“So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or in proceeds.  She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her a snare of the enemy.  She would fain see me all my life tethered to the law, like a browsing goat to a stake.  In that way I ’m in sight.  ’It ‘s a more regular occupation!’ that ’s all I can get out of her.  A more regular damnation!  Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such wicked men?  I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n’t confute her with an example.  She had the advantage of me, because she formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in black lace mittens (you may see it on the parlor table), who used to drink raw brandy and beat his wife.  I promised her that, whatever I might do to my wife, I would never beat my mother, and that as for brandy, raw or diluted, I detested it.  She sat silently crying for an hour, during which I expended treasures of eloquence.  It ’s a good thing to have to reckon up one’s intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my cause, I was most agreeably impressed with the elevated character of my own.  I kissed her solemnly at last, and told her that I had said everything and that she must make the best of it.  This morning she has dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is n’t a cheerful house.  I long to be out of it!”

“I ’m extremely sorry,” said Rowland, “to have been the prime cause of so much suffering.  I owe your mother some amends; will it be possible for me to see her?”

“If you ’ll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the truth she ’ll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an agent of the foul fiend.  She does n’t see why you should have come here and set me by the ears:  you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and desolate doting mothers.  I leave it to you, personally, to answer these charges.  You see, what she can’t forgive—­what she ’ll not really ever forgive—­is your taking me off to Rome.  Rome is an evil word, in my mother’s vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, as you ’d say ‘damnation.’  Northampton is in the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying dusk, into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate.  And there was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository of every virtue, Mr. Striker’s office!”

“And does Mr. Striker know of your decision?” asked Rowland.

“To a certainty!  Mr. Striker, you must know, is not simply a good-natured attorney, who lets me dog’s-ear his law-books.  He’s a particular friend and general adviser.  He looks after my mother’s property and kindly consents to regard me as part of it.  Our opinions have always been painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his zealous attempts to unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part before.  He never understood me, and it was useless to try to make him.  We speak a different language—­we ’re made of a different clay.  I had a fit of rage