Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/225

 attitude in regard to this worshipper was one of undisguised though friendly amusement; as indeed there was oddity enough in the little water-colourist's gasps and glares and other fond intensities, which had ever some lapse of intelligibility for their climax. "Ah, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton afterwards, on his expressing with a small groan of depreciation of his own paltry performances his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's talent. "You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters. Be contented with what you are, and paint me another picture."

"Oh, I don't envy Hudson anything he possesses," Singleton said, "because to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness. 'Complete,' that 's what he is; while we little clevernesses are like half-ripened plums, only good eating on the side that has had a glimpse of the sun. Nature has made him so, and fortune confesses to it! He 's himself in person such a subject for a painter—a Pinturicchio-figure, is n't he? come to life; he has more genius than any one, and as a matter of course the most beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to feed him with her beauty. If that's not completeness where shall one look for it?"