“It is altogether a very singular type of young lady,” said Rowland, after the visit which I have related at length.  “It may be a charm, but it is certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the charm of shrinking innocence and soft docility.  Our American girls are accused of being more knowing than any others, and Miss Light is nominally an American.  But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make her what she is.  The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a product of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong.”

“Ah, she has an atmosphere,” said Roderick, in the tone of high appreciation.

“Young unmarried women,” Rowland answered, “should be careful not to have too much!”

“Ah, you don’t forgive her,” cried his companion, “for hitting you so hard!  A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much notice of him.”

“A man is never flattered at a woman’s not liking him.”

“Are you sure she does n’t like you?  That ’s to the credit of your humility.  A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade himself that he was in favor.”

“He would have also,” said Rowland, laughing, “to be a fellow of remarkable ingenuity!” He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he was not engaged to than of the girl he was.  But it amounted almost to arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland to pretend to know how often Roderick thought of Miss Garland.  He wondered gloomily, at any rate, whether for men of his companion’s large, easy power, there was not a larger moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who, yielding Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was), had no reason to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their accounts.  Was it not a part of the eternal fitness of things that Roderick, while rhapsodizing about Miss Light, should have it at his command to look at you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded blue, and to shake off your musty imputations by a toss of his picturesque brown locks?  Or had he, in fact, no conscience to speak of?  Happy fellow, either way!

Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick on his model and what he had made of her.  “Devilish pretty, through and through!” he said as he looked at the bust.  “Capital handling of the neck and throat; lovely work on the nose.  You ’re a detestably lucky fellow, my boy!  But you ought not to have squandered such material on a simple bust; you should have made a great imaginative figure.  If I could only have got hold of her, I would have put her into a statue in spite of herself.  What a pity she is not a ragged Trasteverine, whom we might have for a franc an hour!  I have been carrying about in my head for years a delicious design for a fantastic figure, but it has always stayed there for want of a tolerable model.  I have seen intimations of the type, but Miss Light is the perfection of it.  As soon as I saw her I said to myself, ’By Jove, there ‘s my statue in the flesh!’”