Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/223

 be a fellow of remarkable ingenuity." He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he was not engaged to than of the other. But it amounted almost to arrogance in poor Rowland, you may say, to pretend to know how often Roderick thought of Mary Garland. He wondered gloomily, at any rate, whether for men of his friend's large easy power there was not an ampler moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who, yielding Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was), had no reason to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their accounts. Was it not a part of the eternal fitness of things that Roderick, while rhapsodising about Christina Light, should have it at his command to look at you with eyes of the most guileless and unclouded blue and to shake off your musty imputations by a toss of his romantic brown locks? Or else had he, in fact, no conscience to speak of? Fortunate mortal either way!

Our friend Gloriani came, among others, to congratulate Roderick on his model and what he had made of her. "Devilish pretty through and through!" he said as he looked at the bust. "Capital handling of the neck and throat; lovely work on the facial muscles and extraordinary play, extraordinary elegance of life, everywhere. Your luck 's too hateful, but you ought n't to have let her off with the mere sacrifice of her head. There would be no end to be done with the whole inimitable presence of her. If I could only have got hold of her I would have pumped every inch of her empty. What a pity she's not a poor 189