“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.”