'Ah, what a lovely color!' she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
'Would you like to have it?'
She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
'Would you like to have it?' he repeated in a ringing voice.
'Don't look as if you would eat me up,' she answered. 'It 's harmless if I say yes!'
Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower. It was separated from the ledge on which he stood by a rugged surface of vertical wall, which dropped straight into the dusky vaults behind the arena. Suddenly he took off his hat and flung it behind him. Christina then sprang to her feet.
'I will bring it you,' he said.
She seized his arm. 'Are you crazy? Do you mean to kill yourself?'
'I shall not kill myself. Sit down!'
'Excuse me. Not till you do!' And she grasped his arm with both hands.
Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture to her former place. 'Go there!' he cried fiercely.
'You can never, never!' she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands. 'I implore you!'
Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland had never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which awakened the echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, 'Sit down!' She hesitated a moment and then she dropped on the ground and buried her face in her hands.
Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more. He saw Roderick clasp in his left arm the jagged corner of the vertical partition along which he proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for a resting- place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil. The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets and grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances on a level with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed. The relics of the cornice were utterly worthless as a support. Rowland had observed this, and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated. If the thing were possible, he felt a sudden admiring glee at the thought of Roderick's doing it. It would be finely done, it would be gallant, it would have a sort of masculine eloquence as an answer to Christina's sinister persiflage. But it was not possible! Rowland left his place with a bound, and scrambled down some neighboring steps, and the next moment a stronger pair of hands than Christina's were laid upon Roderick's shoulder.
He turned, staring, pale and angry. Christina rose, pale and staring, too, but beautiful in her wonder and alarm. 'My dear Roderick,' said Rowland, 'I am only preventing you from doing a very foolish thing. That 's an exploit for spiders, not for young sculptors of promise.'
Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then closed his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. 'I won't resist you,' he said. 'But I have made you obey,' he added, turning to Christina. 'Am I weak now?'
She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him and addressed Rowland: 'Be so good as to show me the way out of this horrible place!'
He helped her back into the corridor; Roderick followed after a short interval. Of course, as they were descending the steps, came questions for Rowland to answer, and more or less surprise. Where had he come from? how happened he to have appeared at just that moment? Rowland answered that he had been rambling overhead, and that, looking out of an aperture, he had seen a gentleman preparing to undertake a preposterous gymnastic feat, and a lady swooning away in consequence. Interference seemed justifiable, and he had made it as prompt as possible. Roderick was far from hanging his head, like a man who has been caught in the perpetration of an extravagant folly; but if he held it more erect than usual Rowland believed that this was much less because he had made a show of personal daring than because he had triumphantly proved to Christina that, like a certain person she had dreamed of, he too could speak the language of decision. Christina descended to the arena in silence, apparently occupied with her own thoughts. She betrayed no sense of the privacy of her interview with Roderick needing an explanation. Rowland had seen stranger things in New York! The only evidence of her recent agitation was that, on being joined by her maid, she declared that she was unable to walk home; she must have a carriage. A fiacre was found resting in the shadow of the Arch of Constantine, and Rowland suspected that after she had got into it she disburdened herself, under her veil, of a few natural tears.
Rowland had played eavesdropper to so good a purpose that he might justly have omitted the ceremony of denouncing himself to Roderick. He preferred, however, to let him know that he had overheard a portion of his talk with Christina.
'Of course it seems to you,' Roderick said, 'a proof that I am utterly infatuated.'
'Miss Light seemed to me to know very well how far she could go,' Rowland answered. 'She was twisting you round her finger. I don't think she exactly meant to defy you; but your crazy pursuit of that flower was a proof that she could go all lengths in the way of making a fool of you.'
'Yes,' said Roderick, meditatively; 'she is making a fool of me.'
'And what do you expect to come of it?'
'Nothing good!' And Roderick put his hands into his pockets and looked as if he had announced the most colorless fact in the world.
'And in the light of your late interview, what do you make of your young lady?'
'If I could tell you that, it would be plain sailing. But she 'll not tell me again I am weak!'
'Are you very sure you are not weak?'
'I may be, but she shall never know it.'
Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked his companion whether he was going to his studio.
