ve need for
them more--never more, never more, never more!' 'So you 've learned
everything they contain?' asked Striker, leering over his spectacles.
'Better late than never.' 'I 've learned nothing that you can teach me,'
I cried. 'But I shall tax your patience no longer. I 'm going to be a
sculptor. I 'm going to Rome. I won't bid you good-by just yet; I shall
see you again. But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four
detested walls--to this living tomb! I did n't know till now how I hated
it! My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have not
made of me!'"

"I 'm glad to know you are to see Mr. Striker again," Rowland answered,
correcting a primary inclination to smile. "You certainly owe him a
respectful farewell, even if he has not understood you. I confess you
rather puzzle me. There is another person," he presently added, "whose
opinion as to your new career I should like to know. What does Miss
Garland think?"

Hudson looked at him keenly, with a slight blush. Then, with a conscious
smile, "What makes you suppose she thinks anything?" he asked.

"Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as
a very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions."

The smile on Roderick's mobile face passed rapidly into a frown. "Oh,
she thinks what I think!" he answered.

Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as
harmonious a shape as possible to his companion's scheme. "I have
launched you, as I may say," he said, "and I feel as if I ought to see
you into port. I am older than you and know the world better, and
it seems well that we should voyage a while together. It 's on my
conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you through the
Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay. I sail on the fifth
of September; can you make your preparations to start with me?"

Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in
his friend's wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges. "I have no
preparations to make," he said with a smile, raising his arms and
letting them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition. "What I
am to take with me I carry here!" and he tapped his forehead.

"Happy man!" murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light
stowage, in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and
of the heavy one in deposit at his banker's, of bags and boxes.

When his companion had left him he went in sea