Rowland frowned.  “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “don’t play such dangerous games with your facility.  If you have got facility, revere it, respect it, adore it, treasure it—­don’t speculate on it.”  And he wondered what his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done if there had been no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand.  But he did not formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency seemed not to have presented itself to Roderick’s imagination.  The young sculptor reverted to his late adventures again in the evening, and this time talked of them more objectively, as the phrase is; more as if they had been the adventures of another person.  He related half a dozen droll things that had happened to him, and, as if his responsibility had been disengaged by all this free discussion, he laughed extravagantly at the memory of them.  Rowland sat perfectly grave, on principle.  Then Roderick began to talk of half a dozen statues that he had in his head, and set forth his design, with his usual vividness.  Suddenly, as it was relevant, he declared that his Baden doings had not been altogether fruitless, for that the lady who had reminded Rowland of Madame de Cruchecassee was tremendously statuesque.  Rowland at last said that it all might pass if he felt that he was really the wiser for it.  “By the wiser,” he added, “I mean the stronger in purpose, in will.”

“Oh, don’t talk about will!” Roderick answered, throwing back his head and looking at the stars.  This conversation also took place in the open air, on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has a monument.  “The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries.  Who can answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it ’s strong?  There are all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one’s will and one’s inclinations.  People talk as if the two things were essentially distinct; on different sides of one’s organism, like the heart and the liver.  Mine, I know, are much nearer together.  It all depends upon circumstances.  I believe there is a certain group of circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to snap like a dry twig.”

“My dear boy,” said Rowland, “don’t talk about the will being ‘destined.’  The will is destiny itself.  That ’s the way to look at it.”

“Look at it, my dear Rowland,” Roderick answered, “as you find most comfortable.  One conviction I have gathered from my summer’s experience,” he went on—­“it ’s as well to look it frankly in the face—­is that I possess an almost unlimited susceptibility to the influence of a beautiful woman.”