oved from his cue, as it were, this extraordinary insensibility to the
injurious effects of his eloquence was a capital example; the more so
as the motive of his eloquence was never an appeal for sympathy or
compassion, things to which he seemed perfectly indifferent and of which
he could make no use. The great and characteristic point with him was
the perfect absoluteness of his own emotions and experience. He never
saw himself as part of a whole; only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged,
isolated individual, rejoicing or raging, as the case might be, but
needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself. All this, to Rowland,
was ancient history, but his perception of it stirred within him afresh,
at the sight of Roderick's sense of having been betrayed. That he,
under the circumstances, should not in fairness be the first to lodge a
complaint of betrayal was a point to which, at his leisure, Rowland was
of course capable of rendering impartial justice; but Roderick's
present desperation was so peremptory that it imposed itself on one's
sympathies. "Do you pretend to say," he went on, "that she did n't lead
me along to the very edge of fulfillment and stupefy me with all that
she suffered me to believe, all that she sacredly promised? It amused
her to do it, and she knew perfectly well what she really meant. She
never meant to be sincere; she never dreamed she could be. She 's a
ravenous flirt, and why a flirt is a flirt is more than I can tell you.
I can't understand playing with those matters; for me they 're serious,
whether I take them up or lay them down. I don't see what 's in your
head, Rowland, to attempt to defend Miss Light; you were the first to
cry out against her! You told me she was dangerous, and I pooh-poohed
you. You were right; you 're always right. She 's as cold and false and
heartless as she 's beautiful, and she has sold her heartless beauty to
the highest bidder. I hope he knows what he gets!"

"Oh, my son," cried Mrs. Hudson, plaintively, "how could you ever care
for such a dreadful creature?"

"It would take long to tell you, dear mother!"

Rowland's lately-deepened sympathy and compassion for Christina was
still throbbing in his mind, and he felt that, in loyalty to it, he
must say a word for her. "You believed in her too much at first," he
declared, "and you believe in her too little now."

Roderick looked at him with eyes almost lurid, beneath lowering brows.
"She is an angel, then, after all?-