Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/176

 in the face — is that I 'm damnably susceptible, by nature, to the grace and the beauty and the mystery of women, to their power to turn themselves 'on' as creatures of subtlety and perversity. So there you have me."

Rowland, so "having" him, stared, and then strolled away, softly whistling to himself. He was unwilling to admit even tacitly that this speech had really the ominous meaning it seemed to have. In a few days the two young men made their way back to Italy and lingered a while in Florence before going on to Rome. In Florence Roderick appeared to have recovered his old innocence and his preference for the pleasures of study. Rowland began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream, or at the worst one of the plunges, really touching bottom, that the plunger with the brine of the deep sea in his mouth doesn't need, or never has wind again, to repeat. They passed a fortnight looking at pictures and exploring for out-of-the-way remnants of fresco and carving, and Roderick exhibited all his earlier energy of appreciation and criticism. In Rome he went almost pompously to work, finishing in a month two or three small things he had left standing on his departure. He talked the most joyous nonsense about finding himself back in his old quarters. On the first Sunday following their return, at their going together in the afternoon to Saint Peter's, he delivered himself of a mystic greeting to the great church, and to the city in general, in a manner so uplifted that his voice rang quite publicly through the nave and arrested a 142