Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/316

 perhaps remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati."

"Has it been hanging fire all this time? Then let it off—no matter with what bang. I promise not to stop my ears."

"It relates to my friend Hudson." And Rowland paused. She was looking at him expectantly; her face gave no other sign. "I 'm rather disturbed in mind about him. He seems to me at times not quite to have found his feet." He paused again, but Christina said nothing. "The case is simply this," he went on. "It was by my advice, you see, that he gave up his work at home and went in for the artist's, went in for this, life. I made him burn his ships, I brought him to Rome, I launched him in the world, and I 've undertaken to answer to—to his mother for his doing well. It 's not such smooth sailing as it might be, and I 'm inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he 's to succeed he must work—very quietly and very hard. It 's not news to you, I imagine, that Hudson 's a great admirer of yours."

Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not of confusion, but of deep deliberation. Violent frankness had, as a general thing, struck Rowland as the keynote of her system, but she had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of calculation, and her silence now had for him vaguely something charged and ominous. He had of course rather sounded his scruples before deciding to make to an unprotected girl, for the needs of a cause—and not her cause, but his very own—the point that another 282