“That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending to be the limit of my action.  You can’t feel for me nor judge for me, and there are certain things you know nothing about.  I have suffered, sir!” Roderick went on with increasing emphasis.  “I have suffered damnable torments.  Have I been such a placid, contented, comfortable man this last six months, that when I find a chance to forget my misery, I should take such pains not to profit by it?  You ask too much, for a man who himself has no occasion to play the hero.  I don’t say that invidiously; it ’s your disposition, and you can’t help it.  But decidedly, there are certain things you know nothing about.”

Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if he had been less intent upon his own eloquence, would probably have perceived that he turned pale.  “These things—­what are they?” Rowland asked.

“They are women, principally, and what relates to women.  Women for you, by what I can make out, mean nothing.  You have no imagination—­no sensibility!”

“That ’s a serious charge,” said Rowland, gravely.

“I don’t make it without proof!”

“And what is your proof?”

Roderick hesitated a moment.  “The way you treated Christina Light.  I call that grossly obtuse.”

“Obtuse?” Rowland repeated, frowning.

“Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune.”

“My good fortune?”

“There it is—­it ’s all news to you!  You had pleased her.  I don’t say she was dying of love for you, but she took a fancy to you.”

“We will let this pass!” said Rowland, after a silence.

“Oh, I don’t insist.  I have only her own word for it.”

“She told you this?”

“You noticed, at least, I suppose, that she was not afraid to speak.  I never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious to see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself.”

“I frankly confess it would have lasted forever.  And yet I don’t consider that my insensibility is proved.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” cried Roderick, “or I shall begin to suspect—­what I must do you the justice to say that I never have suspected—­that you are a trifle conceited.  Upon my word, when I think of all this, your protest, as you call it, against my following Christina Light seems to me thoroughly offensive.  There is something monstrous in a man’s pretending to lay down the law to a sort of emotion with which he is quite unacquainted—­in his asking a fellow to give up a lovely woman for conscience’ sake, when he has never had the impulse to strike a blow for one for passion’s!”

“Oh, oh!” cried Rowland.

“All that ’s very easy to say,” Roderick went on; “but you must remember that there are such things as nerves, and senses, and imagination, and a restless demon within that may sleep sometimes for a day, or for six months, but that sooner or later wakes up and thumps at your ribs till you listen to him!  If you can’t understand it, take it on trust, and let a poor imaginative devil live his life as he can!”