“I don’t pretend to say.  When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n’t care for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug about it.  If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be gained by having a little humbug, I was willing to try it!  I don’t see that the situation is really changed.  Mary Garland is all that she ever was—­more than all.  But I don’t care for her!  I don’t care for anything, and I don’t find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor.  The only difference is that I don’t care now, whether I care for her or not.  Of course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question for any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume that she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials.”

“Oh, you ’re in love!” said Rowland, not very logically.  It must be confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made for the sole purpose of hearing Roderick deny it.

But it quite failed of its aim.  Roderick gave a liberal shrug of his shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head.  “Call it what you please!  I am past caring for names.”

Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly disingenuous.  He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had argued the false to learn the true.  The true was that Roderick was again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue in Mary’s presence, indisposed though he was to admit it.  He had said, shortly before, that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a promising beginning.  If her voice was sweet it was probable that her glance was not amiss, that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her whole personal presence had learned the art of not being irritating.  So Rowland reasoned, and invested Mary Garland with a still finer loveliness.

It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions, and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy touches were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply a matter of the conscience.  He watched for signs that she rejoiced in Roderick’s renewed acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him that she was on her guard against interpreting it too largely.  It was now her turn—­he fancied that he sometimes gathered from certain nameless indications of glance and tone and gesture—­it was now her turn to be indifferent, to care for other things.  Again and again Rowland asked himself what these things were that Miss Garland might be supposed to care for, to the injury of ideal constancy; and again, having designated them, he divided them into two portions.  One was that larger experience, in general, which had come to her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne in upon her imagination, that there were more things one might do with one’s life than youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of; the revision of old pledges in the light of new emotions.  The other was the experience, in especial, of Rowland’s—­what?