Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/254

 your being exposed to influences and opportunities here that she hardly even dreams of. How could I ever meet her again," Rowland continued with much warmth of tone, "if at the end of it all she should find herself short?"

"I had no idea she had made such an impression on you. You 're too anxious and, I really think, too zealous. I take it she did n't really request you to look after her affairs."

"If anything happens to you I 'm accountable. You must understand that."

"That 's a view of the situation I can't accept—in your own interest no less than in mine. It can only make us both very uncomfortable. I know all I owe you; I feel it: you know that. But I 'm not a small boy nor a country lout any longer, and whatever I do I do with my eyes open. When I do well the merit 's my own; if I do ill the fault 's my own. The idea that I make you nervous is not to be borne. Dedicate your nerves to some better cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a quarrel we shall settle it between ourselves."

Rowland had found himself wondering shortly before whether possibly his brilliant young friend were without a conscience; now it dimly occurred to him that he was without that indispensable aid to completeness, a feeling heart. Rowland, as we have already intimated, was a man of moral passion, and no small part of that motive force had been spent in this adventure. There had been from the first no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had implicitly offered everything that belongs to 220