Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/161

 be leaving Rome. They would go north and travel. They would go to Switzerland, to Germany, to Holland, to England. Roderick assented, his eye brightened, and Rowland talked of a dozen things they might do. Roderick walked up and down; he seemed to have something to say which he hesitated to bring out. He hesitated so rarely that Rowland wondered and at last asked him what was on his mind. Roderick stopped before him, frowning a little.

"I 've such unbounded faith in your extraordinary nature," he said, "that I believe nothing I could ever say would ever offend you."

"Well, try!"

"Dunque," Roderick continued, "I think my journey will do me more good if I take it alone. I need n't say I prefer your society to that of any man living. For the last six months it has been a fund of comfort. But I 've a feeling that you 're always expecting something of me, that you 're measuring my doings by a terrifically high standard. You 're watching me, my dear fellow, as my mother at home watches the tea-kettle she has set to boil, and the case is that somehow I don't want to be watched. I want to go my own way; to work when I choose and to be a fool, to be even a wretch, when I choose, and the biggest kind of either if necessary. It 's not that I don't know what I owe you; it 's not that we 're not the best friends in the world. It 's simply—it 's simply—!"

"It 's simply that I bore you," said Rowland.

Roderick sounded his eyes to a depth that almost 127