ing
for effect, or the mere sensuous pleasure of extravagant and paradoxical
utterance, as had often enough been the case ere this; he was not
even talking viciously or ill-humoredly. He was talking passionately,
desperately, and from an irresistible need to throw off the oppressive
burden of his mother's confidence. His cruel eloquence brought the poor
lady to her feet, and she stood there with clasped hands, petrified
and voiceless. Mary Garland quickly left her place, came straight to
Roderick, and laid her hand on his arm, looking at him with all her
tormented heart in her eyes. He made no movement to disengage himself;
he simply shook his head several times, in dogged negation of her
healing powers. Rowland had been living for the past month in such
intolerable expectancy of disaster that now that the ice was broken, and
the fatal plunge taken, his foremost feeling was almost elation; but
in a moment his orderly instincts and his natural love of superficial
smoothness overtook it.

"I really don't see, Roderick," he said, "the profit of your talking in
just this way at just this time. Don't you see how you are making your
mother suffer?"

"Do I enjoy it myself?" cried Roderick. "Is the suffering all on your
side and theirs? Do I look as if I were happy, and were stirring you
up with a stick for my amusement? Here we all are in the same boat; we
might as well understand each other! These women must know that I 'm not
to be counted on. That sounds remarkably cool, no doubt, and I certainly
don't deny your right to be utterly disgusted with me."

"Will you keep what you have got to say till another time," said Mary,
"and let me hear it alone?"

"Oh, I 'll let you hear it as often as you please; but what 's the use
of keeping it? I 'm in the humor; it won't keep! It 's a very simple
matter. I 'm a failure, that 's all; I 'm not a first-rate man. I 'm
second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please. After that, it 's all
one!"

Mary Garland turned away and buried her face in her hands; but Roderick,
struck, apparently, in some unwonted fashion with her gesture, drew
her towards him again, and went on in a somewhat different tone. "It 's
hardly worth while we should have any private talk about this, Mary," he
said. "The thing would be comfortable for neither of us. It 's better,
after all, that it be said once for all and dismissed. There are
things I can't talk to you about. Can I, at least? You are such a queer
cre