Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/257

 an extraordinary amenity. Roderick sat staring a moment longer at the floor, then he sprang up and laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder. "You 're the best man in the world," he said, "and I 'm a vile brute. Only," he added, in a moment, "you don't understand me!" And he looked at him out of such bottomless depths as might have formed the element of a shining merman who should be trying, comparatively near shore, to signal to a ruminating ox.

Rowland's own face was now a confession of his probably being indeed too heavy to float in such waters. "What is it now? Explain."

"Oh, I can't explain!" cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work. "I 've only one way of expressing my deepest feelings—it 's this." And he swung his tool. He stood looking at the half-wrought clay for a moment and then flung the instrument down. "And even this half the time plays me false!"

Rowland felt that his irritation had not subsided, but he nevertheless risked, for a decent consistency's sake, the words he had had on his conscience from the beginning. "We must do what we can and be thankful," he said. "And let me assure you of this—that the practice of your talent will never see you out of one kind of difficulty only just to expose you to another."

Roderick pressed his hand to his forehead with vehemence, and then shook it in the air despairingly; a gesture that had of late become frequent with him. "No, no, it 's no use; you don't understand me. But I don't blame you. You can't!"

"You think it will then?" said Rowland, to whom it had suddenly occurred that he sincerely might. 223