Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/480

 picked up the thread of his old love of ideas. He found again in Florence certain of his Roman friends and made with them appointments more or less genial. More than once he asked Mary Garland to accompany him to the city, where he showed her the things he most cared for. He had a mass of sculptor's clay brought up to the villa and deposited in a room suitable for his work, but when this had been done he turned the key in the door and the clay was never touched. His eye was heavy and his hand cold, and his mother was more than once caught in the act of praying that he might be induced to see a doctor. On one of these occasions he had a great outburst of anger, begging her to know once for all that his health in these days fairly mocked him with its excellence. On the whole, and most of the time, he irresistibly appealed, the air being charged with him as with some rich wasted essence, some spirit scattered by the breaking of its phial and yet unable, for its very quality, to lose itself. If he was not querulous and bitter it was because he had taken an extraordinary vow not to be; a vow heroic for him and which those who knew him well had the tenderness to appreciate. Talking with him was like skating on thin ice, and his companions had a constant mental vision of spots marked dangerous.

This was an arduous time for Rowland; he said to himself that he would see it through but must never court again such perils. Mrs. Hudson divided it between looking askance at her son, with her hands tightly clasped about her pocket-handkerchief, as if she were wringing it dry of the last hour's tears, and 446