“I must tell you something,” he said at last.  “I should like you to know it, and you will be so glad to know it.  Besides, it ’s only a question of time; three months hence, probably, you would have guessed it.  I am engaged to Mary Garland.”

Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm, it seemed to him that the ship gave a great dizzying lurch.  But in a moment he contrived to answer coherently:  “Engaged to Miss Garland!  I never supposed—­I never imagined”—­

“That I was in love with her?” Roderick interrupted.  “Neither did I, until this last fortnight.  But you came and put me into such ridiculous good-humor that I felt an extraordinary desire to tell some woman that I adored her.  Miss Garland is a magnificent girl; you know her too little to do her justice.  I have been quietly learning to know her, these past three months, and have been falling in love with her without being conscious of it.  It appeared, when I spoke to her, that she had a kindness for me.  So the thing was settled.  I must of course make some money before we can marry.  It ’s rather droll, certainly, to engage one’s self to a girl whom one is going to leave the next day, for years.  We shall be condemned, for some time to come, to do a terrible deal of abstract thinking about each other.  But I wanted her blessing on my career and I could not help asking for it.  Unless a man is unnaturally selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that fine creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news of my greatness.  If ever I am a dull companion and over-addicted to moping, remember in justice to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart is five thousand miles away.”

Rowland listened to all this with a sort of feeling that fortune had played him an elaborately-devised trick.  It had lured him out into mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him a thumping blow in mid-chest.  “Yes,” he said, after an attempt at the usual formal congratulation, “you certainly ought to do better—­with Miss Garland waiting for you at Northampton.”

Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was eloquent and rung a hundred changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man.  Then at last, suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that he must go to bed.  Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late, between sea and sky.

CHAPTER III.  Rome