Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/183

 "What do you think yourself?" Rowland demanded not from pusillanimity, but from real uncertainty.

"I think it curiously, almost interestingly bad," Roderick answered. "It was false from the first; it has fundamental vices. I 've shuffled them out of sight by a hocus-pocus for which I blush, but I haven't corrected them. I can't—I can't—I can't!" he cried passionately. "They stare me in the face—they 're all I see!"

Rowland offered several criticisms of detail and suggested certain practicable changes. But Roderick differed with him on each of these points; the thing had faults enough, but they were not those faults. Rowland, unruffled, concluded by saying that whatever its faults might be, he had an idea people in general would admire it.

"I wish to heaven some person in particular—but not you again, confound you!" Roderick cried—"would buy it and take it off my hands and out of my sight! What am I to do now?" he almost imperiously went on. "I haven't a blamed idea. I think of subjects, but they remain mere idiotic names. They 're mere words—they 're not images. What am I to do?"

Rowland was a trifle annoyed. "Be a man," he was on the point of saying, "and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice!" But before he had uttered the words there rang through the studio a loud peremptory ring at the outer door. Roderick broke into a laugh. "Talk of the devil and you see his horns! If that 's not a customer, for poetic justice, it ought to be."