CHAPTER XIII.  Switzerland

On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved a silence which Rowland allowed to make him uneasy.  Early on the morrow Roderick, saying nothing of his intentions, started off on a walk; Rowland saw him striding with light steps along the rugged path to Engelberg.  He was absent all day and he gave no account of himself on his return.  He said he was deadly tired, and he went to bed early.  When he had left the room Miss Garland drew near to Rowland.

“I wish to ask you a question,” she said.  “What happened to Roderick yesterday at Engelberg?”

“You have discovered that something happened?” Rowland answered.

“I am sure of it.  Was it something painful?”

“I don’t know how, at the present moment, he judges it.  He met the Princess Casamassima.”

“Thank you!” said Miss Garland, simply, and turned away.

The conversation had been brief, but, like many small things, it furnished Rowland with food for reflection.  When one is looking for symptoms one easily finds them.  This was the first time Mary Garland had asked Rowland a question which it was in Roderick’s power to answer, the first time she had frankly betrayed Roderick’s reticence.  Rowland ventured to think it marked an era.

The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those altitudes, was oppressively heavy.  Rowland lounged on the grass a while, near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella, within view of the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau.  To-day, however, the white summits were invisible; their heads were muffled in sullen clouds and the valleys beneath them curtained in dun-colored mist.  Rowland had a book in his pocket, and he took it out and opened it.  But his page remained unturned; his own thoughts were more importunate.  His interview with Christina Light had made a great impression upon him, and he was haunted with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness, and of all that was tragic and fatal in her latest transformation.  These things were immensely appealing, and Rowland thought with infinite impatience of Roderick’s having again encountered them.  It required little imagination to apprehend that the young sculptor’s condition had also appealed to Christina.  His consummate indifference, his supreme defiance, would make him a magnificent trophy, and Christina had announced with sufficient distinctness that she had said good-by to scruples.  It was her fancy at present to treat the world as a garden of pleasure, and if, hitherto, she had played with Roderick’s passion on its stem, there was little doubt that now she would pluck it with an unfaltering hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness.  And why the deuce need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction?  Rowland’s meditations, even when they began in rancor, often