simply hideous.'
'Do you really care,' Rowland asked, 'what you appeared?'
'Certainly. I have been damnably stupid. Is n't an artist supposed to be a man of perceptions? I am hugely disgusted.'
'Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh.'
'And yet,' said Roderick, 'though you have suffered, in a degree, I don't believe you have suffered so much as some other men would have done.'
'Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult.'
Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground. 'Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous,' he repeated—'hideous.' He 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 and motionless air, 'It 's this horrible day!'
Rowland that afternoon tried to write a letter to his cousin Cecilia, but his head and his heart were alike heavy, and he traced upon the paper but a single line. 'I believe there is such a thing as being too reasonable. But when once the habit is formed, what is one to do?' He had occasion to use his keys and he felt for them in his pocket; they were missing, and he remembered that he had left them lying on the hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick. He went forth in search of them and found them where he had thrown them. He flung himself down in the same place again; he felt indisposed to walk. He was conscious that his mood had vastly changed since the morning; his extraordinary, acute sense of his rights had been replaced by the familiar, chronic sense of his duties. Only, his duties now seemed impracticable; he turned over and buried his face in his arms. He lay so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all was that Roderick had beaten him. At last he was startled by an extraordinary sound; it took him a moment to perceive that it was a portentous growl of thunder. He roused himself and saw that the whole face of the sky had altered. The clouds that had hung motionless all day were moving from their stations, and getting into position, as it were, for a battle. The wind was rising; the sallow vapors were turning dark and consolidating their masses. It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland judged best to observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent. He took his way down to the inn and found Singleton still at his post, profiting by the last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study, and yet at the same time taking rapid notes of the actual condition of the clouds.
'We are going to have a most interesting storm,' the little painter gleefully cried. 'I should like awfully to do it.'
Rowland adjured him to pack up his tools and decamp, and repaired to the house. The air by this time had become portentously dark, and the thunder was incessant and tremendous; in the midst of it the lightning flashed and vanished, like the treble shrilling upon the bass. The innkeeper and his servants had crowded to the doorway, and were looking at the scene with faces which seemed a proof that it was unprecedented. As Rowland approached, the group divided, to let some one pass from within, and Mrs. Hudson came forth, as white as a corpse and trembling in every limb.
'My boy, my boy, where is my boy?' she cried. 'Mr. Mallet, why are you here without him? Bring him to me!'
'Has no one seen Mr. Hudson?' Rowland asked of the others. 'Has he not returned?'
Each one shook his head and looked grave, and Rowland attempted to reassure Mrs. Hudson by saying that of course he had taken refuge in a chalet.
'Go and find him, go and find him!' she cried, insanely. 'Don't stand there and talk, or I shall die!' It was now as dark as evening, and Rowland could just distinguish the figure of Singleton scampering homeward with his box and easel. 'And where is Mary?' Mrs. Hudson went on; 'what in mercy's name has become of her? Mr. Mallet, why did you ever bring us here?'
There came a prodigious flash of lightning, and the limitless tumult about them turned clearer than midsummer noonday. The brightness lasted long enough to enable Rowland to see a woman's figure on the top of an eminence near the house. It was Mary Garland, questioning the lurid darkness for Roderick. Rowland sprang out to interrupt her vigil, but in a moment he encountered her, retreating. He seized her hand and hurried her to the house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered gallery, Mrs. Hudson fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
'Did you see nothing,—nothing?' she cried. 'Tell Mr. Mallet he must go and find him, with some men, some
