Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/122

 and settle the question of precedence among themselves. The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room and take boarders."

"I fancy it 's our peculiar good luck that we don't see the limits of our minds," said Rowland. "We 're young, compared with what we may one day be. That belongs to youth; it's perhaps the best part of it. They say that old people do find themselves at last face to face with a solid blank wall and stand thumping against it in vain. It resounds, it seems to have something beyond it, but it won't move. That 's only a reason for living with open doors as long as we can."

"Open doors?" Roderick sounded. "Yes, let us close no doors that open upon Rome. For this, for the mind, must be the most breatheable air in the world it gives a new sense to the old Pax Romana. But though my doors may stand open to-day," he presently added, "I shall see no visitors. I want to pause and breathe; I want to give the desired vision a chance to descend. I 've been working hard for three months; now let my genius do the rest—the grand genius of me!"

Rowland, on his side, was not without provision for reflexion, and they lingered on in gentle desultory gossip. Rowland himself felt the need of intellectual rest, of a truce to present care for churches, statues and pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as he had really been living Roderick's intellectual life the past three 88