Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/475

 But without you it 's not a blank—it 's certain damnation!"

"Mercy, mercy, mercy!" murmured Mrs. Hudson. Rowland made an effort to turn to account this precious symptom of a positive wish. "If I go with you, will you try to work?"

Roderick had up to this moment been looking as unperturbed as if the deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all his passion returned. "Try to work!" he cried. "Try—try! work—work! In God's name don't talk that way, or I shall think you do it on purpose. Do you suppose I 'm trying not to work? Do you suppose I stand rotting here for the fun of it? Don't you suppose I would try to work for myself before I tried for you?"

"Mr. Mallet," cried Mrs. Hudson piteously, "will you leave me alone with this?"

Rowland turned to her and informed her gently that he would go with her then to Florence. After he had taken this engagement he thought not at all of the pain of his position as mediator between the mother's resentful grief and the son's incureable weakness; he drank deep, only, of the satisfaction of not cutting himself off from their other companion. If the future was a blank to Roderick it was hardly less so to himself. He had at moments a sharp foreboding of ill things yet to come. He paid it no special deference, but it seemed to warn him not to count on the future for anything he might squeeze out of the present. On his going to take leave of Madame Grandoni 441