Pandolfini very delightful, very comfortable," he said. "You ought to
be very contented there. Whether you work or whether you loaf, it 's a
place for an artist to be happy in. I hope you will work."

"I hope I may!" said Roderick with a magnificent smile.

"When we meet again, have something to show me."

"When we meet again? Where the deuce are you going?" Roderick demanded.

"Oh, I hardly know; over the Alps."

"Over the Alps! You 're going to leave me?" Roderick cried.

Rowland had most distinctly meant to leave him, but his resolution
immediately wavered. He glanced at Mrs. Hudson and saw that her eyebrows
were lifted and her lips parted in soft irony. She seemed to accuse him
of a craven shirking of trouble, to demand of him to repair his
cruel havoc in her life by a solemn renewal of zeal. But Roderick's
expectations were the oddest! Such as they were, Rowland asked himself
why he should n't make a bargain with them. "You desire me to go with
you?" he asked.

"If you don't go, I won't--that 's all! How in the world shall I get
through the summer without you?"

"How will you get through it with me? That 's the question."

"I don't pretend to say; the future is a dead blank. But without you it
's not a blank--it 's certain damnation!"

"Mercy, mercy!" murmured Mrs. Hudson.

Rowland made an effort to stand firm, and for a moment succeeded. "If I
go with you, will you try to work?"

Roderick, up to this moment, had been looking as unperturbed as if the
deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at
these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all
his passion returned. "Try to work!" he cried. "Try--try! work--work! In
God's name don't talk that way, or you 'll drive me mad! Do you suppose
I 'm trying not to work? Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun
of it? Don't you suppose I would try to work for myself before I tried
for you?"

"Mr. Mallet," cried Mrs. Hudson, piteously, "will you leave me alone
with this?"

Rowland turned to her and informed her, gently, that he would go with
her to Florence. After he had so pledged himself he thought not at all
of the pain of his position as mediator between the mother's resentful
grief and the son's incurable weakness; he drank deep, only, of the
satisfaction of not separating from Mary Garland. If the future was a
blank to Roderick, it was hardly less so to himself. He had at moments
a lively forebod