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.