“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!”