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?”