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