, about a month after his return from Frascati,
+as he was strolling across the vast arena, he observed a young
+woman seated on one of the fragments of stone which are ranged
+along the line of the ancient parapet.  It seemed to him that
+he had seen her before, but he was unable to localize her face.
+Passing her again, he perceived that one of the little
+red-legged French soldiers at that time on guard there had
+approached her and was gallantly making himself agreeable.
+She smiled brilliantly, and Rowland recognized the smile
+(it had always pleased him) of a certain comely Assunta,
+who sometimes opened the door for Mrs. Light's visitors.
+He wondered what she was doing alone in the Coliseum, and conjectured
+that Assunta had admirers as well as her young mistress, but that,
+being without the same domiciliary conveniencies, she was using
+this massive heritage of her Latin ancestors as a boudoir.
+In other words, she had an appointment with her lover,
+who had better, from present appearances, be punctual.
+It was a long time since Rowland had ascended to the ruinous
+upper tiers of the great circus, and, as the day was radiant
+and the distant views promised to be particularly clear,
+he determined to give himself the pleasure.  The custodian
+unlocked the great wooden wicket, and he climbed through
+the winding shafts, where the eager Roman crowds had billowed
+and trampled, not pausing till he reached the highest accessible
+point of the ruin.  The views were as fine as he had supposed;
+the lights on the Sabine Mountains had never been more lovely.
+He gazed to his satisfaction and retraced his steps.
+In a moment he paused again on an abutment somewhat lower,
+from which the glance dropped dizzily into the interior.
+There are chance anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions
+of the Coliseum which offer a very fair imitation of the rugged
+face of an Alpine cliff.  In those days a multitude of delicate
+flowers and sprays of wild herbage had found a friendly soil
+in the hoary crevices, and they bloomed and nodded amid the antique
+masonry as freely as they would have done in the virgin rock.
+Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound of voices
+rising up from below.  He had but to step slightly
+forward to find himself overlooking two persons who had
+seated themselves on a narrow ledge, in a sunny corner.
+They had apparently had an eye to extreme privacy, but they
+had not observed that their position was commanded by Rowland's
+stand-point. One of these airy adventurers was a lady,
+thickly veiled, so that, even if he had not been standing
+directly above her, Rowland could not have seen her face.
+The other was a young man, whose face was also invisible,
+but who, as Rowland stood there, gave a toss of his clustering
+locks which was equivalent to the signature--Roderick Hudson.
+A moment's reflection, hereupon, satisfied him of the identity
+of the lady.  He had been unjust to poor Assunta, sitting patient
+in the gloomy arena; she had not come on her own errand.
+Rowland's discoveries made him hesitate.  Should he retire
+as noiselessly as possible, or should he call out a friendly
+good morning?  While he was debating the question, he found
+himself distinctly hearing his friends' words.  They were
+of such a nature as to make him unwilling to retreat, and yet
+to make it awkward to be discovered in a position where it
+would be apparent that he had heard them.
+
+"If what you say is true," said Christina, with her usual
+soft deliberateness--it made her words rise with peculiar
+distinctness to Rowland's ear--"you are simply weak.  I am sorry!
+I hoped--I really believed--you were not."
+
+"No, I am not weak," answered Roderick, with vehemence; "I maintain
+that I am not weak!  I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can't help that.
+Weakness is a man's own fault!"
+
+"Incomplete, then!" said Christina, with a laugh.  "It 's
+the same thing, so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement.
+Is it written, then, that I shall really never know what I
+have so often dreamed of?"
+
+"What have you dreamed of?"
+
+"A man whom I can perfectly respect!" cried the young girl, with a
+sudden flame.  "A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire.
+I meet one, as I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe
+to be cast in a larger mould than most of the vile human breed,
+to be large in character, great in talent, strong in will!
+In such a man as that, I say, one's weary imagination at
+last may rest; or it may wander if it will, yet never need
+to wander far from the deeps where one's heart is anchored.
+When I first knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck me.
+I observed you, as women observe, and I fancied you had
+the sacred fire."
+
+"Before heaven, I believe I have!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Ah, but so little!  It flickers and trembles and sputters;
+it goes out, you tell me, for whole weeks together.
+From your own account, it 's ten to one that in the long run
+you 're a failure."
+
+"I say those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them
+they make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting,
+on purpose to refute you!"
+
+"Ah, the man who is strong with what I call strength,"
+Christina replied, "would neither rise nor fall by anything I could say!
+I am a poor, weak woman; I have no strength myself, and I can
+give no strength.  I am a miserable medley of vanity and folly.
+I am silly, I am ignorant, I am affected, I am false.
+I am the fruit of a horrible education, sown on a worthless soil.
+I am all that, and yet I believe I have one merit!  I should know
+a great character when I saw it, and I should delight in it with a
+generosity which would do something toward the remission of my sins.
+For a man who should really give me a certain feeling--
+which I have never had, but which I should know when it came--
+I would send Prince Casamassima and his millions to perdition.
+I don't know what you think of me for saying all this; I suppose
+we have not climbed up here under the skies to play propriety.
+Why have you been at such pains to assure me, after all, that you
+are a little man and not a great one, a weak one and not a strong?
+I innocently imagined that your eyes declared you were strong.
+But your voice condemns you; I always wondered at it; it 's not
+the voice of a conqueror!"
+
+"Give me something to conquer," cried Roderick, "and when I say
+that I thank you from my soul, my voice, whatever you think of it,
+shall speak the truth!"
+
+Christina for a moment said nothing.  Rowland was too interested
+to think of moving.  "You pretend to such devotion," she went on,
+"and yet I am sure you have never really chosen between me
+and that person in America."
+
+"Do me the favor not to speak of her," said Roderick, imploringly.
+
+"Why not?  I say no ill of her, and I think all kinds of good.
+I am certain she is a far better girl than I, and far more likely
+to make you happy."
+
+"This is happiness, this present, palpable moment," said Roderick;
+"though you have such a genius for saying the things that torture me!"
+
+"It 's greater happiness than you deserve, then!  You have never chosen,
+I say; you have been afraid to choose.  You have never really faced
+the fact that you are false, that you have broken your faith.
+You have never looked at it and seen that it was hideous, and yet said,
+'No matter, I 'll brave the penalty, I 'll bear the shame!'
+You have closed your eyes; you have tried to stifle remembrance,
+to persuade yourself that you were not behaving as badly as you
+seemed to be, and there would be some way, after all, of compassing
+bliss and yet escaping trouble.  You have faltered and drifted,
+you have gone on from accident to accident, and I am sure that at
+this present moment you can't tell what it is you really desire!"
+
+Roderick was sitting with his knees drawn up and bent, and his hands clapsed
+around his legs.  He bent his head and rested his forehead on his knees.
+
+Christina went on with a sort of infernal calmness:
+"I believe that, really, you don't greatly care for your friend
+in America any more than you do for me.  You are one of the men who
+care only for themselves and for what they can make of themselves.
+That 's very well when they can make something great,
+and I could interest myself in a man of extraordinary power
+who should wish to turn all his passions to account.
+But if the power should turn out to be, after all, rather ordinary?
+Fancy feeling one's self ground in the mill of a third-rate talent!
+If you have doubts about yourself, I can't reassure you;
+I have too many doubts myself, about everything in this weary world.
+You have gone up like a rocket, in your profession, they tell me;
+are you going to come down like the stick?  I don't pretend to know;
+I repeat frankly what I have said before--that all modern
+sculpture seems to me weak, and that the only things I care
+for are some of the most battered of the antiques of the Vatican.
+No, no, I can't reassure you; and when you tell me--with a confidence
+in my discretion of which, certainly, I am duly sensible--
+that at times you feel terribly small, why, I can only answer,
+'Ah, then, my poor friend, I am afraid you are small.'
+The language I should like to hear, from a certain person,
+would be the language of absolute decision."
+
+Roderick raised his head, but he said nothing; he seemed
+to be exchanging a long glance with his companion.
+The result of it was to make him fling himself back with an
+inarticulate murmur.  Rowland, admonished by the silence,
+was on the point of turning away, but he was arrested by a gesture
+of the young girl.  She pointed for a moment into the blue air.
+Roderick followed the direction of her gesture.
+
+"Is that little flower we see outlined against that dark niche,"
+she asked, "as intensely blue as it looks through my veil?"
+She spoke apparently with the amiable design of directing
+the conversation into a less painful channel.
+
+Rowland, from where he stood, could see the flower she meant--
+a delicate plant of radiant hue, which sprouted from the top of an
+immense fragment of wall some twenty feet from Christina's place.
+
+Roderick turned his head and looked at it without answering.
+At last, glancing round, "Put up your veil!" he said.
+Christina complied.  "Does it look as blue now?" he asked.
+
+"Ah, what a lovely color!" she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
+
+"Would you like to have it?"
+
+She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
+
+"Would you like to have it?" he repeated in a ringing voice.
+
+"Don't look as if you would eat me up," she answered.
+"It 's harmless if I say yes!"
+
+Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower.
+It was separated from the ledge on which he stood by a rugged surface
+of vertical wall, which dropped straight into the dusky vaults behind
+the arena.  Suddenly he took off his hat and flung it behind him.
+Christina then sprang to her feet.
+
+"I will bring it you," he said.
+
+She seized his arm.  "Are you crazy?  Do you mean to kill yourself?"
+
+"I shall not kill myself.  Sit down!"
+
+"Excuse me.  Not till you do!"  And she grasped his arm with both hands.
+
+Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture
+to her former place.  "Go there!" he cried fiercely.
+
+"You can never, never!" she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands.
+"I implore you!"
+
+Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland
+had never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which
+awakened the echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, "Sit down!"
+She hesitated a moment and then she dropped on the ground and buried
+her face in her hands.
+
+Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more.  He saw Roderick
+clasp in his left arm the jagged corner of the vertical
+partition along which he proposed to pursue his crazy journey,
+stretch out his leg, and feel for a resting-place for his foot.
+Rowland had measured with a glance the possibility of his
+sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil.
+The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections,
+the remains apparently of a brick cornice supporting
+the arch of a vault which had long since collapsed.
+It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets and
+grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances
+on a level with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed.
+The relics of the cornice were utterly worthless as a support.
+Rowland had observed this, and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated.
+If the thing were possible, he felt a sudden admiring glee at
+the thought of Roderick's doing it.  It would be finely done,
+it would be gallant, it would have a sort of masculine
+eloquence as an answer to Christina's sinister persiflage.
+But it was not possible!  Rowland left his place with a bound,
+and scrambled down some neighboring steps, and the next
+moment a stronger pair of hands than Christina's were laid
+upon Roderick's shoulder.
+
+He turned, staring, pale and angry.  Christina rose,
+pale and staring, too, but beautiful in her wonder and alarm.
+"My dear Roderick," said Rowland, "I am only preventing you
+from doing a very foolish thing.  That 's an exploit for spiders,
+not for young sculptors of promise."
+
+Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then
+closed his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness.
+"I won't resist you," he said.  "But I have made you obey,"
+he added, turning to Christina.  "Am I weak now?"
+
+She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him
+and addressed Rowland:  "Be so good as to show me the way
+out of this horrible place!"
+
+He helped her back into the corridor; Roderick followed after
+a short interval.  Of course, as they were descending the steps,
+came questions for Rowland to answer, and more or less surprise.
+Where had he come from? how happened he to have appeared at just that moment?
+Rowland answered that he had been rambling overhead, and that,
+looking out of an aperture, he had seen a gentleman preparing to undertake
+a preposterous gymnastic feat, and a lady swooning away in consequence.
+Interference seemed justifiable, and he had made it as prompt as possible.
+Roderick was far from hanging his head, like a man who has been caught
+in the perpetration of an extravagant folly; but if he held it more
+erect than usual Rowland believed that this was much less because
+he had made a show of personal daring than because he had triumphantly
+proved to Christina that, like a certain person she had dreamed of,
+he too could speak the language of decision.  Christina descended
+to the arena in silence, apparently occupied with her own thoughts.
+She betrayed no sense of the privacy of her interview with Roderick
+needing an explanation.  Rowland had seen stranger things in New York!
+The only evidence of her recent agitation was that, on being joined
+by her maid, she declared that she was unable to walk home; she must
+have a carriage.  A fiacre was found resting in the shadow of the Arch
+of Constantine, and Rowland suspected that after she had got into it
+she disburdened herself, under her veil, of a few natural tears.
+
+Rowland had played eavesdropper to so good a purpose that he might
+justly have omitted the ceremony of denouncing himself to Roderick.
+He preferred, however, to let him know that he had overheard a portion
+of his talk with Christina.
+
+"Of course it seems to you," Roderick said, "a proof that I
+am utterly infatuated."
+
+"Miss Light seemed to me to know very well how far she could go,"
+Rowland answered.  "She was twisting you round her finger.
+I don't think she exactly meant to defy you; but your crazy
+pursuit of that flower was a proof that she could go all lengths
+in the way of making a fool of you."
+
+"Yes," said Roderick, meditatively; "she is making a fool of me."
+
+"And what do you expect to come of it?"
+
+"Nothing good!"  And Roderick put his hands into his pockets and looked
+as if he had announced the most colorless fact in the world.
+
+"And in the light of your late interview, what do you make
+of your young lady?"
+
+"If I could tell you that, it would be plain sailing.
+But she 'll not tell me again I am weak!"
+
+"Are you very sure you are not weak?"
+
+"I may be, but she shall never know it."
+
+Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked
+his companion whether he was going to his studio.
+
+Roderick started out of a reverie and passed his hands over his eyes.
+"Oh no, I can't settle down to work after such a scene as that.
+I was not afraid of breaking my neck then, but I feel all in a tremor now.
+I will go--I will go and sit in the sun on the Pincio!"
+
+"Promise me this, first," said Rowland, very solemnly:
+"that the next time you meet Miss Light, it shall be on the earth
+and not in the air."
+
+Since his return from Frascati, Roderick had been working
+doggedly at the statue ordered by Mr. Leavenworth.
+To Rowland's eye he had made a very fair beginning,
+but he had himself insisted, from the first, that he liked
+neither his subject nor his patron, and that it was impossible
+to feel any warmth of interest in a work which was to be
+incorporated into the ponderous personality of Mr. Leavenworth.
+It was all against the grain; he wrought without love.
+Nevertheless after a fashion he wrought, and the figure grew
+beneath his hands.  Miss Blanchard's friend was ordering works
+of art on every side, and his purveyors were in many cases
+persons whom Roderick declared it was infamy to be paired with.
+There had been grand tailors, he said, who declined to make
+you a coat unless you got the hat you were to wear with it
+from an artist of their own choosing.  It seemed to him
+that he had an equal right to exact that his statue should
+not form part of the same system of ornament as the "Pearl
+of Perugia," a picture by an American confrere who had,
+in Mr. Leavenworth's opinion, a prodigious eye for color.
+As a customer, Mr. Leavenworth used to drop into Roderick's studio,
+to see how things were getting on, and give a friendly hint or so.
+He would seat himself squarely, plant his gold-topped cane
+between his legs, which he held very much apart, rest his
+large white hands on the head, and enunciate the principles
+of spiritual art, as he hoisted them one by one, as you
+might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness.
+His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense
+of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst
+of the matter was that the good gentleman's placid vanity had
+an integument whose toughness no sarcastic shaft could pierce.
+Roderick admitted that in thinking over the tribulations
+of struggling genius, the danger of dying of over-patronage
+had never occurred to him.
+
+The deterring effect of the episode of the Coliseum was
+apparently of long continuance; if Roderick's nerves had been
+shaken his hand needed time to recover its steadiness.
+He cultivated composure upon principles of his own; by frequenting
+entertainments from which he returned at four o'clock in the morning,
+and lapsing into habits which might fairly be called irregular.
+He had hitherto made few friends among the artistic fraternity;
+chiefly because he had taken no trouble about it, and there was in his
+demeanor an elastic independence of the favor of his fellow-mortals
+which made social advances on his own part peculiarly necessary.
+Rowland had told him more than once that he ought to fraternize
+a trifle more with the other artists, and he had always answered
+that he had not the smallest objection to fraternizing:
+let them come!  But they came on rare occasions, and Roderick
+was not punctilious about returning their visits.  He declared
+there was not one of them whose works gave him the smallest
+desire to make acquaintance with the insides of their heads.
+For Gloriani he professed a superb contempt, and, having been
+once to look at his wares, never crossed his threshold again.
+The only one of the fraternity for whom by his own admission
+he cared a straw was little Singleton; but he expressed his regard
+only in a kind of sublime hilarity whenever he encountered this
+humble genius, and quite forgot his existence in the intervals.
+He had never been to see him, but Singleton edged his way, from time
+to time, timidly, into Roderick's studio, and agreed with characteristic
+modesty that brilliant fellows like the sculptor might consent
+to receive homage, but could hardly be expected to render it.
+Roderick never exactly accepted homage, and apparently did not quite
+observe whether poor Singleton spoke in admiration or in blame.
+Roderick's taste as to companions was singularly capricious.
+There were very good fellows, who were disposed to cultivate him,
+who bored him to death; and there were others, in whom even Rowland's
+good-nature was unable to discover a pretext for tolerance,
+in whom he appeared to find the highest social qualities.
+He used to give the most fantastic reasons for his likes and dislikes.
+He would declare he could n't speak a civil word to a man
+who brushed his hair in a certain fashion, and he would explain
+his unaccountable fancy for an individual of imperceptible merit
+by telling you that he had an ancestor who in the thirteenth
+century had walled up his wife alive.  "I like to talk to a man
+whose ancestor has walled up his wife alive," he would say.
+"You may not see the fun of it, and think poor P---- is a very
+dull fellow.  It 's very possible; I don't ask you to admire him.
+But, for reasons of my own, I like to have him about.
+The old fellow left her for three days with her face uncovered,
+and placed a long mirror opposite to her, so that she could see,
+as he said, if her gown was a fit!"
+
+His relish for an odd flavor in his friends had led him to make
+the acquaintance of a number of people outside of Rowland's
+well-ordered circle, and he made no secret of their being very queer fish.
+He formed an intimacy, among others, with a crazy fellow who had come
+to Rome as an emissary of one of the Central American republics,
+to drive some ecclesiastical bargain with the papal government.
+The Pope had given him the cold shoulder, but since he had not
+prospered as a diplomatist, he had sought compensation as a man
+of the world, and his great flamboyant curricle and negro lackeys
+were for several weeks one of the striking ornaments of the Pincian.
+He spoke a queer jargon of Italian, Spanish, French, and English,
+humorously relieved with scraps of ecclesiastical Latin,
+and to those who inquired of Roderick what he found to interest
+him in such a fantastic jackanapes, the latter would reply,
+looking at his interlocutor with his lucid blue eyes, that it
+was worth any sacrifice to hear him talk nonsense!  The two had
+gone together one night to a ball given by a lady of some renown
+in the Spanish colony, and very late, on his way home, Roderick came
+up to Rowland's rooms, in whose windows he had seen a light.
+Rowland was going to bed, but Roderick flung himself into an armchair
+and chattered for an hour.  The friends of the Costa Rican envoy
+were as amusing as himself, and in very much the same line.
+The mistress of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and gold
+heels to her slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had
+sent for a pair of castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced
+a fandango, while the gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor.
+"It was awfully low," Roderick said; "all of a sudden I perceived it,
+and bolted.  Nothing of that kind ever amuses me to the end:
+before it 's half over it bores me to death; it makes me sick.
+Hang it, why can't a poor fellow enjoy things in peace?
+My illusions are all broken-winded; they won't carry me twenty paces!
+I can't laugh and forget; my laugh dies away before it begins.
+Your friend Stendhal writes on his book-covers (I never got farther)
+that he has seen too early in life la beaute parfaite.
+I don't know how early he saw it; I saw it before I was born--
+in another state of being!  I can't describe it positively;
+I can only say I don't find it anywhere now.  Not at the bottom of
+champagne glasses; not, strange as it may seem, in that extra half-yard
+or so of shoulder that some women have their ball-dresses cut to expose.
+I don't find it at merry supper-tables, where half a dozen ugly men
+with pomatumed heads are rapidly growing uglier still with heat and wine;
+not when I come away and walk through these squalid black streets,
+and go out into the Forum and see a few old battered stone
+posts standing there like gnawed bones stuck into the earth.
+Everything is mean and dusky and shabby, and the men and women who make up
+this so-called brilliant society are the meanest and shabbiest of all.
+They have no real spontaneity; they are all cowards and popinjays.
+They have no more dignity than so many grasshoppers.  Nothing is good
+but one!"  And he jumped up and stood looking at one of his statues,
+which shone vaguely across the room in the dim lamplight.
+
+"Yes, do tell us," said Rowland, "what to hold on by!"
+
+"Those things of mine were tolerably good," he answered.
+"But my idea was better--and that 's what I mean!"
+
+Rowland said nothing.  He was willing to wait for Roderick to complete
+the circle of his metamorphoses, but he had no desire to officiate
+as chorus to the play.  If Roderick chose to fish in troubled waters,
+he must land his prizes himself.
+
+"You think I 'm an impudent humbug," the latter said at last,
+"coming up to moralize at this hour of the night.  You think I
+want to throw dust into your eyes, to put you off the scent.
+That 's your eminently rational view of the case."
+
+"Excuse me from taking any view at all," said Rowland.
+
+"You have given me up, then?"
+
+"No, I have merely suspended judgment.  I am waiting."
+
+"You have ceased then positively to believe in me?"
+
+Rowland made an angry gesture.  "Oh, cruel boy!  When you
+have hit your mark and made people care for you, you should
+n't twist your weapon about at that rate in their vitals.
+Allow me to say I am sleepy.  Good night!"
+
+Some days afterward it happened that Rowland, on a long afternoon ramble,
+took his way through one of the quiet corners of the Trastevere.
+He was particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could
+hardly have expressed the charm he found in it.  As you pass
+away from the dusky, swarming purlieus of the Ghetto, you emerge
+into a region of empty, soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys,
+where the shabby houses seem mouldering away in disuse, and yet your
+footstep brings figures of startling Roman type to the doorways.
+There are few monuments here, but no part of Rome seemed
+more historic, in the sense of being weighted with a crushing past,
+blighted with the melancholy of things that had had their day.
+When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow, battered walls,
+and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of small
+closed churches, the place acquired a strange fascination.
+The church of Saint Cecilia has one of these sunny,
+waste-looking courts; the edifice seems abandoned to silence
+and the charity of chance devotion.  Rowland never passed it
+without going in, and he was generally the only visitor.
+He entered it now, but found that two persons had preceded him.
+Both were women.  One was at her prayers at one of the side altars;
+the other was seated against a column at the upper end of the nave.
+Rowland walked to the altar, and paid, in a momentary glance at
+the clever statue of the saint in death, in the niche beneath it,
+the usual tribute to the charm of polished ingenuity.  As he turned
+away he looked at the person seated and recognized Christina Light.
+Seeing that she perceived him, he advanced to speak to her.
+
+She was sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands in her lap;
+she seemed to be tired.  She was dressed simply, as if for walking
+and escaping observation.  When he had greeted her he glanced back
+at her companion, and recognized the faithful Assunta.
+
+Christina smiled.  "Are you looking for Mr. Hudson?
+He is not here, I am happy to say."
+
+"But you?" he asked.  "This is a strange place to find you."
+
+"Not at all!  People call me a strange girl, and I might as well
+have the comfort of it.  I came to take a walk; that, by the way,
+is part of my strangeness.  I can't loll all the morning on a sofa,
+and all the afternoon in a carriage.  I get horribly restless.
+I must move; I must do something and see something.  Mamma suggests
+a cup of tea.  Meanwhile I put on an old dress and half a dozen veils,
+I take Assunta under my arm, and we start on a pedestrian tour.
+It 's a bore that I can't take the poodle, but he attracts attention.
+We trudge about everywhere; there is nothing I like so much.
+I hope you will congratulate me on the simplicity of my tastes."
+
+"I congratulate you on your wisdom.  To live in Rome and not to walk would,
+I think, be poor pleasure.  But you are terribly far from home, and I am
+afraid you are tired."
+
+"A little--enough to sit here a while."
+
+"Might I offer you my company while you rest?"
+
+"If you will promise to amuse me.  I am in dismal spirits."
+
+Rowland said he would do what he could, and brought a chair and placed
+it near her.  He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her;
+he mistrusted her; and yet he felt it a kind of privilege to
+watch her, and he found a peculiar excitement in talking to her.
+The background of her nature, as he would have called it, was large
+and mysterious, and it emitted strange, fantastic gleams and flashes.
+Watching for these rather quickened one's pulses.  Moreover, it was
+not a disadvantage to talk to a girl who made one keep guard on
+one's composure; it diminished one's chronic liability to utter
+something less than revised wisdom.
+
+Assunta had risen from her prayers, and, as he took his place,
+was coming back to her mistress.  But Christina motioned her away.
+"No, no; while you are about it, say a few dozen more!" she said.
+"Pray for me," she added in English.  "Pray, I say nothing silly.
+She has been at it half an hour; I envy her capacity!"
+
+"Have you never felt in any degree," Rowland asked,
+"the fascination of Catholicism?"
+
+"Yes, I have been through that, too!  There was a time when I
+wanted immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter.
+It was when I was about sixteen years old.  I read the Imitation
+and the Life of Saint Catherine.  I fully believed in the miracles
+of the saints, and I was dying to have one of my own.
+The least little accident that could have been twisted into a miracle
+would have carried me straight into the bosom of the church.
+I had the real religious passion.  It has passed away, and, as I
+sat here just now, I was wondering what had become of it!"
+
+Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady's tone
+which he would have called a want of veracity, and this epitome of her
+religious experience failed to strike him as an absolute statement of fact.
+But the trait was not disagreeable, for she herself was evidently
+the foremost dupe of her inventions.  She had a fictitious history in
+which she believed much more fondly than in her real one, and an infinite
+capacity for extemporized reminiscence adapted to the mood of the hour.
+She liked to idealize herself, to take interesting and picturesque
+attitudes to her own imagination; and the vivacity and spontaneity
+of her character gave her, really, a starting-point in experience;
+so that the many-colored flowers of fiction which blossomed in her talk
+were not so much perversions, as sympathetic exaggerations, of fact.
+And Rowland felt that whatever she said of herself might have been,
+under the imagined circumstances; impulse was there, audacity, the restless,
+questioning temperament.  "I am afraid I am sadly prosaic," he said,
+"for in these many months now that I have been in Rome, I have never
+ceased for a moment to look at Catholicism simply from the outside.
+I don't see an opening as big as your finger-nail where I could
+creep into it!"
+
+"What do you believe?" asked Christina, looking at him.
+"Are you religious?"
+
+"I believe in God."
+
+Christina let her beautiful eyes wander a while, and then gave a little sigh.
+"You are much to be envied!"
+
+"You, I imagine, in that line have nothing to envy me."
+
+"Yes, I have.  Rest!"
+
+"You are too young to say that."
+
+"I am not young; I have never been young!  My mother took care of that.
+I was a little wrinkled old woman at ten."
+
+"I am afraid," said Rowland, in a moment, "that you are fond
+of painting yourself in dark colors."
+
+She looked at him a while in silence.  "Do you wish,"
+she demanded at last, "to win my eternal gratitude?
+Prove to me that I am better than I suppose."
+
+"I should have first to know what you really suppose."
+
+She shook her head.  "It would n't do.  You would be horrified
+to learn even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked
+at the knowledge of evil displayed in my very mistakes."
+
+"Well, then," said Rowland, "I will ask no questions.  But, at a venture,
+I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very good."
+
+"Can it be, can it be," she asked, "that you too are trying
+to flatter me?  I thought you and I had fallen, from the first,
+into rather a truth-speaking vein."
+
+"Oh, I have not abandoned it!" said Rowland; and he determined,
+since he had the credit of homely directness, to push
+his advantage farther.  The opportunity seemed excellent.
+But while he was hesitating as to just how to begin, the young
+girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in her lap,
+"Please tell me about your religion."
+
+"Tell you about it?  I can't!" said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.
+
+She flushed a little.  "Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot
+be put into words, nor communicated to my base ears?"
+
+"It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can't
+detach myself from it sufficiently to talk about it."
+
+"Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive.
+It should wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine,
+to sway all hearts!"
+
+"One's religion takes the color of one's general disposition.
+I am not aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent."
+
+"Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair!
+I am sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it,
+can be terribly eloquent.  To tell the truth, my lonely musings,
+before you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way.  What do you
+know of anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you?
+How do you know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air;
+one of those castles that we are called fools for building when we
+lodge them in this life?"
+
+"I don't know it, any more than any one knows the contrary.
+But one's religion is extremely ingenious in doing without knowledge."
+
+"In such a world as this it certainly needs to be!"
+
+Rowland smiled.  "What is your particular quarrel with this world?"
+
+"It 's a general quarrel.  Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent.
+We all seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque.
+It all comes over me here so dismally!  The very atmosphere of this cold,
+deserted church seems to mock at one's longing to believe in something.
+Who cares for it now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously?
+Poor stupid Assunta there gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does
+n't understand, and you and I, proper, passionless tourists, come lounging
+in to rest from a walk.  And yet the Catholic church was once the proudest
+institution in the world, and had quite its own way with men's souls.
+When such a mighty structure as that turns out to have a flaw,
+what faith is one to put in one's poor little views and philosophies?
+What is right and what is wrong?  What is one really to care for?
+What is the proper rule of life?  I am tired of trying to discover,
+and I suspect it 's not worth the trouble.  Live as most amuses you!"
+
+"Your perplexities are so terribly comprehensive," said Rowland,
+smiling, "that one hardly knows where to meet them first."
+
+"I don't care much for anything you can say, because it 's sure
+to be half-hearted. You are not in the least contented, yourself."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Oh, I am an observer!"
+
+"No one is absolutely contented, I suppose, but I assure you
+I complain of nothing."
+
+"So much the worse for your honesty.  To begin with, you are in love."
+
+"You would not have me complain of that!"
+
+"And it does n't go well.  There are grievous obstacles.
+So much I know!  You need n't protest; I ask no questions.
+You will tell no one--me least of all.  Why does one never see you?"
+
+"Why, if I came to see you," said Rowland, deliberating, "it would
+n't be, it could n't be, for a trivial reason--because I had not
+been in a month, because I was passing, because I admire you.
+It would be because I should have something very particular to say.
+I have not come, because I have been slow in making up my mind
+to say it."
+
+"You are simply cruel.  Something particular, in this ocean of inanities?
+In common charity, speak!"
+
+"I doubt whether you will like it."
+
+"Oh, I hope to heaven it 's not a compliment!"
+
+"It may be called a compliment to your reasonableness.
+You perhaps remember that I gave you a hint of it the other
+day at Frascati."
+
+"Has it been hanging fire all this time?  Explode!  I promise
+not to stop my ears."
+
+"It relates to my friend Hudson."  And Rowland paused.
+She was looking at him expectantly; her face gave no sign.
+"I am rather disturbed in mind about him.  He seems to me
+at times to be in an unpromising way."  He paused again,
+but Christina said nothing.  "The case is simply this,"
+he went on.  "It was by my advice he renounced his career at
+home and embraced his present one.  I made him burn his ships.
+I brought him to Rome, I launched him in the world, and I
+stand surety, in a measure, to--to his mother, for his prosperity.
+It is not such smooth sailing as it might be, and I am inclined
+to put up prayers for fair winds.  If he is to succeed,
+he must work--quietly, devotedly.  It is not news to you,
+I imagine, that Hudson is a great admirer of yours."
+
+Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes
+with an air, not of confusion, but of deep deliberation.
+Surprising frankness had, as a general thing, struck Rowland
+as the key-note of her character, but she had more than once
+given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of calculation,
+and her silence now had something which it is hardly extravagant
+to call portentous.  He had of course asked himself how far
+it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl,
+for the needs of a cause, that another man admired her;
+the thing, superficially, had an uncomfortable analogy with the
+shrewdness that uses a cat's paw and lets it risk being singed.
+But he decided that even rigid discretion is not bound to take
+a young lady at more than her own valuation, and Christina
+presently reassured him as to the limits of her susceptibility.
+"Mr. Hudson is in love with me!" she said.
+
+Rowland flinched a trifle.  Then--"Am I," he asked, "from this
+point of view of mine, to be glad or sorry?"
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?"
+
+She hesitated a moment.  "You wish him to be great in his profession?
+And for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?"
+
+"Decidedly.  I don't say it 's a general rule, but I think it
+is a rule for him."
+
+"So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?"
+
+"He would at least do himself justice."
+
+"And by that you mean a great deal?"
+
+"A great deal."
+
+Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes
+on the cracked and polished slabs of the pavement.
+At last, looking up, "You have not forgotten, I suppose,
+that you told me he was engaged?"
+
+"By no means."
+
+"He is still engaged, then?"
+
+"To the best of my belief."
+
+"And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy
+by something I can do for him?"
+
+"What I desire is this.  That your great influence with him should be exerted
+for his good, that it should help him and not retard him.  Understand me.
+You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless time of it.
+I can answer for two of them.  You don't know your own mind very well,
+I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense of the admirer.
+Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I might not say
+the great word."
+
+"You need n't; I know it.  I am a horrible coquette."
+
+"No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity.
+I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend."
+
+"There 's nothing I cannot imagine!  That is my trouble."
+
+Rowland's brow contracted impatiently.  "I cannot imagine
+it, then!" he affirmed.
+
+Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, "I am not so bad
+as you think," she said.
+
+"It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether circumstances
+don't make the thing an extreme improbability."
+
+"Worse and worse.  I can be bullied, then, or bribed!"
+
+"You are not so candid," said Rowland, "as you pretend to be.
+My feeling is this.  Hudson, as I understand him, does not need,
+as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of passion.
+He's better without it; he's emotional and passionate enough
+when he 's left to himself.  The sooner passion is at rest,
+therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work, and the fewer
+emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more,
+the better for him.  If you cared for him enough to marry him,
+I should have nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere.
+But I strongly suspect you don't, and therefore I would suggest,
+most respectfully, that you should let him alone."
+
+"And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him
+for ever more?"
+
+"Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier.
+He will be better able to concentrate himself."
+
+"What is he doing now?  Wherein does he dissatisfy you?"
+
+"I can hardly say.  He 's like a watch that 's running down.
+He is moody, desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic."
+
+"Heavens, what a list!  And it 's all poor me?"
+
+"No, not all.  But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you
+are a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others."
+
+Christina raised her hand to her eyes, and bent her head thoughtfully.
+Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather surprised
+him by her gentleness.  At last, without moving, "If I were to marry him,"
+she asked, "what would have become of his fianc; aaee?"
+
+"I am bound to suppose that she would be extremely unhappy."
+
+Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make
+her reflections, left his place and strolled away.
+Poor Assunta, sitting patiently on a stone bench, and unprovided,
+on this occasion, with military consolation, gave him a bright,
+frank smile, which might have been construed as an expression
+of regret for herself, and of sympathy for her mistress.
+Rowland presently seated himself again near Christina.
+
+"What do you think," she asked, looking at him, "of your friend's infidelity?"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Was he very much in love with her?"
+
+"He asked her to marry him.  You may judge."
+
+"Is she rich?"
+
+"No, she is poor."
+
+"Is she very much in love with him?"
+
+"I know her too little to say."
+
+She paused again, and then resumed:  "You have settled in
+your mind, then, that I will never seriously listen to him?"
+
+"I think it unlikely, until the contrary is proved."
+
+"How shall it be proved?  How do you know what passes between us?"
+
+"I can judge, of course, but from appearance; but, like you, I am
+an observer.  Hudson has not at all the air of a prosperous suitor."
+
+"If he is depressed, there is a reason.  He has a bad conscience.
+One must hope so, at least.  On the other hand, simply as a friend,"
+she continued gently, "you think I can do him no good?"
+
+The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty, as she
+made this remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland
+had an uncomfortable sense of being put at a disadvantage.
+"There are doubtless many good things you might do, if you had
+proper opportunity," he said.  "But you seem to be sailing with a
+current which leaves you little leisure for quiet benevolence.
+You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which a poor
+artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you."
+
+"In plain English, I am hopelessly frivolous.  You put it very generously."
+
+"I won't hesitate to say all my thought," said Rowland.
+"For better or worse, you seem to me to belong, both by
+character and by circumstance, to what is called the world,
+the great world.  You are made to ornament it magnificently.
+You are not made to be an artist's wife."
+
+"I see.  But even from your point of view, that would depend upon the artist.
+Extraordinary talent might make him a member of the great world!"
+
+Rowland smiled.  "That is very true."
+
+"If, as it is," Christina continued in a moment, "you take a low view
+of me--no, you need n't protest--I wonder what you would think if you
+knew certain things."
+
+"What things do you mean?"
+
+"Well, for example, how I was brought up.  I have had a horrible education.
+There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it, since I have turned
+and judged my circumstances."
+
+"My dear Miss Light!"  Rowland murmured.
+
+She gave a little, quick laugh.  "You don't want to hear? you
+don't want to have to think about that?"
+
+"Have I a right to?  You need n't justify yourself."
+
+She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes,
+then fell to musing again.  "Is there not some novel or some play,"
+she asked at last, "in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared
+a young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?"
+
+"Very likely," said Rowland.  "I hope she consents."
+
+"I forget.  But tell me," she continued, "shall you consider--
+admitting your proposition--that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson,
+so that he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous,
+heroic, sublime--something with a fine name like that?"
+
+Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about
+to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world;
+but he instantly suspected that this tone would not please her,
+and, besides, it would not express his meaning.
+
+"You do something I shall greatly respect," he contented himself with saying.
+
+She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid.
+"What have I to do to-day?" she asked.
+
+Assunta meditated.  "Eh, it 's a very busy day!  Fortunately I have
+a better memory than the signorina," she said, turning to Rowland.
+She began to count on her fingers.  "We have to go to the Pie di Marmo to see
+about those laces that were sent to be washed.  You said also that you
+wished to say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress.
+You want some moss-rosebuds for to-night, and you won't get them for nothing!
+You dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman is to powder your hair.
+You 're to come home in time to receive, for the signora gives a dance.
+And so away, away till morning!"
+
+"Ah, yes, the moss-roses!" Christina murmured, caressingly.
+"I must have a quantity--at least a hundred.  Nothing but buds, eh?
+You must sew them in a kind of immense apron, down the front of my dress.
+Packed tight together, eh?  It will be delightfully barbarous.
+And then twenty more or so for my hair.  They go very well
+with powder; don't you think so?"  And she turned to Rowland.
+"I am going en Pompadour."
+
+"Going where?"
+
+"To the Spanish Embassy, or whatever it is."
+
+"All down the front, signorina?  Dio buono!  You must give me time!"
+Assunta cried.
+
+"Yes, we'll go!"  And she left her place.  She walked
+slowly to the door of the church, looking at the pavement,
+and Rowland could not guess whether she was thinking of her apron
+of moss-rosebuds or of her opportunity for moral sublimity.
+Before reaching the door she turned away and stood gazing at
+an old picture, indistinguishable with blackness, over an altar.
+At last they passed out into the court.  Glancing at her in
+the open air, Rowland was startled; he imagined he saw the traces
+of hastily suppressed tears.  They had lost time, she said,
+and they must hurry; she sent Assunta to look for a fiacre.
+She remained silent a while, scratching the ground with
+the point of her parasol, and then at last, looking up,
+she thanked Rowland for his confidence in her "reasonableness."
+"It 's really very comfortable to be asked, to be expected,
+to do something good, after all the horrid things one has
+been used to doing--instructed, commanded, forced to do!
+I 'll think over what you have said to me."  In that deserted
+quarter fiacres are rare, and there was some delay in
+Assunta's procuring one.  Christina talked of the church,
+of the picturesque old court, of that strange, decaying corner
+of Rome.  Rowland was perplexed; he was ill at ease.
+At last the fiacre arrived, but she waited a moment longer.
+"So, decidedly," she suddenly asked, "I can only harm him?"
+
+"You make me feel very brutal," said Rowland.
+
+"And he is such a fine fellow that it would be really a great pity, eh?"
+
+"I shall praise him no more," Rowland said.
+
+She turned away quickly, but she lingered still.
+"Do you remember promising me, soon after we first met,
+that at the end of six months you would tell me definitely
+what you thought of me?"
+
+"It was a foolish promise."
+
+"You gave it.  Bear it in mind.  I will think of what you have said
+to me.  Farewell."  She stepped into the carriage, and it rolled away.
+Rowland stood for some minutes, looking after it, and then
+went his way with a sigh.  If this expressed general mistrust,
+he ought, three days afterward, to have been reassured.
+He received by the post a note containing these words:--
+
+         "I have done it. Begin and respect me!
+
+                                              --C. L."
+
+To be perfectly satisfactory, indeed, the note required a commentary.
+He called that evening upon Roderick, and found one in the information
+offered him at the door, by the old serving-woman--the startling
+information that the signorino had gone to Naples.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  Provocation
+
+About a month later, Rowland addressed to his cousin Cecilia
+a letter of which the following is a portion:--
+
+...."So much for myself; yet I tell you but a tithe of my own
+story unless I let you know how matters stand with poor Hudson,
+for he gives me more to think about just now than anything else
+in the world.  I need a good deal of courage to begin this chapter.
+You warned me, you know, and I made rather light of your warning.
+I have had all kinds of hopes and fears, but hitherto,
+in writing to you, I have resolutely put the hopes foremost.
+Now, however, my pride has forsaken me, and I should like hugely
+to give expression to a little comfortable despair.  I should
+like to say, 'My dear wise woman, you were right and I was wrong;
+you were a shrewd observer and I was a meddlesome donkey!'
+When I think of a little talk we had about the 'salubrity of genius,'
+I feel my ears tingle.  If this is salubrity, give me raging disease!
+I 'm pestered to death; I go about with a chronic heartache;
+there are moments when I could shed salt tears.  There 's
+a pretty portrait of the most placid of men!  I wish I could
+make you understand; or rather, I wish you could make me!
+I don't understand a jot; it 's a hideous, mocking mystery;
+I give it up!  I don't in the least give it up, you know;
+I 'm incapable of giving it up.  I sit holding my head by the hour,
+racking my brain, wondering what under heaven is to be done.
+You told me at Northampton that I took the thing too easily;
+you would tell me now, perhaps, that I take it too hard.
+I do, altogether; but it can't be helped.  Without flattering myself,
+I may say I 'm sympathetic.  Many another man before this
+would have cast his perplexities to the winds and declared
+that Mr. Hudson must lie on his bed as he had made it.
+Some men, perhaps, would even say that I am making a mighty
+ado about nothing; that I have only to give him rope,
+and he will tire himself out.  But he tugs at his rope
+altogether too hard for me to hold it comfortably.
+I certainly never pretended the thing was anything else than
+an experiment; I promised nothing, I answered for nothing;
+I only said the case was hopeful, and that it would be a shame
+to neglect it.  I have done my best, and if the machine is
+running down I have a right to stand aside and let it scuttle.
+Amen, amen!  No, I can write that, but I can't feel it.
+I can't be just; I can only be generous.  I love the poor
+fellow and I can't give him up.  As for understanding him,
+that 's another matter; nowadays I don't believe even you would.
+One's wits are sadly pestered over here, I assure you,
+and I 'm in the way of seeing more than one puzzling specimen
+of human nature.  Roderick and Miss Light, between them!....
+Have n't I already told you about Miss Light?  Last winter
+everything was perfection.  Roderick struck out bravely,
+did really great things, and proved himself, as I supposed,
+thoroughly solid.  He was strong, he was first-rate;
+I felt perfectly secure and sang private paeans of joy.
+We had passed at a bound into the open sea, and left danger behind.
+But in the summer I began to be puzzled, though I succeeded
+in not being alarmed.  When we came back to Rome, however, I saw
+that the tide had turned and that we were close upon the rocks.
+It is, in fact, another case of Ulysses alongside of the Sirens;
+only Roderick refuses to be tied to the mast.  He is the most
+extraordinary being, the strangest mixture of qualities.
+I don't understand so much force going with so much weakness--
+such a brilliant gift being subject to such lapses.
+The poor fellow is incomplete, and it is really not his
+own fault; Nature has given him the faculty out of hand
+and bidden him be hanged with it.  I never knew a man harder
+to advise or assist, if he is not in the mood for listening.
+I suppose there is some key or other to his character,
+but I try in vain to find it; and yet I can't believe
+that Providence is so cruel as to have turned the lock and
+thrown the key away.  He perplexes me, as I say, to death,
+and though he tires out my patience, he still fascinates me.
+Sometimes I think he has n't a grain of conscience,
+and sometimes I think that, in a way, he has an excess.
+He takes things at once too easily and too hard; he is both
+too lax and too tense, too reckless and too ambitious,
+too cold and too passionate.  He has developed faster even
+than you prophesied, and for good and evil alike he takes
+up a formidable space.  There 's too much of him for me,
+at any rate.  Yes, he is hard; there is no mistake about that.
+He 's inflexible, he 's brittle; and though he has plenty
+of spirit, plenty of soul, he has n't what I call a heart.
+He has something that Miss Garland took for one, and I 'm pretty
+sure she 's a judge.  But she judged on scanty evidence.
+He has something that Christina Light, here, makes believe
+at times that she takes for one, but she is no judge at all!
+I think it is established that, in the long run, egotism makes
+a failure in conduct:  is it also true that it makes a failure
+in the arts?.... Roderick's standard is immensely high;
+I must do him that justice.  He will do nothing beneath it,
+and while he is waiting for inspiration, his imagination,
+his nerves, his senses must have something to amuse them.
+This is a highly philosophical way of saying that he has taken
+to dissipation, and that he has just been spending a month
+at Naples--a city where 'pleasure' is actively cultivated--
+in very bad company.  Are they all like that, all the men of genius?
+There are a great many artists here who hammer away at their trade
+with exemplary industry; in fact I am surprised at their success
+in reducing the matter to a steady, daily grind:  but I really
+don't think that one of them has his exquisite quality of talent.
+It is in the matter of quantity that he has broken down.
+The bottle won't pour; he turns it upside down; it 's no use!
+Sometimes he declares it 's empty--that he has done all he was made
+to do.  This I consider great nonsense; but I would nevertheless
+take him on his own terms if it was only I that was concerned.
+But I keep thinking of those two praying, trusting neighbors
+of yours, and I feel wretchedly like a swindler.  If his working
+mood came but once in five years I would willingly wait for it
+and maintain him in leisure, if need be, in the intervals;
+but that would be a sorry account to present to them.
+Five years of this sort of thing, moreover, would effectually
+settle the question.  I wish he were less of a genius and more
+of a charlatan!  He 's too confoundedly all of one piece;
+he won't throw overboard a grain of the cargo to save the rest.
+Fancy him thus with all his brilliant personal charm,
+his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a nervous
+nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there
+is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way.
+He was tolerably foolish last summer at Baden Baden,
+but he got on his feet, and for a while he was steady.
+Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled over.
+Now, literally, he 's lying prone.  He came into my room
+last night, miserably tipsy.  I assure you, it did n't
+amuse me..... About Miss Light it 's a long story. She is one of 
+the great beauties of all time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome,
+like the pilgrims of old, to see.  Her complexion, her glance, her step,
+her dusky tresses, may have been seen before in a goddess, but never
+in a woman.  And you may take this for truth, because I 'm not in love
+with her.  On the contrary!  Her education has been simply infernal.
+She is corrupt, perverse, as proud as the queen of Sheba, and an
+appalling coquette; but she is generous, and with patience and skill you
+may enlist her imagination in a good cause as well as in a bad one.
+The other day I tried to manipulate it a little.  Chance offered me
+an interview to which it was possible to give a serious turn, and I boldly
+broke ground and begged her to suffer my poor friend to go in peace.
+After a good deal of finessing she consented, and the next day, with a
+single word, packed him off to Naples to drown his sorrow in debauchery.
+I have come to the conclusion that she is more dangerous in her virtuous
+moods than in her vicious ones, and that she probably has a way
+of turning her back which is the most provoking thing in the world.
+She 's an actress, she could n't forego doing the thing dramatically,
+and it was the dramatic touch that made it fatal.  I wished her,
+of course, to let him down easily; but she desired to have the curtain
+drop on an attitude, and her attitudes deprive
+inflammable young artists of their reason..... Roderick made an 
+admirable bust of her at the beginning of the winter, and a dozen women
+came rushing to him to be done, mutatis mutandis, in the same style.
+They were all great ladies and ready to take him by the hand,
+but he told them all their faces did n't interest him, and sent them
+away vowing his destruction."
+
+At this point of his long effusion, Rowland had paused and put
+by his letter.  He kept it three days and then read it over.
+He was disposed at first to destroy it, but he decided
+finally to keep it, in the hope that it might strike a spark
+of useful suggestion from the flint of Cecilia's good sense.
+We know he had a talent for taking advice.  And then it
+might be, he reflected, that his cousin's answer would throw
+some light on Mary Garland's present vision of things.
+In his altered mood he added these few lines:--
+
+"I unburdened myself the other day of this monstrous load
+of perplexity; I think it did me good, and I let it stand.
+I was in a melancholy muddle, and I was trying to work myself free.
+You know I like discussion, in a quiet way, and there
+is no one with whom I can have it as quietly as with you,
+most sagacious of cousins!  There is an excellent old lady
+with whom I often chat, and who talks very much to the point.
+But Madame Grandoni has disliked Roderick from the first,
+and if I were to take her advice I would wash my hands of him.
+You will laugh at me for my long face, but you would do
+that in any circumstances.  I am half ashamed of my letter,
+for I have a faith in my friend that is deeper than my doubts.
+He was here last evening, talking about the Naples Museum,
+the Aristides, the bronzes, the Pompeian frescoes,
+with such a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the ultimate
+future seemed blasphemy.  I walked back to his lodging
+with him, and he was as mild as midsummer moonlight.
+He has the ineffable something that charms and convinces;
+my last word about him shall not be a harsh one."
+
+Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into
+his friend's studio, he found Roderick suffering from
+the grave infliction of a visit from Mr. Leavenworth.
+Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being bored,
+and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation.
+He had lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging
+in the sun; an image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life.
+The real lazzarone, he had admitted, was a vile fellow;
+but the ideal lazzarone--and his own had been subtly idealized--
+was a precursor of the millennium.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying
+gaze to the figure.
+
+"Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?" he sympathetically observed.
+
+"Oh no," said Roderick seriously, "he 's not dying, he 's only drunk!"
+
+"Ah, but intoxication, you know," Mr. Leavenworth rejoined,
+"is not a proper subject for sculpture.  Sculpture should not
+deal with transitory attitudes."
+
+"Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude!  Nothing is more permanent,
+more sculpturesque, more monumental!"
+
+"An entertaining paradox," said Mr. Leavenworth, "if we had time
+to exercise our wits upon it.  I remember at Florence an intoxicated
+figure by Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration
+of a great mind.  I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever.
+I have traveled through Europe on cold water.  The most varied and
+attractive lists of wines are offered me, but I brush them aside.
+No cork has ever been drawn at my command!"
+
+"The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set of muscles,"
+said Roderick.  "I think I will make a figure in that position."
+
+"A Bacchus, realistically treated!  My dear young friend, never trifle with
+your lofty mission.  Spotless marble should represent virtue, not vice!"
+And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise the spirit
+of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely benignity
+to another object--a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light.
+"An ideal head, I presume," he went on; "a fanciful representation
+of one of the pagan goddesses--a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad?
+I often regret that our American artists should not boldly cast off
+that extinct nomenclature."
+
+"She is neither a naiad nor a dryad," said Roderick, "and her name
+is as good as yours or mine."
+
+"You call her"--Mr. Leavenworth blandly inquired.
+
+"Miss Light," Rowland interposed, in charity.
+
+"Ah, our great American beauty!  Not a pagan goddess--
+an American, Christian lady!  Yes, I have had the pleasure
+of conversing with Miss Light.  Her conversational powers
+are not remarkable, but her beauty is of a high order.
+I observed her the other evening at a large party,
+where some of the proudest members of the European aristocracy
+were present--duchesses, princesses, countesses, and others
+distinguished by similar titles.  But for beauty, grace,
+and elegance my fair countrywoman left them all nowhere.
+What women can compare with a truly refined American lady?
+The duchesses the other night had no attractions for my eyes;
+they looked coarse and sensual!  It seemed to me that the tyranny
+of class distinctions must indeed be terrible when such
+countenances could inspire admiration.  You see more beautiful
+girls in an hour on Broadway than in the whole tour of Europe.
+Miss Light, now, on Broadway, would excite no particular remark."
+
+"She has never been there!" cried Roderick, triumphantly.
+
+"I 'm afraid she never will be there.  I suppose you have heard
+the news about her."
+
+"What news?"  Roderick had stood with his back turned,
+fiercely poking at his lazzarone; but at Mr. Leavenworth's
+last words he faced quickly about.
+
+"It 's the news of the hour, I believe.  Miss Light is admired
+by the highest people here.  They tacitly recognize her superiority.
+She has had offers of marriage from various great lords.
+I was extremely happy to learn this circumstance,
+and to know that they all had been left sighing.  She has
+not been dazzled by their titles and their gilded coronets.
+She has judged them simply as men, and found them wanting.
+One of them, however, a young Neapolitan prince, I believe,
+has after a long probation succeeded in making himself acceptable.
+Miss Light has at last said yes, and the engagement has
+just been announced.  I am not generally a retailer of gossip
+of this description, but the fact was alluded to an hour ago
+by a lady with whom I was conversing, and here, in Europe,
+these conversational trifles usurp the lion's share of
+one's attention.  I therefore retained the circumstance.
+Yes, I regret that Miss Light should marry one of these
+used-up foreigners.  Americans should stand by each other.
+If she wanted a brilliant match we could have fixed it for her.
+If she wanted a fine fellow--a fine, sharp, enterprising modern man--
+I would have undertaken to find him for her without going
+out of the city of New York.  And if she wanted a big fortune,
+I would have found her twenty that she would have had hard work
+to spend:  money down--not tied up in fever-stricken lands
+and worm-eaten villas!  What is the name of the young man?
+Prince Castaway, or some such thing!"
+
+It was well for Mr. Leavenworth that he was a voluminous and
+imperturbable talker; for the current of his eloquence floated
+him past the short, sharp, startled cry with which Roderick
+greeted his "conversational trifle."  The young man stood
+looking at him with parted lips and an excited eye.
+
+"The position of woman," Mr. Leavenworth placidly resumed,
+"is certainly a very degraded one in these countries.
+I doubt whether a European princess can command the respect
+which in our country is exhibited toward the obscurest females.
+The civilization of a country should be measured by the
+deference shown to the weaker sex.  Judged by that standard,
+where are they, over here?"
+
+Though Mr. Leavenworth had not observed Roderick's emotion, it was not lost
+upon Rowland, who was making certain uncomfortable reflections upon it.
+He saw that it had instantly become one with the acute irritation produced
+by the poor gentleman's oppressive personality, and that an explosion
+of some sort was imminent.  Mr. Leavenworth, with calm unconsciousness,
+proceeded to fire the mine.
+
+"And now for our Culture!" he said in the same sonorous tones,
+demanding with a gesture the unveiling of the figure, which stood
+somewhat apart, muffled in a great sheet.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with concentrated rancor,
+and then strode to the statue and twitched off the cover.
+Mr. Leavenworth settled himself into his chair with an air
+of flattered proprietorship, and scanned the unfinished image.
+"I can conscientiously express myself as gratified with the
+general conception," he said.  "The figure has considerable
+majesty, and the countenance wears a fine, open expression.
+The forehead, however, strikes me as not sufficiently intellectual.
+In a statue of Culture, you know, that should be the great point.
+The eye should instinctively seek the forehead.  Could n't you
+heighten it up a little?"
+
+Roderick, for all answer, tossed the sheet back over the statue.
+"Oblige me, sir," he said, "oblige me!  Never mention that thing again."
+
+"Never mention it?  Why my dear sir"--
+
+"Never mention it.  It 's an abomination!"
+
+"An abomination!  My Culture!"
+
+"Yours indeed!" cried Roderick.  "It 's none of mine.
+I disown it.  "
+
+"Disown it, if you please," said Mr. Leavenworth sternly,
+"but finish it first!"
+
+"I 'd rather smash it!" cried Roderick.
+
+"This is folly, sir.  You must keep your engagements."
+
+"I made no engagement.  A sculptor is n't a tailor.  Did you ever
+hear of inspiration?  Mine is dead!  And it 's no laughing matter.
+You yourself killed it."
+
+"I--I-- killed your inspiration?" cried Mr. Leavenworth,
+with the accent of righteous wrath.  "You 're a very ungrateful boy!
+If ever I encouraged and cheered and sustained any one,
+I 'm sure I have done so to you."
+
+"I appreciate your good intentions, and I don't wish to be uncivil.
+But your encouragement is--superfluous.  I can't work for you!"
+
+"I call this ill-humor, young man!" said Mr. Leavenworth,
+as if he had found the damning word.
+
+"Oh, I 'm in an infernal humor!"  Roderick answered.
+
+"Pray, sir, is it my infelicitous allusion to Miss Light's marriage?"
+
+"It 's your infelicitous everything!  I don't say that to offend you;
+I beg your pardon if it does.  I say it by way of making our
+rupture complete, irretrievable!"
+
+Rowland had stood by in silence, but he now interfered.
+"Listen to me," he said, laying his hand on Roderick's arm.
+"You are standing on the edge of a gulf.  If you suffer
+anything that has passed to interrupt your work on that figure,
+you take your plunge.  It 's no matter that you don't
+like it; you will do the wisest thing you ever did if you
+make that effort of will necessary for finishing it.
+Destroy the statue then, if you like, but make the effort.
+I speak the truth!"
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes that still inexorableness made
+almost tender.  "You too!" he simply said.
+
+Rowland felt that he might as well attempt to squeeze water from
+a polished crystal as hope to move him.  He turned away and walked
+into the adjoining room with a sense of sickening helplessness.
+In a few moments he came back and found that Mr. Leavenworth
+had departed--presumably in a manner somewhat portentous.
+Roderick was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head
+in his hands.
+
+Rowland made one more attempt.  "You decline to think of what I urge?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"There's one more point--that you shouldn't, for a month,
+go to Mrs. Light's."
+
+"I go there this evening."
+
+"That too is an utter folly."
+
+"There are such things as necessary follies."
+
+"You are not reflecting; you are speaking in passion."
+
+"Why then do you make me speak?"
+
+Rowland meditated a moment.  "Is it also necessary that you should lose
+the best friend you have?"
+
+Roderick looked up.  "That 's for you to settle!"
+
+His best friend clapped on his hat and strode away; in a moment
+the door closed behind him.  Rowland walked hard for nearly a couple
+of hours.  He passed up the Corso, out of the Porta del Popolo
+and into the Villa Borghese, of which he made a complete circuit.
+The keenness of his irritation subsided, but it left him with
+an intolerable weight upon his heart.  When dusk had fallen,
+he found himself near the lodging of his friend Madame Grandoni.
+He frequently paid her a visit during the hour which preceded dinner,
+and he now ascended her unillumined staircase and rang at her
+relaxed bell-rope with an especial desire for diversion.
+He was told that, for the moment, she was occupied, but that if
+he would come in and wait, she would presently be with him.
+He had not sat musing in the firelight for ten minutes when
+he heard the jingle of the door-bell and then a rustling and
+murmuring in the hall.  The door of the little saloon opened,
+but before the visitor appeared he had recognized her voice.
+Christina Light swept forward, preceded by her poodle,
+and almost filling the narrow parlor with the train of her dress.
+She was colored here and there by the flicking firelight.
+
+"They told me you were here," she said simply, as she took a seat.
+
+"And yet you came in?  It is very brave," said Rowland.
+
+"You are the brave one, when one thinks of it!  Where is the padrona?"
+
+"Occupied for the moment.  But she is coming."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"I have already waited ten minutes; I expect her from moment to moment."
+
+"Meanwhile we are alone?"  And she glanced into the dusky corners
+of the room.
+
+"Unless Stenterello counts," said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, he knows my secrets--unfortunate brute!"  She sat silent awhile,
+looking into the firelight.  Then at last, glancing at Rowland,
+"Come! say something pleasant!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I have been very happy to hear of your engagement."
+
+"No, I don't mean that.  I have heard that so often, only since breakfast,
+that it has lost all sense.  I mean some of those unexpected, charming things
+that you said to me a month ago at Saint Cecilia's."
+
+"I offended you, then," said Rowland.  "I was afraid I had."
+
+"Ah, it occurred to you?  Why have n't I seen you since?"
+
+"Really, I don't know."  And he began to hesitate for an explanation.
+"I have called, but you have never been at home."
+
+"You were careful to choose the wrong times.  You have a way
+with a poor girl!  You sit down and inform her that she is
+a person with whom a respectable young man cannot associate
+without contamination; your friend is a very nice fellow,
+you are very careful of his morals, you wish him to know
+none but nice people, and you beg me therefore to desist.
+You request me to take these suggestions to heart and to act
+upon them as promptly as possible.  They are not particularly
+flattering to my vanity.  Vanity, however, is a sin, and I
+listen submissively, with an immense desire to be just.
+If I have many faults I know it, in a general way, and I
+try on the whole to do my best.  'Voyons,' I say to myself,
+'it is n't particularly charming to hear one's self made
+out such a low person, but it is worth thinking over;
+there 's probably a good deal of truth in it, and at any rate
+we must be as good a girl as we can.  That 's the great point!
+And then here 's a magnificent chance for humility.  If there 's
+doubt in the matter, let the doubt count against one's self.
+That is what Saint Catherine did, and Saint Theresa, and all
+the others, and they are said to have had in consequence the most
+ineffable joys.  Let us go in for a little ineffable joy!'
+I tried it; I swallowed my rising sobs, I made you my courtesy,
+I determined I would not be spiteful, nor passionate, nor vengeful,
+nor anything that is supposed to be particularly feminine.
+I was a better girl than you made out--better at least
+than you thought; but I would let the difference go and do
+magnificently right, lest I should not do right enough.
+I thought of it a deal for six hours when I know I did n't
+seem to be, and then at last I did it!  Santo Dio!"
+
+"My dear Miss Light, my dear Miss Light!" said Rowland, pleadingly.
+
+"Since then," the young girl went on, "I have been waiting
+for the ineffable joys.  They have n't yet turned up!"
+
+"Pray listen to me!"  Rowland urged.
+
+"Nothing, nothing, nothing has come of it.  I have passed the dreariest
+month of my life!"
+
+"My dear Miss Light, you are a very terrible young lady!" cried Rowland.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"A good many things.  We 'll talk them over.  But first,
+forgive me if I have offended you!"
+
+She looked at him a moment, hesitating, and then thrust her hands
+into her muff.  "That means nothing.  Forgiveness is between equals,
+and you don't regard me as your equal."
+
+"Really, I don't understand!"
+
+Christina rose and moved for a moment about the room.
+Then turning suddenly, "You don't believe in me!" she cried;
+"not a grain!  I don't know what I would not give to force
+you to believe in me!"
+
+Rowland sprang up, protesting, but before he had time to go far
+one of the scanty portieres was raised, and Madame Grandoni came in,
+pulling her wig straight.  "But you shall believe in me yet,"
+murmured Christina, as she passed toward her hostess.
+
+Madame Grandoni turned tenderly to Christina.  "I must give you
+a very solemn kiss, my dear; you are the heroine of the hour.
+You have really accepted him, eh?"
+
+"So they say!"
+
+"But you ought to know best."
+
+"I don't know--I don't care!"  She stood with her hand in Madame
+Grandoni's, but looking askance at Rowland.
+
+"That 's a pretty state of mind," said the old lady, "for a young
+person who is going to become a princess."
+
+Christina shrugged her shoulders.  "Every one expects me to go into ecstacies
+over that!  Could anything be more vulgar?  They may chuckle by themselves!
+Will you let me stay to dinner?"
+
+"If you can dine on a risotto.  But I imagine you are expected
+at home.  "
+
+"You are right.  Prince Casamassima dines there, en famille.
+But I 'm not in his family, yet!"
+
+"Do you know you are very wicked?  I have half a mind not to keep you."
+
+Christina dropped her eyes, reflectively.  "I beg you will let me stay,"
+she said.  "If you wish to cure me of my wickedness you must
+be very patient and kind with me.  It will be worth the trouble.
+You must show confidence in me."  And she gave another glance at Rowland.
+Then suddenly, in a different tone, "I don't know what I 'm saying!"
+she cried.  "I am weary, I am more lonely than ever, I wish I were dead!"
+The tears rose to her eyes, she struggled with them an instant,
+and buried her face in her muff; but at last she burst into
+uncontrollable sobs and flung her arms upon Madame Grandoni's neck.
+This shrewd woman gave Rowland a significant nod, and a little shrug,
+over the young girl's beautiful bowed head, and then led Christina
+tenderly away into the adjoining room.  Rowland, left alone, stood there
+for an instant, intolerably puzzled, face to face with Miss Light's poodle,
+who had set up a sharp, unearthly cry of sympathy with his mistress.
+Rowland vented his confusion in dealing a rap with his stick at
+the animal's unmelodious muzzle, and then rapidly left the house.
+He saw Mrs. Light's carriage waiting at the door, and heard afterwards
+that Christina went home to dinner.
+
+A couple of days later he went, for a fortnight, to Florence.
+He had twenty minds to leave Italy altogether; and at Florence
+he could at least more freely decide upon his future movements.
+He felt profoundly, incurably disgusted.  Reflective benevolence
+stood prudently aside, and for the time touched the source of his
+irritation with no softening side-lights.
+
+It was the middle of March, and by the middle of March in Florence
+the spring is already warm and deep.  He had an infinite
+relish for the place and the season, but as he strolled
+by the Arno and paused here and there in the great galleries,
+they failed to soothe his irritation.  He was sore at heart,
+and as the days went by the soreness deepened rather than healed.
+He felt as if he had a complaint against fortune; good-natured as
+he was, his good-nature this time quite declined to let it pass.
+He had tried to be wise, he had tried to be kind, he had
+embarked upon an estimable enterprise; but his wisdom,
+his kindness, his energy, had been thrown back in his face.
+He was disappointed, and his disappointment had an angry spark in it.
+The sense of wasted time, of wasted hope and faith, kept him
+constant company.  There were times when the beautiful things about
+him only exasperated his discontent.  He went to the Pitti Palace,
+and Raphael's Madonna of the Chair seemed, in its soft serenity,
+to mock him with the suggestion of unattainable repose.
+He lingered on the bridges at sunset, and knew that the light
+was enchanting and the mountains divine, but there seemed
+to be something horribly invidious and unwelcome in the fact.
+He felt, in a word, like a man who has been cruelly defrauded
+and who wishes to have his revenge.  Life owed him,
+he thought, a compensation, and he would be restless and
+resentful until he found it.  He knew--or he seemed to know--
+where he should find it; but he hardly told himself,
+and thought of the thing under mental protest, as a man in want
+of money may think of certain funds that he holds in trust.
+In his melancholy meditations the idea of something better
+than all this, something that might softly, richly interpose,
+something that might reconcile him to the future, something that
+might make one's tenure of life deep and zealous instead of harsh
+and uneven--the idea of concrete compensation, in a word--
+shaped itself sooner or later into the image of Mary Garland.
+
+Very odd, you may say, that at this time of day Rowland should still
+be brooding over a plain girl of whom he had had but the lightest
+of glimpses two years before; very odd that so deep an impression
+should have been made by so lightly-pressed an instrument.
+We must admit the oddity and offer simply in explanation
+that his sentiment apparently belonged to that species of
+emotion of which, by the testimony of the poets, the very name
+and essence is oddity.  One night he slept but half an hour;
+he found his thoughts taking a turn which excited him portentously.
+He walked up and down his room half the night.  It looked out
+on the Arno; the noise of the river came in at the open window;
+he felt like dressing and going down into the streets.
+Toward morning he flung himself into a chair; though he was
+wide awake he was less excited.  It seemed to him that he saw
+his idea from the outside, that he judged it and condemned it;
+yet it stood there before him, distinct, and in a certain
+way imperious.  During the day he tried to banish it and forget it;
+but it fascinated, haunted, at moments frightened him.
+He tried to amuse himself, paid visits, resorted to several rather
+violent devices for diverting his thoughts.  If on the morrow
+he had committed a crime, the persons whom he had seen that day
+would have testified that he had talked strangely and had not
+seemed like himself.  He felt certainly very unlike himself;
+long afterwards, in retrospect, he used to reflect that during
+those days he had for a while been literally beside himself.
+His idea persisted; it clung to him like a sturdy beggar.
+The sense of the matter, roughly expressed, was this:
+If Roderick was really going, as he himself had phrased it,
+to "fizzle out," one might help him on the way--one might smooth
+the descensus Averno.  For forty-eight hours there swam before
+Rowland's eyes a vision of Roderick, graceful and beautiful
+as he passed, plunging, like a diver, from an eminence into
+a misty gulf.  The gulf was destruction, annihilation, death;
+but if death was decreed, why should not the agony be brief?
+Beyond this vision there faintly glimmered another,
+as in the children's game of the "magic lantern" a picture is
+superposed on the white wall before the last one has quite faded.
+It represented Mary Garland standing there with eyes in which
+the horror seemed slowly, slowly to expire, and hanging,
+motionless hands which at last made no resistance when his own
+offered to take them.  When, of old, a man was burnt at the stake
+it was cruel to have to be present; but if one was present it
+was kind to lend a hand to pile up the fuel and make the flames
+do their work quickly and the smoke muffle up the victim.
+With all deference to your kindness, this was perhaps an obligation
+you would especially feel if you had a reversionary interest
+in something the victim was to leave behind him.
+
+One morning, in the midst of all this, Rowland walked
+heedlessly out of one of the city gates and found himself
+on the road to Fiesole.  It was a completely lovely day;
+the March sun felt like May, as the English poet of Florence says;
+the thick-blossomed shrubs and vines that hung over the walls
+of villa and podere flung their odorous promise into the warm,
+still air.  Rowland followed the winding, climbing lanes;
+lingered, as he got higher, beneath the rusty cypresses,
+beside the low parapets, where you look down on the charming
+city and sweep the vale of the Arno; reached the little square
+before the cathedral, and rested awhile in the massive,
+dusky church; then climbed higher, to the Franciscan
+convent which is poised on the very apex of the mountain.
+He rang at the little gateway; a shabby, senile, red-faced brother
+admitted him with almost maudlin friendliness.  There was
+a dreary chill in the chapel and the corridors, and he passed
+rapidly through them into the delightfully steep and tangled old
+garden which runs wild over the forehead of the great hill.
+He had been in it before, and he was very fond of it.
+The garden hangs in the air, and you ramble from terrace
+to terrace and wonder how it keeps from slipping down, in full
+consummation of its bereaved forlornness, into the nakedly
+romantic gorge beneath.  It was just noon when Rowland went in,
+and after roaming about awhile he flung himself in the sun
+on a mossy stone bench and pulled his hat over his eyes.
+The short shadows of the brown-coated cypresses above him had grown
+very long, and yet he had not passed back through the convent.
+One of the monks, in his faded snuff-colored robe, came wandering
+out into the garden, reading his greasy little breviary.
+Suddenly he came toward the bench on which Rowland had
+stretched himself, and paused a moment, attentively.
+Rowland was lingering there still; he was sitting
+with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees.
+He seemed not to have heard the sandaled tread of the good brother,
+but as the monk remained watching him, he at last looked up.
+It was not the ignoble old man who had admitted him,
+but a pale, gaunt personage, of a graver and more ascetic,
+and yet of a benignant, aspect.  Rowland's face bore the traces
+of extreme trouble.  The frate kept his finger in his little book,
+and folded his arms picturesquely across his breast.
+It can hardly be determined whether his attitude, as he bent
+his sympathetic Italian eye upon Rowland, was a happy accident
+or the result of an exquisite spiritual discernment.
+To Rowland, at any rate, under the emotion of that moment,
+it seemed blessedly opportune.  He rose and approached the monk,
+and laid his hand on his arm.
+
+"My brother," he said, "did you ever see the Devil?"
+
+The frate gazed, gravely, and crossed himself.  "Heaven forbid!"
+
+"He was here," Rowland went on, "here in this lovely garden,
+as he was once in Paradise, half an hour ago.  But have no fear;
+I drove him out."  And Rowland stooped and picked up his hat,
+which had rolled away into a bed of cyclamen, in vague symbolism
+of an actual physical tussle.
+
+"You have been tempted, my brother?" asked the friar, tenderly.
+
+"Hideously!"
+
+"And you have resisted--and conquered!"
+
+"I believe I have conquered."
+
+"The blessed Saint Francis be praised!  It is well done.
+If you like, we will offer a mass for you."
+
+"I am not a Catholic," said Rowland.
+
+The frate smiled with dignity.  "That is a reason the more."
+
+"But it 's for you, then, to choose.  Shake hands with me,"
+Rowland added; "that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out,
+to stop a moment in your chapel."
+
+They shook hands and separated.  The frate crossed himself,
+opened his book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky.
+Rowland passed back into the convent, and paused long enough
+in the chapel to look for the alms-box. He had had what is vulgarly
+termed a great scare; he believed, very poignantly for the time,
+in the Devil, and he felt an irresistible need to subscribe to any
+institution which engaged to keep him at a distance.
+
+The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards
+he went in search of Roderick.  He found him on the Pincian
+with his back turned to the crowd, looking at the sunset.
+"I went to Florence," Rowland said, "and I thought of going farther;
+but I came back on purpose to give you another piece of advice.
+Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?"
+
+"Never!" said Roderick.
+
+"The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of
+responsibility to--to those various sacred things you have forgotten,
+is in sending for your mother to join you here."
+
+Roderick stared.  "For my mother?"
+
+"For your mother--and for Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.
+"For Mary Garland--for my mother?" he repeated.  "Send for them?"
+
+"Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to ask.
+You are still engaged to Miss Garland?"
+
+Roderick frowned darkly, but assented.
+
+"It would give you pleasure, then, to see her?"
+
+Roderick turned away and for some moments answered nothing.
+"Pleasure!" he said at last, huskily.  "Call it pain."
+
+"I regard you as a sick man," Rowland continued.
+"In such a case Miss Garland would say that her place was
+at your side."
+
+Roderick looked at him some time askance, mistrustfully.
+"Is this a deep-laid snare?" he asked slowly.
+
+Rowland had come back with all his patience rekindled, but these words
+gave it an almost fatal chill.  "Heaven forgive you!" he cried bitterly.
+"My idea has been simply this.  Try, in decency, to understand it.
+I have tried to befriend you, to help you, to inspire you with confidence,
+and I have failed.  I took you from the hands of your mother and
+your betrothed, and it seemed to me my duty to restore you to their hands.
+That 's all I have to say."
+
+He was going, but Roderick forcibly detained him.
+It would have been but a rough way of expressing it to say
+that one could never know how Roderick would take a thing.
+It had happened more than once that when hit hard, deservedly,
+he had received the blow with touching gentleness.
+On the other hand, he had often resented the softest taps.
+The secondary effect of Rowland's present admonition
+seemed reassuring.  "I beg you to wait," he said,
+"to forgive that shabby speech, and to let me reflect."
+And he walked up and down awhile, reflecting.  At last he stopped,
+with a look in his face that Rowland had not seen all winter.
+It was a strikingly beautiful look.
+
+"How strange it is," he said, "that the simplest devices are
+the last that occur to one!"  And he broke into a light laugh.
+"To see Mary Garland is just what I want.  And my mother--
+my mother can't hurt me now."
+
+"You will write, then?"
+
+"I will telegraph.  They must come, at whatever cost.
+Striker can arrange it all for them."
+
+In a couple of days he told Rowland that he had received a telegraphic
+answer to his message, informing him that the two ladies were to sail
+immediately for Leghorn, in one of the small steamers which ply between
+that port and New York.  They would arrive, therefore, in less than a month.
+Rowland passed this month of expectation in no very serene frame of mind.
+His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his
+agitated conscience; but there was something intolerable in the thought
+of the suffering to which the event was probably subjecting those
+undefended women.  They had scraped together their scanty funds
+and embarked, at twenty-four hours' notice, upon the dreadful sea,
+to journey tremulously to shores darkened by the shadow of deeper alarms.
+He could only promise himself to be their devoted friend and servant.
+Preoccupied as he was, he was able to observe that expectation,
+with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his
+characteristic singularities.  If redemption--Roderick seemed
+to reason--was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride,
+these last moments of error should be doubly erratic.  He did nothing;
+but inaction, with him, took on an unwonted air of gentle gayety.
+He laughed and whistled and went often to Mrs. Light's; though Rowland
+knew not in what fashion present circumstances had modified his relations
+with Christina.  The month ebbed away and Rowland daily expected
+to hear from Roderick that he had gone to Leghorn to meet the ship.
+He heard nothing, and late one evening, not having seen his friend
+in three or four days, he stopped at Roderick's lodging to assure
+himself that he had gone at last.  A cab was standing in the street,
+but as it was a couple of doors off he hardly heeded it.
+The hall at the foot of the staircase was dark, like most Roman halls,
+and he paused in the street-doorway on hearing the advancing footstep
+of a person with whom he wished to avoid coming into collision.
+While he did so he heard another footstep behind him, and turning
+round found that Roderick in person had just overtaken him.
+At the same moment a woman's figure advanced from within, into the light
+of the street-lamp, and a face, half-startled, glanced at him out
+of the darkness.  He gave a cry--it was the face of Mary Garland.
+Her glance flew past him to Roderick, and in a second a startled
+exclamation broke from her own lips.  It made Rowland turn again.
+Roderick stood there, pale, apparently trying to speak, but saying nothing.
+His lips were parted and he was wavering slightly with a strange movement--
+the movement of a man who has drunk too much.  Then Rowland's eyes
+met Miss Garland's again, and her own, which had rested a moment
+on Roderick's, were formidable!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  Mary Garland
+
+How it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn
+on his mother's arrival never clearly transpired;
+for he undertook to give no elaborate explanation of his fault.
+He never indulged in professions (touching personal conduct)
+as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and as he would
+have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to embrace
+his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland's presence,
+at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of him.
+It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season,
+the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid,
+and that, according to common probabilities, if Roderick had
+left Rome on the morrow (as he declared that he had intended),
+he would have had a day or two of waiting at Leghorn.
+Rowland's silent inference was that Christina Light had beguiled him
+into letting the time slip, and it was accompanied with a silent
+inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously or maliciously.
+He had told her, presumably, that his mother and his cousin
+were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember
+hereupon that she was a young lady of mysterious impulses.
+Rowland heard in due time the story of the adventures of the two
+ladies from Northampton.  Miss Garland's wish, at Leghorn,
+on finding they were left at the mercy of circumstances,
+had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an answer;
+for she knew that their arrival was a trifle premature.
+But Mrs. Hudson's maternal heart had taken the alarm.
+Roderick's sending for them was, to her imagination, a confession
+of illness, and his not being at Leghorn, a proof of it;
+an hour's delay was therefore cruel both to herself and to him.
+She insisted on immediate departure; and, unskilled as they
+were in the mysteries of foreign (or even of domestic)
+travel, they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome.
+They had arrived late in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns,
+had got into a cab and proceeded to Roderick's lodging.
+At the door, poor Mrs. Hudson's frightened anxiety had overcome her,
+and she had sat quaking and crying in the vehicle, too weak to move.
+Miss Garland had bravely gone in, groped her way up the dusky
+staircase, reached Roderick's door, and, with the assistance
+of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she had culled
+from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage,
+had learned from the old woman who had her cousin's household
+economy in charge that he was in the best of health and spirits,
+and had gone forth a few hours before with his hat on
+his ear, per divertirsi.
+
+These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies
+the evening after their arrival.  Mrs. Hudson spoke of them at great
+length and with an air of clinging confidence in Rowland which told
+him how faithfully time had served him, in her imagination.
+But her fright was over, though she was still catching her breath
+a little, like a person dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep.
+She was excessively bewildered and confused, and seemed
+more than ever to demand a tender handling from her friends.
+Before Miss Garland, Rowland was distinctly conscious that he trembled.
+He wondered extremely what was going on in her mind; what was
+her silent commentary on the incidents of the night before.
+He wondered all the more, because he immediately perceived that she
+was greatly changed since their parting, and that the change
+was by no means for the worse.  She was older, easier, more free,
+more like a young woman who went sometimes into company.
+She had more beauty as well, inasmuch as her beauty before had been
+the depth of her expression, and the sources from which this beauty
+was fed had in these two years evidently not wasted themselves.
+Rowland felt almost instantly--he could hardly have said why:
+it was in her voice, in her tone, in the air--that a total change
+had passed over her attitude towards himself.  She trusted him now,
+absolutely; whether or no she liked him, she believed he was solid.
+He felt that during the coming weeks he would need to be solid.
+Mrs. Hudson was at one of the smaller hotels, and her sitting-room
+was frugally lighted by a couple of candles.  Rowland made
+the most of this dim illumination to try to detect the afterglow
+of that frightened flash from Miss Garland's eyes the night before.
+It had been but a flash, for what provoked it had instantly vanished.
+Rowland had murmured a rapturous blessing on Roderick's head,
+as he perceived him instantly apprehend the situation.
+If he had been drinking, its gravity sobered him on the spot;
+in a single moment he collected his wits.  The next moment,
+with a ringing, jovial cry, he was folding the young girl
+in his arms, and the next he was beside his mother's carriage,
+half smothered in her sobs and caresses.  Rowland had recommended
+a hotel close at hand, and had then discreetly withdrawn.
+Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly, and Miss Garland's
+brow was serene.  It was serene now, twenty-four hours later;
+but nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment.
+What had become of it?  It had dropped down deep into her memory,
+and it was lying there for the present in the shade.  But with
+another week, Rowland said to himself, it would leap erect again;
+the lightest friction would strike a spark from it.  Rowland thought
+he had schooled himself to face the issue of Mary Garland's advent,
+casting it even in a tragical phase; but in her personal presence--
+in which he found a poignant mixture of the familiar and the strange--
+he seemed to face it and all that it might bring with it for
+the first time.  In vulgar parlance, he stood uneasy in his shoes.
+He felt like walking on tiptoe, not to arouse the sleeping shadows.
+He felt, indeed, almost like saying that they might have their
+own way later, if they would only allow to these first few days
+the clear light of ardent contemplation.  For Rowland at last
+was ardent, and all the bells within his soul were ringing
+bravely in jubilee.  Roderick, he learned, had been the whole day
+with his mother, and had evidently responded to her purest trust.
+He appeared to her appealing eyes still unspotted by the world.
+That is what it is, thought Rowland, to be "gifted," to escape not
+only the superficial, but the intrinsic penalties of misconduct.
+The two ladies had spent the day within doors, resting from the fatigues
+of travel.  Miss Garland, Rowland suspected, was not so fatigued
+as she suffered it to be assumed.  She had remained with Mrs. Hudson,
+to attend to her personal wants, which the latter seemed to think,
+now that she was in a foreign land, with a southern climate and a
+Catholic religion, would forthwith become very complex and formidable,
+though as yet they had simply resolved themselves into a desire
+for a great deal of tea and for a certain extremely familiar old
+black and white shawl across her feet, as she lay on the sofa.
+But the sense of novelty was evidently strong upon Miss Garland,
+and the light of expectation was in her eye.  She was restless
+and excited; she moved about the room and went often to the window;
+she was observing keenly; she watched the Italian servants intently,
+as they came and went; she had already had a long colloquy with the
+French chambermaid, who had expounded her views on the Roman question;
+she noted the small differences in the furniture, in the food,
+in the sounds that came in from the street.  Rowland felt, in all this,
+that her intelligence, here, would have a great unfolding.
+He wished immensely he might have a share in it; he wished he might
+show her Rome.  That, of course, would be Roderick's office.
+But he promised himself at least to take advantage of off-hours.
+
+"It behooves you to appreciate your good fortune," he said to her.
+"To be young and elastic, and yet old enough and wise enough to
+discriminate and reflect, and to come to Italy for the first time--
+that is one of the greatest pleasures that life offers us.
+It is but right to remind you of it, so that you make the most
+of opportunity and do not accuse yourself, later, of having wasted
+the precious season."
+
+Miss Garland looked at him, smiling intently, and went to the window again.
+"I expect to enjoy it," she said.  "Don't be afraid; I am not wasteful."
+
+"I am afraid we are not qualified, you know," said Mrs. Hudson.
+"We are told that you must know so much, that you must have
+read so many books.  Our taste has not been cultivated.
+When I was a young lady at school, I remember I had a medal,
+with a pink ribbon, for 'proficiency in Ancient History'--
+the seven kings, or is it the seven hills? and Quintus
+Curtius and Julius Caesar and--and that period, you know.
+I believe I have my medal somewhere in a drawer, now, but I
+have forgotten all about the kings.  But after Roderick
+came to Italy we tried to learn something about it.
+Last winter Mary used to read "Corinne" to me in the evenings,
+and in the mornings she used to read another book, to herself.
+What was it, Mary, that book that was so long, you know,--
+in fifteen volumes?"
+
+"It was Sismondi's Italian Republics," said Mary, simply.
+
+Rowland could not help laughing; whereupon Mary blushed.
+"Did you finish it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, and began another--a shorter one--Roscoe's Leo the Tenth."
+
+"Did you find them interesting?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"Do you like history?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"That 's a woman's answer!  And do you like art?"
+
+She paused a moment.  "I have never seen it!"
+
+"You have great advantages, now, my dear, with Roderick and Mr. Mallet,"
+said Mrs. Hudson.  "I am sure no young lady ever had such advantages.
+You come straight to the highest authorities.  Roderick, I suppose,
+will show you the practice of art, and Mr. Mallet, perhaps, if he will
+be so good, will show you the theory.  As an artist's wife, you ought
+to know something about it."
+
+"One learns a good deal about it, here, by simply living," said Rowland;
+"by going and coming about one's daily avocations."
+
+"Dear, dear, how wonderful that we should be here in the midst of it!"
+murmured Mrs. Hudson.  "To think of art being out there in the streets!
+We did n't see much of it last evening, as we drove from the depot.
+But the streets were so dark and we were so frightened!
+But we are very easy now; are n't we, Mary?"
+
+"I am very happy," said Mary, gravely, and wandered back to the window again.
+
+Roderick came in at this moment and kissed his mother, and then went
+over and joined Miss Garland.  Rowland sat with Mrs. Hudson, who evidently
+had a word which she deemed of some value for his private ear.
+She followed Roderick with intensely earnest eyes.
+
+"I wish to tell you, sir," she said, "how very grateful--how very thankful--
+what a happy mother I am!  I feel as if I owed it all to you, sir.
+To find my poor boy so handsome, so prosperous, so elegant, so famous--
+and ever to have doubted of you!  What must you think of me?
+You 're our guardian angel, sir.  I often say so to Mary."
+
+Rowland wore, in response to this speech, a rather haggard brow.
+He could only murmur that he was glad she found Roderick looking well.
+He had of course promptly asked himself whether the best discretion
+dictated that he should give her a word of warning--just turn the handle
+of the door through which, later, disappointment might enter.
+He had determined to say nothing, but simply to wait in silence for Roderick
+to find effective inspiration in those confidently expectant eyes.
+It was to be supposed that he was seeking for it now; he remained
+sometime at the window with his cousin.  But at last he turned away
+and came over to the fireside with a contraction of the eyebrows which
+seemed to intimate that Miss Garland's influence was for the moment,
+at least, not soothing.  She presently followed him, and for an instant
+Rowland observed her watching him as if she thought him strange.
+"Strange enough," thought Rowland, "he may seem to her, if he will!"
+Roderick directed his glance to his friend with a certain peremptory
+air, which--roughly interpreted--was equivalent to a request to share
+the intellectual expense of entertaining the ladies.  "Good heavens!"
+Rowland cried within himself; "is he already tired of them?"
+
+"To-morrow, of course, we must begin to put you through the mill,"
+Roderick said to his mother.  "And be it hereby known to Mallet
+that we count upon him to turn the wheel."
+
+"I will do as you please, my son," said Mrs. Hudson.
+"So long as I have you with me I don't care where I go.
+We must not take up too much of Mr. Mallet's time."
+
+"His time is inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do.
+Have you, Rowland?  If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it!
+Where will you go first?  You have your choice--from the Scala Santa
+to the Cloaca Maxima."
+
+"Let us take things in order," said Rowland.  "We will go first to Saint
+Peter's. Miss Garland, I hope you are impatient to see Saint Peter's."
+
+"I would like to go first to Roderick's studio," said Miss Garland.
+
+"It 's a very nasty place," said Roderick.  "At your pleasure!"
+
+"Yes, we must see your beautiful things before we can look contentedly
+at anything else," said Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"I have no beautiful things," said Roderick.  "You may see what there is!
+What makes you look so odd?"
+
+This inquiry was abruptly addressed to his mother, who, in response,
+glanced appealingly at Mary and raised a startled hand to her smooth hair.
+
+"No, it 's your face," said Roderick.  "What has happened to it
+these two years?  It has changed its expression."
+
+"Your mother has prayed a great deal," said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+"I did n't suppose, of course, it was from doing anything bad!
+It makes you a very good face--very interesting, very solemn.
+It has very fine lines in it; something might be done with it."
+And Rowland held one of the candles near the poor lady's head.
+
+She was covered with confusion.  "My son, my son," she said with dignity,
+"I don't understand you."
+
+In a flash all his old alacrity had come to him.
+"I suppose a man may admire his own mother!" he cried.
+"If you please, madame, you 'll sit to me for that head.
+I see it, I see it!  I will make something that a queen can't
+get done for her."
+
+Rowland respectfully urged her to assent; he saw Roderick was in the vein
+and would probably do something eminently original.  She gave her promise,
+at last, after many soft, inarticulate protests and a frightened petition
+that she might be allowed to keep her knitting.
+
+Rowland returned the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part
+Roderick had assigned to him.  It had been arranged that they
+should go to Saint Peter's. Roderick was in high good-humor, and,
+in the carriage, was watching his mother with a fine mixture of filial
+and professional tenderness.  Mrs. Hudson looked up mistrustfully
+at the tall, shabby houses, and grasped the side of the barouche
+in her hand, as if she were in a sail-boat, in dangerous waters.
+Rowland sat opposite to Miss Garland.  She was totally oblivious
+of her companions; from the moment the carriage left the hotel,
+she sat gazing, wide-eyed and absorbed, at the objects about them.
+If Rowland had felt disposed he might have made a joke of her
+intense seriousness.  From time to time he told her the name
+of a place or a building, and she nodded, without looking at him.
+When they emerged into the great square between Bernini's colonnades,
+she laid her hand on Mrs. Hudson's arm and sank back in the carriage,
+staring up at the vast yellow fa;alcade of the church.
+Inside the church, Roderick gave his arm to his mother,
+and Rowland constituted himself the especial guide of Miss Garland.
+He walked with her slowly everywhere, and made the entire circuit,
+telling her all he knew of the history of the building.
+This was a great deal, but she listened attentively, keeping her
+eyes fixed on the dome.  To Rowland himself it had never seemed
+so radiantly sublime as at these moments; he felt almost as if
+he had contrived it himself and had a right to be proud of it.
+He left Miss Garland a while on the steps of the choir, where she
+had seated herself to rest, and went to join their companions.
+Mrs. Hudson was watching a great circle of tattered contadini,
+who were kneeling before the image of Saint Peter.  The fashion
+of their tatters fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort
+of terrified pity, and could not be induced to look at anything else.
+Rowland went back to Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
+
+"Well, what do you think of Europe?" he asked, smiling.
+
+"I think it 's horrible!" she said abruptly.
+
+"Horrible?"
+
+"I feel so strangely--I could almost cry."
+
+"How is it that you feel?"
+
+"So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart,
+in an hour!"
+
+"But, surely, you 're pleased--you 're interested."
+
+"I am overwhelmed.  Here in a single hour, everything is changed.
+It is as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke.
+Before me lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one,
+the poor little narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful."
+
+"But you did n't come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on
+that narrow little world.  Forget it, turn your back on it,
+and enjoy all this."
+
+"I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up
+at that golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it
+the vague shapes of certain people and things at home.
+To enjoy, as you say, as these things demand of one to enjoy them,
+is to break with one's past.  And breaking is a pain!"
+
+"Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you.
+Enjoy, enjoy; it is your duty.  Yours especially!"
+
+"Why mine especially?"
+
+"Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing
+the most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful.
+You are extremely intelligent."
+
+"You don't know," said Miss Garland, simply.
+
+"In that matter one feels.  I really think that I know better than you.
+I don't want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is
+susceptible of a great development.  Give it the best company, trust it,
+let it go!"
+
+She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous
+vista of the great church.  "But what you say," she said
+at last, "means change!"
+
+"Change for the better!" cried Rowland.
+
+"How can one tell?  As one stands, one knows the worst.
+It seems to me very frightful to develop," she added,
+with her complete smile.
+
+"One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do
+it with a good grace as with a bad!  Since one can't escape life,
+it is better to take it by the hand."
+
+"Is this what you call life?" she asked.
+
+"What do you mean by 'this'?"
+
+"Saint Peter's--all this splendor, all Rome--pictures, ruins,
+statues, beggars, monks."
+
+"It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it.
+All these things are impregnated with life; they are the fruits
+of an old and complex civilization."
+
+"An old and complex civilization:  I am afraid I don't like that."
+
+"Don't conclude on that point just yet.  Wait till you have tested it.
+While you wait, you will see an immense number of very
+beautiful things--things that you are made to understand.
+They won't leave you as they found you; then you can judge.
+Don't tell me I know nothing about your understanding.
+I have a right to assume it."
+
+Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome.  "I am not sure
+I understand that," she said.
+
+"I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,"
+said Rowland.  "You need n't be afraid to tell the truth.
+What strikes some people is that it is so remarkably small."
+
+"Oh, it's large enough; it's very wonderful.  There are things
+in Rome, then," she added in a moment, turning and looking at him,
+"that are very, very beautiful?"
+
+"Lots of them."
+
+"Some of the most beautiful things in the world?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"What are they? which things have most beauty?"
+
+"That is according to taste.  I should say the statues."
+
+"How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least,
+something about them?"
+
+"You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight.
+But to know them is a thing for one's leisure.
+The more time you spend among them, the more you care for them."
+After a moment's hesitation he went on:  "Why should you grudge time?
+It 's all in your way, since you are to be an artist's wife."
+
+"I have thought of that," she said.  "It may be that I shall always live here,
+among the most beautiful things in the world!"
+
+"Very possibly!  I should like to see you ten years hence."
+
+"I dare say I shall seem greatly altered.  But I am sure of one thing."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"That for the most part I shall be quite the same.
+I ask nothing better than to believe the fine things you say about
+my understanding, but even if they are true, it won't matter.
+I shall be what I was made, what I am now--a young woman from
+the country!  The fruit of a civilization not old and complex,
+but new and simple."
+
+"I am delighted to hear it:  that 's an excellent foundation."
+
+"Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think
+so kindly of it.  Therefore I warn you."
+
+"I am not frightened.  I should like vastly to say something to you:
+Be what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you."
+
+If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland;
+but she seemed at least slightly disturbed.  She proposed that they
+should join their companions.
+
+Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want of
+reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic temples.
+"Mary, dear," she whispered, "suppose we had to kiss that dreadful brass toe.
+If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at Northampton, as bright
+as that!  I think it's so heathenish; but Roderick says he thinks
+it 's sublime."
+
+Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse.  "It 's sublimer
+than anything that your religion asks you to do!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties,"
+said Miss Garland.
+
+"The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and
+listening to a nasal Puritan!  I admit that 's difficult.
+But it 's not sublime.  I am speaking of ceremonies, of forms.
+It is in my line, you know, to make much of forms.
+I think this is a very beautiful one.  Could n't you do it?"
+he demanded, looking at his cousin.
+
+She looked back at him intently and then shook her head.
+"I think not!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know; I could n't!"
+
+During this little discussion our four friends were standing
+near the venerable image of Saint Peter, and a squalid,
+savage-looking peasant, a tattered ruffian of the most orthodox
+Italian aspect, had been performing his devotions before it.
+He turned away, crossing himself, and Mrs. Hudson gave a little
+shudder of horror.
+
+"After that," she murmured, "I suppose he thinks he is as good as any one!
+And here is another.  Oh, what a beautiful person!"
+
+A young lady had approached the sacred effigy, after having wandered
+away from a group of companions.  She kissed the brazen toe,
+touched it with her forehead, and turned round, facing our friends.
+Rowland then recognized Christina Light.  He was stupefied:
+had she suddenly embraced the Catholic faith?  It was but a few
+weeks before that she had treated him to a passionate profession
+of indifference.  Had she entered the church to put herself
+en regle with what was expected of a Princess Casamassima?
+While Rowland was mentally asking these questions she was
+approaching him and his friends, on her way to the great altar.
+At first she did not perceive them.
+
+Mary Garland had been gazing at her.  "You told me," she said gently,
+to Rowland, "that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things
+in the world.  This surely is one of them!"
+
+At this moment Christina's eye met Rowland's and before
+giving him any sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at
+his companions.  She saw Roderick, but she gave him no bow;
+she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked at Mary Garland.
+At Mary Garland she looked fixedly, piercingly, from head to foot,
+as the slow pace at which she was advancing made possible.
+Then suddenly, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time,
+she gave him a charming nod, a radiant smile.  In a moment
+he was at her side.  She stopped, and he stood talking to her;
+she continued to look at Miss Garland.
+
+"Why, Roderick knows her!" cried Mrs. Hudson, in an awe-struck whisper.
+"I supposed she was some great princess."
+
+"She is--almost!" said Rowland.  "She is the most beautiful girl in Europe,
+and Roderick has made her bust."
+
+"Her bust?  Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, vaguely shocked.
+"What a strange bonnet!"
+
+"She has very strange eyes," said Mary, and turned away.
+
+The two ladies, with Rowland, began to descend toward the door of the church.
+On their way they passed Mrs. Light, the Cavaliere, and the poodle,
+and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which these personages
+stood to Roderick's young lady.
+
+"Think of it, Mary!" said Mrs. Hudson.  "What splendid people he must know!
+No wonder he found Northampton dull!"
+
+"I like the poor little old gentleman," said Mary.
+
+"Why do you call him poor?"  Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
+
+"He seems so!" she answered simply.
+
+As they were reaching the door they were overtaken by Roderick,
+whose interview with Miss Light had perceptibly brightened his eye.
+"So you are acquainted with princesses!" said his mother softly,
+as they passed into the portico.
+
+"Miss Light is not a princess!" said Roderick, curtly.
+
+"But Mr. Mallet says so," urged Mrs. Hudson, rather disappointed.
+
+"I meant that she was going to be!" said Rowland.
+
+"It 's by no means certain that she is even going to be!"
+Roderick answered.
+
+"Ah," said Rowland, "I give it up!"
+
+Roderick almost immediately demanded that his mother should sit
+to him, at his studio, for her portrait, and Rowland ventured to add
+another word of urgency.  If Roderick's idea really held him,
+it was an immense pity that his inspiration should be wasted;
+inspiration, in these days, had become too precious a commodity.
+It was arranged therefore that, for the present, during the mornings,
+Mrs. Hudson should place herself at her son's service.
+This involved but little sacrifice, for the good lady's appetite
+for antiquities was diminutive and bird-like, the usual round
+of galleries and churches fatigued her, and she was glad to
+purchase immunity from sight-seeing by a regular afternoon drive.
+It became natural in this way that, Miss Garland having her
+mornings free, Rowland should propose to be the younger lady's
+guide in whatever explorations she might be disposed to make.
+She said she knew nothing about it, but she had a great curiosity,
+and would be glad to see anything that he would show her.  Rowland could
+not find it in his heart to accuse Roderick of neglect of the young girl;
+for it was natural that the inspirations of a capricious man of genius,
+when they came, should be imperious; but of course he wondered
+how Miss Garland felt, as the young man's promised wife, on being
+thus expeditiously handed over to another man to be entertained.
+However she felt, he was certain he would know little about it.
+There had been, between them, none but indirect allusions
+to her engagement, and Rowland had no desire to discuss it
+more largely; for he had no quarrel with matters as they stood.
+They wore the same delightful aspect through the lovely month
+of May, and the ineffable charm of Rome at that period seemed
+but the radiant sympathy of nature with his happy opportunity.
+The weather was divine; each particular morning, as he walked from his
+lodging to Mrs. Hudson's modest inn, seemed to have a blessing upon it.
+The elder lady had usually gone off to the studio, and he found Miss
+Garland sitting alone at the open window, turning the leaves of some
+book of artistic or antiquarian reference that he had given her.
+She always had a smile, she was always eager, alert, responsive.
+She might be grave by nature, she might be sad by circumstance,
+she might have secret doubts and pangs, but she was essentially
+young and strong and fresh and able to enjoy.  Her enjoyment
+was not especially demonstrative, but it was curiously diligent.
+Rowland felt that it was not amusement and sensation that she coveted,
+but knowledge--facts that she might noiselessly lay away, piece by piece,
+in the perfumed darkness of her serious mind, so that, under this
+head at least, she should not be a perfectly portionless bride.
+She never merely pretended to understand; she let things go, in her
+modest fashion, at the moment, but she watched them on their way,
+over the crest of the hill, and when her fancy seemed not likely
+to be missed it went hurrying after them and ran breathless
+at their side, as it were, and begged them for the secret.
+Rowland took an immense satisfaction in observing that she never mistook
+the second-best for the best, and that when she was in the presence
+of a masterpiece, she recognized the occasion as a mighty one.
+She said many things which he thought very profound--
+that is, if they really had the fine intention he suspected.
+This point he usually tried to ascertain; but he was obliged
+to proceed cautiously, for in her mistrustful shyness it seemed
+to her that cross-examination must necessarily be ironical.
+She wished to know just where she was going--what she would gain or lose.
+This was partly on account of a native intellectual purity, a temper
+of mind that had not lived with its door ajar, as one might say,
+upon the high-road of thought, for passing ideas to drop in and out
+at their pleasure; but had made much of a few long visits from guests
+cherished and honored--guests whose presence was a solemnity.
+But it was even more because she was conscious of a sort of growing
+self-respect, a sense of devoting her life not to her own ends,
+but to those of another, whose life would be large and brilliant.
+She had been brought up to think a great deal of "nature" and nature's
+innocent laws; but now Rowland had spoken to her ardently of culture;
+her strenuous fancy had responded, and she was pursuing culture
+into retreats where the need for some intellectual effort gave
+a noble severity to her purpose.  She wished to be very sure,
+to take only the best, knowing it to be the best.  There was something
+exquisite in this labor of pious self-adornment, and Rowland helped it,
+though its fruits were not for him.  In spite of her lurking rigidity
+and angularity, it was very evident that a nervous, impulsive sense
+of beauty was constantly at play in her soul, and that her actual
+experience of beautiful things moved her in some very deep places.
+For all that she was not demonstrative, that her manner was simple,
+and her small-talk of no very ample flow; for all that, as she had said,
+she was a young woman from the country, and the country was West Nazareth,
+and West Nazareth was in its way a stubborn little fact, she was
+feeling the direct influence of the great amenities of the world,
+and they were shaping her with a divinely intelligent touch.
+"Oh exquisite virtue of circumstance!" cried Rowland to himself,
+"that takes us by the hand and leads us forth out of corners where,
+perforce, our attitudes are a trifle contracted, and beguiles us
+into testing mistrusted faculties!"  When he said to Mary Garland
+that he wished he might see her ten years hence, he was paying
+mentally an equal compliment to circumstance and to the girl herself.
+Capacity was there, it could be freely trusted; observation would
+have but to sow its generous seed.  "A superior woman"--
+the idea had harsh associations, but he watched it imaging itself
+in the vagueness of the future with a kind of hopeless confidence.
+
+They went a great deal to Saint Peter's, for which Rowland had
+an exceeding affection, a large measure of which he succeeded
+in infusing into his companion.  She confessed very speedily
+that to climb the long, low, yellow steps, beneath the huge
+florid fa;alcade, and then to push the ponderous leathern apron
+of the door, to find one's self confronted with that builded,
+luminous sublimity, was a sensation of which the keenness
+renewed itself with surprising generosity.  In those days
+the hospitality of the Vatican had not been curtailed, and it
+was an easy and delightful matter to pass from the gorgeous
+church to the solemn company of the antique marbles.
+Here Rowland had with his companion a great deal of talk,
+and found himself expounding aesthetics a perte de vue.
+He discovered that she made notes of her likes and dislikes in a
+new-looking little memorandum book, and he wondered to what extent
+she reported his own discourse.  These were charming hours.
+The galleries had been so cold all winter that Rowland had been
+an exile from them; but now that the sun was already scorching
+in the great square between the colonnades, where the twin
+fountains flashed almost fiercely, the marble coolness of
+the long, image-bordered vistas made them a delightful refuge.
+The great herd of tourists had almost departed, and our two
+friends often found themselves, for half an hour at a time,
+in sole and tranquil possession of the beautiful Braccio Nuovo.
+Here and there was an open window, where they lingered and leaned,
+looking out into the warm, dead air, over the towers of
+the city, at the soft-hued, historic hills, at the stately
+shabby gardens of the palace, or at some sunny, empty,
+grass-grown court, lost in the heart of the labyrinthine pile.
+They went sometimes into the chambers painted by Raphael,
+and of course paid their respects to the Sistine Chapel;
+but Mary's evident preference was to linger among the statues.
+Once, when they were standing before that noblest of sculptured
+portraits, the so-called Demosthenes, in the Braccio Nuovo,
+she made the only spontaneous allusion to her projected marriage,
+direct or indirect, that had yet fallen from her lips.
+"I am so glad," she said, "that Roderick is a sculptor and
+not a painter."
+
+The allusion resided chiefly in the extreme earnestness with which the words
+were uttered.  Rowland immediately asked her the reason of her gladness.
+
+"It 's not that painting is not fine," she said, "but that sculpture
+is finer.  It is more manly."
+
+Rowland tried at times to make her talk about herself, but in this she
+had little skill.  She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant
+to social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a desire
+to draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and thoughts.
+He told her his desire and what suggested it.  "It appears, then," she said,
+"that, after all, one can grow at home!"
+
+"Unquestionably, if one has a motive.  Your growth, then, was unconscious?
+You did not watch yourself and water your roots?"
+
+She paid no heed to his question.  "I am willing to grant,"
+she said, "that Europe is more delightful than I supposed;
+and I don't think that, mentally, I had been stingy.
+But you must admit that America is better than you have supposed."
+
+"I have not a fault to find with the country which produced you!"
+Rowland thought he might risk this, smiling.
+
+"And yet you want me to change--to assimilate Europe, I suppose
+you would call it."
+
+"I have felt that desire only on general principles.  Shall I tell you
+what I feel now?  America has made you thus far; let America finish you!
+I should like to ship you back without delay and see what becomes of you.
+That sounds unkind, and I admit there is a cold intellectual curiosity in it."
+
+She shook her head.  "The charm is broken; the thread is snapped!
+I prefer to remain here."
+
+Invariably, when he was inclined to make of something they were talking
+of a direct application to herself, she wholly failed to assist him;
+she made no response.  Whereupon, once, with a spark of ardent irritation,
+he told her she was very "secretive."  At this she colored a little,
+and he said that in default of any larger confidence it would at least
+be a satisfaction to make her confess to that charge.  But even this
+satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making,
+two or three times afterward, a softly ironical allusion to her slyness.
+He told her that she was what is called in French a sournoise.
+"Very good," she answered, almost indifferently, "and now please tell
+me again--I have forgotten it--what you said an 'architrave' was."
+
+It was on the occasion of her asking him a question of this kind
+that he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she
+had been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark
+of restless ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts.
+"You are always snatching at information," he said; "you will never
+consent to have any disinterested conversation."
+
+She frowned a little, as she always did when he arrested
+their talk upon something personal.  But this time
+she assented, and said that she knew she was eager for facts.
+"One must make hay while the sun shines," she added.
+"I must lay up a store of learning against dark days.
+Somehow, my imagination refuses to compass the idea that I
+may be in Rome indefinitely."
+
+He knew he had divined her real motives; but he felt that if he might
+have said to her--what it seemed impossible to say--that fortune
+possibly had in store for her a bitter disappointment, she would have
+been capable of answering, immediately after the first sense of pain,
+"Say then that I am laying up resources for solitude!"
+
+But all the accusations were not his.  He had been watching, once,
+during some brief argument, to see whether she would take her forefinger
+out of her Murray, into which she had inserted it to keep a certain page.
+It would have been hard to say why this point interested him, for he had
+not the slightest real apprehension that she was dry or pedantic.
+The simple human truth was, the poor fellow was jealous of science.
+In preaching science to her, he had over-estimated his powers
+of self-effacement. Suddenly, sinking science for the moment,
+she looked at him very frankly and began to frown.  At the same time
+she let the Murray slide down to the ground, and he was so charmed
+with this circumstance that he made no movement to pick it up.
+
+"You are singularly inconsistent, Mr. Mallet," she said.
+
+"How?"
+
+"That first day that we were in Saint Peter's you said
+things that inspired me.  You bade me plunge into all this.
+I was all ready; I only wanted a little push; yours was a great one;
+here I am in mid-ocean! And now, as a reward for my bravery,
+you have repeatedly snubbed me."
+
+"Distinctly, then," said Rowland, "I strike you as inconsistent?"
+
+"That is the word."
+
+"Then I have played my part very ill."
+
+"Your part?  What is your part supposed to have been?"
+
+He hesitated a moment.  "That of usefulness, pure and simple."
+
+"I don't understand you!" she said; and picking up her Murray,
+she fairly buried herself in it.
+
+That evening he said something to her which necessarily increased
+her perplexity, though it was not uttered with such an intention.
+"Do you remember," he asked, "my begging you, the other day, to do
+occasionally as I told you?  It seemed to me you tacitly consented."
+
+"Very tacitly."
+
+"I have never yet really presumed on your consent.  But now I would
+like you to do this:  whenever you catch me in the act of what you
+call inconsistency, ask me the meaning of some architectural term.
+I will know what you mean; a word to the wise!"
+
+One morning they spent among the ruins of the Palatine,
+that sunny desolation of crumbling, over-tangled fragments,
+half excavated and half identified, known as the Palace
+of the Caesars.  Nothing in Rome is more interesting,
+and no locality has such a confusion of picturesque charms.
+It is a vast, rambling garden, where you stumble at every
+step on the disinterred bones of the past; where damp,
+frescoed corridors, relics, possibly, of Nero's Golden House,
+serve as gigantic bowers, and where, in the springtime,
+you may sit on a Latin inscription, in the shade of a flowering
+almond-tree, and admire the composition of the Campagna.
+The day left a deep impression on Rowland's mind, partly owing
+to its intrinsic sweetness, and partly because his companion,
+on this occasion, let her Murray lie unopened for an hour,
+and asked several questions irrelevant to the Consuls
+and the Caesars.  She had begun by saying that it was coming
+over her, after all, that Rome was a ponderously sad place.
+The sirocco was gently blowing, the air was heavy, she was tired,
+she looked a little pale.
+
+"Everything," she said, "seems to say that all things are vanity.
+If one is doing something, I suppose one feels a certain strength within
+one to contradict it.  But if one is idle, surely it is depressing to live,
+year after year, among the ashes of things that once were mighty.
+If I were to remain here I should either become permanently 'low,'
+as they say, or I would take refuge in some dogged daily work."
+
+"What work?"
+
+"I would open a school for those beautiful little beggars;
+though I am sadly afraid I should never bring myself to scold them."
+
+"I am idle," said Rowland, "and yet I have kept up a certain spirit."
+
+"I don't call you idle," she answered with emphasis.
+
+"It is very good of you.  Do you remember our talking about
+that in Northampton?"
+
+"During that picnic?  Perfectly.  Has your coming abroad succeeded,
+for yourself, as well as you hoped?"
+
+"I think I may say that it has turned out as well as I expected."
+
+"Are you happy?"
+
+"Don't I look so?"
+
+"So it seems to me.  But"--and she hesitated a moment--"I imagine
+you look happy whether you are so or not."
+
+"I 'm like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder
+excavated fresco:  I am made to grin."
+
+"Shall you come back here next winter?"
+
+"Very probably."
+
+"Are you settled here forever?"
+
+" 'Forever' is a long time.  I live only from year to year."
+
+"Shall you never marry?"
+
+Rowland gave a laugh.  " 'Forever'--'never!' You handle large ideas.
+I have not taken a vow of celibacy."
+
+"Would n't you like to marry?"
+
+"I should like it immensely."
+
+To this she made no rejoinder:  but presently she asked,
+"Why don't you write a book?"
+
+Rowland laughed, this time more freely.  "A book!
+What book should I write?"
+
+"A history; something about art or antiquities."
+
+"I have neither the learning nor the talent."
+
+She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said
+she had supposed otherwise.  "You ought, at any rate,"
+she continued in a moment, "to do something for yourself."
+
+"For myself?  I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed
+to live for himself"--
+
+"I don't know how it seems," she interrupted, "to careless observers.
+But we know--we know that you have lived--a great deal--for us."
+
+Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words
+with a little jerk.
+
+"She has had that speech on her conscience," thought Rowland;
+"she has been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her
+that now was her time to make it and have done with it."
+
+She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with
+due solemnity.  "You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel.
+Mrs. Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels.  Of course
+Roderick has expressed himself.  I have been wanting to thank you too;
+I do, from my heart."
+
+Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic
+mask much more than the comic.  But Miss Garland was not looking at him;
+she had taken up her Murray again.
+
+In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland
+frequently saw her again in the evening.  He was apt to spend
+half an hour in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension
+on the slope of the Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly
+with his mother, was present on these occasions.  Rowland saw
+him little at other times, and for three weeks no observations
+passed between them on the subject of Mrs. Hudson's advent.
+To Rowland's vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits
+to proceed from the presence of the two ladies remained
+shrouded in mystery.  Roderick was peculiarly inscrutable.
+He was preoccupied with his work on his mother's portrait,
+which was taking a very happy turn; and often, when he sat silent,
+with his hands in his pockets, his legs outstretched, his head
+thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to be supposed
+that his fancy was hovering about the half-shaped image in
+his studio, exquisite even in its immaturity.  He said little,
+but his silence did not of necessity imply disaffection,
+for he evidently found it a deep personal luxury to lounge away
+the hours in an atmosphere so charged with feminine tenderness.
+He was not alert, he suggested nothing in the way of excursions
+(Rowland was the prime mover in such as were attempted),
+but he conformed passively at least to the tranquil temper of
+the two women, and made no harsh comments nor sombre allusions.
+Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his
+friend injustice in denying him the sentiment of duty.
+He refused invitations, to Rowland's knowledge, in order to dine
+at the jejune little table-d'hote; wherever his spirit might be,
+he was present in the flesh with religious constancy.
+Mrs. Hudson's felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable tendency
+to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown.
+Her tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers
+that the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch
+is an inanimate terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust,
+and that it is even a safe audacity to tickle its nose.
+As to whether the love-knot of which Mary Garland had
+the keeping still held firm, who should pronounce?
+The young girl, as we know, did not wear it on her sleeve.
+She always sat at the table, near the candles, with a piece
+of needle-work. This was the attitude in which Rowland had
+first seen her, and he thought, now that he had seen her
+in several others, it was not the least becoming.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. The Cavaliere
+
+There befell at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable
+to go to the hotel.  Late in the evening of the second one Roderick
+came into his room.  In a few moments he announced that he had finished
+the bust of his mother.
+
+"And it 's magnificent!" he declared.  "It 's one of the best
+things I have done."
+
+"I believe it," said Rowland.  "Never again talk to me about
+your inspiration being dead."
+
+"Why not?  This may be its last kick!  I feel very tired.
+But it 's a masterpiece, though I do say it.  They tell us
+we owe so much to our parents.  Well, I 've paid the filial
+debt handsomely!"  He walked up and down the room a few moments,
+with the purpose of his visit evidently still undischarged.
+"There 's one thing more I want to say," he presently resumed.
+"I feel as if I ought to tell you!"  He stopped before Rowland
+with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded.
+"Your invention is a failure!"
+
+"My invention?"  Rowland repeated.
+
+"Bringing out my mother and Mary."
+
+"A failure?"
+
+"It 's no use!  They don't help me."
+
+Rowland had fancied that Roderick had no more surprises for him;
+but he was now staring at him, wide-eyed.
+
+"They bore me!"  Roderick went on.
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.
+
+"Listen, listen!" said Roderick with perfect gentleness.
+"I am not complaining of them; I am simply stating a fact.
+I am very sorry for them; I am greatly disappointed."
+
+"Have you given them a fair trial?"
+
+"Should n't you say so?  It seems to me I have behaved beautifully."
+
+"You have done very well; I have been building great hopes on it."
+
+"I have done too well, then.  After the first forty-eight hours
+my own hopes collapsed.  But I determined to fight it out;
+to stand within the temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend!
+Do you want to know the result?  Another week of it, and I shall
+begin to hate them.  I shall want to poison them."
+
+"Miserable boy!" cried Rowland.  "They are the loveliest of women!"
+
+"Very likely!  But they mean no more to me than a Bible text
+to an atheist!"
+
+"I utterly fail," said Rowland, in a moment, "to understand your relation
+to Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides.
+"She adores me!  That 's my relation."  And he smiled strangely.
+
+"Have you broken your engagement?"
+
+"Broken it?  You can't break a ray of moonshine."
+
+"Have you absolutely no affection for her?"
+
+Roderick placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment.
+"Dead--dead--dead!" he said at last.
+
+"I wonder," Rowland asked presently, "if you begin
+to comprehend the beauty of Miss Garland's character.
+She is a person of the highest merit."
+
+"Evidently--or I would not have cared for her!"
+
+"Has that no charm for you now?"
+
+"Oh, don't force a fellow to say rude things!"
+
+"Well, I can only say that you don't know what you are giving up."
+
+Roderick gave a quickened glance.  "Do you know, so well?"
+
+"I admire her immeasurably."
+
+Roderick smiled, we may almost say sympathetically.
+"You have not wasted time."
+
+Rowland's thoughts were crowding upon him fast.  If Roderick
+was resolute, why oppose him?  If Mary was to be sacrificed,
+why, in that way, try to save her?  There was another way;
+it only needed a little presumption to make it possible.
+Rowland tried, mentally, to summon presumption to his aid;
+but whether it came or not, it found conscience there before it.
+Conscience had only three words, but they were cogent.
+"For her sake--for her sake," it dumbly murmured, and Rowland
+resumed his argument.  "I don't know what I would n't do,"
+he said, "rather than that Miss Garland should suffer."
+
+"There is one thing to be said," Roderick answered reflectively.
+"She is very strong."
+
+"Well, then, if she 's strong, believe that with a longer chance,
+a better chance, she will still regain your affection."
+
+"Do you know what you ask?" cried Roderick.  "Make love to a girl I hate?"
+
+"You hate?"
+
+"As her lover, I should hate her!"
+
+"Listen to me!" said Rowland with vehemence.
+
+"No, listen you to me!  Do you really urge my marrying a woman who
+would bore me to death?  I would let her know it in very good season,
+and then where would she be?"
+
+Rowland walked the length of the room a couple of times and then
+stopped suddenly.  "Go your way, then!  Say all this to her,
+not to me!"
+
+"To her?  I am afraid of her; I want you to help me."
+
+"My dear Roderick," said Rowland with an eloquent smile,
+"I can help you no more!"
+
+Roderick frowned, hesitated a moment, and then took his hat.
+"Oh, well," he said, "I am not so afraid of her as all that!"
+And he turned, as if to depart.
+
+"Stop!" cried Rowland, as he laid his hand on the door.
+
+Roderick paused and stood waiting, with his irritated brow.
+
+"Come back; sit down there and listen to me.  Of anything you were to say
+in your present state of mind you would live most bitterly to repent.
+You don't know what you really think; you don't know what you really feel.
+You don't know your own mind; you don't do justice to Miss Garland.
+All this is impossible here, under these circumstances.  You 're blind,
+you 're deaf, you 're under a spell.  To break it, you must leave Rome."
+
+"Leave Rome!  Rome was never so dear to me."
+
+"That 's not of the smallest consequence.  Leave it instantly."
+
+"And where shall I go?"
+
+"Go to some place where you may be alone with your mother and Miss Garland."
+
+"Alone?  You will not come?"
+
+"Oh, if you desire it, I will come."
+
+Roderick inclining his head a little, looked at his friend askance.
+"I don't understand you," he said; "I wish you liked Miss Garland
+either a little less, or a little more."
+
+Rowland felt himself coloring, but he paid no heed to Roderick's speech.
+"You ask me to help you," he went on.  "On these present conditions I can
+do nothing.  But if you will postpone all decision as to the continuance
+of your engagement a couple of months longer, and meanwhile leave Rome,
+leave Italy, I will do what I can to 'help you,' as you say, in the event
+of your still wishing to break it."
+
+"I must do without your help then!  Your conditions are impossible.
+I will leave Rome at the time I have always intended--at the end of June.
+My rooms and my mother's are taken till then; all my arrangements are
+made accordingly.  Then, I will depart; not before."
+
+"You are not frank," said Rowland.  "Your real reason for staying
+has nothing to do with your rooms."
+
+Roderick's face betrayed neither embarrassment nor resentment.
+"If I 'm not frank, it 's for the first time in my life.
+Since you know so much about my real reason, let me hear it!
+No, stop!" he suddenly added, "I won't trouble you.
+You are right, I have a motive.  On the twenty-fourth of June
+Miss Light is to be married.  I take an immense interest in all
+that concerns her, and I wish to be present at her wedding."
+
+"But you said the other day at Saint Peter's that it was by no means
+certain her marriage would take place."
+
+"Apparently I was wrong:  the invitations, I am told, are going out."
+
+Rowland felt that it would be utterly vain to remonstrate,
+and that the only thing for him was to make the best terms possible.
+"If I offer no further opposition to your waiting for Miss Light's marriage,"
+he said, "will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period,
+to defer to my judgment--to say nothing that may be a cause of suffering
+to Miss Garland?"
+
+"For a certain period?  What period?"  Roderick demanded.
+
+"Ah, don't drive so close a bargain!  Don't you understand that I have
+taken you away from her, that I suffer in every nerve in consequence,
+and that I must do what I can to restore you?"
+
+"Do what you can, then," said Roderick gravely, putting out his hand.
+"Do what you can!"  His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute
+a promise, and upon this they parted.
+
+Roderick's bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what
+he called the filial debt, was at least a most admirable production.
+Rowland, at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening,
+and this unscrupulous genius immediately began to ask questions about it.
+"I am told our high-flying friend has come down," he said.
+"He has been doing a queer little old woman."
+
+"A queer little old woman!"  Rowland exclaimed.  "My dear sir,
+she is Hudson's mother."
+
+"All the more reason for her being queer!  It is a bust for terra-cotta, eh?"
+
+"By no means; it is for marble."
+
+"That 's a pity.  It was described to me as a charming piece of quaintness:
+a little demure, thin-lipped old lady, with her head on one side,
+and the prettiest wrinkles in the world--a sort of fairy godmother."
+
+"Go and see it, and judge for yourself," said Rowland.
+
+"No, I see I shall be disappointed.  It 's quite the other thing,
+the sort of thing they put into the campo-santos. I wish that boy
+would listen to me an hour!"
+
+But a day or two later Rowland met him again in the street, and,
+as they were near, proposed they should adjourn to Roderick's studio.
+He consented, and on entering they found the young master.
+Roderick's demeanor to Gloriani was never conciliatory,
+and on this occasion supreme indifference was apparently all
+he had to offer.  But Gloriani, like a genuine connoisseur,
+cared nothing for his manners; he cared only for his skill.
+In the bust of Mrs. Hudson there was something almost touching;
+it was an exquisite example of a ruling sense of beauty.
+The poor lady's small, neat, timorous face had certainly no
+great character, but Roderick had reproduced its sweetness,
+its mildness, its minuteness, its still maternal passion,
+with the most unerring art.  It was perfectly unflattered,
+and yet admirably tender; it was the poetry of fidelity.
+Gloriani stood looking at it a long time most intently.
+Roderick wandered away into the neighboring room.
+
+"I give it up!" said the sculptor at last.  "I don't understand it."
+
+"But you like it?" said Rowland.
+
+"Like it?  It 's a pearl of pearls.  Tell me this," he added:
+"is he very fond of his mother; is he a very good son?"
+And he gave Rowland a sharp look.
+
+"Why, she adores him," said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"That 's not an answer!  But it 's none of my business.
+Only if I, in his place, being suspected of having--
+what shall I call it?--a cold heart, managed to do that piece
+of work, oh, oh!  I should be called a pretty lot of names.
+Charlatan, poseur, arrangeur!  But he can do as he chooses!
+My dear young man, I know you don't like me," he went on,
+as Roderick came back.  "It 's a pity; you are strong enough
+not to care about me at all.  You are very strong."
+
+"Not at all," said Roderick curtly.  "I am very weak!"
+
+"I told you last year that you would n't keep it up.
+I was a great ass.  You will!"
+
+"I beg your pardon--I won't!" retorted Roderick.
+
+"Though I 'm a great ass, all the same, eh?  Well, call me
+what you will, so long as you turn out this sort of thing!
+I don't suppose it makes any particular difference, but I
+should like to say now I believe in you."
+
+Roderick stood looking at him for a moment with a strange hardness
+in his face.  It flushed slowly, and two glittering, angry tears
+filled his eyes.  It was the first time Rowland had ever seen
+them there; he saw them but once again.  Poor Gloriani, he was sure,
+had never in his life spoken with less of irony; but to Roderick
+there was evidently a sense of mockery in his profession of faith.
+He turned away with a muttered, passionate imprecation.
+Gloriani was accustomed to deal with complex problems, but this
+time he was hopelessly puzzled.  "What 's the matter with him?"
+he asked, simply.
+
+Rowland gave a sad smile, and touched his forehead.
+"Genius, I suppose."
+
+Gloriani sent another parting, lingering look at the bust of Mrs. Hudson.
+"Well, it 's deuced perfect, it 's deuced simple; I do believe in him!"
+he said.  "But I 'm glad I 'm not a genius.  It makes," he added with a laugh,
+as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his back still turned,
+"it makes a more sociable studio."
+
+Rowland had purchased, as he supposed, temporary tranquillity
+for Mary Garland; but his own humor in these days was not
+especially peaceful.  He was attempting, in a certain sense,
+to lead the ideal life, and he found it, at the least, not easy.
+The days passed, but brought with them no official invitation
+to Miss Light's wedding.  He occasionally met her, and he
+occasionally met Prince Casamassima; but always separately,
+never together.  They were apparently taking their happiness
+in the inexpressive manner proper to people of social eminence.
+Rowland continued to see Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt
+a confirmed affection.  He had always talked to her with frankness,
+but now he made her a confidant of all his hidden dejection.
+Roderick and Roderick's concerns had been a common theme
+with him, and it was in the natural course to talk
+of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Miss Garland's fine smile.
+Madame Grandoni was an intelligent listener, and she
+lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell.
+"At one moment you tell me the girl is plain," she said;
+"the next you tell me she 's pretty.  I will invite them,
+and I shall see for myself.  But one thing is very clear:
+you are in love with her."
+
+Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her.
+
+"More than that," she added, "you have been in love with her these two years.
+There was that certain something about you!.... I knew you were a mild,
+sweet fellow, but you had a touch of it more than was natural.
+Why did n't you tell me at once?  You would have saved me
+a great deal of trouble.  And poor Augusta Blanchard too!"
+And herewith Madame Grandoni communicated a pertinent fact:
+Augusta Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth were going to make a match.
+The young lady had been staying for a month at Albano, and Mr. Leavenworth
+had been dancing attendance.  The event was a matter of course.
+Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself with a failure
+of attention to Miss Blanchard's doings, made some such observation.
+
+"But you did not find it so!" cried his hostess.
+"It was a matter of course, perhaps, that Mr. Leavenworth,
+who seems to be going about Europe with the sole view of picking
+up furniture for his 'home,' as he calls it, should think Miss
+Blanchard a very handsome piece; but it was not a matter of course--
+or it need n't have been--that she should be willing to become
+a sort of superior table-ornament. She would have accepted you
+if you had tried."
+
+"You are supposing the insupposable," said Rowland.
+"She never gave me a particle of encouragement."
+
+"What would you have had her do?  The poor girl did her best,
+and I am sure that when she accepted Mr. Leavenworth she
+thought of you."
+
+"She thought of the pleasure her marriage would give me."
+
+"Ay, pleasure indeed!  She is a thoroughly good girl,
+but she has her little grain of feminine spite, like the rest.
+Well, he 's richer than you, and she will have what she wants;
+but before I forgive you I must wait and see this new arrival--
+what do you call her?--Miss Garland.  If I like her, I will
+forgive you; if I don't, I shall always bear you a grudge."
+
+Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she
+might offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland
+was a figment of her fancy.  Miss Garland was engaged to another man,
+and he himself had no claims.
+
+"Well, then," said Madame Grandoni, "if I like her,
+we 'll have it that you ought to be in love with her.
+If you fail in this, it will be a double misdemeanor.
+The man she 's engaged to does n't care a straw for her.
+Leave me alone and I 'll tell her what I think of you."
+
+As to Christina Light's marriage, Madame Grandoni could make no
+definite statement.  The young girl, of late, had made her several
+flying visits, in the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial
+shopping and dress-fitting; she had spoken of the event with
+a toss of her head, as a matter which, with a wise old friend
+who viewed things in their essence, she need not pretend to treat
+as a solemnity.  It was for Prince Casamassima to do that.
+"It is what they call a marriage of reason," she once said.
+"That means, you know, a marriage of madness!"
+
+"What have you said in the way of advice?"  Rowland asked.
+
+"Very little, but that little has favored the prince.
+I know nothing of the mysteries of the young lady's heart.
+It may be a gold-mine, but at any rate it 's a mine, and it 's
+a long journey down into it.  But the marriage in itself is an
+excellent marriage.  It 's not only brilliant, but it 's safe.
+I think Christina is quite capable of making it a means of misery;
+but there is no position that would be sacred to her.
+Casamassima is an irreproachable young man; there is nothing
+against him but that he is a prince.  It is not often, I fancy,
+that a prince has been put through his paces at this rate.
+No one knows the wedding-day; the cards of invitation have
+been printed half a dozen times over, with a different date;
+each time Christina has destroyed them.  There are people
+in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away;
+they are in a dreadful fright about the fever, but they
+are dying to see the wedding, and if the day were fixed,
+they would make their arrangements to wait for it.
+I think it very possible that after having kept them a month
+and produced a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married
+at midnight by an old friar, with simply the legal witnesses."
+
+"It is true, then, that she has become a Catholic?"
+
+"So she tells me.  One day she got up in the depths of despair;
+at her wit's end, I suppose, in other words, for a new sensation.
+Suddenly it occurred to her that the Catholic church might after all
+hold the key, might give her what she wanted!  She sent for a priest;
+he happened to be a clever man, and he contrived to interest her.
+She put on a black dress and a black lace veil, and looking
+handsomer than ever she rustled into the Catholic church.
+The prince, who is very devout, and who had her heresy
+sorely on his conscience, was thrown into an ecstasy.
+May she never have a caprice that pleases him less!"
+
+Rowland had already asked Madame Grandoni what, to her perception,
+was the present state of matters between Christina and Roderick;
+and he now repeated his question with some earnestness of apprehension.
+"The girl is so deucedly dramatic," he said, "that I don't know what coup de
+theatre she may have in store for us.  Such a stroke was her turning Catholic;
+such a stroke would be her some day making her courtesy to a disappointed
+world as Princess Casamassima, married at midnight, in her bonnet.
+She might do--she may do--something that would make even more starers!
+I 'm prepared for anything."
+
+"You mean that she might elope with your sculptor, eh?"
+
+"I 'm prepared for anything!"
+
+"Do you mean that he 's ready?"
+
+"Do you think that she is?"
+
+"They 're a precious pair!  I think this.  You by no means
+exhaust the subject when you say that Christina is dramatic.
+It 's my belief that in the course of her life she will do
+a certain number of things from pure disinterested passion.
+She 's immeasurably proud, and if that is often a fault
+in a virtuous person, it may be a merit in a vicious one.
+She needs to think well of herself; she knows a fine character,
+easily, when she meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison,
+even though the comparison is made by herself alone;
+and when the estimate she may have made of herself grows vague,
+she needs to do something to give it definite, impressive form.
+What she will do in such a case will be better or worse,
+according to her opportunity; but I imagine it will generally
+be something that will drive her mother to despair;
+something of the sort usually termed 'unworldly.'  "
+
+Rowland, as he was taking his leave, after some further
+exchange of opinions, rendered Miss Light the tribute of a
+deeply meditative sigh.  "She has bothered me half to death,"
+he said, "but somehow I can't manage, as I ought, to hate her.
+I admire her, half the time, and a good part of the rest
+I pity her."
+
+"I think I most pity her!" said Madame Grandoni.
+
+This enlightened woman came the next day to call upon the two ladies
+from Northampton.  She carried their shy affections by storm, and made
+them promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow.
+Her visit was an era in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing
+but make sudden desultory allusions to her, for the next thirty-six hours.
+"To think of her being a foreigner!" she would exclaim, after much
+intent reflection, over her knitting; "she speaks so beautifully!"
+Then in a little while, "She was n't so much dressed as you might
+have expected.  Did you notice how easy it was in the waist?
+I wonder if that 's the fashion?"  Or, "She 's very old to wear a hat;
+I should never dare to wear a hat!"  Or, "Did you notice her hands?--
+very pretty hands for such a stout person.  A great many rings,
+but nothing very handsome.  I suppose they are hereditary."  Or, "She 's
+certainly not handsome, but she 's very sweet-looking. I wonder why
+she does n't have something done to her teeth."  Rowland also received
+a summons to Madame Grandoni's tea-drinking, and went betimes,
+as he had been requested.  He was eagerly desirous to lend his mute
+applause to Mary Garland's debut in the Roman social world.  The two
+ladies had arrived, with Roderick, silent and careless, in attendance.
+Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by Mr. Leavenworth, and the party
+was completed by a dozen artists of both sexes and various nationalities.
+It was a friendly and easy assembly, like all Madame Grandoni's parties,
+and in the course of the evening there was some excellent music.
+People played and sang for Madame Grandoni, on easy terms, who, elsewhere,
+were not to be heard for the asking.  She was herself a superior musician,
+and singers found it a privilege to perform to her accompaniment.
+Rowland talked to various persons, but for the first time in his life his
+attention visibly wandered; he could not keep his eyes off Mary Garland.
+Madame Grandoni had said that he sometimes spoke of her as pretty
+and sometimes as plain; to-night, if he had had occasion to describe
+her appearance, he would have called her beautiful.  She was dressed
+more than he had ever seen her; it was becoming, and gave her a deeper
+color and an ampler presence.  Two or three persons were introduced
+to her who were apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them
+with her brilliant natural smile.  Rowland, from an opposite corner,
+reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss
+Blanchard's classic contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed
+him hardly more than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value.
+Roderick could not be accused of rancor, for he had approached
+Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied familiarity, and, lounging against the wall,
+with hands in pockets, was discoursing to him with candid serenity.
+Now that he had done him an impertinence, he evidently found him
+less intolerable.  Mr. Leavenworth stood stirring his tea and silently
+opening and shutting his mouth, without looking at the young sculptor,
+like a large, drowsy dog snapping at flies.  Rowland had found
+it disagreeable to be told Miss Blanchard would have married him
+for the asking, and he would have felt some embarrassment in going
+to speak to her if his modesty had not found incredulity so easy.
+The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had never been present
+to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all ways, to be
+compassed with a great effort.  He had half an hour's talk with her;
+a farewell talk, as it seemed to him--a farewell not to a real illusion,
+but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever
+be an acceptable pis-aller. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon
+her engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness.
+But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs. Browning
+and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her responding
+on this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a "glorious heart."
+Rowland wished to manifest an extreme regard, but toward the end
+of the talk his zeal relaxed, and he fell a-thinking that a certain
+natural ease in a woman was the most delightful thing in the world.
+There was Christina Light, who had too much, and here was Miss Blanchard,
+who had too little, and there was Mary Garland (in whom the quality
+was wholly uncultivated), who had just the right amount.
+
+He went to Madame Grandoni in an adjoining room, where she
+was pouring out tea.
+
+"I will make you an excellent cup," she said, "because I have forgiven you."
+
+He looked at her, answering nothing; but he swallowed his
+tea with great gusto, and a slight deepening of his color;
+by all of which one would have known that he was gratified.
+In a moment he intimated that, in so far as he had sinned,
+he had forgiven himself.
+
+"She is a lovely girl," said Madame Grandoni.  "There is a great deal there.
+I have taken a great fancy to her, and she must let me make a friend of her."
+
+"She is very plain," said Rowland, slowly, "very simple, very ignorant."
+
+"Which, being interpreted, means, 'She is very handsome, very subtle,
+and has read hundreds of volumes on winter evenings in the country.'
+"
+
+"You are a veritable sorceress," cried Rowland; "you frighten me away!"
+As he was turning to leave her, there rose above the hum of voices
+in the drawing-room the sharp, grotesque note of a barking dog.
+Their eyes met in a glance of intelligence.
+
+"There is the sorceress!" said Madame Grandoni.
+"The sorceress and her necromantic poodle!"  And she hastened
+back to the post of hospitality.
+
+Rowland followed her, and found Christina Light standing in the middle
+of the drawing-room, and looking about in perplexity.  Her poodle,
+sitting on his haunches and gazing at the company, had apparently been
+expressing a sympathetic displeasure at the absence of a welcome.
+But in a moment Madame Grandoni had come to the young girl's relief,
+and Christina had tenderly kissed her.
+
+"I had no idea," said Christina, surveying the assembly, "that you
+had such a lot of grand people, or I would not have come in.
+The servant said nothing; he took me for an invitee.  I came
+to spend a neighborly half-hour; you know I have n't many left!
+It was too dismally dreary at home.  I hoped I should find
+you alone, and I brought Stenterello to play with the cat.
+I don't know that if I had known about all this I would have dared
+to come in; but since I 've stumbled into the midst of it, I beg
+you 'll let me stay.  I am not dressed, but am I very hideous?
+I will sit in a corner and no one will notice me.
+My dear, sweet lady, do let me stay.  Pray, why did n't you
+ask me?  I never have been to a little party like this.
+They must be very charming.  No dancing--tea and conversation?
+No tea, thank you; but if you could spare a biscuit for Stenterello;
+a sweet biscuit, please.  Really, why did n't you ask me?
+Do you have these things often?  Madame Grandoni, it 's very unkind!"
+And the young girl, who had delivered herself of the foregoing
+succession of sentences in her usual low, cool, penetrating voice,
+uttered these last words with a certain tremor of feeling.
+"I see," she went on, "I do very well for balls and great banquets,
+but when people wish to have a cosy, friendly, comfortable evening,
+they leave me out, with the big flower-pots and the gilt candlesticks."
+
+"I 'm sure you 're welcome to stay, my dear," said Madame Grandoni,
+"and at the risk of displeasing you I must confess that if I
+did n't invite you, it was because you 're too grand.
+Your dress will do very well, with its fifty flounces,
+and there is no need of your going into a corner.
+Indeed, since you 're here, I propose to have the glory of it.
+You must remain where my people can see you."
+
+"They are evidently determined to do that by the way they stare.
+Do they think I intend to dance a tarantella?  Who are they all;
+do I know them?"  And lingering in the middle of the room, with her
+arm passed into Madame Grandoni's, she let her eyes wander slowly
+from group to group.  They were of course observing her.  Standing in
+the little circle of lamplight, with the hood of an Eastern burnous,
+shot with silver threads, falling back from her beautiful head,
+one hand gathering together its voluminous, shimmering folds,
+and the other playing with the silken top-knot on the uplifted
+head of her poodle, she was a figure of radiant picturesqueness.
+She seemed to be a sort of extemporized tableau vivant.
+Rowland's position made it becoming for him to speak
+to her without delay.  As she looked at him he saw that,
+judging by the light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a
+humor of which she had not yet treated him to a specimen.
+In a simpler person he would have called it exquisite kindness;
+but in this young lady's deportment the flower was one thing and
+the perfume another.  "Tell me about these people," she said to him.
+"I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I had not seen.
+What are they all talking about?  It 's all beyond me, I suppose.
+There is Miss Blanchard, sitting as usual in profile against
+a dark object.  She is like a head on a postage-stamp. And
+there is that nice little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson.
+What a dear little woman for a mother!  Comme elle est proprette!
+And the other, the fiancee, of course she 's here.  Ah, I see!"
+She paused; she was looking intently at Miss Garland.
+Rowland measured the intentness of her glance, and suddenly
+acquired a firm conviction.  "I should like so much to know her!"
+she said, turning to Madame Grandoni.  "She has a charming face;
+I am sure she 's an angel.  I wish very much you would introduce me.
+No, on second thoughts, I had rather you did n't. I will speak
+to her bravely myself, as a friend of her cousin."  Madame Grandoni
+and Rowland exchanged glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina
+flung off her burnous, crumpled it together, and, with uplifted
+finger,tossing it into a corner, gave it in charge to her poodle.
+He stationed himself upon it, on his haunches, with upright vigilance.
+Christina crossed the room with the step and smile of a
+ministering angel, and introduced herself to Mary Garland.
+She had once told Rowland that she would show him, some day,
+how gracious her manners could be; she was now redeeming her promise.
+Rowland, watching her, saw Mary Garland rise slowly, in response
+to her greeting, and look at her with serious deep-gazing eyes.
+The almost dramatic opposition of these two keenly interesting girls
+touched Rowland with a nameless apprehension, and after a moment
+he preferred to turn away.  In doing so he noticed Roderick.
+The young sculptor was standing planted on the train of a lady's dress,
+gazing across at Christina's movements with undisguised earnestness.
+There were several more pieces of music; Rowland sat in a corner
+and listened to them.  When they were over, several people began
+to take their leave, Mrs. Hudson among the number.  Rowland saw her
+come up to Madame Grandoni, clinging shyly to Mary Garland's arm.
+Miss Garland had a brilliant eye and a deep color in her cheek.
+The two ladies looked about for Roderick, but Roderick had his
+back turned.  He had approached Christina, who, with an absent air,
+was sitting alone, where she had taken her place near Miss Garland,
+looking at the guests pass out of the room.  Christina's eye,
+like Miss Garland's, was bright, but her cheek was pale.
+Hearing Roderick's voice, she looked up at him sharply;
+then silently, with a single quick gesture, motioned him away.
+He obeyed her, and came and joined his mother in bidding good night
+to Madame Grandoni.  Christina, in a moment, met Rowland's glance,
+and immediately beckoned him to come to her.  He was familiar
+with her spontaneity of movement, and was scarcely surprised.
+She made a place for him on the sofa beside her; he wondered
+what was coming now.  He was not sure it was not a mere fancy,
+but it seemed to him that he had never seen her look just as she
+was looking then.  It was a humble, touching, appealing look,
+and it threw into wonderful relief the nobleness of her beauty.
+"How many more metamorphoses," he asked himself, "am I to be
+treated to before we have done?"
+
+"I want to tell you," said Christina.  "I have taken an immense
+fancy to Miss Garland.  Are n't you glad?"
+
+"Delighted!" exclaimed poor Rowland.
+
+"Ah, you don't believe it," she said with soft dignity.
+
+"Is it so hard to believe?"
+
+"Not that people in general should admire her, but that I should.  But I want
+to tell you; I want to tell some one, and I can't tell Miss Garland herself.
+She thinks me already a horrid false creature, and if I were to express
+to her frankly what I think of her, I should simply disgust her.
+She would be quite right; she has repose, and from that point of view I
+and my doings must seem monstrous.  Unfortunately, I have n't repose.
+I am trembling now; if I could ask you to feel my arm, you would see!
+But I want to tell you that I admire Miss Garland more than any of the people
+who call themselves her friends--except of course you.  Oh, I know that!
+To begin with, she is extremely handsome, and she does n't know it."
+
+"She is not generally thought handsome," said Rowland.
+
+"Evidently!  That 's the vulgarity of the human mind.
+Her head has great character, great natural style.
+If a woman is not to be a supreme beauty in the regular way,
+she will choose, if she 's wise, to look like that.
+She 'll not be thought pretty by people in general, and desecrated,
+as she passes, by the stare of every vile wretch who chooses
+to thrust his nose under her bonnet; but a certain number
+of superior people will find it one of the delightful things
+of life to look at her.  That lot is as good as another!
+Then she has a beautiful character!"
+
+"You found that out soon!" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"How long did it take you?  I found it out before I ever spoke to her.
+I met her the other day in Saint Peter's; I knew it then.  I knew it--
+do you want to know how long I have known it?"
+
+"Really," said Rowland, "I did n't mean to cross-examine you."
+
+"Do you remember mamma's ball in December?
+We had some talk and you then mentioned her--not by name.
+You said but three words, but I saw you admired her, and I knew
+that if you admired her she must have a beautiful character.
+That 's what you require!"
+
+"Upon my word," cried Rowland, "you make three words go very far!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hudson has also spoken of her."
+
+"Ah, that 's better!" said Rowland.
+
+"I don't know; he does n't like her."
+
+"Did he tell you so?"  The question left Rowland's lips before he could
+stay it, which he would have done on a moment's reflection.
+
+Christina looked at him intently.  "No!" she said at last.
+"That would have been dishonorable, would n't it?  But I know it
+from my knowledge of him.  He does n't like perfection; he is not bent
+upon being safe, in his likings; he 's willing to risk something!
+Poor fellow, he risks too much!"
+
+Rowland was silent; he did not care for the thrust;
+but he was profoundly mystified.  Christina beckoned
+to her poodle, and the dog marched stiffly across to her.
+She gave a loving twist to his rose-colored top-knot, and bade
+him go and fetch her burnous.  He obeyed, gathered it up
+in his teeth, and returned with great solemnity, dragging it
+along the floor.
+
+"I do her justice.  I do her full justice," she went on,
+with soft earnestness.  "I like to say that, I like to be able
+to say it.  She 's full of intelligence and courage and devotion.
+She does n't do me a grain of justice; but that is no harm.
+There is something so fine in the aversions of a good woman!"
+
+"If you would give Miss Garland a chance," said Rowland,
+"I am sure she would be glad to be your friend."
+
+"What do you mean by a chance?  She has only to take it.
+I told her I liked her immensely, and she frowned as if I had said
+something disgusting.  She looks very handsome when she frowns."
+Christina rose, with these words, and began to gather her
+mantle about her.  "I don't often like women," she went on.
+"In fact I generally detest them.  But I should like to know
+Miss Garland well.  I should like to have a friendship with her;
+I have never had one; they must be very delightful.
+But I shan't have one now, either--not if she can help it!
+Ask her what she thinks of me; see what she will say.
+I don't want to know; keep it to yourself.  It 's too sad.  So we go
+through life.  It 's fatality--that 's what they call it, is n't it?
+We please the people we don't care for, we displease those we do!
+But I appreciate her, I do her justice; that 's the more important thing.
+It 's because I have imagination.  She has none.  Never mind;
+it 's her only fault.  I do her justice; I understand very well."
+She kept softly murmuring and looking about for Madame Grandoni.
+She saw the good lady near the door, and put out her hand to
+Rowland for good night.  She held his hand an instant, fixing him
+with her eyes, the living splendor of which, at this moment,
+was something transcendent.  "Yes, I do her justice," she repeated.
+"And you do her more; you would lay down your life for her."
+With this she turned away, and before he could answer, she left him.
+She went to Madame Grandoni, grasped her two hands, and held out
+her forehead to be kissed.  The next moment she was gone.
+
+"That was a happy accident!" said Madame Grandoni.  "She never looked
+so beautiful, and she made my little party brilliant."
+
+"Beautiful, verily!"  Rowland answered.  "But it was no accident."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"It was a plan.  She wished to see Miss Garland.
+She knew she was to be here."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"By Roderick, evidently."
+
+"And why did she wish to see Miss Garland?"
+
+"Heaven knows!  I give it up!"
+
+"Ah, the wicked girl!" murmured Madame Grandoni.
+
+"No," said Rowland; "don't say that now.  She 's too beautiful."
+
+"Oh, you men!  The best of you!"
+
+"Well, then," cried Rowland, "she 's too good!"
+
+The opportunity presenting itself the next day, he failed not, as you
+may imagine, to ask Mary Garland what she thought of Miss Light.
+It was a Saturday afternoon, the time at which the beautiful
+marbles of the Villa Borghese are thrown open to the public.
+Mary had told him that Roderick had promised to take
+her to see them, with his mother, and he joined the party
+in the splendid Casino.  The warm weather had left so few
+strangers in Rome that they had the place almost to themselves.
+Mrs. Hudson had confessed to an invincible fear of treading,
+even with the help of her son's arm, the polished marble floors,
+and was sitting patiently on a stool, with folded hands,
+looking shyly, here and there, at the undraped paganism around her.
+Roderick had sauntered off alone, with an irritated brow,
+which seemed to betray the conflict between the instinct
+of observation and the perplexities of circumstance.
+Miss Garland was wandering in another direction, and though she
+was consulting her catalogue, Rowland fancied it was from habit;
+she too was preoccupied.  He joined her, and she presently
+sat down on a divan, rather wearily, and closed her Murray.
+Then he asked her abruptly how Christina had pleased her.
+
+She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she
+had been thinking of Christina.
+
+"I don't like her!" she said with decision.
+
+"What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think she 's false."  This was said without petulance or bitterness,
+but with a very positive air.
+
+"But she wished to please you; she tried," Rowland rejoined,
+in a moment.
+
+"I think not.  She wished to please herself!"
+
+Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more.
+No allusion to Christina had passed between them since the day
+they met her at Saint Peter's, but he knew that she knew,
+by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who loves,
+that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her.
+To what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain;
+but last night's interview, apparently, had not reassured her.
+It was, under these circumstances, equally unbecoming
+for Rowland either to depreciate or to defend Christina,
+and he had to content himself with simply having verified
+the girl's own assurance that she had made a bad impression.
+He tried to talk of indifferent matters--about the statues
+and the frescoes; but to-day, plainly, aesthetic curiosity,
+with Miss Garland, had folded its wings.  Curiosity of another sort
+had taken its place.  Mary was longing, he was sure, to question
+him about Christina; but she found a dozen reasons for hesitating.
+Her questions would imply that Roderick had not treated her
+with confidence, for information on this point should properly
+have come from him.  They would imply that she was jealous,
+and to betray her jealousy was intolerable to her pride.
+For some minutes, as she sat scratching the brilliant pavement
+with the point of her umbrella, it was to be supposed
+that her pride and her anxiety held an earnest debate.
+At last anxiety won.
+
+"A propos of Miss Light," she asked, "do you know her well?"
+
+"I can hardly say that.  But I have seen her repeatedly."
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"Yes and no.  I think I am sorry for her."
+
+Mary had spoken with her eyes on the pavement.  At this she looked up.
+"Sorry for her?  Why?"
+
+"Well--she is unhappy."
+
+"What are her misfortunes?"
+
+"Well--she has a horrible mother, and she has had a most injurious education."
+
+For a moment Miss Garland was silent.  Then, "Is n't she
+very beautiful?" she asked.
+
+"Don't you think so?"
+
+"That 's measured by what men think!  She is extremely clever, too."
+
+"Oh, incontestably."
+
+"She has beautiful dresses."
+
+"Yes, any number of them."
+
+"And beautiful manners."
+
+"Yes--sometimes."
+
+"And plenty of money."
+
+"Money enough, apparently."
+
+"And she receives great admiration."
+
+"Very true."
+
+"And she is to marry a prince."
+
+"So they say."
+
+Miss Garland rose and turned to rejoin her companions,
+commenting these admissions with a pregnant silence.
+"Poor Miss Light!" she said at last, simply.  And in this it
+seemed to Rowland there was a touch of bitterness.
+
+Very late on the following evening his servant brought him
+the card of a visitor.  He was surprised at a visit at such
+an hour, but it may be said that when he read the inscription--
+Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa--his surprise declined.
+He had had an unformulated conviction that there was to be
+a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni's; the Cavaliere
+had come to usher it in.
+
+He had come, evidently, on a portentous errand.  He was as pale
+as ashes and prodigiously serious; his little cold black eye
+had grown ardent, and he had left his caressing smile at home.
+He saluted Rowland, however, with his usual obsequious bow.
+
+"You have more than once done me the honor to invite me to call upon you,"
+he said.  "I am ashamed of my long delay, and I can only say
+to you, frankly, that my time this winter has not been my own."
+Rowland assented, ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative
+of the adage "Better late than never," begged him to be seated,
+and offered him a cigar.  The Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly
+the fragrant weed, and then declared that, if his kind host would
+allow him, he would reserve it for consumption at another time.
+He apparently desired to intimate that the solemnity of his errand
+left him no breath for idle smoke-puffings. Rowland stayed himself,
+just in time, from an enthusiastic offer of a dozen more cigars,
+and, as he watched the Cavaliere stow his treasure tenderly away
+in his pocket-book, reflected that only an Italian could go through
+such a performance with uncompromised dignity.  "I must confess,"
+the little old man resumed, "that even now I come on business
+not of my own--or my own, at least, only in a secondary sense.
+I have been dispatched as an ambassador, an envoy extraordinary,
+I may say, by my dear friend Mrs. Light."
+
+"If I can in any way be of service to Mrs. Light, I shall
+be happy," Rowland said.
+
+"Well then, dear sir, Casa Light is in commotion.
+The signora is in trouble--in terrible trouble."
+For a moment Rowland expected to hear that the signora's trouble
+was of a nature that a loan of five thousand francs would assuage.
+But the Cavaliere continued:  "Miss Light has committed a great crime;
+she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her mother."
+
+"A dagger!" cried Rowland.
+
+The Cavaliere patted the air an instant with his finger-tips.
+"I speak figuratively.  She has broken off her marriage."
+
+"Broken it off?"
+
+"Short!  She has turned the prince from the door."
+And the Cavaliere, when he had made this announcement, folded his
+arms and bent upon Rowland his intense, inscrutable gaze.
+It seemed to Rowland that he detected in the polished depths
+of it a sort of fantastic gleam of irony or of triumph;
+but superficially, at least, Giacosa did nothing to discredit
+his character as a presumably sympathetic representative
+of Mrs. Light's affliction.
+
+Rowland heard his news with a kind of fierce disgust; it seemed
+the sinister counterpart of Christina's preternatural mildness at
+Madame Grandoni's tea-party. She had been too plausible to be honest.
+Without being able to trace the connection, he yet instinctively
+associated her present rebellion with her meeting with Mary Garland.
+If she had not seen Mary, she would have let things stand.
+It was monstrous to suppose that she could have sacrificed so
+brilliant a fortune to a mere movement of jealousy, to a refined
+instinct of feminine deviltry, to a desire to frighten poor Mary
+from her security by again appearing in the field.  Yet Rowland
+remembered his first impression of her; she was "dangerous," and she
+had measured in each direction the perturbing effect of her rupture.
+She was smiling her sweetest smile at it!  For half an hour Rowland
+simply detested her, and longed to denounce her to her face.
+Of course all he could say to Giacosa was that he was extremely sorry.
+"But I am not surprised," he added.
+
+"You are not surprised?"
+
+"With Miss Light everything is possible.  Is n't that true?"
+
+Another ripple seemed to play for an instant in the current
+of the old man's irony, but he waived response.
+"It was a magnificent marriage," he said, solemnly.  "I do
+not respect many people, but I respect Prince Casamassima."
+
+"I should judge him indeed to be a very honorable young man," said Rowland.
+
+"Eh, young as he is, he 's made of the old stuff.  And now, perhaps he 's
+blowing his brains out.  He is the last of his house; it 's a great house.
+But Miss Light will have put an end to it!"
+
+"Is that the view she takes of it?"  Rowland ventured to ask.
+
+This time, unmistakably, the Cavaliere smiled, but still in
+that very out-of-the-way place.  "You have observed Miss Light
+with attention," he said, "and this brings me to my errand.
+Mrs. Light has a high opinion of your wisdom, of your kindness,
+and she has reason to believe you have influence with her daughter."
+
+"I--with her daughter?  Not a grain!"
+
+"That is possibly your modesty.  Mrs. Light believes that something
+may yet be done, and that Christina will listen to you.
+She begs you to come and see her before it is too late."
+
+"But all this, my dear Cavaliere, is none of my business,"
+Rowland objected.  "I can't possibly, in such a matter,
+take the responsibility of advising Miss Light."
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor, in brief
+but intense reflection.  Then looking up, "Unfortunately," he said,
+"she has no man near her whom she respects; she has no father!"
+
+"And a fatally foolish mother!"  Rowland gave himself
+the satisfaction of exclaiming.
+
+The Cavaliere was so pale that he could not easily have turned paler;
+yet it seemed for a moment that his dead complexion blanched.
+"Eh, signore, such as she is, the mother appeals to you.
+A very handsome woman--disheveled, in tears, in despair, in dishabille!"
+
+Rowland reflected a moment, not on the attractions of Mrs. Light
+under the circumstances thus indicated by the Cavaliere,
+but on the satisfaction he would take in accusing Christina
+to her face of having struck a cruel blow.
+
+"I must add," said the Cavaliere, "that Mrs. Light desires also to speak
+to you on the subject of Mr. Hudson."
+
+"She considers Mr. Hudson, then, connected with this step of her daughter's?"
+
+"Intimately.  He must be got out of Rome."
+
+"Mrs. Light, then, must get an order from the Pope to remove him.
+It 's not in my power."
+
+The Cavaliere assented, deferentially.  "Mrs. Light is equally helpless.
+She would leave Rome to-morrow, but Christina will not budge.
+An order from the Pope would do nothing.  A bull in council
+would do nothing."
+
+"She 's a remarkable young lady," said Rowland, with bitterness.
+
+But the Cavaliere rose and responded coldly, "She has a great spirit."
+And it seemed to Rowland that her great spirit, for mysterious reasons,
+gave him more pleasure than the distressing use she made of it gave
+him pain.  He was on the point of charging him with his inconsistency,
+when Giacosa resumed:  "But if the marriage can be saved, it must be saved.
+It 's a beautiful marriage.  It will be saved."
+
+"Notwithstanding Miss Light's great spirit to the contrary?"
+
+"Miss Light, notwithstanding her great spirit, will call
+Prince Casamassima back."
+
+"Heaven grant it!" said Rowland.
+
+"I don't know," said the Cavaliere, solemnly, "that heaven will have much
+to do with it."
+
+Rowland gave him a questioning look, but he laid his finger on his lips.
+And with Rowland's promise to present himself on the morrow at Casa Light,
+he shortly afterwards departed.  He left Rowland revolving many things:
+Christina's magnanimity, Christina's perversity, Roderick's contingent
+fortune, Mary Garland's certain trouble, and the Cavaliere's
+own fine ambiguities.
+
+Rowland's promise to the Cavaliere obliged him to withdraw from an
+excursion which he had arranged with the two ladies from Northampton.
+Before going to Casa Light he repaired in person to Mrs. Hudson's hotel,
+to make his excuses.
+
+He found Roderick's mother sitting with tearful eyes, staring at
+an open note that lay in her lap.  At the window sat Miss Garland,
+who turned her intense regard upon him as he came in.
+Mrs. Hudson quickly rose and came to him, holding out the note.
+
+"In pity's name," she cried, "what is the matter with my boy?
+If he is ill, I entreat you to take me to him!"
+
+"He is not ill, to my knowledge," said Rowland.
+"What have you there?"
+
+"A note--a dreadful note.  He tells us we are not to see him for a week.
+If I could only go to his room!  But I am afraid, I am afraid!"
+
+"I imagine there is no need of going to his room.
+What is the occasion, may I ask, of his note?"
+
+"He was to have gone with us on this drive to--what is the place?--
+to Cervara.  You know it was arranged yesterday morning.
+In the evening he was to have dined with us.  But he never came,
+and this morning arrives this awful thing.  Oh dear, I 'm so excited!
+Would you mind reading it?"
+
+Rowland took the note and glanced at its half-dozen lines.
+"I cannot go to Cervara," they ran; "I have something else to do.
+This will occupy me perhaps for a week, and you 'll not see me.
+Don't miss me--learn not to miss me.  R. H."
+
+"Why, it means," Rowland commented, "that he has taken up a piece
+of work, and that it is all-absorbing. That 's very good news."
+This explanation was not sincere; but he had not the courage
+not to offer it as a stop-gap. But he found he needed all his
+courage to maintain it, for Miss Garland had left her place
+and approached him, formidably unsatisfied.
+
+"He does not work in the evening," said Mrs. Hudson.  "Can't he come
+for five minutes?  Why does he write such a cruel, cold note to his
+poor mother--to poor Mary?  What have we done that he acts so strangely?
+It 's this wicked, infectious, heathenish place!"  And the poor lady's
+suppressed mistrust of the Eternal City broke out passionately.
+"Oh, dear Mr. Mallet," she went on, "I am sure he has the fever
+and he 's already delirious!"
+
+"I am very sure it 's not that," said Miss Garland, with a certain dryness.
+
+She was still looking at Rowland; his eyes met hers, and his own glance fell.
+This made him angry, and to carry off his confusion he pretended to be looking
+at the floor, in meditation.  After all, what had he to be ashamed of?
+For a moment he was on the point of making a clean breast of it,
+of crying out, "Dearest friends, I abdicate:  I can't help you!"
+But he checked himself; he felt so impatient to have his three words
+with Christina.  He grasped his hat.
+
+"I will see what it is!" he cried.  And then he was glad he had
+not abdicated, for as he turned away he glanced again at Mary and saw that,
+though her eyes were full of trouble, they were not hard and accusing,
+but charged with appealing friendship.
+
+He went straight to Roderick's apartment, deeming this, at an
+early hour, the safest place to seek him.  He found him in his
+sitting-room, which had been closely darkened to keep out the heat.
+The carpets and rugs had been removed, the floor of speckled
+concrete was bare and lightly sprinkled with water.  Here and there,
+over it, certain strongly perfumed flowers had been scattered.
+Roderick was lying on his divan in a white dressing-gown, staring up
+at the frescoed ceiling.  The room was deliciously cool, and filled
+with the moist, sweet odor of the circumjacent roses and violets.
+All this seemed highly fantastic, and yet Rowland hardly felt surprised.
+
+"Your mother was greatly alarmed at your note," he said, "and I
+came to satisfy myself that, as I believed, you are not ill."
+Roderick lay motionless, except that he slightly turned
+his head toward his friend.  He was smelling a large
+white rose, and he continued to present it to his nose.
+In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale,
+but his handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy.
+He let them rest for some time on Rowland, lying there like a
+Buddhist in an intellectual swoon, whose perception should be
+slowly ebbing back to temporal matters.  "Oh, I 'm not ill,"
+he said at last.  "I have never been better."
+
+"Your note, nevertheless, and your absence," Rowland said,
+"have very naturally alarmed your mother.  I advise you to go
+to her directly and reassure her."
+
+"Go to her?  Going to her would be worse than staying away.
+Staying away at present is a kindness."  And he inhaled
+deeply his huge rose, looking up over it at Rowland.
+"My presence, in fact, would be indecent."
+
+"Indecent?  Pray explain."
+
+"Why, you see, as regards Mary Garland.  I am divinely happy!
+Does n't it strike you?  You ought to agree with me.
+You wish me to spare her feelings; I spare them by staying away.
+Last night I heard something"--
+
+"I heard it, too," said Rowland with brevity.  "And it 's in honor of this
+piece of news that you have taken to your bed in this fashion?"
+
+"Extremes meet!  I can't get up for joy."
+
+"May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?--from Miss Light herself?"
+
+"By no means.  It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as well."
+
+"Casamassima's loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?"
+
+"I don't talk about certainties.  I don't want to
+be arrogant, I don't want to offend the immortal gods.
+I 'm keeping very quiet, but I can't help being happy.
+I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she
+threw overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!"
+
+"I feel bound to tell you," was in the course of a moment Rowland's
+response to this speech, "that I am now on my way to Mrs. Light's."
+
+"I congratulate you, I envy you!"  Roderick murmured, imperturbably.
+
+"Mrs. Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter,
+with whom she has taken it into her head that I have influence.
+I don't know to what extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you
+notice I shall not speak in your interest."
+
+Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes.
+"Pray don't!" he simply answered.
+
+"You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow."
+
+"My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you.
+You 're incapable of doing anything disloyal."
+
+"You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your visions,
+and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with anxiety?"
+
+"Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces?
+Wait till I get used to it a trifle.  I have done them
+a palpable wrong, but I can at least forbear to add insult
+to injury.  I may be an arrant fool, but, for the moment,
+I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased.
+I should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them;
+so I lock myself up as a dangerous character."
+
+"Well, I can only say, 'May your pleasure never grow less,
+or your danger greater!' "
+
+Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose.
+"God's will be done!"
+
+On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs. Light's.
+This afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him.
+Since the Cavaliere's report of her condition she had somewhat
+smoothed and trimmed the exuberance of her distress, but she
+was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she clutched Rowland
+by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes,
+he were her single floating spar.  Rowland greatly pitied her,
+for there is something respectable in passionate grief,
+even in a very bad cause; and as pity is akin to love,
+he endured her rather better than he had done hitherto.
+
+"Speak to her, plead with her, command her!" she cried,
+pressing and shaking his hands.  "She 'll not heed us,
+no more than if we were a pair of clocks a-ticking. Perhaps
+she will listen to you; she always liked you."
+
+"She always disliked me," said Rowland.  "But that does n't matter now.
+I have come here simply because you sent for me, not because I can help you.
+I cannot advise your daughter."
+
+"Oh, cruel, deadly man!  You must advise her; you shan't leave this
+house till you have advised her!" the poor woman passionately retorted.
+"Look at me in my misery and refuse to help me!  Oh, you need n't
+be afraid, I know I 'm a fright, I have n't an idea what I have on.
+If this goes on, we may both as well turn scarecrows.
+If ever a woman was desperate, frantic, heart-broken, I am that woman.
+I can't begin to tell you.  To have nourished a serpent, sir, all these
+years! to have lavished one's self upon a viper that turns and stings
+her own poor mother!  To have toiled and prayed, to have pushed
+and struggled, to have eaten the bread of bitterness, and all the rest
+of it, sir--and at the end of all things to find myself at this pass.
+It can't be, it 's too cruel, such things don't happen, the Lord
+don't allow it.  I 'm a religious woman, sir, and the Lord knows
+all about me.  With his own hand he had given me his reward!
+I would have lain down in the dust and let her walk over me;
+I would have given her the eyes out of my head, if she had taken a fancy
+to them.  No, she 's a cruel, wicked, heartless, unnatural girl!
+I speak to you, Mr. Mallet, in my dire distress, as to my only friend.
+There is n't a creature here that I can look to--not one of them all
+that I have faith in.  But I always admired you.  I said to Christina
+the first time I saw you that there at last was a real gentleman.
+Come, don't disappoint me now!  I feel so terribly alone, you see;
+I feel what a nasty, hard, heartless world it is that has come
+and devoured my dinners and danced to my fiddles, and yet that has
+n't a word to throw to me in my agony!  Oh, the money, alone, that I
+have put into this thing, would melt the heart of a Turk!"
+
+During this frenzied outbreak Rowland had had time to look round the room,
+and to see the Cavaliere sitting in a corner, like a major-domo on the divan
+of an antechamber, pale, rigid, and inscrutable.
+
+"I have it at heart to tell you," Rowland said, "that if you
+consider my friend Hudson"--
+
+Mrs. Light gave a toss of her head and hands.  "Oh, it 's not that.
+She told me last night to bother her no longer with Hudson, Hudson!
+She did n't care a button for Hudson.  I almost wish she did;
+then perhaps one might understand it.  But she does n't care for
+anything in the wide world, except to do her own hard, wicked will,
+and to crush me and shame me with her cruelty."
+
+"Ah, then," said Rowland, "I am as much at sea as you,
+and my presence here is an impertinence.  I should like to say
+three words to Miss Light on my own account.  But I must absolutely
+and inexorably decline to urge the cause of Prince Casamassima.
+This is simply impossible."
+
+Mrs. Light burst into angry tears.  "Because the poor boy is a prince,
+eh? because he 's of a great family, and has an income of millions, eh?
+That 's why you grudge him and hate him.  I knew there were vulgar people
+of that way of feeling, but I did n't expect it of you.  Make an effort,
+Mr. Mallet; rise to the occasion; forgive the poor fellow his splendor.
+Be just, be reasonable!  It 's not his fault, and it 's not mine.
+He 's the best, the kindest young man in the world, and the most
+correct and moral and virtuous!  If he were standing here in rags,
+I would say it all the same.  The man first--the money afterwards:
+that was always my motto, and always will be.  What do you take me for?
+Do you suppose I would give Christina to a vicious person? do you
+suppose I would sacrifice my precious child, little comfort as I have
+in her, to a man against whose character one word could be breathed?
+Casamassima is only too good, he 's a saint of saints, he 's stupidly good!
+There is n't such another in the length and breadth of Europe.
+What he has been through in this house, not a common peasant would endure.
+Christina has treated him as you would n't treat a dog.
+He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted!  He has been driven hither
+and thither till he did n't know where he was.  He has stood there
+where you stand--there, with his name and his millions and his devotion--
+as white as your handkerchief, with hot tears in his eyes, and me ready
+to go down on my knees to him and say, 'My own sweet prince, I could
+kiss the ground you tread on, but it is n't decent that I should allow
+you to enter my house and expose yourself to these horrors again.'
+And he would come back, and he would come back, and go through it all again,
+and take all that was given him, and only want the girl the more!
+I was his confidant; I know everything.  He used to beg my forgiveness
+for Christina.  What do you say to that?  I seized him once and kissed him,
+I did!  To find that and to find all the rest with it, and to believe it
+was a gift straight from the pitying angels of heaven, and then to see
+it dashed away before your eyes and to stand here helpless--oh, it 's
+a fate I hope you may ever be spared!"
+
+"It would seem, then, that in the interest of Prince Casamassima
+himself I ought to refuse to interfere," said Rowland.
+
+Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes.
+The intensity of her grief and anger gave her a kind of majesty,
+and Rowland, for the moment, felt ashamed of the ironical
+ring of his observation.  "Very good, sir," she said.
+"I 'm sorry your heart is not so tender as your conscience.
+My compliments to your conscience!  It must give you great happiness.
+Heaven help me!  Since you fail us, we are indeed driven to the wall.
+But I have fought my own battles before, and I have never
+lost courage, and I don't see why I should break down now.
+Cavaliere, come here!"
+
+Giacosa rose at her summons and advanced with his usual deferential alacrity.
+He shook hands with Rowland in silence.
+
+"Mr. Mallet refuses to say a word," Mrs. Light went on.
+"Time presses, every moment is precious.  Heaven knows what
+that poor boy may be doing.  If at this moment a clever woman
+should get hold of him she might be as ugly as she pleased!
+It 's horrible to think of it."
+
+The Cavaliere fixed his eyes on Rowland, and his look, which the
+night before had been singular, was now most extraordinary.
+There was a nameless force of anguish in it which seemed to
+grapple with the young man's reluctance, to plead, to entreat,
+and at the same time to be glazed over with a reflection
+of strange things.
+
+Suddenly, though most vaguely, Rowland felt the presence
+of a new element in the drama that was going on before him.
+He looked from the Cavaliere to Mrs. Light, whose eyes were
+now quite dry, and were fixed in stony hardness on the floor.
+
+"If you could bring yourself," the Cavaliere said, in a low, soft,
+caressing voice, "to address a few words of solemn remonstrance
+to Miss Light, you would, perhaps, do more for us than you know.
+You would save several persons a great pain.  The dear signora,
+first, and then Christina herself.  Christina in particular.
+Me too, I might take the liberty to add!"
+
+There was, to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble petition.
+He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor little
+unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion of
+the mysterious obliquity of his life.  All of a sudden, as he watched
+the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd,
+and it stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. Light.
+His idea embarrassed him, and to carry off his embarrassment,
+he repeated that it was folly to suppose that his words would have
+any weight with Christina.
+
+The Cavaliere stepped forward and laid two fingers on Rowland's breast.
+"Do you wish to know the truth?  You are the only man whose
+words she remembers."
+
+Rowland was going from surprise to surprise.  "I will say what I can!"
+he said.  By this time he had ventured to glance at Mrs. Light.
+She was looking at him askance, as if, upon this, she was suddenly
+mistrusting his motives.
+
+"If you fail," she said sharply, "we have something else!
+But please to lose no time."
+
+She had hardly spoken when the sound of a short, sharp growl
+caused the company to turn.  Christina's fleecy poodle stood
+in the middle of the vast saloon, with his muzzle lowered,
+in pompous defiance of the three conspirators against the comfort
+of his mistress.  This young lady's claims for him seemed justified;
+he was an animal of amazingly delicate instincts.
+He had preceded Christina as a sort of van-guard of defense,
+and she now slowly advanced from a neighboring room.
+
+"You will be so good as to listen to Mr. Mallet," her mother said,
+in a terrible voice, "and to reflect carefully upon what he says.
+I suppose you will admit that he is disinterested.
+In half an hour you shall hear from me again!"  And passing
+her hand through the Cavaliere's arm, she swept rapidly out
+of the room.
+
+Christina looked hard at Rowland, but offered him no greeting.
+She was very pale, and, strangely enough, it at first seemed
+to Rowland that her beauty was in eclipse.  But he very soon
+perceived that it had only changed its character, and that if it
+was a trifle less brilliant than usual, it was admirably touching
+and noble.  The clouded light of her eyes, the magnificent
+gravity of her features, the conscious erectness of her head,
+might have belonged to a deposed sovereign or a condemned martyr.
+"Why have you come here at this time?" she asked.
+
+"Your mother sent for me in pressing terms, and I was very glad
+to have an opportunity to speak to you."
+
+"Have you come to help me, or to persecute me?"
+
+"I have as little power to do one as I have desire to do
+the other.  I came in great part to ask you a question.
+First, your decision is irrevocable?"
+
+Christina's two hands had been hanging clasped in front of her;
+she separated them and flung them apart by an admirable gesture.
+
+"Would you have done this if you had not seen Miss Garland?"
+
+She looked at him with quickened attention; then suddenly,
+"This is interesting!" she cried.  "Let us have it out."
+And she flung herself into a chair and pointed to another.
+
+"You don't answer my question," Rowland said.
+
+"You have no right, that I know of, to ask it.  But it 's
+a very clever one; so clever that it deserves an answer.
+Very likely I would not."
+
+"Last night, when I said that to myself, I was extremely angry,"
+Rowland rejoined.
+
+"Oh, dear, and you are not angry now?"
+
+"I am less angry."
+
+"How very stupid!  But you can say something at least."
+
+"If I were to say what is uppermost in my mind, I would say that,
+face to face with you, it is never possible to condemn you."
+
+"Perche?"
+
+"You know, yourself!  But I can at least say now what I felt last night.
+It seemed to me that you had consciously, cruelly dealt a blow at that
+poor girl.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Wait a moment!"  And with her eyes fixed on him, she inclined
+her head on one side, meditatively.  Then a cold, brilliant smile
+covered her face, and she made a gesture of negation.
+"I see your train of reasoning, but it 's quite wrong.
+I meant no harm to Miss Garland; I should be extremely sorry
+to make her suffer.  Tell me you believe that."
+
+This was said with ineffable candor.  Rowland heard himself answering,
+"I believe it!"
+
+"And yet, in a sense, your supposition was true,"
+Christina continued.  "I conceived, as I told you, a great
+admiration for Miss Garland, and I frankly confess I was
+jealous of her.  What I envied her was simply her character!
+I said to myself, 'She, in my place, would n't marry Casamassima.'
+I could not help saying it, and I said it so often that I
+found a kind of inspiration in it.  I hated the idea of being
+worse than she--of doing something that she would n't do.
+I might be bad by nature, but I need n't be by volition.
+The end of it all was that I found it impossible not to tell
+the prince that I was his very humble servant, but that I
+could not marry him."
+
+"Are you sure it was only of Miss Garland's character that you were jealous,
+not of--not of"--
+
+"Speak out, I beg you.  We are talking philosophy!"
+
+"Not of her affection for her cousin?"
+
+"Sure is a good deal to ask.  Still, I think I may say it!
+There are two reasons; one, at least, I can tell you:
+her affection has not a shadow's weight with Mr. Hudson!
+Why then should one fear it?"
+
+"And what is the other reason?"
+
+"Excuse me; that is my own affair."
+
+Rowland was puzzled, baffled, charmed, inspired, almost, all at once.
+"I have promised your mother," he presently resumed, "to say something
+in favor of Prince Casamassima."
+
+She shook her head sadly.  "Prince Casamassima needs nothing
+that you can say for him.  He is a magnificent parti.
+I know it perfectly."
+
+"You know also of the extreme affliction of your mother?"
+
+"Her affliction is demonstrative.  She has been abusing me for
+the last twenty-four hours as if I were the vilest of the vile."
+To see Christina sit there in the purity of her beauty and say this,
+might have made one bow one's head with a kind of awe.  "I have failed
+of respect to her at other times, but I have not done so now.
+Since we are talking philosophy," she pursued with a gentle smile,
+"I may say it 's a simple matter!  I don't love him.
+Or rather, perhaps, since we are talking philosophy, I may say
+it 's not a simple matter.  I spoke just now of inspiration.
+The inspiration has been great, but--I frankly confess it--
+the choice has been hard.  Shall I tell you?" she demanded,
+with sudden ardor; "will you understand me?  It was on the one side
+the world, the splendid, beautiful, powerful, interesting world.
+I know what that is; I have tasted of the cup, I know its sweetness.
+Ah, if I chose, if I let myself go, if I flung everything
+to the winds, the world and I would be famous friends!
+I know its merits, and I think, without vanity, it would see mine.
+You would see some fine things!  I should like to be a princess,
+and I think I should be a very good one; I would play my part well.
+I am fond of luxury, I am fond of a great society, I am fond
+of being looked at.  I am corrupt, corruptible, corruption!
+Ah, what a pity that could n't be, too!  Mercy of Heaven!"
+There was a passionate tremor in her voice; she covered her face
+with her hands and sat motionless.  Rowland saw that an intense
+agitation, hitherto successfully repressed, underlay her calmness,
+and he could easily believe that her battle had been fierce.
+She rose quickly and turned away, walked a few paces, and stopped.
+In a moment she was facing him again, with tears in her eyes
+and a flush in her cheeks.  "But you need n't think I 'm afraid!"
+she said.  "I have chosen, and I shall hold to it.
+I have something here, here, here!" and she patted her heart.
+"It 's my own.  I shan't part with it.  Is it what you call
+an ideal?  I don't know; I don't care!  It is brighter than
+the Casamassima diamonds!"
+
+"You say that certain things are your own affair," Rowland presently rejoined;
+"but I must nevertheless make an attempt to learn what all this means--
+what it promises for my friend Hudson.  Is there any hope for him?"
+
+"This is a point I can't discuss with you minutely.
+I like him very much."
+
+"Would you marry him if he were to ask you?"
+
+"He has asked me."
+
+"And if he asks again?"
+
+"I shall marry no one just now."
+
+"Roderick," said Rowland, "has great hopes."
+
+"Does he know of my rupture with the prince?"
+
+"He is making a great holiday of it."
+
+Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to smooth his silky fleece.
+"I like him very much," she repeated; "much more than I used to.
+Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia's, I have felt
+a great friendship for him.  There 's something very fine about him;
+he 's not afraid of anything.  He is not afraid of failure; he is not
+afraid of ruin or death."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Rowland, bitterly; "he is fatally picturesque."
+
+"Picturesque, yes; that 's what he is.  I am very sorry for him."
+
+"Your mother told me just now that you had said that you did
+n't care a straw for him."
+
+"Very likely!  I meant as a lover.  One does n't want a lover one pities,
+and one does n't want--of all things in the world--a picturesque husband!
+I should like Mr. Hudson as something else.  I wish he were my brother,
+so that he could never talk to me of marriage.  Then I could adore him.
+I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all disagreeable rubs
+and shocks.  I am much stronger than he, and I would stand between him
+and the world.  Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother, I should be willing
+to live and die an old maid!"
+
+"Have you ever told him all this?"
+
+"I suppose so; I 've told him five hundred things!
+If it would please you, I will tell him again."
+
+"Oh, Heaven forbid!" cried poor Rowland, with a groan.
+
+He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation,
+and feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant
+doorway was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room.
+She stopped half-way, and gave the young persons a flushed
+and menacing look.  It found apparently little to reassure her,
+and she moved away with a passionate toss of her drapery.
+Rowland thought with horror of the sinister compulsion to which
+the young girl was to be subjected.  In this ethereal flight
+of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing;
+but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked
+down to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn.
+She would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed
+gross to make further demands upon it on Roderick's behalf.
+
+Rowland took up his hat.  "You asked a while ago if I had come to help you,"
+he said.  "If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly glad."
+
+She stood silent a moment, reflecting.  Then at last,
+looking up, "You remember," she said, "your promising me
+six months ago to tell me what you finally thought of me?
+I should like you to tell me now."
+
+He could hardly help smiling.  Madame Grandoni had insisted
+on the fact that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one;
+and this little speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot.
+She had played her great scene, she had made her point, and now she
+had her eye at the hole in the curtain and she was watching the house!
+But she blushed as she perceived his smile, and her blush,
+which was beautiful, made her fault venial.
+
+"You are an excellent girl!" he said, in a particular tone,
+and gave her his hand in farewell.
+
+There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light's apartment,
+the pride and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which
+the departing visitor passed before reaching the door.
+In one of the first of these Rowland found himself waylaid
+and arrested by the distracted lady herself.
+
+"Well, well?" she cried, seizing his arm.  "Has she listened to you--
+have you moved her?"
+
+"In Heaven's name, dear madame," Rowland begged, "leave the poor girl alone!
+She is behaving very well!"
+
+"Behaving very well?  Is that all you have to tell me?
+I don't believe you said a proper word to her.
+You are conspiring together to kill me!"
+
+Rowland tried to soothe her, to remonstrate, to persuade her
+that it was equally cruel and unwise to try to force matters.
+But she answered him only with harsh lamentations and imprecations,
+and ended by telling him that her daughter was her property, not his,
+and that his interference was most insolent and most scandalous.
+Her disappointment seemed really to have crazed her, and his only
+possible rejoinder was to take a summary departure.
+
+A moment later he came upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting
+with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried
+in thought that Rowland had to call him before he roused himself.
+Giacosa looked at him a moment keenly, and then gave a shake
+of the head, interrogatively.
+
+Rowland gave a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded
+by a long, melancholy sigh.  "But her mother is determined
+to force matters," said Rowland.
+
+"It seems that it must be!"
+
+"Do you consider that it must be?"
+
+"I don't differ with Mrs. Light!"
+
+"It will be a great cruelty!"
+
+The Cavaliere gave a tragic shrug.  "Eh! it is n't an easy world."
+
+"You should do nothing to make it harder, then."
+
+"What will you have?  It 's a magnificent marriage."
+
+"You disappoint me, Cavaliere," said Rowland, solemnly.  "I imagined
+you appreciated the great elevation of Miss Light's attitude.
+She does n't love the prince; she has let the matter stand
+or fall by that."
+
+The old man grasped him by the hand and stood a moment with averted eyes.
+At last, looking at him, he held up two fingers.
+
+"I have two hearts," he said, "one for myself, one for the world.
+This one opposes Miss Light, the other adores her!
+One suffers horribly at what the other does."
+
+"I don't understand double people, Cavaliere," Rowland said,
+"and I don't pretend to understand you.  But I have guessed
+that you are going to play some secret card."
+
+"The card is Mrs. Light's, not mine," said the Cavaliere.
+
+"It 's a menace, at any rate?"
+
+"The sword of Damocles!  It hangs by a hair.  Christina is to be
+given ten minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall.
+On the blade there is something written in strange characters.
+Don't scratch your head; you will not make it out."
+
+"I think I have guessed it," Rowland said, after a pregnant silence.
+The Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added,
+"Though there are some signs, indeed, I don't understand."
+
+"Puzzle them out at your leisure," said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand.
+"I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post.  I wish you were a Catholic;
+I would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us
+the next half-hour."
+
+"For 'us'? For whom?"
+
+"For all of us.  At any rate remember this:  I worship the Christina!"
+
+Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light's dress; he turned away,
+and the Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post.
+Rowland for the next couple of days pondered his riddle.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  Mrs. Hudson
+
+Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went
+to Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally
+good health and spirits.  After this he called again on the two
+ladies from Northampton, but, as Roderick's absence continued,
+he was able neither to furnish nor to obtain much comfort.
+Miss Garland's apprehensive face seemed to him an image
+of his own state of mind.  He was profoundly depressed;
+he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished it
+would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages.
+On the afternoon of the third day he went into Saint Peter's,
+his frequent resort whenever the outer world was disagreeable.
+From a heart-ache to a Roman rain there were few importunate
+pains the great church did not help him to forget.
+He had wandered there for half an hour, when he came upon
+a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers.
+He saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his
+sketch-book a memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery
+of the basilica; and in a moment he perceived that the artist
+was little Sam Singleton.
+
+Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his
+modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity.
+Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days,
+was as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk.
+There was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips
+to some simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense
+of extreme moral refreshment.  On this occasion he mentally blessed
+the ingenuous little artist, and heard presently with keen regret
+that he was to leave Rome on the morrow.  Singleton had come to bid
+farewell to Saint Peter's, and he was gathering a few supreme memories.
+He had earned a purse-full of money, and he was meaning to take
+a summer's holiday; going to Switzerland, to Germany, to Paris.
+In the autumn he was to return home; his family--composed, as Rowland knew,
+of a father who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried sisters,
+one of whom gave lyceum-lectures on woman's rights, the whole resident
+at Buffalo, New York--had been writing him peremptory letters
+and appealing to him as a son, brother, and fellow-citizen. He would
+have been grateful for another year in Rome, but what must be must be,
+and he had laid up treasure which, in Buffalo, would seem infinite.
+They talked some time; Rowland hoped they might meet in Switzerland,
+and take a walk or two together.  Singleton seemed to feel that Buffalo
+had marked him for her own; he was afraid he should not see Rome again
+for many a year.
+
+"So you expect to live at Buffalo?"  Rowland asked sympathetically.
+
+"Well, it will depend upon the views--upon the attitude--of my family,"
+Singleton replied.  "Oh, I think I shall get on; I think it can be done.
+If I find it can be done, I shall really be quite proud of it; as an artist
+of course I mean, you know.  Do you know I have some nine hundred sketches?
+I shall live in my portfolio.  And so long as one is not in Rome,
+pray what does it matter where one is?  But how I shall envy all you Romans--
+you and Mr. Gloriani, and Mr. Hudson, especially!"
+
+"Don't envy Hudson; he has nothing to envy."
+
+Singleton grinned at what he considered a harmless jest.
+"Yes, he 's going to be the great man of our time!
+And I say, Mr. Mallet, is n't it a mighty comfort that it 's
+we who have turned him out?"
+
+"Between ourselves," said Rowland, "he has disappointed me."
+
+Singleton stared, open-mouthed. "Dear me, what did you expect?"
+
+"Truly," said Rowland to himself, "what did I expect?"
+
+"I confess," cried Singleton, "I can't judge him rationally.
+He fascinates me; he 's the sort of man one makes one's hero of."
+
+"Strictly speaking, he is not a hero," said Rowland.
+
+Singleton looked intensely grave, and, with almost tearful eyes,
+"Is there anything amiss--anything out of the way, about him?"
+he timidly asked.  Then, as Rowland hesitated to reply,
+he quickly added, "Please, if there is, don't tell me!
+I want to know no evil of him, and I think I should hardly believe it.
+In my memories of this Roman artist-life, he will be the central figure.
+He will stand there in radiant relief, as beautiful and unspotted
+as one of his own statues!"
+
+"Amen!" said Rowland, gravely.  He remembered afresh that the sea
+is inhabited by big fishes and little, and that the latter often
+find their way down the throats of the former.  Singleton was going
+to spend the afternoon in taking last looks at certain other places,
+and Rowland offered to join him on his sentimental circuit.
+But as they were preparing to leave the church, he heard himself
+suddenly addressed from behind.  Turning, he beheld a young
+woman whom he immediately recognized as Madame Grandoni's maid.
+Her mistress was present, she said, and begged to confer with him
+before he departed.
+
+This summons obliged Rowland to separate from Singleton, to whom
+he bade farewell.  He followed the messenger, and presently
+found Madame Grandoni occupying a liberal area on the steps
+of the tribune, behind the great altar, where, spreading a shawl
+on the polished red marble, she had comfortably seated herself.
+He expected that she had something especial to impart, and she
+lost no time in bringing forth her treasure.
+
+"Don't shout very loud," she said, "remember that we are in church;
+there 's a limit to the noise one may make even in Saint Peter's.
+Christina Light was married this morning to Prince Casamassima.  "
+
+Rowland did not shout at all; he gave a deep, short murmur:
+"Married--this morning?"
+
+"Married this morning, at seven o'clock, le plus tranquillement du monde,
+before three or four persons.  The young couple left Rome an hour afterwards."
+
+For some moments this seemed to him really terrible; the dark little
+drama of which he had caught a glimpse had played itself out.
+He had believed that Christina would resist; that she had
+succumbed was a proof that the pressure had been cruel.
+Rowland's imagination followed her forth with an irresistible
+tremor into the world toward which she was rolling away,
+with her detested husband and her stifled ideal; but it must
+be confessed that if the first impulse of his compassion
+was for Christina, the second was for Prince Casamassima.
+Madame Grandoni acknowledged an extreme curiosity as to the secret
+springs of these strange doings:  Casamassima's sudden dismissal,
+his still more sudden recall, the hurried private marriage.
+"Listen," said Rowland, hereupon, "and I will tell you something."
+And he related, in detail, his last visit to Mrs. Light and his
+talk with this lady, with Christina, and with the Cavaliere.
+
+"Good," she said; "it 's all very curious.  But it 's a riddle,
+and I only half guess it."
+
+"Well," said Rowland, "I desire to harm no one; but certain
+suppositions have taken shape in my mind which serve as a solvent
+to several ambiguities."
+
+"It is very true," Madame Grandoni answered, "that the Cavaliere,
+as he stands, has always needed to be explained."
+
+"He is explained by the hypothesis that, three-and-twenty years ago,
+at Ancona, Mrs. Light had a lover."
+
+"I see.  Ancona was dull, Mrs. Light was lively, and--
+three-and-twenty years ago--perhaps, the Cavaliere was fascinating.
+Doubtless it would be fairer to say that he was fascinated.
+Poor Giacosa!"
+
+"He has had his compensation," Rowland said.  "He has been passionately
+fond of Christina."
+
+"Naturally.  But has Christina never wondered why?"
+
+"If she had been near guessing, her mother's shabby treatment
+of him would have put her off the scent.  Mrs. Light's conscience
+has apparently told her that she could expiate an hour's too great
+kindness by twenty years' contempt.  So she kept her secret.
+But what is the profit of having a secret unless you can make some use
+of it?  The day at last came when she could turn hers to account;
+she could let the skeleton out of the closet and create a panic."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Neither do I morally," said Rowland.  "I only conceive that there
+was a horrible, fabulous scene.  The poor Cavaliere stood outside,
+at the door, white as a corpse and as dumb.  The mother and
+daughter had it out together.  Mrs. Light burnt her ships.
+When she came out she had three lines of writing in her daughter's
+hand, which the Cavaliere was dispatched with to the prince.
+They overtook the young man in time, and, when he reappeared,
+he was delighted to dispense with further waiting.
+I don't know what he thought of the look in his bride's face;
+but that is how I roughly reconstruct history."
+
+"Christina was forced to decide, then, that she could not afford
+not to be a princess?"
+
+"She was reduced by humiliation.  She was assured that it was not for her
+to make conditions, but to thank her stars that there were none made for her.
+If she persisted, she might find it coming to pass that there would
+be conditions, and the formal rupture--the rupture that the world would hear
+of and pry into--would then proceed from the prince and not from her."
+
+"That 's all nonsense!" said Madame Grandoni, energetically.
+
+"To us, yes; but not to the proudest girl in the world, deeply wounded
+in her pride, and not stopping to calculate probabilities,
+but muffling her shame, with an almost sensuous relief,
+in a splendor that stood within her grasp and asked no questions.
+Is it not possible that the late Mr. Light had made an outbreak
+before witnesses who are still living?"
+
+"Certainly her marriage now," said Madame Grandoni, less analytically,
+"has the advantage that it takes her away from her--parents!"
+
+This lady's farther comments upon the event are not immediately
+pertinent to our history; there were some other comments of
+which Rowland had a deeply oppressive foreboding.  He called,
+on the evening of the morrow upon Mrs. Hudson, and found Roderick
+with the two ladies.  Their companion had apparently but lately entered,
+and Rowland afterwards learned that it was his first appearance
+since the writing of the note which had so distressed his mother.
+He had flung himself upon a sofa, where he sat with his chin upon
+his breast, staring before him with a sinister spark in his eye.
+He fixed his gaze on Rowland, but gave him no greeting.
+He had evidently been saying something to startle the women;
+Mrs. Hudson had gone and seated herself, timidly and imploringly,
+on the edge of the sofa, trying to take his hand.  Miss Garland
+was applying herself to some needlework with conscious intentness.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gave Rowland, on his entrance, a touching look
+of gratitude.  "Oh, we have such blessed news!" she said.
+"Roderick is ready to leave Rome."
+
+"It 's not blessed news; it 's most damnable news!" cried Roderick.
+
+"Oh, but we are very glad, my son, and I am sure you will be
+when you get away.  You 're looking most dreadfully thin;
+is n't he, Mr. Mallet?  It 's plain enough you need a change.
+I 'm sure we will go wherever you like.  Where would you
+like to go?"
+
+Roderick turned his head slowly and looked at her.  He had let
+her take his hand, which she pressed tenderly between her own.
+He gazed at her for some time in silence.  "Poor mother!"
+he said at last, in a portentous tone.
+
+"My own dear son!" murmured Mrs. Hudson in all the innocence
+of her trust.
+
+"I don't care a straw where you go!  I don't care a straw for anything!"
+
+"Oh, my dear boy, you must not say that before all of us here--
+before Mary, before Mr. Mallet!"
+
+"Mary--Mr. Mallet?"  Roderick repeated, almost savagely.
+He released himself from the clasp of his mother's
+hand and turned away, leaning his elbows on his knees
+and holding his head in his hands.  There was a silence;
+Rowland said nothing because he was watching Miss Garland.
+"Why should I stand on ceremony with Mary and Mr. Mallet?"
+Roderick presently added.  "Mary pretends to believe I 'm
+a fine fellow, and if she believes it as she ought to,
+nothing I can say will alter her opinion.  Mallet knows I 'm
+a hopeless humbug; so I need n't mince my words with him."
+
+"Ah, my dear, don't use such dreadful language!" said Mrs. Hudson.
+"Are n't we all devoted to you, and proud of you, and waiting only
+to hear what you want, so that we may do it?"
+
+Roderick got up, and began to walk about the room; he was evidently
+in a restless, reckless, profoundly demoralized condition.
+Rowland felt that it was literally true that he did not care a straw
+for anything, but he observed with anxiety that Mrs. Hudson, who did
+not know on what delicate ground she was treading, was disposed
+to chide him caressingly, as a mere expression of tenderness.
+He foresaw that she would bring down the hovering thunderbolt
+on her head.
+
+"In God's name," Roderick cried, "don't remind me of my obligations!
+It 's intolerable to me, and I don't believe it 's pleasant to Mallet.
+I know they 're tremendous--I know I shall never repay them.  I 'm bankrupt!
+Do you know what that means?"
+
+The poor lady sat staring, dismayed, and Rowland angrily interfered.
+"Don't talk such stuff to your mother!" he cried.  "Don't you see you
+'re frightening her?"
+
+"Frightening her? she may as well be frightened first as last.
+Do I frighten you, mother?"  Roderick demanded.
+
+"Oh, Roderick, what do you mean?" whimpered the poor lady.
+"Mr. Mallet, what does he mean?"
+
+"I mean that I 'm an angry, savage, disappointed, miserable man!"
+Roderick went on.  "I mean that I can't do a stroke of work nor
+think a profitable thought!  I mean that I 'm in a state of helpless
+rage and grief and shame!  Helpless, helpless--that 's what it is.
+You can't help me, poor mother--not with kisses, nor tears,
+nor prayers!  Mary can't help me--not for all the honor she
+does me, nor all the big books on art that she pores over.
+Mallet can't help me--not with all his money, nor all his good example,
+nor all his friendship, which I 'm so profoundly well aware of:
+not with it all multiplied a thousand times and repeated
+to all eternity!  I thought you would help me, you and Mary;
+that 's why I sent for you.  But you can't, don't think it!
+The sooner you give up the idea the better for you.  Give up being
+proud of me, too; there 's nothing left of me to be proud of!
+A year ago I was a mighty fine fellow; but do you know what has
+become of me now?  I have gone to the devil!"
+
+There was something in the ring of Roderick's voice, as he uttered
+these words, which sent them home with convincing force.
+He was not talking for effect, or the mere sensuous pleasure
+of extravagant and paradoxical utterance, as had often enough
+been the case ere this; he was not even talking viciously or
+ill-humoredly. He was talking passionately, desperately, and from
+an irresistible need to throw off the oppressive burden of his
+mother's confidence.  His cruel eloquence brought the poor
+lady to her feet, and she stood there with clasped hands,
+petrified and voiceless.  Mary Garland quickly left her place,
+came straight to Roderick, and laid her hand on his arm,
+looking at him with all her tormented heart in her eyes.
+He made no movement to disengage himself; he simply shook his
+head several times, in dogged negation of her healing powers.
+Rowland had been living for the past month in such intolerable
+expectancy of disaster that now that the ice was broken,
+and the fatal plunge taken, his foremost feeling was almost elation;
+but in a moment his orderly instincts and his natural love
+of superficial smoothness overtook it.
+
+"I really don't see, Roderick," he said, "the profit
+of your talking in just this way at just this time.
+Don't you see how you are making your mother suffer?"
+
+"Do I enjoy it myself?" cried Roderick.  "Is the suffering
+all on your side and theirs?  Do I look as if I were happy,
+and were stirring you up with a stick for my amusement?
+Here we all are in the same boat; we might as well understand
+each other!  These women must know that I 'm not to be counted on.
+That sounds remarkably cool, no doubt, and I certainly don't
+deny your right to be utterly disgusted with me."
+
+"Will you keep what you have got to say till another time,"
+said Mary, "and let me hear it alone?"
+
+"Oh, I 'll let you hear it as often as you please; but what 's
+the use of keeping it?  I 'm in the humor; it won't keep!
+It 's a very simple matter.  I 'm a failure, that 's all; I 'm not
+a first-rate man.  I 'm second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please.
+After that, it 's all one!"
+
+Mary Garland turned away and buried her face in her hands;
+but Roderick, struck, apparently, in some unwonted fashion
+with her gesture, drew her towards him again, and went on
+in a somewhat different tone.  "It 's hardly worth while we
+should have any private talk about this, Mary," he said.
+"The thing would be comfortable for neither of us.  It 's better,
+after all, that it be said once for all and dismissed.
+There are things I can't talk to you about.  Can I, at least?
+You are such a queer creature!"
+
+"I can imagine nothing you should n't talk to me about," said Mary.
+
+"You are not afraid?" he demanded, sharply, looking at her.
+
+She turned away abruptly, with lowered eyes, hesitating a moment.
+"Anything you think I should hear, I will hear," she said.
+And then she returned to her place at the window and took
+up her work.
+
+"I have had a great blow," said Roderick.  "I was a great ass,
+but it does n't make the blow any easier to bear."
+
+"Mr. Mallet, tell me what Roderick means!" said Mrs. Hudson,
+who had found her voice, in a tone more peremptory than Rowland
+had ever heard her use.
+
+"He ought to have told you before," said Roderick.
+"Really, Rowland, if you will allow me to say so, you ought!
+You could have given a much better account of all this than I myself;
+better, especially, in that it would have been more lenient to me.
+You ought to have let them down gently; it would have saved them
+a great deal of pain.  But you always want to keep things so smooth!
+Allow me to say that it 's very weak of you."
+
+"I hereby renounce such weakness!" said Rowland.
+
+"Oh, what is it, sir; what is it?" groaned Mrs. Hudson, insistently.
+
+"It 's what Roderick says:  he 's a failure!"
+
+Mary Garland, on hearing this declaration, gave Rowland a single glance
+and then rose, laid down her work, and walked rapidly out of the room.
+Mrs. Hudson tossed her head and timidly bristled.  "This from you,
+Mr. Mallet!" she said with an injured air which Rowland found harrowing.
+
+But Roderick, most characteristically, did not in the least resent his
+friend's assertion; he sent him, on the contrary, one of those large,
+clear looks of his, which seemed to express a stoical pleasure
+in Rowland's frankness, and which set his companion, then and there,
+wondering again, as he had so often done before, at the extraordinary
+contradictions of his temperament.  "My dear mother," Roderick said,
+"if you had had eyes that were not blinded by this sad maternal vanity,
+you would have seen all this for yourself; you would have seen that I
+'m anything but prosperous."
+
+"Is it anything about money?" cried Mrs. Hudson.
+"Oh, do write to Mr. Striker!"
+
+"Money?" said Roderick.  "I have n't a cent of money;
+I 'm bankrupt!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Mallet, how could you let him?" asked Mrs. Hudson, terribly.
+
+"Everything I have is at his service," said Rowland, feeling ill.
+
+"Of course Mr. Mallet will help you, my son!" cried the poor lady, eagerly.
+
+"Oh, leave Mr. Mallet alone!" said Roderick.  "I have squeezed him dry;
+it 's not my fault, at least, if I have n't!"
+
+"Roderick, what have you done with all your money?" his mother demanded.
+
+"Thrown it away!  It was no such great amount.  I have done
+nothing this winter."
+
+"You have done nothing?"
+
+"I have done no work!  Why in the world did n't you guess it and spare
+me all this?  Could n't you see I was idle, distracted, dissipated?"
+
+"Dissipated, my dear son?"  Mrs. Hudson repeated.
+
+"That 's over for the present!  But could n't you see--could n't Mary see--
+that I was in a damnably bad way?"
+
+"I have no doubt Miss Garland saw," said Rowland.
+
+"Mary has said nothing!" cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"Oh, she 's a fine girl!"  Rowland said.
+
+"Have you done anything that will hurt poor Mary?"
+Mrs. Hudson asked.
+
+"I have only been thinking night and day of another woman!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson dropped helplessly into her seat again.
+"Oh dear, dear, had n't we better go home?"
+
+"Not to get out of her way!"  Roderick said.  "She has started
+on a career of her own, and she does n't care a straw for me.
+My head was filled with her; I could think of nothing else;
+I would have sacrificed everything to her--you, Mary, Mallet, my work,
+my fortune, my future, my honor!  I was in a fine state, eh?
+I don't pretend to be giving you good news; but I 'm telling the simple,
+literal truth, so that you may know why I have gone to the dogs.
+She pretended to care greatly for all this, and to be willing to make
+any sacrifice in return; she had a magnificent chance, for she was
+being forced into a mercenary marriage with a man she detested.
+She led me to believe that she would give this up, and break
+short off, and keep herself free and sacred and pure for me.
+This was a great honor, and you may believe that I valued it.
+It turned my head, and I lived only to see my happiness come to pass.
+She did everything to encourage me to hope it would; everything that
+her infernal coquetry and falsity could suggest."
+
+"Oh, I say, this is too much!"  Rowland broke out.
+
+"Do you defend her?"  Roderick cried, with a renewal of his passion.
+"Do you pretend to say that she gave me no hopes?"
+He had been speaking with growing bitterness, quite losing sight
+of his mother's pain and bewilderment in the passionate joy
+of publishing his wrongs.  Since he was hurt, he must cry out;
+since he was in pain, he must scatter his pain abroad.
+Of his never thinking of others, save as they spoke and moved
+from his cue, as it were, this extraordinary insensibility
+to the injurious effects of his eloquence was a capital example;
+the more so as the motive of his eloquence was never an appeal
+for sympathy or compassion, things to which he seemed
+perfectly indifferent and of which he could make no use.
+The great and characteristic point with him was the perfect
+absoluteness of his own emotions and experience.  He never saw
+himself as part of a whole; only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged,
+isolated individual, rejoicing or raging, as the case might be,
+but needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself.
+All this, to Rowland, was ancient history, but his perception
+of it stirred within him afresh, at the sight of Roderick's sense
+of having been betrayed.  That he, under the circumstances,
+should not in fairness be the first to lodge a complaint
+of betrayal was a point to which, at his leisure,
+Rowland was of course capable of rendering impartial justice;
+but Roderick's present desperation was so peremptory that it
+imposed itself on one's sympathies.  "Do you pretend to say,"
+he went on, "that she did n't lead me along to the very edge
+of fulfillment and stupefy me with all that she suffered me
+to believe, all that she sacredly promised?  It amused her
+to do it, and she knew perfectly well what she really meant.
+She never meant to be sincere; she never dreamed she could be.
+She 's a ravenous flirt, and why a flirt is a flirt is more than I
+can tell you.  I can't understand playing with those matters;
+for me they 're serious, whether I take them up or lay them down.
+I don't see what 's in your head, Rowland, to attempt to defend
+Miss Light; you were the first to cry out against her!
+You told me she was dangerous, and I pooh-poohed you.
+You were right; you 're always right.  She 's as cold
+and false and heartless as she 's beautiful, and she
+has sold her heartless beauty to the highest bidder.
+I hope he knows what he gets!"
+
+"Oh, my son," cried Mrs. Hudson, plaintively, "how could you
+ever care for such a dreadful creature?"
+
+"It would take long to tell you, dear mother!"
+
+Rowland's lately-deepened sympathy and compassion for Christina
+was still throbbing in his mind, and he felt that, in loyalty to it,
+he must say a word for her.  "You believed in her too much at first,"
+he declared, "and you believe in her too little now."
+
+Roderick looked at him with eyes almost lurid, beneath lowering brows.
+"She is an angel, then, after all?--that 's what you want to prove!"
+he cried.  "That 's consoling for me, who have lost her!
+You 're always right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy,
+be wrong for once!"
+
+"Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, be merciful!" said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which,
+for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare.  The poor fellow's
+stare covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension--
+a presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady
+might be capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity.
+There was no space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for
+complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only by turning
+another over flat and perching on top of it.  She was evidently
+not following Roderick at all in his dusky aberrations.
+Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was darkness
+and trouble, and as Roderick's glory had now quite outstripped
+her powers of imagination and urged him beyond her jurisdiction,
+so that he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame,
+she found it infinitely comfortable to lay the burden of their common
+affliction upon Rowland's broad shoulders.  Had he not promised
+to make them all rich and happy?  And this was the end of it!
+Rowland felt as if his trials were, in a sense, only beginning.
+"Had n't you better forget all this, my dear?"  Mrs. Hudson said.
+"Had n't you better just quietly attend to your work?"
+
+"Work, madame?" cried Roderick.  "My work 's over.  I can't work--
+I have n't worked all winter.  If I were fit for anything,
+this sentimental collapse would have been just the thing
+to cure me of my apathy and break the spell of my idleness.
+But there 's a perfect vacuum here!"  And he tapped his forehead.
+"It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every hour!"
+
+"I 'm sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little mother,"
+said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.
+
+"I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since!
+I quarreled with an excellent man, the other day, from mere
+exasperation of my nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!"
+
+"Threw away--five thousand dollars!"  Roderick had been
+wandering among formidable abstractions and allusions too dark
+to penetrate.  But here was a concrete fact, lucidly stated,
+and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment, looked it in the face.
+She repeated her son's words a third time with a gasping murmur,
+and then, suddenly, she burst into tears.  Roderick went to her,
+sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
+coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out.
+She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly.
+She said not a word, she made no attempt to scold;
+but the desolation of her tears was overwhelming.
+It lasted some time--too long for Rowland's courage.
+He had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful;
+but the elation that was mentioned a while since had
+utterly ebbed, and he found his situation intolerable.
+He walked away--not, perhaps, on tiptoe, but with a total
+absence of bravado in his tread.
+
+The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought
+him the card of a visitor.  He read with surprise the name
+of Mrs. Hudson, and hurried forward to meet her.
+He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the arm of
+her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping,
+and her lips tightly compressed.  Her advent puzzled him,
+and it was not for some time that he began to understand
+the motive of it.  Roderick's countenance threw no light upon it;
+but Roderick's countenance, full of light as it was,
+in a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything.
+He had not been in Rowland's rooms for several weeks,
+and he immediately began to look at those of his own works
+that adorned them.  He lost himself in silent contemplation.
+Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself with dignity,
+and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive.
+Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland's whole
+attention centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep.
+She told him that she had come to him for practical advice;
+she begged to remind him that she was a stranger in the land.
+Where were they to go, please? what were they to do?
+Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned
+and was gazing at his Adam with the intensity with which he might
+have examined Michael Angelo's Moses.
+
+"Roderick says he does n't know, he does n't care," Mrs. Hudson said;
+"he leaves it entirely to you."
+
+Many another man, in Rowland's place, would have greeted
+this information with an irate and sarcastic laugh,
+and told his visitors that he thanked them infinitely
+for their confidence, but that, really, as things stood now,
+they must settle these matters between themselves;
+many another man might have so demeaned himself, even if,
+like Rowland, he had been in love with Mary Garland and pressingly
+conscious that her destiny was also part of the question.
+But Rowland swallowed all hilarity and all sarcasm,
+and let himself seriously consider Mrs. Hudson's petition.
+His wits, however, were but indifferently at his command;
+they were dulled by his sense of the inexpressible change in
+Mrs. Hudson's attitude.  Her visit was evidently intended as a formal
+reminder of the responsiblities Rowland had worn so lightly.
+Mrs. Hudson was doubtless too sincerely humble a person to suppose
+that if he had been recreant to his vows of vigilance and tenderness,
+her still, small presence would operate as a chastisement.
+But by some diminutive logical process of her own she
+had convinced herself that she had been weakly trustful,
+and that she had suffered Rowland to think too meanly,
+not only of her understanding, but of her social consequence.
+A visit in her best gown would have an admonitory effect
+as regards both of these attributes; it would cancel some
+favors received, and show him that she was no such fool!
+These were the reflections of a very shy woman, who, determining for
+once in her life to hold up her head, was perhaps carrying it
+a trifle extravagantly.
+
+"You know we have very little money to spend," she said,
+as Rowland remained silent.  "Roderick tells me that he has
+debts and nothing at all to pay them with.  He says I must write
+to Mr. Striker to sell my house for what it will bring, and send
+me out the money.  When the money comes I must give it to him.
+I 'm sure I don't know; I never heard of anything so dreadful!
+My house is all I have.  But that is all Roderick will say.
+We must be very economical."
+
+Before this speech was finished Mrs. Hudson's voice had begun to
+quaver softly, and her face, which had no capacity for the expression
+of superior wisdom, to look as humbly appealing as before.
+Rowland turned to Roderick and spoke like a school-master. "Come
+away from those statues, and sit down here and listen to me!"
+
+Roderick started, but obeyed with the most graceful docility.
+
+"What do you propose to your mother to do?"  Rowland asked.
+
+"Propose?" said Roderick, absently.  "Oh, I propose nothing."
+
+The tone, the glance, the gesture with which this was said were
+horribly irritating (though obviously without the slightest intention
+of being so), and for an instant an imprecation rose to Rowland's lips.
+But he checked it, and he was afterwards glad he had done so.
+"You must do something," he said.  "Choose, select, decide!"
+
+"My dear Rowland, how you talk!"  Roderick cried.
+"The very point of the matter is that I can't do anything.
+I will do as I 'm told, but I don't call that doing.
+We must leave Rome, I suppose, though I don't see why.
+We have got no money, and you have to pay money on the railroads."
+
+Mrs. Hudson surreptitiously wrung her hands.
+"Listen to him, please!" she cried.  "Not leave Rome, when we
+have staid here later than any Christians ever did before!
+It 's this dreadful place that has made us so unhappy."
+
+"That 's very true," said Roderick, serenely.  "If I had not come to Rome,
+I would n't have risen, and if I had not risen, I should n't have fallen."
+
+"Fallen--fallen!" murmured Mrs. Hudson.  "Just hear him!"
+
+"I will do anything you say, Rowland," Roderick added.
+"I will do anything you want.  I have not been unkind to my mother--
+have I, mother?  I was unkind yesterday, without meaning it;
+for after all, all that had to be said.  Murder will out,
+and my low spirits can't be hidden.  But we talked it over and
+made it up, did n't we?  It seemed to me we did.  Let Rowland
+decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right thing."
+And Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the statues,
+got up again and went back to look at them.
+
+Mrs. Hudson fixed her eyes upon the floor in silence.
+There was not a trace in Roderick's face, or in his voice,
+of the bitterness of his emotion of the day before, and not
+a hint of his having the lightest weight upon his conscience.
+He looked at Rowland with his frank, luminous eye as if there
+had never been a difference of opinion between them; as if each
+had ever been for both, unalterably, and both for each.
+
+Rowland had received a few days before a letter from a lady
+of his acquaintance, a worthy Scotswoman domiciled in a villa
+upon one of the olive-covered hills near Florence.  She held her
+apartment in the villa upon a long lease, and she enjoyed for a sum
+not worth mentioning the possession of an extraordinary number
+of noble, stone-floored rooms, with ceilings vaulted and frescoed,
+and barred windows commanding the loveliest view in the world.
+She was a needy and thrifty spinster, who never hesitated to
+declare that the lovely view was all very well, but that for her
+own part she lived in the villa for cheapness, and that if she
+had a clear three hundred pounds a year she would go and really
+enjoy life near her sister, a baronet's lady, at Glasgow.
+She was now proposing to make a visit to that exhilarating city,
+and she desired to turn an honest penny by sub-letting for a few
+weeks her historic Italian chambers.  The terms on which she occupied
+them enabled her to ask a rent almost jocosely small, and she begged
+Rowland to do what she called a little genteel advertising for her.
+Would he say a good word for her rooms to his numerous friends,
+as they left Rome?  He said a good word for them now to Mrs. Hudson,
+and told her in dollars and cents how cheap a summer's lodging
+she might secure.  He dwelt upon the fact that she would
+strike a truce with tables-d'hote and have a cook of her own,
+amenable possibly to instruction in the Northampton mysteries.
+He had touched a tender chord; Mrs. Hudson became almost cheerful.
+Her sentiments upon the table-d'hote system and upon foreign household
+habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had space for it,
+would repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul to the
+Puritanic canons of cookery quite lightened the burden of her depression.
+While Rowland set forth his case Roderick was slowly walking
+round the magnificent Adam, with his hands in his pockets.
+Rowland waited for him to manifest an interest in their discussion,
+but the statue seemed to fascinate him and he remained calmly heedless.
+Rowland was a practical man; he possessed conspicuously what is called
+the sense of detail.  He entered into Mrs. Hudson's position minutely,
+and told her exactly why it seemed good that she should remove
+immediately to the Florentine villa.  She received his advice
+with great frigidity, looking hard at the floor and sighing,
+like a person well on her guard against an insidious optimism.
+But she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received her
+permission to write to his friend that he had let the rooms.
+
+Roderick assented to this decision without either sighs or smiles.
+"A Florentine villa is a good thing!" he said.  "I am at your service."
+
+"I 'm sure I hope you 'll get better there," moaned his mother,
+gathering her shawl together.
+
+Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed
+to Rowland's statues.  "Better or worse, remember this:
+I did those things!" he said.
+
+Mrs. Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, "Remember it yourself!"
+
+"They are horribly good!" said Roderick.
+
+Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him
+that he had nothing more to say.  But as the others were going,
+a last light pulsation of the sense of undischarged duty led
+him to address to Roderick a few words of parting advice.
+"You 'll find the Villa Pandolfini very delightful, very comfortable,"
+he said.  "You ought to be very contented there.  Whether you work
+or whether you loaf, it 's a place for an artist to be happy in.
+I hope you will work."
+
+"I hope I may!" said Roderick with a magnificent smile.
+
+"When we meet again, have something to show me."
+
+"When we meet again?  Where the deuce are you going?"  Roderick demanded.
+
+"Oh, I hardly know; over the Alps."
+
+"Over the Alps!  You 're going to leave me?"  Roderick cried.
+
+Rowland had most distinctly meant to leave him, but his resolution
+immediately wavered.  He glanced at Mrs. Hudson and saw that
+her eyebrows were lifted and her lips parted in soft irony.
+She seemed to accuse him of a craven shirking of trouble, to demand of him
+to repair his cruel havoc in her life by a solemn renewal of zeal.
+But Roderick's expectations were the oddest!  Such as they were,
+Rowland asked himself why he should n't make a bargain with them.
+"You desire me to go with you?" he asked.
+
+"If you don't go, I won't--that 's all!  How in the world shall
+I get through the summer without you?"
+
+"How will you get through it with me?  That 's the question."
+
+"I don't pretend to say; the future is a dead blank.
+But without you it 's not a blank--it 's certain damnation!"
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" murmured Mrs. Hudson.
+
+Rowland made an effort to stand firm, and for a moment succeeded.
+"If I go with you, will you try to work?"
+
+Roderick, up to this moment, had been looking as unperturbed as if
+the deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past.
+But at these words his face changed formidably; he flushed
+and scowled, and all his passion returned.  "Try to work!" he cried.
+"Try--try! work--work!  In God's name don't talk that way,
+or you 'll drive me mad!  Do you suppose I 'm trying not to work?
+Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun of it?
+Don't you suppose I would try to work for myself before I
+tried for you?"
+
+"Mr. Mallet," cried Mrs. Hudson, piteously, "will you leave me
+alone with this?"
+
+Rowland turned to her and informed her, gently, that he would go
+with her to Florence.  After he had so pledged himself he thought not
+at all of the pain of his position as mediator between the mother's
+resentful grief and the son's incurable weakness; he drank deep,
+only, of the satisfaction of not separating from Mary Garland.
+If the future was a blank to Roderick, it was hardly less so to himself.
+He had at moments a lively foreboding of impending calamity.
+He paid it no especial deference, but it made him feel indisposed
+to take the future into his account.  When, on his going to take leave
+of Madame Grandoni, this lady asked at what time he would come back
+to Rome, he answered that he was coming back either never or forever.
+When she asked him what he meant, he said he really could
+n't tell her, and parted from her with much genuine emotion;
+the more so, doubtless, that she blessed him in a quite loving,
+maternal fashion, and told him she honestly believed him to be
+the best fellow in the world.
+
+The Villa Pandolfini stood directly upon a small grass-grown piazza,
+on the top of a hill which sloped straight from one of the gates of Florence.
+It offered to the outer world a long, rather low fa;alcade, colored a dull,
+dark yellow, and pierced with windows of various sizes, no one of which,
+save those on the ground floor, was on the same level with any other.
+Within, it had a great, cool, gray cortile, with high, light arches
+around it, heavily-corniced doors, of majestic altitude, opening out of it,
+and a beautiful mediaeval well on one side of it.  Mrs. Hudson's rooms
+opened into a small garden supported on immense substructions, which were
+planted on the farther side of the hill, as it sloped steeply away.
+This garden was a charming place.  Its south wall was curtained with a dense
+orange vine, a dozen fig-trees offered you their large-leaved shade,
+and over the low parapet the soft, grave Tuscan landscape kept you company.
+The rooms themselves were as high as chapels and as cool as royal sepulchres.
+Silence, peace, and security seemed to abide in the ancient house and
+make it an ideal refuge for aching hearts.  Mrs. Hudson had a stunted,
+brown-faced Maddalena, who wore a crimson handkerchief passed over
+her coarse, black locks and tied under her sharp, pertinacious chin,
+and a smile which was as brilliant as a prolonged flash of lightning.
+She smiled at everything in life, especially the things she did n't
+like and which kept her talent for mendacity in healthy exercise.
+A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient to make her show her teeth
+at you like a cheerful she-wolf. This inexpugnable smile constituted
+her whole vocabulary in her dealings with her melancholy mistress,
+to whom she had been bequeathed by the late occupant of the apartment,
+and who, to Rowland's satisfaction, promised to be diverted from her
+maternal sorrows by the still deeper perplexities of Maddalena's theory
+of roasting, sweeping, and bed-making.
+
+Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence,
+whence in the summer mornings he had five minutes'
+walk in the sharp, black, shadow-strip projected by winding,
+flower-topped walls, to join his friends.  The life at
+the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined itself,
+was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from
+exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm.  If a sensible shadow
+rested upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice;
+it was feigning a repose which it very scantily felt.
+Roderick had lost no time in giving the full measure of his
+uncompromising chagrin, and as he was the central figure
+of the little group, as he held its heart-strings all in his
+own hand, it reflected faithfully the eclipse of his own genius.
+No one had ventured upon the cheerful commonplace of saying that
+the change of air and of scene would restore his spirits; this would
+have had, under the circumstances, altogether too silly a sound.
+The change in question had done nothing of the sort, and his
+companions had, at least, the comfort of their perspicacity.
+An essential spring had dried up within him, and there
+was no visible spiritual law for making it flow again.
+He was rarely violent, he expressed little of the irritation
+and ennui that he must have constantly felt; it was as if
+he believed that a spiritual miracle for his redemption was
+just barely possible, and was therefore worth waiting for.
+The most that one could do, however, was to wait grimly
+and doggedly, suppressing an imprecation as, from time to time,
+one looked at one's watch.  An attitude of positive urbanity
+toward life was not to be expected; it was doing one's
+duty to hold one's tongue and keep one's hands off one's
+own windpipe, and other people's. Roderick had long silences,
+fits of profound lethargy, almost of stupefaction.
+He used to sit in the garden by the hour, with his head
+thrown back, his legs outstretched, his hands in his pockets,
+and his eyes fastened upon the blinding summer sky.  He would
+gather a dozen books about him, tumble them out on the ground,
+take one into his lap, and leave it with the pages unturned.
+These moods would alternate with hours of extreme restlessness,
+during which he mysteriously absented himself.
+He bore the heat of the Italian summer like a salamander,
+and used to start off at high noon for long walks over the hills.
+He often went down into Florence, rambled through her close,
+dim streets, and lounged away mornings in the churches and galleries.
+On many of these occasions Rowland bore him company,
+for they were the times when he was most like his former self.
+Before Michael Angelo's statues and the pictures of
+the early Tuscans, he quite forgot his own infelicities,
+and picked up the thread of his old aesthetic loquacity.
+He had a particular fondness for Andrea del Sarto, and affirmed
+that if he had been a painter he would have taken the author
+of the Madonna del Sacco for his model.  He found in Florence
+some of his Roman friends, and went down on certain evenings
+to meet them.  More than once he asked Mary Garland to go with
+him into town, and showed her the things he most cared for.
+He had some modeling clay brought up to the villa and deposited
+in a room suitable for his work; but when this had been done
+he turned the key in the door and the clay never was touched.
+His eye was heavy and his hand cold, and his mother put up
+a secret prayer that he might be induced to see a doctor.
+But on a certain occasion, when her prayer became articulate,
+he had a great outburst of anger and begged her to know,
+once for all, that his health was better than it had ever been.
+On the whole, and most of the time, he was a sad spectacle;
+he looked so hopelessly idle.  If he was not querulous and bitter,
+it was because he had taken an extraordinary vow not to be;
+a vow heroic, for him, a vow which those who knew him well had
+the tenderness to appreciate.  Talking with him was like skating
+on thin ice, and his companions had a constant mental vision
+of spots designated "dangerous."
+
+This was a difficult time for Rowland; he said to himself that he would
+endure it to the end, but that it must be his last adventure of the kind.
+Mrs. Hudson divided her time between looking askance at her son,
+with her hands tightly clasped about her pocket-handkerchief,
+as if she were wringing it dry of the last hour's tears, and turning
+her eyes much more directly upon Rowland, in the mutest, the feeblest,
+the most intolerable reproachfulness.  She never phrased her accusations,
+but he felt that in the unillumined void of the poor lady's mind they
+loomed up like vaguely-outlined monsters.  Her demeanor caused him
+the acutest suffering, and if, at the outset of his enterprise, he had seen,
+how dimly soever, one of those plaintive eye-beams in the opposite scale,
+the brilliancy of Roderick's promises would have counted for little.
+They made their way to the softest spot in his conscience and kept it
+chronically aching.  If Mrs. Hudson had been loquacious and vulgar,
+he would have borne even a less valid persecution with greater fortitude.
+But somehow, neat and noiseless and dismally lady-like, as she
+sat there, keeping her grievance green with her soft-dropping tears,
+her displeasure conveyed an overwhelming imputation of brutality.
+He felt like a reckless trustee who has speculated with the widow's mite,
+and is haunted with the reflection of ruin that he sees in her tearful eyes.
+He did everything conceivable to be polite to Mrs. Hudson, and to treat
+her with distinguished deference.  Perhaps his exasperated nerves made
+him overshoot the mark, and rendered his civilities a trifle peremptory.
+She seemed capable of believing that he was trying to make a fool of her;
+she would have thought him cruelly recreant if he had suddenly departed
+in desperation, and yet she gave him no visible credit for his constancy.
+Women are said by some authorities to be cruel; I don't know how true this is,
+but it may at least be pertinent to remark that Mrs. Hudson was very much
+of a woman.  It often seemed to Rowland that he had too decidedly forfeited
+his freedom, and that there was something positively grotesque in a man
+of his age and circumstances living in such a moral bondage.
+
+But Mary Garland had helped him before, and she helped him now--
+helped him not less than he had assured himself she would
+when he found himself drifting to Florence.  Yet her help
+was rendered in the same unconscious, unacknowledged fashion
+as before; there was no explicit change in their relations.
+After that distressing scene in Rome which had immediately
+preceded their departure, it was of course impossible that there
+should not be on Miss Garland's part some frankness of allusion
+to Roderick's sad condition.  She had been present, the reader
+will remember, during only half of his unsparing confession,
+and Rowland had not seen her confronted with any absolute
+proof of Roderick's passion for Christina Light.
+But he knew that she knew far too much for her happiness;
+Roderick had told him, shortly after their settlement at
+the Villa Pandolfini, that he had had a "tremendous talk"
+with his cousin.  Rowland asked no questions about it;
+he preferred not to know what had passed between them.
+If their interview had been purely painful, he wished to ignore
+it for Miss Garland's sake; and if it had sown the seeds
+of reconciliation, he wished to close his eyes to it for his own--
+for the sake of that unshaped idea, forever dismissed and yet
+forever present, which hovered in the background of his consciousness,
+with a hanging head, as it were, and yet an unshamed glance,
+and whose lightest motions were an effectual bribe to patience.
+Was the engagement broken?  Rowland wondered, yet without asking.
+But it hardly mattered, for if, as was more than probable,
+Miss Garland had peremptorily released her cousin,
+her own heart had by no means recovered its liberty.
+It was very certain to Rowland's mind that if she had given him
+up she had by no means ceased to care for him passionately,
+and that, to exhaust her charity for his weaknesses,
+Roderick would have, as the phrase is, a long row to hoe.
+She spoke of Roderick as she might have done of a person
+suffering from a serious malady which demanded much tenderness;
+but if Rowland had found it possible to accuse her of dishonesty
+he would have said now that she believed appreciably less than
+she pretended to in her victim's being an involuntary patient.
+There are women whose love is care-taking and patronizing,
+and who rather prefer a weak man because he gives them
+a comfortable sense of strength.  It did not in the least
+please Rowland to believe that Mary Garland was one of these;
+for he held that such women were only males in petticoats,
+and he was convinced that Miss Garland's heart was constructed
+after the most perfect feminine model.  That she was a very different
+woman from Christina Light did not at all prove that she was less
+a woman, and if the Princess Casamassima had gone up into a high
+place to publish her disrelish of a man who lacked the virile will,
+it was very certain that Mary Garland was not a person to put up,
+at any point, with what might be called the princess's leavings.
+It was Christina's constant practice to remind you of the complexity
+of her character, of the subtlety of her mind, of her troublous
+faculty of seeing everything in a dozen different lights.
+Mary Garland had never pretended not to be simple; but Rowland had a
+theory that she had really a more multitudinous sense of human things,
+a more delicate imagination, and a finer instinct of character.
+She did you the honors of her mind with a grace far less regal,
+but was not that faculty of quite as remarkable an adjustment?
+If in poor Christina's strangely commingled nature there was
+circle within circle, and depth beneath depth, it was to be
+believed that Mary Garland, though she did not amuse herself
+with dropping stones into her soul, and waiting to hear them fall,
+laid quite as many sources of spiritual life under contribution.
+She had believed Roderick was a fine fellow when she bade him
+farewell beneath the Northampton elms, and this belief, to her young,
+strenuous, concentrated imagination, had meant many things.
+If it was to grow cold, it would be because disenchantment
+had become total and won the battle at each successive point.
+
+Miss Garland had even in her face and carriage something
+of the preoccupied and wearied look of a person who is watching
+at a sick-bed; Roderick's broken fortunes, his dead ambitions,
+were a cruel burden to the heart of a girl who had believed
+that he possessed "genius," and supposed that genius was to one's
+spiritual economy what full pockets were to one's domestic.
+And yet, with her, Rowland never felt, as with Mrs. Hudson,
+that undercurrent of reproach and bitterness toward himself,
+that impertinent implication that he had defrauded her of happiness.
+Was this justice, in Miss Garland, or was it mercy?
+The answer would have been difficult, for she had almost let
+Rowland feel before leaving Rome that she liked him well enough
+to forgive him an injury.  It was partly, Rowland fancied,
+that there were occasional lapses, deep and sweet, in her sense
+of injury.  When, on arriving at Florence, she saw the place Rowland
+had brought them to in their trouble, she had given him a look
+and said a few words to him that had seemed not only a remission
+of guilt but a positive reward.  This happened in the court
+of the villa--the large gray quadrangle, overstretched, from edge
+to edge of the red-tiled roof, by the soft Italian sky.
+Mary had felt on the spot the sovereign charm of the place;
+it was reflected in her deeply intelligent glance, and Rowland
+immediately accused himself of not having done the villa justice.
+Miss Garland took a mighty fancy to Florence, and used to look
+down wistfully at the towered city from the windows and garden.
+Roderick having now no pretext for not being her cicerone,
+Rowland was no longer at liberty, as he had been in Rome,
+to propose frequent excursions to her.  Roderick's own
+invitations, however, were not frequent, and Rowland more than
+once ventured to introduce her to a gallery or a church.
+These expeditions were not so blissful, to his sense,
+as the rambles they had taken together in Rome, for his
+companion only half surrendered herself to her enjoyment,
+and seemed to have but a divided attention at her command.
+Often, when she had begun with looking intently at a picture,
+her silence, after an interval, made him turn and glance at her.
+He usually found that if she was looking at the picture still,
+she was not seeing it.  Her eyes were fixed, but her thoughts
+were wandering, and an image more vivid than any that Raphael
+or Titian had drawn had superposed itself upon the canvas.
+She asked fewer questions than before, and seemed to have lost
+heart for consulting guide-books and encyclopaedias.  From time
+to time, however, she uttered a deep, full murmur of gratification.
+Florence in midsummer was perfectly void of travelers, and the dense
+little city gave forth its aesthetic aroma with a larger frankness,
+as the nightingale sings when the listeners have departed.
+The churches were deliciously cool, but the gray streets
+were stifling, and the great, dove-tailed polygons of pavement
+as hot to the tread as molten lava.  Rowland, who suffered from
+intense heat, would have found all this uncomfortable in solitude;
+but Florence had never charmed him so completely as during
+these midsummer strolls with his preoccupied companion.
+One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow to the Academy.
+Miss Garland kept her appointment, but as soon as she appeared,
+Rowland saw that something painful had befallen her.
+She was doing her best to look at her ease, but her face bore
+the marks of tears.  Rowland told her that he was afraid she was ill,
+and that if she preferred to give up the visit to Florence
+he would submit with what grace he might.  She hesitated
+a moment, and then said she preferred to adhere to their plan.
+"I am not well," she presently added, "but it 's a moral malady,
+and in such cases I consider your company beneficial."
+
+"But if I am to be your doctor," said Rowland, "you must tell
+me how your illness began."
+
+"I can tell you very little.  It began with Mrs. Hudson
+being unjust to me, for the first time in her life.
+And now I am already better!"
+
+I mention this incident because it confirmed an impression
+of Rowland's from which he had derived a certain consolation.
+He knew that Mrs. Hudson considered her son's ill-regulated passion
+for Christina Light a very regrettable affair, but he suspected
+that her manifest compassion had been all for Roderick, and not
+in the least for Mary Garland.  She was fond of the young girl,
+but she had valued her primarily, during the last two years,
+as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick's shrine.
+Roderick had honored her by asking her to become his wife,
+but that poor Mary had any rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was
+quite incapable of perceiving.  Her sentiment on the subject was
+of course not very vigorously formulated, but she was unprepared
+to admit that Miss Garland had any ground for complaint.
+Roderick was very unhappy; that was enough, and Mary's duty was
+to join her patience and her prayers to those of his doting mother.
+Roderick might fall in love with whom he pleased; no doubt that women
+trained in the mysterious Roman arts were only too proud and too
+happy to make it easy for him; and it was very presuming in poor,
+plain Mary to feel any personal resentment.  Mrs. Hudson's
+philosophy was of too narrow a scope to suggest that a mother may
+forgive where a mistress cannot, and she thought herself greatly
+aggrieved that Miss Garland was not so disinterested as herself.
+She was ready to drop dead in Roderick's service, and she was
+quite capable of seeing her companion falter and grow faint,
+without a tremor of compassion.  Mary, apparently, had given
+some intimation of her belief that if constancy is the flower
+of devotion, reciprocity is the guarantee of constancy,
+and Mrs. Hudson had rebuked her failing faith and called it cruelty.
+That Miss Garland had found it hard to reason with Mrs. Hudson,
+that she suffered deeply from the elder lady's softly bitter imputations,
+and that, in short, he had companionship in misfortune--
+all this made Rowland find a certain luxury in his discomfort.
+
+The party at Villa Pandolfini used to sit in the garden
+in the evenings, which Rowland almost always spent with them.
+Their entertainment was in the heavily perfumed air, in the dim,
+far starlight, in the crenelated tower of a neighboring villa,
+which loomed vaguely above them in the warm darkness,
+and in such conversation as depressing reflections allowed.
+Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless ghost,
+silent for the most part, but making from time to time a
+brief observation, characterized by the most fantastic cynicism.
+Roderick's contributions to the conversation were indeed
+always so fantastic that, though half the time they wearied
+him unspeakably, Rowland made an effort to treat them humorously.
+With Rowland alone Roderick talked a great deal more; often about
+things related to his own work, or about artistic and aesthetic
+matters in general.  He talked as well as ever, or even better;
+but his talk always ended in a torrent of groans and curses.
+When this current set in, Rowland straightway turned his back
+or stopped his ears, and Roderick now witnessed these movements
+with perfect indifference.  When the latter was absent
+from the star-lit circle in the garden, as often happened,
+Rowland knew nothing of his whereabouts; he supposed him
+to be in Florence, but he never learned what he did there.
+All this was not enlivening, but with an even, muffled tread the days
+followed each other, and brought the month of August to a close.
+One particular evening at this time was most enchanting;
+there was a perfect moon, looking so extraordinarily large
+that it made everything its light fell upon seem small;
+the heat was tempered by a soft west wind, and the wind
+was laden with the odors of the early harvest.  The hills,
+the vale of the Arno, the shrunken river, the domes of Florence,
+were vaguely effaced by the dense moonshine; they looked
+as if they were melting out of sight like an exorcised vision.
+Rowland had found the two ladies alone at the villa, and he had sat
+with them for an hour.  He felt absolutely hushed by the solemn
+splendor of the scene, but he had risked the remark that,
+whatever life might yet have in store for either of them,
+this was a night that they would never forget.
+
+"It 's a night to remember on one's death-bed!" Miss Garland exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Mary, how can you!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, to whom this savored
+of profanity, and to whose shrinking sense, indeed, the accumulated
+loveliness of the night seemed to have something shameless and defiant.
+
+They were silent after this, for some time, but at last Rowland
+addressed certain idle words to Miss Garland.  She made no reply,
+and he turned to look at her.  She was sitting motionless,
+with her head pressed to Mrs. Hudson's shoulder, and the latter lady
+was gazing at him through the silvered dusk with a look which gave
+a sort of spectral solemnity to the sad, weak meaning of her eyes.
+She had the air, for the moment, of a little old malevolent fairy.
+Miss Garland, Rowland perceived in an instant, was not
+absolutely motionless; a tremor passed through her figure.
+She was weeping, or on the point of weeping, and she could not trust
+herself to speak.  Rowland left his place and wandered to another
+part of the garden, wondering at the motive of her sudden tears.
+Of women's sobs in general he had a sovereign dread, but these,
+somehow, gave him a certain pleasure.  When he returned to his
+place Miss Garland had raised her head and banished her tears.
+She came away from Mrs. Hudson, and they stood for a short time
+leaning against the parapet.
+
+"It seems to you very strange, I suppose," said Rowland,
+"that there should be any trouble in such a world as this."
+
+"I used to think," she answered, "that if any trouble came
+to me I would bear it like a stoic.  But that was at home,
+where things don't speak to us of enjoyment as they do here.
+Here it is such a mixture; one does n't know what to choose,
+what to believe.  Beauty stands there--beauty such as this night
+and this place, and all this sad, strange summer, have been
+so full of--and it penetrates to one's soul and lodges there,
+and keeps saying that man was not made to suffer, but to enjoy.
+This place has undermined my stoicism, but--shall I tell you?
+I feel as if I were saying something sinful--I love it!"
+
+"If it is sinful, I absolve you," said Rowland, "in so far as I have power.
+We are made, I suppose, both to suffer and to enjoy.  As you say,
+it 's a mixture.  Just now and here, it seems a peculiarly strange one.
+But we must take things in turn."
+
+His words had a singular aptness, for he had hardly uttered them
+when Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood.
+He stood for a moment gazing hard at the view.
+
+"It 's a very beautiful night, my son," said his mother, going to him timidly,
+and touching his arm.
+
+He passed his hand through his hair and let it stay there,
+clasping his thick locks.  "Beautiful?" he cried;
+"of course it 's beautiful!  Everything is beautiful;
+everything is insolent, defiant, atrocious with beauty.
+Nothing is ugly but me--me and my poor dead brain!"
+
+"Oh, my dearest son," pleaded poor Mrs. Hudson, "don't you
+feel any better?"
+
+Roderick made no immediate answer; but at last he spoke in a different voice.
+"I came expressly to tell you that you need n't trouble yourselves any longer
+to wait for something to turn up.  Nothing will turn up!  It 's all over!
+I said when I came here I would give it a chance.  I have given it a chance.
+Have n't I, eh?  Have n't I, Rowland?  It 's no use; the thing 's a failure!
+Do with me now what you please.  I recommend you to set me up there at the end
+of the garden and shoot me."
+
+"I feel strongly inclined," said Rowland gravely, "to go
+and get my revolver."
+
+"Oh, mercy on us, what language!" cried Mrs. Hudson.
+
+"Why not?"  Roderick went on.  "This would be a lovely night for it,
+and I should be a lucky fellow to be buried in this garden.
+But bury me alive, if you prefer.  Take me back to Northampton."
+
+"Roderick, will you really come?" cried his mother.
+
+"Oh yes, I 'll go!  I might as well be there as anywhere--
+reverting to idiocy and living upon alms.  I can do nothing
+with all this; perhaps I should really like Northampton.
+If I 'm to vegetate for the rest of my days, I can do it there
+better than here."
+
+"Oh, come home, come home," Mrs. Hudson said, "and we shall all be safe
+and quiet and happy.  My dearest son, come home with your poor mother!"
+
+"Let us go, then, and go quickly!"
+
+Mrs. Hudson flung herself upon his neck for gratitude.
+"We 'll go to-morrow!" she cried.  "The Lord is very good to me!"
+
+Mary Garland said nothing to this; but she looked at Rowland,
+and her eyes seemed to contain a kind of alarmed appeal.
+Rowland noted it with exultation, but even without it he would
+have broken into an eager protest.
+
+"Are you serious, Roderick?" he demanded.
+
+"Serious? of course not!  How can a man with a crack
+in his brain be serious? how can a muddlehead reason?
+But I 'm not jesting, either; I can no more make jokes
+than utter oracles!"
+
+"Are you willing to go home?"
+
+"Willing?  God forbid!  I am simply amenable to force;
+if my mother chooses to take me, I won't resist.
+I can't! I have come to that!"
+
+"Let me resist, then," said Rowland.  "Go home as you are now?
+I can't stand by and see it."
+
+It may have been true that Roderick had lost his sense of humor, but he
+scratched his head with a gesture that was almost comical in its effect.
+"You are a queer fellow!  I should think I would disgust you horribly.  "
+
+"Stay another year," Rowland simply said.
+
+"Doing nothing?"
+
+"You shall do something.  I am responsible for your doing something."
+
+"To whom are you responsible?"
+
+Rowland, before replying, glanced at Miss Garland, and his glance
+made her speak quickly.  "Not to me!"
+
+"I 'm responsible to myself," Rowland declared.
+
+"My poor, dear fellow!" said Roderick.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Mallet, are n't you satisfied?" cried Mrs. Hudson, in the tone
+in which Niobe may have addressed the avenging archers, after she had seen
+her eldest-born fall.  "It 's out of all nature keeping him here.  When we
+'re in a poor way, surely our own dear native land is the place for us.
+Do leave us to ourselves, sir!"
+
+This just failed of being a dismissal in form, and Rowland bowed his head
+to it.  Roderick was silent for some moments; then, suddenly, he covered
+his face with his two hands.  "Take me at least out of this terrible Italy,"
+he cried, "where everything mocks and reproaches and torments and eludes me!
+Take me out of this land of impossible beauty and put me in the midst
+of ugliness.  Set me down where nature is coarse and flat, and men and
+manners are vulgar.  There must be something awfully ugly in Germany.
+Pack me off there!"
+
+Rowland answered that if he wished to leave Italy the thing might
+be arranged; he would think it over and submit a proposal on the morrow.
+He suggested to Mrs. Hudson, in consequence, that she should spend
+the autumn in Switzerland, where she would find a fine tonic climate,
+plenty of fresh milk, and several pensions at three francs and a half a day.
+Switzerland, of course, was not ugly, but one could not have everything.
+
+Mrs. Hudson neither thanked him nor assented; but she wept and packed
+her trunks.  Rowland had a theory, after the scene which led
+to these preparations, that Mary Garland was weary of waiting
+for Roderick to come to his senses, that the faith which had
+bravely borne his manhood company hitherto, on the tortuous march
+he was leading it, had begun to believe it had gone far enough.
+This theory was not vitiated by something she said to him on the day
+before that on which Mrs. Hudson had arranged to leave Florence.
+
+"Cousin Sarah, the other evening," she said, "asked you to please leave us.
+I think she hardly knew what she was saying, and I hope you have
+not taken offense."
+
+"By no means; but I honestly believe that my leaving you would contribute
+greatly to Mrs. Hudson's comfort.  I can be your hidden providence, you know;
+I can watch you at a distance, and come upon the scene at critical moments."
+
+Miss Garland looked for a moment at the ground; and then,
+with sudden earnestness, "I beg you to come with us!" she said.
+
+It need hardly be added that after this Rowland went with them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  The Princess Casamassima
+
+Rowland had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn,
+accessible with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once
+spent a blissful ten days.  He had at that time been trudging,
+knapsack on back, over half Switzerland, and not being,
+on his legs, a particularly light weight, it was no shame to him
+to confess that he was mortally tired.  The inn of which I speak
+presented striking analogies with a cow-stable; but in spite
+of this circumstance, it was crowded with hungry tourists.
+It stood in a high, shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine
+meadows sloping down to it from the base of certain rugged
+rocks whose outlines were grotesque against the evening sky.
+Rowland had seen grander places in Switzerland that pleased
+him less, and whenever afterwards he wished to think of Alpine
+opportunities at their best, he recalled this grassy concave
+among the mountain-tops, and the August days he spent there,
+resting deliciously, at his length, in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder,
+with the light cool air stirring about his temples, the wafted
+odors of the pines in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells
+in his ears, the vast progression of the mountain shadows
+before his eyes, and a volume of Wordsworth in his pocket.
+His face, on the Swiss hill-sides, had been scorched to within
+a shade of the color nowadays called magenta, and his bed
+was a pallet in a loft, which he shared with a German botanist
+of colossal stature--every inch of him quaking at an open window.
+These had been drawbacks to felicity, but Rowland hardly cared
+where or how he was lodged, for he spent the livelong day under
+the sky, on the crest of a slope that looked at the Jungfrau.
+He remembered all this on leaving Florence with his friends,
+and he reflected that, as the midseason was over,
+accommodations would be more ample, and charges more modest.
+He communicated with his old friend the landlord, and, while September
+was yet young, his companions established themselves under his
+guidance in the grassy valley.
+
+He had crossed the Saint Gothard Pass with them, in the same carriage.
+During the journey from Florence, and especially during this portion of it,
+the cloud that hung over the little party had been almost dissipated,
+and they had looked at each other, in the close contiguity of the train
+and the posting-carriage, without either accusing or consoling glances.
+It was impossible not to enjoy the magnificent scenery of the Apennines
+and the Italian Alps, and there was a tacit agreement among the travelers
+to abstain from sombre allusions.  The effect of this delicate compact
+seemed excellent; it ensured them a week's intellectual sunshine.
+Roderick sat and gazed out of the window with a fascinated stare,
+and with a perfect docility of attitude.  He concerned himself not a
+particle about the itinerary, or about any of the wayside arrangements;
+he took no trouble, and he gave none.  He assented to everything
+that was proposed, talked very little, and led for a week a perfectly
+contemplative life.  His mother rarely removed her eyes from him;
+and if, a while before, this would have extremely irritated him,
+he now seemed perfectly unconscious of her observation and profoundly
+indifferent to anything that might befall him.  They spent a couple
+of days on the Lake of Como, at a hotel with white porticoes smothered
+in oleander and myrtle, and the terrace-steps leading down to little
+boats with striped awnings.  They agreed it was the earthly paradise,
+and they passed the mornings strolling through the perfumed alleys
+of classic villas, and the evenings floating in the moonlight in a
+circle of outlined mountains, to the music of silver-trickling oars.
+One day, in the afternoon, the two young men took a long stroll together.
+They followed the winding footway that led toward Como, close to
+the lake-side, past the gates of villas and the walls of vineyards,
+through little hamlets propped on a dozen arches, and bathing
+their feet and their pendant tatters in the gray-green ripple;
+past frescoed walls and crumbling campaniles and grassy village piazzas,
+and the mouth of soft ravines that wound upward, through belts
+of swinging vine and vaporous olive and splendid chestnut, to high
+ledges where white chapels gleamed amid the paler boskage, and bare
+cliff-surfaces, with their sun-cracked lips, drank in the azure light.
+It all was confoundingly picturesque; it was the Italy that we
+know from the steel engravings in old keepsakes and annuals,
+from the vignettes on music-sheets and the drop-curtains at theatres;
+an Italy that we can never confess to ourselves--in spite of our
+own changes and of Italy's--that we have ceased to believe in.
+Rowland and Roderick turned aside from the little paved footway
+that clambered and dipped and wound and doubled beside the lake,
+and stretched themselves idly beneath a fig-tree, on a grassy promontory.
+Rowland had never known anything so divinely soothing as the dreamy
+softness of that early autumn afternoon.  The iridescent mountains
+shut him in; the little waves, beneath him, fretted the white pebbles
+at the laziest intervals; the festooned vines above him swayed just
+visibly in the all but motionless air.
+
+Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his
+hands under his head.  "This suits me," he said; "I could be
+happy here and forget everything.  Why not stay here forever?"
+He kept his position for a long time and seemed lost in his thoughts.
+Rowland spoke to him, but he made vague answers; at last
+he closed his eyes.  It seemed to Rowland, also, a place to stay
+in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the disagreeable.
+Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it in his arms.
+There had been something passionate in his movement; but Rowland
+was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back
+into a sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes.
+Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward
+the lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture,
+as if his heart was too full for utterance.
+
+"Pity me, sir; pity me!" he presently cried.  "Look at this lovely world,
+and think what it must be to be dead to it!"
+
+"Dead?" said Rowland.
+
+"Dead, dead; dead and buried!  Buried in an open grave,
+where you lie staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the
+waving flowers, and hearing all nature live and grow above you!
+That 's the way I feel!"
+
+"I am glad to hear it," said Rowland.  "Death of that sort
+is very near to resurrection."
+
+"It 's too horrible," Roderick went on; "it has all come over me
+here tremendously!  If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears.
+For one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!"
+
+"Never mind what you have been; be something better!"
+
+"I shall never be anything again:  it 's no use talking!
+But I don't know what secret spring has been touched
+since I have lain here.  Something in my heart seemed
+suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and desire.
+I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible!
+Mind you, I know it, I feel it!  Remember that hereafter.
+Don't say that he was stupefied and senseless;
+that his perception was dulled and his aspiration dead.
+Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of the beauty
+and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested
+and shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open,
+and his heart beating to madness; that he clung to every
+blade of grass and every way-side thorn as he passed;
+that it was the most horrible spectacle you ever witnessed;
+that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!"
+
+"Good heavens, man, are you insane?"  Rowland cried.
+
+"I never have been saner.  I don't want to be bad company, and in this
+beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break
+the charm.  But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor,
+to life!  I only want to assure you that I know what I lose.
+I know it in every pulse of my heart!  Here, where these things
+are all loveliest, I take leave of them.  Farewell, farewell!"
+
+During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented
+himself much of the time from the carriage, and rambled far
+in advance, along the huge zigzags of the road.  He displayed
+an extraordinary activity; his light weight and slender figure
+made him an excellent pedestrian, and his friends frequently saw
+him skirting the edge of plunging chasms, loosening the stones
+on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against the sky,
+from the top of rocky pinnacles.  Mary Garland walked a great deal,
+but she remained near the carriage to be with Mrs. Hudson.
+Rowland remained near it to be with Miss Garland.
+He trudged by her side up that magnificent ascent from Italy,
+and found himself regretting that the Alps were so low, and that
+their trudging was not to last a week.  She was exhilarated;
+she liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until within the last
+few weeks, she had seen nothing greater than Mount Holyoke,
+and she found that the Alps amply justified their reputation.
+Rowland knew that she loved nature, but he was struck afresh
+with the vivacity of her observation of it, and with her
+knowledge of plants and stones.  At that season the wild flowers
+had mostly departed, but a few of them lingered, and Miss
+Garland never failed to espy them in their outlying corners.
+They interested her greatly; she was charmed when they
+were old friends, and charmed even more when they were new.
+She displayed a very light foot in going in quest of them,
+and had soon covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle
+of strange vegetation.  Rowland of course was alert in her service,
+and he gathered for her several botanical specimens which at
+first seemed inaccessible.  One of these, indeed, had at
+first appeared easier of capture than his attempt attested,
+and he had paused a moment at the base of the little peak
+on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther pursuit.
+Suddenly, as he stood there, he remembered Roderick's defiance
+of danger and of Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized
+with a strong desire to test the courage of his companion.
+She had just scrambled up a grassy slope near him, and had seen
+that the flower was out of reach.  As he prepared to approach it,
+she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing was impossible!
+Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved,
+enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes,
+what became of him.  He was the least brutal of men, but for
+a moment he was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.
+
+"I can get the flower," he called to her.  "Will you trust me?"
+
+"I don't want it; I would rather not have it!" she cried.
+
+"Will you trust me?" he repeated, looking at her.
+
+She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered
+whether she would shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done.
+"I wish it were something better!" she said simply; and then
+stood watching him, while he began to clamber.  Rowland was
+not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise was difficult;
+but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow
+foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize.
+He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived
+to descend.  There was more than one chance for an ugly fall,
+but he evaded them all.  It was doubtless not gracefully done,
+but it was done, and that was all he had proposed to himself.
+He was red in the face when he offered Miss Garland the flower,
+and she was visibly pale.  She had watched him without moving.
+All this had passed without the knowledge of Mrs. Hudson,
+who was dozing beneath the hood of the carriage.  Mary Garland's
+eyes did not perhaps display that ardent admiration which was
+formerly conferred by the queen of beauty at a tournament;
+but they expressed something in which Rowland found his reward.
+"Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely.
+
+He hesitated.  He felt that it was physically possible to say,
+"Because I love you!" but that it was not morally possible.
+He lowered his pitch and answered, simply, "Because I wanted
+to do something for you."
+
+"Suppose you had fallen," said Miss Garland.
+
+"I believed I would not fall.  And you believed it, I think."
+
+"I believed nothing.  I simply trusted you, as you asked me."
+
+"Quod erat demonstrandum!" cried Rowland.  "I think you know Latin."
+
+When our four friends were established in what I have called their
+grassy valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both
+grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges,
+a great many long walks, and, thanks to the lucid mountain air,
+not a little exhilaration.  Mrs. Hudson was obliged to intermit
+her suspicions of the deleterious atmosphere of the old world,
+and to acknowledge the edifying purity of the breezes of Engelthal.
+She was certainly more placid than she had been in Italy;
+having always lived in the country, she had missed in Rome
+and Florence that social solitude mitigated by bushes and
+rocks which is so dear to the true New England temperament.
+The little unpainted inn at Engelthal, with its plank partitions,
+its milk-pans standing in the sun, its "help," in the form of angular
+young women of the country-side, reminded her of places of summer
+sojourn in her native land; and the beautiful historic chambers
+of the Villa Pandolfini passed from her memory without a regret,
+and without having in the least modified her ideal of domiciliary grace.
+Roderick had changed his sky, but he had not changed his mind;
+his humor was still that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse
+in that tragic explosion on the Lake of Como.  He kept his despair
+to himself, and he went doggedly about the ordinary business of life;
+but it was easy to see that his spirit was mortally heavy,
+and that he lived and moved and talked simply from the force of habit.
+In that sad half-hour among the Italian olives there had been
+such a fierce sincerity in his tone, that Rowland began to abdicate
+the critical attitude.  He began to feel that it was essentially
+vain to appeal to the poor fellow's will; there was no will left;
+its place was an impotent void.  This view of the case indeed
+was occasionally contravened by certain indications on Roderick's
+part of the power of resistance to disagreeable obligations:
+one might still have said, if one had been disposed to be
+didactic at any hazard, that there was a method in his madness,
+that his moral energy had its sleeping and its waking hours,
+and that, in a cause that pleased it, it was capable of rising
+with the dawn.  But on the other hand, pleasure, in this case,
+was quite at one with effort; evidently the greatest bliss
+in life, for Roderick, would have been to have a plastic idea.
+And then, it was impossible not to feel tenderly to a despair
+which had so ceased to be aggressive--not to forgive a great deal
+of apathy to a temper which had so unlearned its irritability.
+Roderick said frankly that Switzerland made him less miserable
+than Italy, and the Alps seemed less to mock at his enforced leisure
+than the Apennines.  He indulged in long rambles, generally alone,
+and was very fond of climbing into dizzy places, where no sound could
+overtake him, and there, flinging himself on the never-trodden moss,
+of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging away the hours in
+perfect immobility.  Rowland sometimes walked with him; though Roderick
+never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his society.
+Rowland now made it a rule to treat him like a perfectly sane man,
+to assume that all things were well with him, and never to allude
+to the prosperity he had forfeited or to the work he was not doing.
+He would have still said, had you questioned him, that Roderick's
+condition was a mood--certainly a puzzling one.  It might last yet
+for many a weary hour; but it was a long lane that had no turning.
+Roderick's blues would not last forever.  Rowland's interest in Miss
+Garland's relations with her cousin was still profoundly attentive,
+and perplexed as he was on all sides, he found nothing transparent here.
+After their arrival at Engelthal, Roderick appeared to seek the young
+girl's society more than he had done hitherto, and this revival of
+ardor could not fail to set his friend a-wondering. They sat together
+and strolled together, and Miss Garland often read aloud to him.
+One day, on their coming to dinner, after he had been lying half
+the morning at her feet, in the shadow of a rock, Rowland asked
+him what she had been reading.
+
+"I don't know," Roderick said, "I don't heed the sense."
+Miss Garland heard this, and Rowland looked at her.
+She looked at Roderick sharply and with a little blush.
+"I listen to Mary," Roderick continued, "for the sake of her voice.
+It 's distractingly sweet!"  At this Miss Garland's blush deepened,
+and she looked away.
+
+Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination
+to wander in the direction of certain conjectures which
+the reader may deem unflattering to Miss Garland's constancy.
+He had asked himself whether her faith in Roderick had
+not faltered, and that demand of hers which had brought
+about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost
+equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe.
+Rowland was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk
+the supposition that Miss Garland had contrasted him
+with Roderick to his own advantage; but he had a certain
+consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed itself
+to fancy, at moments, that it might be not illogically
+rewarded by the bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm
+as had crumbled away from her estimate of his companion.
+If some day she had declared, in a sudden burst of passion,
+that she was outwearied and sickened, and that she gave up
+her recreant lover, Rowland's expectation would have gone
+half-way to meet her.  And certainly if her passion had taken
+this course no generous critic would utterly condemn her.
+She had been neglected, ignored, forsaken, treated with
+a contempt which no girl of a fine temper could endure.
+There were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that of Burd Helen
+in the ballad, lay in clinging to the man of their love through
+thick and thin, and in bowing their head to all hard usage.
+This attitude had often an exquisite beauty of its own,
+but Rowland deemed that he had solid reason to believe it
+never could be Mary Garland's. She was not a passive creature;
+she was not soft and meek and grateful for chance bounties.
+With all her reserve of manner she was proud and eager;
+she asked much and she wanted what she asked; she believed
+in fine things and she never could long persuade herself that
+fine things missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved.
+Once Rowland passed an angry day.  He had dreamed--it was the most
+insubstantial of dreams--that she had given him the right to
+believe that she looked to him to transmute her discontent.
+And yet here she was throwing herself back into Roderick's arms
+at his lightest overture, and playing with his own half fearful,
+half shameful hopes!  Rowland declared to himself that his
+position was essentially detestable, and that all the philosophy
+he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable
+nor comfortable.  He would go away and make an end of it.
+He did not go away; he simply took a long walk, stayed away
+from the inn all day, and on his return found Miss Garland
+sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.
+
+Rowland, communing with himself during the restless ramble in question,
+had determined that he would at least cease to observe, to heed,
+or to care for what Miss Garland and Roderick might do or might
+not do together.  Nevertheless, some three days afterward,
+the opportunity presenting itself, he deliberately broached
+the subject with Roderick.  He knew this was inconsistent
+and faint-hearted; it was indulgence to the fingers that itched
+to handle forbidden fruit.  But he said to himself that it
+was really more logical to be inconsistent than the reverse;
+for they had formerly discussed these mysteries very candidly.
+Was it not perfectly reasonable that he should wish to know
+the sequel of the situation which Roderick had then delineated?
+Roderick had made him promises, and it was to be expected
+that he should ascertain how the promises had been kept.
+Rowland could not say to himself that if the promises had been
+extorted for Mary Garland's sake, his present attention to them
+was equally disinterested; and so he had to admit that he was indeed
+faint-hearted. He may perhaps be deemed too narrow a casuist,
+but we have repeated more than once that he was solidly burdened
+with a conscience.
+
+"I imagine," he said to Roderick, "that you are not sorry, at present,
+to have allowed yourself to be dissuaded from making a final rupture
+with Miss Garland."
+
+Roderick eyed him with the vague and absent look which had lately
+become habitual to his face, and repeated "Dissuaded?"
+
+"Don't you remember that, in Rome, you wished to break your engagement,
+and that I urged you to respect it, though it seemed to hang by
+so slender a thread?  I wished you to see what would come of it?
+If I am not mistaken, you are reconciled to it."
+
+"Oh yes," said Roderick, "I remember what you said; you made it a kind
+of personal favor to yourself that I should remain faithful.  I consented,
+but afterwards, when I thought of it, your attitude greatly amused me.
+Had it ever been seen before?--a man asking another man to gratify him
+by not suspending his attentions to a pretty girl!"
+
+"It was as selfish as anything else," said Rowland.
+"One man puts his selfishness into one thing, and one into another.
+It would have utterly marred my comfort to see Miss Garland
+in low spirits."
+
+"But you liked her--you admired her, eh?  So you intimated."
+
+"I admire her profoundly."
+
+"It was your originality then--to do you justice you have a great deal,
+of a certain sort--to wish her happiness secured in just that fashion.
+Many a man would have liked better himself to make the woman he admired happy,
+and would have welcomed her low spirits as an opening for sympathy.
+You were awfully queer about it."
+
+"So be it!" said Rowland.  "The question is, Are you not glad I was queer?
+Are you not finding that your affection for Miss Garland has a permanent
+quality which you rather underestimated?"
+
+"I don't pretend to say.  When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n't care
+for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug about it.
+If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be gained
+by having a little humbug, I was willing to try it!  I don't see that
+the situation is really changed.  Mary Garland is all that she ever was--
+more than all.  But I don't care for her!  I don't care for anything,
+and I don't find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor.
+The only difference is that I don't care now, whether I care for her or not.
+Of course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question
+for any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume
+that she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials."
+
+"Oh, you 're in love!" said Rowland, not very logically.
+It must be confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made
+for the sole purpose of hearing Roderick deny it.
+
+But it quite failed of its aim.  Roderick gave a liberal shrug
+of his shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head.
+"Call it what you please!  I am past caring for names."
+
+Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly disingenuous.
+He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had argued the false
+to learn the true.  The true was that Roderick was again, in some degree,
+under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue in Mary's presence,
+indisposed though he was to admit it.  He had said, shortly before,
+that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a promising beginning.
+If her voice was sweet it was probable that her glance was not amiss,
+that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her whole personal presence
+had learned the art of not being irritating.  So Rowland reasoned,
+and invested Mary Garland with a still finer loveliness.
+
+It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions,
+and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy
+touches were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply
+a matter of the conscience.  He watched for signs that she rejoiced
+in Roderick's renewed acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him
+that she was on her guard against interpreting it too largely.
+It was now her turn--he fancied that he sometimes gathered from
+certain nameless indications of glance and tone and gesture--
+it was now her turn to be indifferent, to care for other things.
+Again and again Rowland asked himself what these things were that Miss
+Garland might be supposed to care for, to the injury of ideal constancy;
+and again, having designated them, he divided them into two portions.
+One was that larger experience, in general, which had come
+to her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne in upon
+her imagination, that there were more things one might do with one's
+life than youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of;
+the revision of old pledges in the light of new emotions.
+The other was the experience, in especial, of Rowland's--what?
+Here Rowland always paused, in perfect sincerity, to measure afresh
+his possible claim to the young girl's regard.  What might he call it?
+It had been more than civility and yet it had been less than devotion.
+It had spoken of a desire to serve, but it had said nothing of a hope
+of reward.  Nevertheless, Rowland's fancy hovered about the idea
+that it was recompensable, and his reflections ended in a reverie
+which perhaps did not define it, but at least, on each occasion,
+added a little to its volume.  Since Miss Garland had asked
+him as a sort of favor to herself to come also to Switzerland,
+he thought it possible she might let him know whether he seemed
+to have effectively served her.  The days passed without her doing so,
+and at last Rowland walked away to an isolated eminence some five miles
+from the inn and murmured to the silent rocks that she was ungrateful.
+Listening nature seemed not to contradict him, so that, on the morrow,
+he asked the young girl, with an infinitesimal touch of irony,
+whether it struck her that his deflection from his Florentine plan
+had been attended with brilliant results.
+
+"Why, we are delighted that you are with us!" she answered.
+
+He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply
+that she had forgotten that she had solemnly asked him to come.
+He reminded her of her request, and recalled the place and time.
+"That evening on the terrace, late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed,
+and Roderick being absent."
+
+She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her.
+"I am afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you," she said.
+"You wanted very much to do something else."
+
+"I wanted above all things to oblige you, and I made no sacrifice.
+But if I had made an immense one, it would be more than made up to me
+by any assurance that I have helped Roderick into a better mood."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, "Why do you ask me?" she said.
+"You are able to judge quite as well as I."
+
+Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious manner.
+"The truth is," he said, "that I am afraid I care only in the second place
+for Roderick's holding up his head.  What I care for in the first place
+is your happiness."
+
+"I don't know why that should be," she answered.
+"I have certainly done nothing to make you so much my friend.
+If you were to tell me you intended to leave us to-morrow,
+I am afraid that I should not venture to ask you to stay.
+But whether you go or stay, let us not talk of Roderick!"
+
+"But that," said Rowland, "does n't answer my question.
+Is he better?"
+
+"No!" she said, and turned away.
+
+He was careful not to tell her that he intended to leave them.
+One day, shortly after this, as the two young men sat
+at the inn-door watching the sunset, which on that evening
+was very striking and lurid, Rowland made an attempt to sound
+his companion's present sentiment touching Christina Light.
+"I wonder where she is," he said, "and what sort of a life
+she is leading her prince."
+
+Roderick at first made no response.  He was watching a figure
+on the summit of some distant rocks, opposite to them.
+The figure was apparently descending into the valley,
+and in relief against the crimson screen of the western sky,
+it looked gigantic.  "Christina Light?"  Roderick at last repeated,
+as if arousing himself from a reverie.  "Where she is?
+It 's extraordinary how little I care!"
+
+"Have you, then, completely got over it?"
+
+To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while.
+"She 's a humbug!" he presently exclaimed.
+
+"Possibly!" said Rowland.  "But I have known worse ones."
+
+"She disappointed me!"  Roderick continued in the same tone.
+
+"Had she, then, really given you hopes?"
+
+"Oh, don't recall it!"  Roderick cried.  "Why the devil should I think
+of it?  It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years."
+His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on
+of his own accord.  "I believed there was a future in it all!
+She pleased me--pleased me; and when an artist--such as I was--
+is pleased, you know!"  And he paused again.  "You never saw
+her as I did; you never heard her in her great moments.
+But there is no use talking about that!  At first she would
+n't regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light of me.
+But at last I forced her to admit I was a great man.
+Think of that, sir!  Christina Light called me a great man.
+A great man was what she was looking for, and we
+agreed to find our happiness for life in each other.
+To please me she promised not to marry till I gave her leave.
+I was not in a marrying way myself, but it was damnation to think
+of another man possessing her.  To spare my sensibilities,
+she promised to turn off her prince, and the idea of her doing so made
+me as happy as to see a perfect statue shaping itself in the block.
+You have seen how she kept her promise!  When I learned it,
+it was as if the statue had suddenly cracked and turned hideous.
+She died for me, like that!"  And he snapped his fingers.
+"Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire, betrayed confidence?
+I am sure I don't know; you certainly have some name for it."
+
+"The poor girl did the best she could," said Rowland.
+
+"If that was her best, so much the worse for her!
+I have hardly thought of her these two months, but I have
+not forgiven her."
+
+"Well, you may believe that you are avenged.  I can't think
+of her as happy."
+
+"I don't pity her!" said Roderick.  Then he relapsed into silence,
+and the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward
+along the jagged silhouette of the rocks.  "Who is this mighty man,"
+cried Roderick at last, "and what is he coming down upon us for?
+We are small people here, and we can't undertake to keep company with giants."
+
+"Wait till we meet him on our own level," said Rowland,
+"and perhaps he will not overtop us."
+
+"For ten minutes, at least," Roderick rejoined, "he will have
+been a great man!"  At this moment the figure sank beneath
+the horizon line and became invisible in the uncertain light.
+Suddenly Roderick said, "I would like to see her once more--
+simply to look at her."
+
+"I would not advise it," said Rowland.
+
+"It was her beauty that did it!"  Roderick went on.
+"It was all her beauty; in comparison, the rest was nothing.
+What befooled me was to think of it as my property!
+And I had made it mine--no one else had studied it as I had,
+no one else understood it.  What does that stick of a Casamassima
+know about it at this hour?  I should like to see it just once more;
+it 's the only thing in the world of which I can say so."
+
+"I would not advise it," Rowland repeated.
+
+"That 's right, dear Rowland," said Roderick; "don't advise!
+That 's no use now."
+
+The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived
+a figure approaching them across the open space in front
+of the house.  Suddenly it stepped into the circle
+of light projected from the door and windows, and they
+beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them.
+He was the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks.
+When this was made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit
+of intense hilarity--it was the first time he had laughed
+in three months.  Singleton, who carried a knapsack and
+walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest welcome.
+He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way
+of luggage his knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a
+second shirt, he produced from it a dozen admirable sketches.
+He had been trudging over half Switzerland and making everywhere
+the most vivid pictorial notes.  They were mostly in a box
+at Interlaken, and in gratitude for Rowland's appreciation,
+he presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to
+the excellent Swiss method, was punctually delivered by post.
+The nights were cold, and our friends, with three or four
+other chance sojourners, sat in-doors over a fire of logs.
+Even with Roderick sitting moodily in the outer shadow they
+made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned over
+Singleton's drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner,
+blushing and grinning, with his feet on the rounds of his chair.
+He had been pedestrianizing for six weeks, and he was glad
+to rest awhile at Engelthal.  It was an economic repose,
+however, for he sallied forth every morning, with his sketching
+tools on his back, in search of material for new studies.
+Roderick's hilarity, after the first evening, had subsided,
+and he watched the little painter's serene activity with a
+gravity that was almost portentous.  Singleton, who was not
+in the secret of his personal misfortunes, still treated him
+with timid frankness as the rising star of American art.
+Roderick had said to Rowland, at first, that Singleton
+reminded him of some curious little insect with a remarkable
+mechanical instinct in its antennae; but as the days went
+by it was apparent that the modest landscapist's unflagging
+industry grew to have an oppressive meaning for him.
+It pointed a moral, and Roderick used to sit and con the moral
+as he saw it figured in Singleton's bent back, on the hot
+hill-sides, protruding from beneath his white umbrella.
+One day he wandered up a long slope and overtook him as he sat
+at work; Singleton related the incident afterwards to Rowland,
+who, after giving him in Rome a hint of Roderick's aberrations,
+had strictly kept his own counsel.
+
+"Are you always like this?" said Roderick, in almost sepulchral accents.
+
+"Like this?" repeated Singleton, blinking confusedly,
+with an alarmed conscience.
+
+"You remind me of a watch that never runs down.
+If one listens hard one hears you always--tic-tic, tic-tic."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Singleton, beaming ingenuously.
+"I am very equable."
+
+"You are very equable, yes.  And do you find it pleasant to be equable?"
+
+Singleton turned and grinned more brightly, while he sucked
+the water from his camel's-hair brush.  Then, with a quickened
+sense of his indebtedness to a Providence that had endowed him
+with intrinsic facilities, "Oh, delightful!" he exclaimed.
+
+Roderick stood looking at him a moment.  "Damnation!" he said
+at last, solemnly, and turned his back.
+
+One morning, shortly after this, Rowland and Roderick took a long walk.
+They had walked before in a dozen different directions, but they
+had not yet crossed a charming little wooded pass, which shut in
+their valley on one side and descended into the vale of Engelberg.
+In coming from Lucerne they had approached their inn by this path,
+and, feeling that they knew it, had hitherto neglected it in favor
+of untrodden ways.  But at last the list of these was exhausted,
+and Rowland proposed the walk to Engelberg as a novelty.
+The place is half bleak and half pastoral; a huge white monastery
+rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley and complicates
+its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss scenery.
+Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual appurtenances
+of a prosperous Swiss resort--lean brown guides in baggy homespun,
+lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks
+in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars.
+Our two friends sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a
+pint of wine, and then Roderick, who was indefatigable,
+announced his intention of climbing to a certain rocky pinnacle
+which overhung the valley, and, according to the testimony
+of one of the guides, commanded a view of the Lake of Lucerne.
+To go and come back was only a matter of an hour, but Rowland,
+with the prospect of his homeward trudge before him,
+confessed to a preference for lounging on his bench, or at most
+strolling a trifle farther and taking a look at the monastery.
+Roderick went off alone, and his companion after a while bent
+his steps to the monasterial church.  It was remarkable, like most
+of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for a hideous style of
+devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and musty picturesqueness,
+and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness for Alpine piety.
+While he was near the high-altar some people came in at the west door;
+but he did not notice them, and was presently engaged in deciphering
+a curious old German epitaph on one of the mural tablets.
+At last he turned away, wondering whether its syntax or its theology
+was the more uncomfortable, and, to this infinite surprise,
+found himself confronted with the Prince and Princess Casamassima.
+
+The surprise on Christina's part, for an instant, was equal, and at first she
+seemed disposed to turn away without letting it give place to a greeting.
+The prince, however, saluted gravely, and then Christina, in silence,
+put out her hand.  Rowland immediately asked whether they were staying
+at Engelberg, but Christina only looked at him without speaking.
+The prince answered his questions, and related that they had been
+making a month's tour in Switzerland, that at Lucerne his wife had been
+somewhat obstinately indisposed, and that the physician had recommended
+a week's trial of the tonic air and goat's milk of Engelberg.
+The scenery, said the prince, was stupendous, but the life was terribly sad--
+and they had three days more!  It was a blessing, he urbanely added,
+to see a good Roman face.
+
+Christina's attitude, her solemn silence and her penetrating gaze
+seemed to Rowland, at first, to savor of affectation; but he presently
+perceived that she was profoundly agitated, and that she was afraid
+of betraying herself.  "Do let us leave this hideous edifice,"
+she said; "there are things here that set one's teeth on edge."
+They moved slowly to the door, and when they stood outside,
+in the sunny coolness of the valley, she turned to Rowland and said,
+"I am extremely glad to see you."  Then she glanced about her
+and observed, against the wall of the church, an old stone seat.
+She looked at Prince Casamassima a moment, and he smiled
+more intensely, Rowland thought, than the occasion demanded.
+"I wish to sit here," she said, "and speak to Mr. Mallet--alone."
+
+"At your pleasure, dear friend," said the prince.
+
+The tone of each was measured, to Rowland's ear; but that of
+Christina was dry, and that of her husband was splendidly urbane.
+Rowland remembered that the Cavaliere Giacosa had told
+him that Mrs. Light's candidate was thoroughly a prince,
+and our friend wondered how he relished a peremptory accent.
+Casamassima was an Italian of the undemonstrative type, but Rowland
+nevertheless divined that, like other princes before him,
+he had made the acquaintance of the thing called compromise.
+"Shall I come back?" he asked with the same smile.
+
+"In half an hour," said Christina.
+
+In the clear outer light, Rowland's first impression of her was
+that she was more beautiful than ever.  And yet in three months she
+could hardly have changed; the change was in Rowland's own vision
+of her, which that last interview, on the eve of her marriage,
+had made unprecedentedly tender.
+
+"How came you here?" she asked.  "Are you staying in this place?"
+
+"I am staying at Engelthal, some ten miles away; I walked over."
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"I am with Mr. Hudson."
+
+"Is he here with you?"
+
+"He went half an hour ago to climb a rock for a view."
+
+"And his mother and that young girl, where are they?"
+
+"They also are at Engelthal."
+
+"What do you do there?"
+
+"What do you do here?" said Rowland, smiling.
+
+"I count the minutes till my week is up.  I hate mountains;
+they depress me to death.  I am sure Miss Garland likes them."
+
+"She is very fond of them, I believe."
+
+"You believe--don't you know?  But I have given up trying to imitate
+Miss Garland," said Christina.
+
+"You surely need imitate no one."
+
+"Don't say that," she said gravely.  "So you have walked ten
+miles this morning?  And you are to walk back again?"
+
+"Back again to supper."
+
+"And Mr. Hudson too?"
+
+"Mr. Hudson especially.  He is a great walker."
+
+"You men are happy!"  Christina cried.  "I believe I
+should enjoy the mountains if I could do such things.
+It is sitting still and having them scowl down at you!
+Prince Casamassina never rides.  He only goes on a mule.
+He was carried up the Faulhorn on a litter."
+
+"On a litter?" said Rowland.
+
+"In one of those machines--a chaise a porteurs--like a woman."
+
+Rowland received this information in silence; it was equally
+unbecoming to either to relish or deprecate its irony.
+
+"Is Mr. Hudson to join you again?  Will he come here?"  Christina asked.
+
+"I shall soon begin to expect him."
+
+"What shall you do when you leave Switzerland?"  Christina continued.
+"Shall you go back to Rome?"
+
+"I rather doubt it.  My plans are very uncertain."
+
+"They depend upon Mr. Hudson, eh?"
+
+"In a great measure."
+
+"I want you to tell me about him.  Is he still in that perverse
+state of mind that afflicted you so much?"
+
+Rowland looked at her mistrustfully, without answering.
+He was indisposed, instinctively, to tell her that Roderick was unhappy;
+it was possible she might offer to help him back to happiness.
+She immediately perceived his hesitation.
+
+"I see no reason why we should not be frank," she said.
+"I should think we were excellently placed for that sort of thing.
+You remember that formerly I cared very little what I said,
+don't you?  Well, I care absolutely not at all now.
+I say what I please, I do what I please!  How did Mr. Hudson
+receive the news of my marriage?"
+
+"Very badly," said Rowland.
+
+"With rage and reproaches?"  And as Rowland hesitated
+again--"With silent contempt?"
+
+"I can tell you but little.  He spoke to me on the subject,
+but I stopped him.  I told him it was none of his business,
+or of mine."
+
+"That was an excellent answer!" said Christina, softly.  "Yet it was a
+little your business, after those sublime protestations I treated you to.
+I was really very fine that morning, eh?"
+
+"You do yourself injustice," said Rowland.  "I should be at liberty
+now to believe you were insincere."
+
+"What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not?
+I can't conceive of anything mattering less.  I was very fine--
+is n't it true?"
+
+"You know what I think of you," said Rowland.
+And for fear of being forced to betray his suspicion of
+the cause of her change, he took refuge in a commonplace.
+"Your mother, I hope, is well."
+
+"My mother is in the enjoyment of superb health, and may be
+seen every evening at the Casino, at the Baths of Lucca,
+confiding to every new-comer that she has married her daughter
+to a pearl of a prince."
+
+Rowland was anxious for news of Mrs. Light's companion,
+and the natural course was frankly to inquire about him.
+"And the Cavaliere Giacosa is well?" he asked.
+
+Christina hesitated, but she betrayed no other embarrassment.
+"The Cavaliere has retired to his native city of Ancona,
+upon a pension, for the rest of his natural life.
+He is a very good old man!"
+
+"I have a great regard for him," said Rowland, gravely, at the same time
+that he privately wondered whether the Cavaliere's pension was paid by
+Prince Casamassima for services rendered in connection with his marriage.
+Had the Cavaliere received his commission?  "And what do you do,"
+Rowland continued, "on leaving this place?"
+
+"We go to Italy--we go to Naples."  She rose and stood silent
+a moment, looking down the valley.  The figure of Prince Casamassima
+appeared in the distance, balancing his white umbrella.
+As her eyes rested upon it, Rowland imagined that he saw
+something deeper in the strange expression which had lurked
+in her face while he talked to her.  At first he had been dazzled
+by her blooming beauty, to which the lapse of weeks had only
+added splendor; then he had seen a heavier ray in the light
+of her eye--a sinister intimation of sadness and bitterness.
+It was the outward mark of her sacrificed ideal.
+Her eyes grew cold as she looked at her husband, and when,
+after a moment, she turned them upon Rowland, they struck him
+as intensely tragical.  He felt a singular mixture of sympathy
+and dread; he wished to give her a proof of friendship,
+and yet it seemed to him that she had now turned her face
+in a direction where friendship was impotent to interpose.
+She half read his feelings, apparently, and she gave a beautiful,
+sad smile.  "I hope we may never meet again!" she said.
+And as Rowland gave her a protesting look--"You have seen me
+at my best.  I wish to tell you solemnly, I was sincere!
+I know appearances are against me," she went on quickly.
+"There is a great deal I can't tell you.  Perhaps you have guessed it;
+I care very little.  You know, at any rate, I did my best.
+It would n't serve; I was beaten and broken; they were stronger
+than I. Now it 's another affair!"
+
+"It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet,"
+said Rowland, vaguely.
+
+"Happiness?  I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for
+bliss ineffable!  You remember I told you that I was, in part,
+the world's and the devil's. Now they have taken me all.
+It was their choice; may they never repent!"
+
+"I shall hear of you," said Rowland.
+
+"You will hear of me.  And whatever you do hear, remember this:
+I was sincere!"
+
+Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him
+with a good deal of simple compassion as a part of that "world"
+against which Christina had launched her mysterious menace.
+It was obvious that he was a good fellow, and that he could not,
+in the nature of things, be a positively bad husband;
+but his distinguished inoffensiveness only deepened
+the infelicity of Christina's situation by depriving her
+defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice.
+So long as she had been free to choose, she had esteemed him:
+but from the moment she was forced to marry him she had detested him.
+Rowland read in the young man's elastic Italian mask a profound
+consciousness of all this; and as he found there also a record
+of other curious things--of pride, of temper, of bigotry,
+of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive traditions--
+he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two
+companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.
+
+"You are going to Naples?"  Rowland said to the prince by way of conversation.
+
+"We are going to Paris," Christina interposed, slowly and softly.
+"We are going to London.  We are going to Vienna.
+We are going to St. Petersburg."
+
+Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point
+of his umbrella.  While he engaged Rowland's attention Christina turned away.
+When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her face;
+she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes by the angle
+of the church-wall. In a moment Roderick stepped into sight.
+
+He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded,
+his garments dusty.  He looked at Christina from head to foot,
+and then, slowly, his cheek flushed and his eye expanded.
+Christina returned his gaze, and for some moments
+there was a singular silence.  "You don't look well!"
+Christina said at last.
+
+Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked,
+as if she had been a statue.  "You are no less beautiful!"
+he presently cried.
+
+She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing
+down the valley; Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima.
+Christina then put out her hand to Rowland.  "Farewell," she said.
+"If you are near me in future, don't try to see me!"
+And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, "I was sincere!"
+She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some commonplace
+about his walk.  But he said nothing; he only looked at her.
+Rowland at first had expected an outbreak of reproach, but it
+was evident that the danger was every moment diminishing.
+He was forgetting everything but her beauty, and as she stood there
+and let him feast upon it, Rowland was sure that she knew it.
+"I won't say farewell to you," she said; "we shall meet again!"
+And she moved gravely away.  Prince Casamassima took leave
+courteously of Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed a bow
+of exaggerated civility.  Roderick appeared not to see it;
+he was still watching Christina, as she passed over the grass.
+His eyes followed her until she reached the door of her inn.
+Here she stopped and looked back at him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  Switzerland
+
+On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved
+a silence which Rowland allowed to make him uneasy.
+Early on the morrow Roderick, saying nothing of his intentions,
+started off on a walk; Rowland saw him striding with light
+steps along the rugged path to Engelberg.  He was absent
+all day and he gave no account of himself on his return.
+He said he was deadly tired, and he went to bed early.
+When he had left the room Miss Garland drew near to Rowland.
+
+"I wish to ask you a question," she said.  "What happened to Roderick
+yesterday at Engelberg?"
+
+"You have discovered that something happened?"  Rowland answered.
+
+"I am sure of it.  Was it something painful?"
+
+"I don't know how, at the present moment, he judges it.
+He met the Princess Casamassima."
+
+"Thank you!" said Miss Garland, simply, and turned away.
+
+The conversation had been brief, but, like many small things,
+it furnished Rowland with food for reflection.
+When one is looking for symptoms one easily finds them.
+This was the first time Mary Garland had asked Rowland
+a question which it was in Roderick's power to answer,
+the first time she had frankly betrayed Roderick's reticence.
+Rowland ventured to think it marked an era.
+
+The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at
+those altitudes, was oppressively heavy.  Rowland lounged on the grass
+a while, near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella,
+within view of the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered
+away to the rocky ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau.
+To-day, however, the white summits were invisible; their heads were muffled
+in sullen clouds and the valleys beneath them curtained in dun-colored mist.
+Rowland had a book in his pocket, and he took it out and opened it.
+But his page remained unturned; his own thoughts were more importunate.
+His interview with Christina Light had made a great impression upon him,
+and he was haunted with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness,
+and of all that was tragic and fatal in her latest transformation.
+These things were immensely appealing, and Rowland thought with
+infinite impatience of Roderick's having again encountered them.
+It required little imagination to apprehend that the young sculptor's
+condition had also appealed to Christina.  His consummate indifference,
+his supreme defiance, would make him a magnificent trophy, and Christina
+had announced with sufficient distinctness that she had said good-by
+to scruples.  It was her fancy at present to treat the world as a
+garden of pleasure, and if, hitherto, she had played with Roderick's
+passion on its stem, there was little doubt that now she would pluck
+it with an unfaltering hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness.
+And why the deuce need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction?
+Rowland's meditations, even when they began in rancor, often brought
+him peace; but on this occasion they ushered in a quite peculiar quality
+of unrest.  He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his moral energy;
+a current that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength
+seemed at last to pause and evaporate.  Rowland looked away at
+the stagnant vapors on the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol
+of the dreariness which his own generosity had bequeathed him.
+At last he had arrived at the uttermost limit of the deference
+a sane man might pay to other people's folly; nay, rather, he had
+transgressed it; he had been befooled on a gigantic scale.
+He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience, but it gave him cold
+comfort and he tossed it angrily away.  He pulled his hat over his eyes,
+and tried to wonder, dispassionately, whether atmospheric conditions
+had not something to do with his ill-humor. He remained for some time
+in this attitude, but was finally aroused from it by a singular
+sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had approached him.
+He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the turf.
+His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt like uttering
+an uncivil speech.  Roderick stood looking at him with an expression
+of countenance which had of late become rare.  There was an unfamiliar
+spark in his eye and a certain imperious alertness in his carriage.
+Confirmed habit, with Rowland, came speedily to the front.
+"What is it now?" he asked himself, and invited Roderick to sit down.
+Roderick had evidently something particular to say, and if he remained
+silent for a time it was not because he was ashamed of it.
+
+"I would like you to do me a favor," he said at last.
+"Lend me some money."
+
+"How much do you wish?"  Rowland asked.
+
+"Say a thousand francs."
+
+Rowland hesitated a moment.  "I don't wish to be indiscreet,
+but may I ask what you propose to do with a thousand francs?"
+
+"To go to Interlaken."
+
+"And why are you going to Interlaken?"
+
+Roderick replied without a shadow of wavering, "Because that woman
+is to be there."
+
+Rowland burst out laughing, but Roderick remained serenely grave.
+"You have forgiven her, then?" said Rowland.
+
+"Not a bit of it!"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Neither do I. I only know that she is incomparably beautiful,
+and that she has waked me up amazingly.  Besides, she asked
+me to come."
+
+"She asked you?"
+
+"Yesterday, in so many words."
+
+"Ah, the jade!"
+
+"Exactly.  I am willing to take her for that."
+
+"Why in the name of common sense did you go back to her?"
+
+"Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had
+just stepped out of her cloud?  Why did I look at her?
+Before I knew where I was, the harm was done."
+
+Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back
+on the grass and lay for some time staring up at the sky.
+At last, raising himself, "Are you perfectly serious?" he asked.
+
+"Deadly serious."
+
+"Your idea is to remain at Interlaken some time?"
+
+"Indefinitely!" said Roderick; and it seemed to his companion that the tone
+in which he said this made it immensely well worth hearing.
+
+"And your mother and cousin, meanwhile, are to remain here?
+It will soon be getting very cold, you know."
+
+"It does n't seem much like it to-day."
+
+"Very true; but to-day is a day by itself."
+
+"There is nothing to prevent their going back to Lucerne.
+I depend upon your taking charge of them."
+
+At this Rowland reclined upon the grass again; and again,
+after reflection, he faced his friend.  "How would you express,"
+he asked, "the character of the profit that you expect to derive
+from your excursion?"
+
+"I see no need of expressing it.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating!
+The case is simply this.  I desire immensely to be near Christina Light,
+and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring something,
+that I propose to drift with the current.  As I say, she has waked me up,
+and it is possible something may come of it.  She makes me feel as if I
+were alive again.  This," and he glanced down at the inn, "I call death!"
+
+"That I am very grateful to hear.  You really feel as if you
+might do something?"
+
+"Don't ask too much.  I only know that she makes my heart beat,
+makes me see visions."
+
+"You feel encouraged?"
+
+"I feel excited."
+
+"You are really looking better."
+
+"I am glad to hear it.  Now that I have answered your questions,
+please to give me the money."
+
+Rowland shook his head.  "For that purpose, I can't!"
+
+"You can't?"
+
+"It 's impossible.  Your plan is rank folly.  I can't help you in it."
+
+Roderick flushed a little, and his eye expanded.  "I will borrow
+what money I can, then, from Mary!"  This was not viciously said;
+it had simply the ring of passionate resolution.
+
+Instantly it brought Rowland to terms.  He took a bunch
+of keys from his pocket and tossed it upon the grass.
+"The little brass one opens my dressing-case," he said.
+"You will find money in it."
+
+Roderick let the keys lie; something seemed to have struck him;
+he looked askance at his friend.  "You are awfully gallant!"
+
+"You certainly are not.  Your proposal is an outrage."
+
+"Very likely.  It 's a proof the more of my desire."
+
+"If you have so much steam on, then, use it for something else.
+You say you are awake again.  I am delighted; only be so in
+the best sense.  Is n't it very plain?  If you have the energy
+to desire, you have also the energy to reason and to judge.
+If you can care to go, you can also care to stay, and staying
+being the more profitable course, the inspiration, on that side,
+for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again,
+should be greater."
+
+Roderick, plainly, did not relish this simple logic,
+and his eye grew angry as he listened to its echo.
+"Oh, the devil!" he cried.
+
+Rowland went on.  "Do you believe that hanging about Christina
+Light will do you any good?  Do you believe it won't? In either
+case you should keep away from her.  If it won't, it 's your duty;
+and if it will, you can get on without it."
+
+"Do me good?" cried Roderick.  "What do I want of 'good'--
+what should I do with 'good'? I want what she gives me,
+call it by what name you will.  I want to ask no questions,
+but to take what comes and let it fill the impossible hours!
+But I did n't come to discuss the matter."
+
+"I have not the least desire to discuss it," said Rowland.
+"I simply protest."
+
+Roderick meditated a moment.  "I have never yet thought twice of accepting
+a favor of you," he said at last; "but this one sticks in my throat."
+
+"It is not a favor; I lend you the money only under compulsion."
+
+"Well, then, I will take it only under compulsion!"  Roderick exclaimed.
+And he sprang up abruptly and marched away.
+
+His words were ambiguous; Rowland lay on the grass, wondering what
+they meant.  Half an hour had not elapsed before Roderick reappeared,
+heated with rapid walking, and wiping his forehead.  He flung himself
+down and looked at his friend with an eye which expressed something
+purer than bravado and yet baser than conviction.
+
+"I have done my best!" he said.  "My mother is out of money;
+she is expecting next week some circular notes from London.
+She had only ten francs in her pocket.  Mary Garland gave me every sou
+she possessed in the world.  It makes exactly thirty-four francs.
+That 's not enough."
+
+"You asked Miss Garland?" cried Rowland.
+
+"I asked her."
+
+"And told her your purpose?"
+
+"I named no names.  But she knew!"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Not a syllable.  She simply emptied her purse."
+
+Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms.
+He felt a movement of irrepressible elation, and he barely
+stifled a cry of joy.  Now, surely, Roderick had shattered
+the last link in the chain that bound Mary to him, and after
+this she would be free!.... When he turned about again,
+Roderick was still sitting there, and he had not touched
+the keys which lay on the grass.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter with me," said Roderick,
+"but I have an insurmountable aversion to taking your money."
+
+"The matter, I suppose, is that you have a grain of wisdom left."
+
+"No, it 's not that.  It 's a kind of brute instinct.
+I find it extremely provoking!"  He sat there for some time
+with his head in his hands and his eyes on the ground.
+His lips were compressed, and he was evidently, in fact,
+in a state of profound irritation.  "You have succeeded
+in making this thing excessively unpleasant!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I am sorry," said Rowland, "but I can't see it in any other way.
+"
+
+"That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending
+to be the limit of my action.  You can't feel for me nor judge
+for me, and there are certain things you know nothing about.
+I have suffered, sir!"  Roderick went on with increasing emphasis.
+"I have suffered damnable torments.  Have I been such a placid, contented,
+comfortable man this last six months, that when I find a chance
+to forget my misery, I should take such pains not to profit by it?
+You ask too much, for a man who himself has no occasion to play the hero.
+I don't say that invidiously; it 's your disposition, and you can't help it.
+But decidedly, there are certain things you know nothing about."
+
+Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick,
+if he had been less intent upon his own eloquence,
+would probably have perceived that he turned pale.
+"These things--what are they?"  Rowland asked.
+
+"They are women, principally, and what relates to women.
+Women for you, by what I can make out, mean nothing.
+You have no imagination--no sensibility!"
+
+"That 's a serious charge," said Rowland, gravely.
+
+"I don't make it without proof!"
+
+"And what is your proof?"
+
+Roderick hesitated a moment.  "The way you treated Christina Light.
+I call that grossly obtuse."
+
+"Obtuse?"  Rowland repeated, frowning.
+
+"Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune."
+
+"My good fortune?"
+
+"There it is--it 's all news to you!  You had pleased her.
+I don't say she was dying of love for you, but she took
+a fancy to you."
+
+"We will let this pass!" said Rowland, after a silence.
+
+"Oh, I don't insist.  I have only her own word for it."
+
+"She told you this?"
+
+"You noticed, at least, I suppose, that she was not afraid to speak.
+I never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious
+to see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself."
+
+"I frankly confess it would have lasted forever.
+And yet I don't consider that my insensibility is proved."
+
+"Oh, don't say that," cried Roderick, "or I shall begin to suspect--
+what I must do you the justice to say that I never have suspected--
+that you are a trifle conceited.  Upon my word, when I
+think of all this, your protest, as you call it, against my
+following Christina Light seems to me thoroughly offensive.
+There is something monstrous in a man's pretending to lay down
+the law to a sort of emotion with which he is quite unacquainted--
+in his asking a fellow to give up a lovely woman for conscience'
+sake, when he has never had the impulse to strike a blow for
+one for passion's!"
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.
+
+"All that 's very easy to say," Roderick went on; "but you must
+remember that there are such things as nerves, and senses,
+and imagination, and a restless demon within that may sleep
+sometimes for a day, or for six months, but that sooner or later
+wakes up and thumps at your ribs till you listen to him!
+If you can't understand it, take it on trust, and let a poor
+imaginative devil live his life as he can!"
+
+Roderick's words seemed at first to Rowland like something heard
+in a dream; it was impossible they had been actually spoken--
+so supreme an expression were they of the insolence of egotism.
+Reality was never so consistent as that!  But Roderick sat there
+balancing his beautiful head, and the echoes of his strident
+accent still lingered along the half-muffled mountain-side.
+Rowland suddenly felt that the cup of his chagrin was full
+to overflowing, and his long-gathered bitterness surged into
+the simple, wholesome passion of anger for wasted kindness.
+But he spoke without violence, and Roderick was probably at
+first far from measuring the force that lay beneath his words.
+
+"You are incredibly ungrateful," he said.  "You are talking
+arrogant nonsense.  What do you know about my sensibilities and
+my imagination?  How do you know whether I have loved or suffered?
+If I have held my tongue and not troubled you with my complaints,
+you find it the most natural thing in the world to put an ignoble
+construction on my silence.  I loved quite as well as you;
+indeed, I think I may say rather better.  I have been constant.
+I have been willing to give more than I received.
+I have not forsaken one mistress because I thought another
+more beautiful, nor given up the other and believed all
+manner of evil about her because I had not my way with her.
+I have been a good friend to Christina Light, and it seems to me
+my friendship does her quite as much honor as your love!"
+
+"Your love--your suffering--your silence--your friendship!" cried Roderick.
+"I declare I don't understand!"
+
+"I dare say not.  You are not used to understanding such things--
+you are not used to hearing me talk of my feelings.
+You are altogether too much taken up with your own.
+Be as much so as you please; I have always respected your right.
+Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose to leave
+you an open field, don't, by way of thanking me, come and call
+me an idiot."
+
+"Oh, you claim then that you have made sacrifices?"
+
+"Several!  You have never suspected it?"
+
+"If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed it?" cried Roderick.
+
+"They were the sacrifices of friendship and they were easily made;
+only I don't enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth."
+
+This was, under the circumstances, a sufficiently generous speech;
+but Roderick was not in the humor to take it generously.
+"Come, be more definite," he said.  "Let me know where it
+is the shoe has pinched."
+
+Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity,
+he should have full justice.  "It 's a perpetual sacrifice,"
+he said, "to live with a perfect egotist."
+
+"I am an egotist?" cried Roderick.
+
+"Did it never occur to you?"
+
+"An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?"
+He repeated the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither
+exactly indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem)
+a sudden violent curiosity for news about himself.
+
+"You are selfish," said Rowland; "you think only of yourself and believe only
+in yourself.  You regard other people only as they play into your own hands.
+You have always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed
+up with the temper of your genius and the very structure of your mind,
+that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be
+thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse.
+But if one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon it."
+
+Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his
+hands together, and crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes.
+In this attitude, for a moment, he sat looking coldly at his friend.
+"So I have made you very uncomfortable?" he went on.
+
+"Extremely so."
+
+"I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful,
+indifferent, cruel?"
+
+"I have accused you, mentally, of all these things,
+with the exception of vanity."
+
+"You have often hated me?"
+
+"Never.  I should have parted company with you before coming to that."
+
+"But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be hanged!"
+
+"Repeatedly.  Then I have had patience and forgiven you."
+
+"Forgiven me, eh?  Suffering all the while?"
+
+"Yes, you may call it suffering."
+
+"Why did you never tell me all this before?"
+
+"Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment;
+because I preferred to err on the side of kindness;
+because I had, myself, in a measure, launched you in the world
+and thrown you into temptations; and because nothing short
+of your unwarrantable aggression just now could have made me
+say these painful things."
+
+Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it;
+Rowland was puzzled by his expression and manner.
+They seemed strangely cynical; there was something revolting
+in his deepening calmness.  "I must have been hideous,"
+Roderick presently resumed.
+
+"I am not talking for your entertainment," said Rowland.
+
+"Of course not.  For my edification!"  As Roderick said these words
+there was not a ray of warmth in his brilliant eye.
+
+"I have spoken for my own relief," Rowland went on, "and so that you need
+never again go so utterly astray as you have done this morning.  "
+
+"It has been a terrible mistake, then?"  What his tone
+expressed was not willful mockery, but a kind of persistent
+irresponsibility which Rowland found equally exasperating.
+He answered nothing.
+
+"And all this time," Roderick continued, "you have been in love?
+Tell me the woman."
+
+Rowland felt an immense desire to give him a visible, palpable pang.
+"Her name is Mary Garland," he said.
+
+Apparently he succeeded.  The surprise was great;
+Roderick colored as he had never done.  "Mary Garland?
+Heaven forgive us!"
+
+Rowland observed the "us;" Roderick threw himself back on the turf.
+The latter lay for some time staring at the sky.  At last he sprang to
+his feet, and Rowland rose also, rejoicing keenly, it must be confessed,
+in his companion's confusion.
+
+"For how long has this been?"  Roderick demanded.
+
+"Since I first knew her."
+
+"Two years!  And you have never told her?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You have told no one?"
+
+"You are the first person."
+
+"Why have you been silent?"
+
+"Because of your engagement."
+
+"But you have done your best to keep that up."
+
+"That 's another matter!"
+
+"It 's very strange!" said Roderick, presently.  "It 's like something
+in a novel."
+
+"We need n't expatiate on it," said Rowland.  "All I wished
+to do was to rebut your charge that I am an abnormal being."
+
+But still Roderick pondered.  "All these months, while I was going on!
+I wish you had mentioned it."
+
+"I acted as was necessary, and that 's the end of it."
+
+"You have a very high opinion of her?"
+
+"The highest."
+
+"I remember now your occasionally expressing it and my being
+struck with it.  But I never dreamed you were in love with her.
+It 's a pity she does n't care for you!"
+
+Rowland had made his point and he had no wish to prolong the conversation;
+but he had a desire to hear more of this, and he remained silent.
+
+"You hope, I suppose, that some day she may?"
+
+"I should n't have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do."
+
+"I don't believe it.  She idolizes me, and if she never were to see
+me again she would idolize my memory."
+
+This might be profound insight, and it might be profound fatuity.
+Rowland turned away; he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you horrible.
+Altogether, I must have appeared simply hideous."
+
+"Do you really care," Rowland asked, "what you appeared?"
+
+"Certainly.  I have been damnably stupid.  Is n't an artist supposed
+to be a man of perceptions?  I am hugely disgusted."
+
+"Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh."
+
+"And yet," said Roderick, "though you have suffered, in a degree,
+I don't believe you have suffered so much as some other men
+would have done."
+
+"Very likely not.  In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult."
+
+Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground.
+"Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous," he repeated--"hideous."
+He turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.
+
+They were both silent for some time, and at last Roderick gave
+a heavy sigh and began to walk away.  "Where are you going?"
+Rowland then asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't care!  To walk; you have given me something to think of."
+This seemed a salutary impulse, and yet Rowland felt a nameless perplexity.
+"To have been so stupid damns me more than anything!"  Roderick went on.
+"Certainly, I can shut up shop now."
+
+Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself,
+he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow.
+It was egotism still:  aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of
+his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given.
+Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him.
+Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most
+illogical impulse--a desire to stop him, to have another word with him--
+not to lose sight of him.  He called him and Roderick turned.
+"I should like to go with you," said Rowland.
+
+"I am fit only to be alone.  I am damned!"
+
+"You had better not think of it at all," Rowland cried,
+"than think in that way."
+
+"There is only one way.  I have been hideous!"  And he broke off
+and marched away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick.
+Rowland watched him and at the end of a moment called to him.
+Roderick stopped and looked at him in silence, and then abruptly turned,
+and disappeared below the crest of a hill.
+
+Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably.  He was
+half irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having
+been placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause.  Roderick did
+not come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding
+away the hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit.
+Mrs. Hudson appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that
+Roderick's demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress.
+Little Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner.
+Miss Garland, Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance
+to her kinsman's pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort.
+The effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill
+that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon it.
+They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.
+
+"I have a headache," she said.  And then suddenly, looking about at
+the menacing sky and motionless air, "It 's this horrible day!"
+
+Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia,
+but his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon
+the paper but a single line.  "I believe there is such a thing as being
+too reasonable.  But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?"
+He had occasion to use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket;
+they were missing, and he remembered that he had left them
+lying on the hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick.
+He went forth in search of them and found them where he had thrown them.
+He flung himself down in the same place again; he felt indisposed to walk.
+He was conscious that his mood had vastly changed since the morning;
+his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights had been replaced
+by the familiar, chronic sense of his duties.  Only, his duties now
+seemed impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his arms.
+He lay so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all was that
+Roderick had beaten him.  At last he was startled by an extraordinary sound;
+it took him a moment to perceive that it was a portentous growl of thunder.
+He roused himself and saw that the whole face of the sky had altered.
+The clouds that had hung motionless all day were moving from
+their stations, and getting into position, as it were, for a battle.
+The wind was rising; the sallow vapors were turning dark and consolidating
+their masses.  It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland judged
+best to observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent.
+He took his way down to the inn and found Singleton still at his post,
+profiting by the last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study,
+and yet at the same time taking rapid notes of the actual condition
+of the clouds.
+
+"We are going to have a most interesting storm," the little painter
+gleefully cried.  "I should like awfully to do it."
+
+Rowland adjured him to pack up his tools and decamp, and repaired
+to the house.  The air by this time had become portentously dark,
+and the thunder was incessant and tremendous; in the midst of it the
+lightning flashed and vanished, like the treble shrilling upon the bass.
+The innkeeper and his servants had crowded to the doorway, and were looking
+at the scene with faces which seemed a proof that it was unprecedented.
+As Rowland approached, the group divided, to let some one pass from within,
+and Mrs. Hudson came forth, as white as a corpse and trembling in every limb.
+
+"My boy, my boy, where is my boy?" she cried.  "Mr. Mallet,
+why are you here without him?  Bring him to me!"
+
+"Has no one seen Mr. Hudson?"  Rowland asked of the others.
+"Has he not returned?"
+
+Each one shook his head and looked grave, and Rowland attempted to reassure
+Mrs. Hudson by saying that of course he had taken refuge in a chalet.
+
+"Go and find him, go and find him!" she cried, insanely.
+"Don't stand there and talk, or I shall die!"  It was now as dark
+as evening, and Rowland could just distinguish the figure of Singleton
+scampering homeward with his box and easel.  "And where is Mary?"
+Mrs. Hudson went on; "what in mercy's name has become of her?
+Mr. Mallet, why did you ever bring us here?"
+
+There came a prodigious flash of lightning, and the limitless
+tumult about them turned clearer than midsummer noonday.
+The brightness lasted long enough to enable Rowland to see
+a woman's figure on the top of an eminence near the house.
+It was Mary Garland, questioning the lurid darkness for Roderick.
+Rowland sprang out to interrupt her vigil, but in a moment
+he encountered her, retreating.  He seized her hand and hurried her
+to the house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered gallery,
+Mrs. Hudson fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
+
+"Did you see nothing,--nothing?" she cried.  "Tell Mr. Mallet he must go
+and find him, with some men, some lights, some wrappings.  Go, go, go, sir!
+In mercy, go!"
+
+Rowland was extremely perturbed by the poor lady's
+vociferous folly, for he deemed her anxiety superfluous.
+He had offered his suggestion with sincerity; nothing was more
+probable than that Roderick had found shelter in a herdsman's cabin.
+These were numerous on the neighboring mountains, and the storm
+had given fair warning of its approach.  Miss Garland stood
+there very pale, saying nothing, but looking at him.
+He expected that she would check her cousin's importunity.
+"Could you find him?" she suddenly asked.  "Would it be of use?"
+
+The question seemed to him a flash intenser than the lightning that was raking
+the sky before them.  It shattered his dream that he weighed in the scale!
+But before he could answer, the full fury of the storm was upon them;
+the rain descended in sounding torrents.  Every one fell back into the house.
+There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little uncarpeted parlor,
+in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt Mary's hand upon his arm.
+For a moment it had an eloquent pressure; it seemed to retract her senseless
+challenge, and to say that she believed, for Roderick, what he believed.
+But nevertheless, thought Rowland, the cry had come, her heart had spoken;
+her first impulse had been to sacrifice him.  He had been uncertain before;
+here, at least, was the comfort of certainty!
+
+It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question
+did little to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening.
+There was a noisy crowd about him in the room--noisy even
+with the accompaniment of the continual thunder-peals;
+lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling, and bustling,
+and annoying him equally by making too light of the tempest
+and by vociferating their alarm.  In the disorder, it was some
+time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw,
+as it was swung from the ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson,
+who was being carried out of the room in a swoon by two
+stout maid-servants, with Mary Garland forcing a passage.
+He rendered what help he could, but when they had laid the poor
+woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away.
+
+"I think you make her worse," she said.
+
+Rowland went to his own chamber.  The partitions in Swiss
+mountain-inns are thin, and from time to time he heard
+Mrs. Hudson moaning, three rooms off.  Considering its great fury,
+the storm took long to expend itself; it was upwards of three
+hours before the thunder ceased.  But even then the rain
+continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had come on,
+was impenetrably black.  This lasted till near midnight.
+Rowland thought of Mary Garland's challenge in the porch,
+but he thought even more that, although the fetid interior
+of a high-nestling chalet may offer a convenient refuge
+from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in
+the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick's voice.
+At midnight, through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star,
+and he immediately went downstairs and out into the gallery.
+The rain had ceased, the cloud-masses were dissevered here
+and there, and several stars were visible.  In a few minutes
+he heard a step behind him, and, turning, saw Miss Garland.
+He asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that she was sleeping,
+exhausted by her fruitless lamentations.  Miss Garland kept
+scanning the darkness, but she said nothing to cast doubt
+on Roderick's having found a refuge.  Rowland noticed it.
+"This also have I guaranteed!" he said to himself.
+There was something that Mary wished to learn, and a question
+presently revealed it.
+
+"What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?" she asked.
+"I saw him at eleven o'clock, and then he meant to go
+to Engelberg, and sleep."
+
+"On his way to Interlaken?"  Rowland said.
+
+"Yes," she answered, under cover of the darkness.
+
+"We had some talk," said Rowland, "and he seemed, for the day,
+to have given up Interlaken."
+
+"Did you dissuade him?"
+
+"Not exactly.  We discussed another question, which, for the time,
+superseded his plan."
+
+Miss Garland was silent.  Then--"May I ask whether your discussion
+was violent?" she said.
+
+"I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us."
+
+"And Roderick left you in--in irritation?"
+
+"I offered him my company on his walk.  He declined it."
+
+Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.
+"If he had gone to Engelberg," she said, "he would have reached the hotel
+before the storm began."
+
+Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity.  "Oh, if you like,"
+he cried, "he can start for Interlaken as soon as he comes back!"
+
+But she did not even notice his wrath.  "Will he come back early?"
+she went on.
+
+"We may suppose so."
+
+"He will know how anxious we are, and he will start with the first light!"
+
+Rowland was on the point of declaring that Roderick's readiness to throw
+himself into the feelings of others made this extremely probable;
+but he checked himself and said, simply, "I expect him at sunrise."
+
+Miss Garland bent her eyes once more upon the irresponsive darkness,
+and then, in silence, went into the house.  Rowland, it must
+be averred, in spite of his resolution not to be nervous,
+found no sleep that night.  When the early dawn began to
+tremble in the east, he came forth again into the open air.
+The storm had completely purged the atmosphere, and the day gave
+promise of cloudless splendor.  Rowland watched the early sun-shafts
+slowly reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick did not come
+back to breakfast, there were two things to be taken into account.
+One was the heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides,
+saturated with the rain; this would make him walk slowly:
+the other was the fact that, speaking without irony, he was not
+remarkable for throwing himself into the sentiments of others.
+Breakfast, at the inn, was early, and by breakfast-time Roderick
+had not appeared.  Then Rowland admitted that he was nervous.
+Neither Mrs. Hudson nor Miss Garland had left their apartment;
+Rowland had a mental vision of them sitting there praying and listening;
+he had no desire to see them more directly.  There were a couple
+of men who hung about the inn as guides for the ascent of the Titlis;
+Rowland sent each of them forth in a different direction, to ask
+the news of Roderick at every ch; afalet door within a morning's walk.
+Then he called Sam Singleton, whose peregrinations had made
+him an excellent mountaineer, and whose zeal and sympathy were
+now unbounded, and the two started together on a voyage of research.
+By the time they had lost sight of the inn, Rowland was obliged
+to confess that, decidedly, Roderick had had time to come back.
+
+He wandered about for several hours, but he found only the sunny
+stillness of the mountain-sides. Before long he parted company
+with Singleton, who, to his suggestion that separation would multiply
+their resources, assented with a silent, frightened look which reflected
+too vividly his own rapidly-dawning thought.  The day was magnificent;
+the sun was everywhere; the storm had lashed the lower slopes into
+a deeper flush of autumnal color, and the snow-peaks reared themselves
+against the near horizon in glaring blocks and dazzling spires.
+Rowland made his way to several chalets, but most of them were empty.
+He thumped at their low, foul doors with a kind of nervous, savage anger;
+he challenged the stupid silence to tell him something about his friend.
+Some of these places had evidently not been open in months.
+The silence everywhere was horrible; it seemed to mock at
+his impatience and to be a conscious symbol of calamity.
+In the midst of it, at the door of one of the chalets, quite alone,
+sat a hideous cretin, who grinned at Rowland over his goitre when,
+hardly knowing what he did, he questioned him.  The creature's family
+was scattered on the mountain-sides; he could give Rowland no help
+to find them.  Rowland climbed into many awkward places, and skirted,
+intently and peeringly, many an ugly chasm and steep-dropping ledge.
+But the sun, as I have said, was everywhere; it illumined the deep places
+over which, not knowing where to turn next, he halted and lingered,
+and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine void--nothing so human
+even as death.  At noon he paused in his quest and sat down on a stone;
+the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst that was now
+possible was true.  He suspended his search; he was afraid to go on.
+He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
+Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had
+happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten,
+became vividly present to his mind.  He was aroused at last by the sound
+of a stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain.
+In a moment, on a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld
+a figure cautiously descending--a figure which was not Roderick.
+It was Singleton, who had seen him and began to beckon to him.
+
+"Come down--come down!" cried the painter, steadily making his own way down.
+Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold and
+watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the cliff.
+This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from the perpendicular,
+and the descent, though difficult, was with care sufficiently practicable.
+
+"What do you see?" cried Rowland.
+
+Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate;
+then, "Come down--come down!" he simply repeated.
+
+Rowland's course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
+precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
+It was a ten minutes' headlong scramble.  Half-way down he saw
+something that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen.
+In the gorge below them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones.
+He let himself go, blindly, fiercely.  Singleton had reached the rocky
+bottom of the ravine before him, and had bounded forward and fallen
+upon his knees.  Rowland overtook him and his own legs collapsed.
+The thing that yesterday was his friend lay before him as the chance of
+the last breath had left it, and out of it Roderick's face stared upward,
+open-eyed, at the sky.
+
+He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little disfigured.
+The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes and hair were
+as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon the strand.
+An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture,
+some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first
+looking at him was only a strangely serene expression of life.
+The eyes were dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them,
+the whole face seemed to awake.  The rain had washed away all blood;
+it was as if Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame.
+Roderick's face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.
+
+"He was a beautiful man!" said Singleton.
+
+They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had
+apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above him,
+with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were closed,
+and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish.
+At last they spoke of carrying him back to the inn.  "There must be
+three or four men," Rowland said, "and they must be brought here quickly.
+I have not the least idea where we are."
+
+"We are at about three hours' walk from home," said Singleton.
+"I will go for help; I can find my way."
+
+"Remember," said Rowland, "whom you will have to face."
+
+"I remember," the excellent fellow answered.  "There was nothing
+I could ever do for him in life; I will do what I can now."
+
+He went off, and Rowland stayed there alone.  He watched
+for seven long hours, and his vigil was forever memorable.
+The most rational of men was for an hour the most passionate.
+He reviled himself with transcendent bitterness,
+he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would
+have lain down there in Roderick's place to unsay the words
+that had yesterday driven him forth on his lonely ramble.
+Roderick had been fond of saying that there are such things
+as necessary follies, and Rowland was now proving it.
+At last he grew almost used to the dumb exultation of
+the cliff above him.  He saw that Roderick was a mass of
+hideous injury, and he tried to understand what had happened.
+Not that it helped him; before that confounding mortality
+one hypothesis after another faltered and swooned away.
+Roderick's passionate walk had carried him farther and higher
+than he knew; he had outstayed, supposably, the first menace
+of the storm, and perhaps even found a defiant entertainment
+in watching it.  Perhaps he had simply lost himself.
+The tempest had overtaken him, and when he tried to return,
+it was too late.  He had attempted to descend the cliff
+in the darkness, he had made the inevitable slip, and whether
+he had fallen fifty feet or three hundred little mattered.
+The condition of his body indicated the shorter fall.
+Now that all was over, Rowland understood how exclusively,
+for two years, Roderick had filled his life.
+His occupation was gone.
+
+Singleton came back with four men--one of them the landlord of the inn.
+They had formed a sort of rude bier of the frame of a chaise a porteurs,
+and by taking a very round-about course homeward were able to follow
+a tolerably level path and carry their burden with a certain decency.
+To Rowland it seemed as if the little procession would never reach
+the inn; but as they drew near it he would have given his right hand
+for a longer delay.  The people of the inn came forward to meet them,
+in a little silent, solemn convoy.  In the doorway, clinging together,
+appeared the two bereaved women.  Mrs. Hudson tottered forward with
+outstretched hands and the expression of a blind person; but before she
+reached her son, Mary Garland had rushed past her, and, in the face
+of the staring, pitying, awe-stricken crowd, had flung herself,
+with the magnificent movement of one whose rights were supreme,
+and with a loud, tremendous cry, upon the senseless vestige of her love.
+
+That cry still lives in Rowland's ears.  It interposes,
+persistently, against the reflection that when he sometimes--
+very rarely--sees her, she is unreservedly kind to him;
+against the memory that during the dreary journey back to America,
+made of course with his assistance, there was a great frankness
+in her gratitude, a great gratitude in her frankness.
+Miss Garland lives with Mrs. Hudson, at Northampton, where Rowland
+visits his cousin Cecilia more frequently than of old.
+When he calls upon Miss Garland he never sees Mrs. Hudson.
+Cecilia, who, having her shrewd impression that he comes to see
+Miss Garland as much as to see herself, does not feel obliged
+to seem unduly flattered, calls him, whenever he reappears,
+the most restless of mortals.  But he always says to her in answer,
+"No, I assure you I am the most patient!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Roderick Hudson, by Henry James
+
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