Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/466

 comfortable to lay the burden of their common affliction upon Rowland's broad shoulders. Had he not promised to make them all rich and happy? And this was the end of it! Rowland felt as if his trials were only beginning. "Had n't you better forget all this, my dear?" Mrs. Hudson said to Rod erick. "Hadn't you better just quietly attend to your work?"

"Work, madam?" cried Roderick. "My work's over. I can't work—I have n't worked all winter. If I were fit for anything this tremendous slap in the face would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy. But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And he tapped his forehead. "It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every hour!"

"I'm sure you've made a beautiful likeness of your poor dreary little mother," said Mrs. Hudson coaxingly.

"I had done nothing before, and I 've done nothing since! I quarrelled with an excellent man the other day from mere exasperation of my nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars."

"Threw away five thousand dollars!" Roderick had been wandering among formidable abstractions, complications that bristled and defied her touch; but here was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and she looked it for a moment in the face. She repeated his words a third time with a gasping murmur, and then suddenly she burst into piteous tears. Roderick went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes coldly on the floor and waited for her to weep herself out. She 432