ining his head a little, looked at his friend askance. "I
don't understand you," he said; "I wish you liked Miss Garland either a
little less, or a little more."

Rowland felt himself coloring, but he paid no heed to Roderick's speech.
"You ask me to help you," he went on. "On these present conditions I can
do nothing. But if you will postpone all decision as to the continuance
of your engagement a couple of months longer, and meanwhile leave Rome,
leave Italy, I will do what I can to 'help you,' as you say, in the
event of your still wishing to break it."

"I must do without your help then! Your conditions are impossible. I
will leave Rome at the time I have always intended--at the end of June.
My rooms and my mother's are taken till then; all my arrangements are
made accordingly. Then, I will depart; not before."

"You are not frank," said Rowland. "Your real reason for staying has
nothing to do with your rooms."

Roderick's face betrayed neither embarrassment nor resentment. "If I 'm
not frank, it 's for the first time in my life. Since you know so much
about my real reason, let me hear it! No, stop!" he suddenly added, "I
won't trouble you. You are right, I have a motive. On the twenty-fourth
of June Miss Light is to be married. I take an immense interest in all
that concerns her, and I wish to be present at her wedding."

"But you said the other day at Saint Peter's that it was by no means
certain her marriage would take place."

"Apparently I was wrong: the invitations, I am told, are going out."

Rowland felt that it would be utterly vain to remonstrate, and that the
only thing for him was to make the best terms possible. "If I offer no
further opposition to your waiting for Miss Light's marriage," he said,
"will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period, to
defer to my judgment--to say nothing that may be a cause of suffering to
Miss Garland?"

"For a certain period? What period?" Roderick demanded.

"Ah, don't drive so close a bargain! Don't you understand that I have
taken you away from her, that I suffer in every nerve in consequence,
and that I must do what I can to restore you?"

"Do what you can, then," said Roderick gravely, putting out his hand.
"Do what you can!" His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute a
promise, and upon this they parted.

Roderick's bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what
he called the filial debt, was at least a most admirab