Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/340

 made one more attempt. "You won't mind me the least little bit?"

"Be so good as not to mind me!"

"There 's one more point: that you should make and keep a resolve not to go back—for the present at least—to Mrs. Light's."

"I shall go back this evening."

"That too is fatal folly."

"Well," Roderick smiled, "when one's a fatalist as well as a fool—!"

"You talk like a slave, not like a free agent."

"Why then do you make me talk?"

Rowland meditated a moment. "Are your fatalism and your folly prepared to lose you the best friend you have?"

Roderick looked up; he still smiled. "I defy them to rid me—!"

His best friend clapped on that gentleman's hat and strode away; in a moment the door sharply closed. 306