“Try it,” said Rowland.

“Well, then, I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone.  I need n’t say I prefer your society to that of any man living.  For the last six months it has been everything to me.  But I have a perpetual feeling that you are expecting something of me, that you are measuring my doings by a terrifically high standard.  You are watching me; I don’t want to be watched.  I want to go my own way; to work when I choose and to loaf when I choose.  It is not that I don’t know what I owe you; it is not that we are not friends.  It is simply that I want a taste of absolutely unrestricted freedom.  Therefore, I say, let us separate.”

Rowland shook him by the hand.  “Willingly.  Do as you desire, I shall miss you, and I venture to believe you ’ll pass some lonely hours.  But I have only one request to make:  that if you get into trouble of any kind whatever, you will immediately let me know.”

They began their journey, however, together, and crossed the Alps side by side, muffled in one rug, on the top of the St. Gothard coach.  Rowland was going to England to pay some promised visits; his companion had no plan save to ramble through Switzerland and Germany as fancy guided him.  He had money, now, that would outlast the summer; when it was spent he would come back to Rome and make another statue.  At a little mountain village by the way, Roderick declared that he would stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests.  The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells.  The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt an almost overmastering reluctance.

“Say the word,” he exclaimed, “and I will stop too.”

Roderick frowned.  “Ah, you don’t trust me; you don’t think I ’m able to take care of myself.  That proves that I was right in feeling as if I were watched!”

“Watched, my dear fellow!” said Rowland.  “I hope you may never have anything worse to complain of than being watched in the spirit in which I watch you.  But I will spare you even that.  Good-by!” Standing in his place, as the coach rolled away, he looked back at his friend lingering by the roadside.  A great snow-mountain, behind Roderick, was beginning to turn pink in the sunset.  The young man waved his hat, still looking grave.  Rowland settled himself in his place, reflecting after all that this was a salubrious beginning of independence.  He was among forests and glaciers, leaning on the pure bosom of nature.  And then—­and then—­was it not in itself a guarantee against folly to be engaged to Mary Garland?

CHAPTER IV.  Experience