Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow.  It was egotism still:  aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given.  Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him.  Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse—­a desire to stop him, to have another word with him—­not to lose sight of him.  He called him and Roderick turned.  “I should like to go with you,” said Rowland.

“I am fit only to be alone.  I am damned!”

“You had better not think of it at all,” Rowland cried, “than think in that way.”

“There is only one way.  I have been hideous!” And he broke off and marched away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick.  Rowland watched him and at the end of a moment called to him.  Roderick stopped and looked at him in silence, and then abruptly turned, and disappeared below the crest of a hill.

Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably.  He was half irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having been placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause.  Roderick did not come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding away the hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit.  Mrs. Hudson appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that Roderick’s demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress.  Little Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner.  Miss Garland, Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance to her kinsman’s pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort.  The effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon it.  They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.

“I have a headache,” she said.  And then suddenly, looking about at the menacing sky and motionless air, “It ’s this horrible day!”

Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia, but his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon the paper but a single line.  “I believe there is such a thing as being too reasonable.  But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?” He had occasion to use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket; they were missing, and he remembered that he had left them lying on the hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick.  He went forth in search of them and found them where he had thrown them.  He flung himself down in the same place again; he felt indisposed to walk.  He was conscious that his mood had vastly changed since the morning; his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights had been replaced by the familiar, chronic sense of his duties.  Only, his duties now seemed impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his arms.  He lay so a long time,