yesterday when I smashed his bust, at the thought of all the bad blood he had stirred up in me; it did me good, and it ’s all over now.  I don’t hate him any more; I ’m rather sorry for him.  See how you ’ve improved me!  I must have seemed to him wilfully, wickedly stupid, and I ’m sure he only tolerated me on account of his great regard for my mother.  This morning I grasped the bull by the horns.  I took an armful of law-books that have been gathering the dust in my room for the last year and a half, and presented myself at the office.  ’Allow me to put these back in their places,’ I said.  ’I shall never have need for them more—­never more, never more, never more!’ ’So you ’ve learned everything they contain?’ asked Striker, leering over his spectacles.  ‘Better late than never.’  ’I ‘ve learned nothing that you can teach me,’ I cried.  ’But I shall tax your patience no longer.  I ’m going to be a sculptor.  I ’m going to Rome.  I won’t bid you good-by just yet; I shall see you again.  But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four detested walls—­to this living tomb!  I did n’t know till now how I hated it!  My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have not made of me!’”

“I ’m glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again,” Rowland answered, correcting a primary inclination to smile.  “You certainly owe him a respectful farewell, even if he has not understood you.  I confess you rather puzzle me.  There is another person,” he presently added, “whose opinion as to your new career I should like to know.  What does Miss Garland think?”

Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush.  Then, with a conscious smile, “What makes you suppose she thinks anything?” he asked.

“Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as a very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions.”

The smile on Roderick’s mobile face passed rapidly into a frown.  “Oh, she thinks what I think!” he answered.

Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as harmonious a shape as possible to his companion’s scheme.  “I have launched you, as I may say,” he said, “and I feel as if I ought to see you into port.  I am older than you and know the world better, and it seems well that we should voyage a while together.  It ’s on my conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you through the Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay.  I sail on the fifth of September; can you make your preparations to start with me?”

Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in his friend’s wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges.  “I have no preparations to make,” he said with a smile, raising his arms and letting them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition.  “What I am to take with me I carry here!” and he tapped his forehead.

“Happy man!” murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light stowage, in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and of the heavy one in deposit at his banker’s, of bags and boxes.