turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.

They were both silent for some time, and at last Roderick gave a heavy
sigh and began to walk away. "Where are you going?" Rowland then asked.

"Oh, I don't care! To walk; you have given me something to think
of." This seemed a salutary impulse, and yet Rowland felt a nameless
perplexity. "To have been so stupid damns me more than anything!"
Roderick went on. "Certainly, I can shut up shop now."

Rowland felt in no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could
almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism
still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but
never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let
him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became
conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse--a desire to stop
him, to have another word with him--not to lose sight of him. He called
him and Roderick turned. "I should like to go with you," said Rowland.

"I am fit only to be alone. I am damned!"

"You had better not think of it at all," Rowland cried, "than think in
that way."

"There is only one way. I have been hideous!" And he broke off and
marched away with his long, elastic step, swinging his stick. Rowland
watched him and at the end of a moment called to him. Roderick stopped
and looked at him in silence, and then abruptly turned, and disappeared
below the crest of a hill.

Rowland passed the remainder of the day uncomfortably. He was half
irritated, half depressed; he had an insufferable feeling of having been
placed in the wrong, in spite of his excellent cause. Roderick did not
come home to dinner; but of this, with his passion for brooding away the
hours on far-off mountain sides, he had almost made a habit. Mrs. Hudson
appeared at the noonday repast with a face which showed that Roderick's
demand for money had unsealed the fountains of her distress. Little
Singleton consumed an enormous and well-earned dinner. Miss Garland,
Rowland observed, had not contributed her scanty assistance to her
kinsman's pursuit of the Princess Casamassima without an effort. The
effort was visible in her pale face and her silence; she looked so ill
that when they left the table Rowland felt almost bound to remark upon
it. They had come out upon the grass in front of the inn.

"I have a headache," she said. And then suddenly, looking about at the
menacing sky an