brought him peace; but on this occasion they ushered in a quite peculiar quality of unrest.  He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his moral energy; a current that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength seemed at last to pause and evaporate.  Rowland looked away at the stagnant vapors on the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol of the dreariness which his own generosity had bequeathed him.  At last he had arrived at the uttermost limit of the deference a sane man might pay to other people’s folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it; he had been befooled on a gigantic scale.  He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience, but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away.  He pulled his hat over his eyes, and tried to wonder, dispassionately, whether atmospheric conditions had not something to do with his ill-humor.  He remained for some time in this attitude, but was finally aroused from it by a singular sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had approached him.  He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the turf.  His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt like uttering an uncivil speech.  Roderick stood looking at him with an expression of countenance which had of late become rare.  There was an unfamiliar spark in his eye and a certain imperious alertness in his carriage.  Confirmed habit, with Rowland, came speedily to the front.  “What is it now?” he asked himself, and invited Roderick to sit down.  Roderick had evidently something particular to say, and if he remained silent for a time it was not because he was ashamed of it.

“I would like you to do me a favor,” he said at last.  “Lend me some money.”

“How much do you wish?” Rowland asked.

“Say a thousand francs.”

Rowland hesitated a moment.  “I don’t wish to be indiscreet, but may I ask what you propose to do with a thousand francs?”

“To go to Interlaken.”

“And why are you going to Interlaken?”

Roderick replied without a shadow of wavering, “Because that woman is to be there.”

Rowland burst out laughing, but Roderick remained serenely grave.  “You have forgiven her, then?” said Rowland.

“Not a bit of it!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. I only know that she is incomparably beautiful, and that she has waked me up amazingly.  Besides, she asked me to come.”

“She asked you?”

“Yesterday, in so many words.”

“Ah, the jade!”

“Exactly.  I am willing to take her for that.”

“Why in the name of common sense did you go back to her?”

“Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had just stepped out of her cloud?  Why did I look at her?  Before I knew where I was, the harm was done.”

Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back on the grass and lay for some time staring up at the sky.  At last, raising himself, “Are you perfectly serious?” he asked.