“You are selfish,” said Rowland; “you think only of yourself and believe only in yourself.  You regard other people only as they play into your own hands.  You have always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure of your mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse.  But if one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon it.”

Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes.  In this attitude, for a moment, he sat looking coldly at his friend.  “So I have made you very uncomfortable?” he went on.

“Extremely so.”

“I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent, cruel?”

“I have accused you, mentally, of all these things, with the exception of vanity.”

“You have often hated me?”

“Never.  I should have parted company with you before coming to that.”

“But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be hanged!”

“Repeatedly.  Then I have had patience and forgiven you.”

“Forgiven me, eh?  Suffering all the while?”

“Yes, you may call it suffering.”

“Why did you never tell me all this before?”

“Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because I preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had, myself, in a measure, launched you in the world and thrown you into temptations; and because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could have made me say these painful things.”

Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it; Rowland was puzzled by his expression and manner.  They seemed strangely cynical; there was something revolting in his deepening calmness.  “I must have been hideous,” Roderick presently resumed.

“I am not talking for your entertainment,” said Rowland.

“Of course not.  For my edification!” As Roderick said these words there was not a ray of warmth in his brilliant eye.

“I have spoken for my own relief,” Rowland went on, “and so that you need never again go so utterly astray as you have done this morning.”

“It has been a terrible mistake, then?” What his tone expressed was not willful mockery, but a kind of persistent irresponsibility which Rowland found equally exasperating.  He answered nothing.

“And all this time,” Roderick continued, “you have been in love?  Tell me the woman.”

Rowland felt an immense desire to give him a visible, palpable pang.  “Her name is Mary Garland,” he said.

Apparently he succeeded.  The surprise was great; Roderick colored as he had never done.  “Mary Garland?  Heaven forgive us!”

Rowland observed the “us;” Roderick threw himself back on the turf.  The latter lay for some time staring at the sky.  At last he sprang to his feet, and Rowland rose also, rejoicing keenly, it must be confessed, in his companion’s confusion.