Rowland burst out laughing. “I have no wish whatever either to shoot you or to drown you!” he said. “Why launch such a tirade against a warning offered you altogether in the interest of your freest development? Do you really mean that you have an inexorable need of embarking on a flirtation with Miss Light?--a flirtation as to the felicity of which there may be differences of opinion, but which cannot at best, under the circumstances, be called innocent. Your last summer’s adventures were more so! As for the terms on which you are to live, I had an idea you had arranged them otherwise!”
“I have arranged nothing--thank God! I don’t pretend to arrange. I am young and ardent and inquisitive, and I admire Miss Light. That ‘s enough. I shall go as far as admiration leads me. I am not afraid. Your genuine artist may be sometimes half a madman, but he ‘s not a coward!”
“Suppose that in your speculation you should come to grief, not only sentimentally but artistically?”
“Come what come will! If I ‘m to fizzle out, the sooner I know it the better. Sometimes I half suspect it. But let me at least go out and reconnoitre for the enemy, and not sit here waiting for him, cudgeling my brains for ideas that won’t come!”
Do what he would, Rowland could not think of Roderick’s theory of unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case under discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion. But he saw it was vain to combat longer, for inclination was powerfully on Roderick’s side. He laid his hand on Roderick’s shoulder, looked at him a moment with troubled eyes, then shook his head mournfully and turned away.
“I can’t work any more,” said Roderick. “You have upset me! I ‘ll go and stroll on the Pincian.” And he tossed aside his working-jacket and prepared himself for the street. As he was arranging his cravat before the glass, something occurred to him which made him thoughtful. He stopped a few moments afterward, as they were going out, with his hand on the door-knob. “You did, from your own point of view, an indiscreet thing,” he said, “to tell Miss Light of my engagement.”
Rowland looked at him with a glance which was partly an interrogation, but partly, also, an admission.