The sculptor examined them with deference, and Singleton himself began to laugh nervously; he was trembling with hope that the great Gloriani would be pleased.  “Yes, these are fresh too,” Gloriani said; “extraordinarily fresh!  How old are you?”

“Twenty-six, sir,” said Singleton.

“For twenty-six they are famously fresh.  They must have taken you a long time; you work slowly.”

“Yes, unfortunately, I work very slowly.  One of them took me six weeks, the other two months.”

“Upon my word!  The Muse pays you long visits.”  And Gloriani turned and looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors.  Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard.  “Oh, you!” said the sculptor; “you ’ll keep it up!”

A week after his dinner-party, Rowland went into Roderick’s studio and found him sitting before an unfinished piece of work, with a hanging head and a heavy eye.  He could have fancied that the fatal hour foretold by Gloriani had struck.  Roderick rose with a sombre yawn and flung down his tools.  “It ’s no use,” he said, “I give it up!”

“What is it?”

“I have struck a shallow!  I have been sailing bravely, but for the last day or two my keel has been crunching the bottom.”

“A difficult place?” Rowland asked, with a sympathetic inflection, looking vaguely at the roughly modeled figure.

“Oh, it ’s not the poor clay!” Roderick answered.  “The difficult place is here!” And he struck a blow on his heart.  “I don’t know what ’s the matter with me.  Nothing comes; all of a sudden I hate things.  My old things look ugly; everything looks stupid.”

Rowland was perplexed.  He was in the situation of a man who has been riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop, and of a sudden feels him stumble and balk.  As yet, he reflected, he had seen nothing but the sunshine of genius; he had forgotten that it has its storms.  Of course it had!  And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which would float them both safely through the worst weather.  “Why, you ’re tired!” he said.  “Of course you ’re tired.  You have a right to be!”

“Do you think I have a right to be?” Roderick asked, looking at him.

“Unquestionably, after all you have done.”

“Well, then, right or wrong, I am tired.  I certainly have done a fair winter’s work.  I want a change.”

Rowland declared that it was certainly high time they should be leaving Rome.  They would go north and travel.  They would go to Switzerland, to Germany, to Holland, to England.  Roderick assented, his eye brightened, and Rowland talked of a dozen things they might do.  Roderick walked up and down; he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring out.  He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered, and at last asked him what was on his mind.  Roderick stopped before him, frowning a little.

“I have such unbounded faith in your good-will,” he said, “that I believe nothing I can say would offend you.”