Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/549

 is one to do?" He had occasion to use his keys, and he felt for them in his pockets; they were missing, and he remembered that he had left them lying on the hill-top where he had had his talk with Roderick. He went forth in search of them and found them where he had thrown them. He flung himself down in the same place again; he felt it impossible to walk. He was conscious that his mood had greatly changed since the morning; his extraordinary acute sense of his rights had been replaced by the familiar chronic sense of his duties. His duties, however, now seemed only to defy him; he turned over and buried his face in his arms. He lay so a long time, thinking of many things; the sum of them all was that Roderick had beaten him. At last he was startled by an extraordinary sound, which defined itself the next instant as a portentous growl of thunder. He got up and saw that the whole face of the sky had altered. The clouds that had hung motionless all day were moving from their stations and getting into position for a battle. The wind was rising, the turbid vapours growing dark and thick. It was a striking spectacle, but Rowland judged best to observe it briefly, as a storm was evidently imminent. He took the path to the inn and found Singleton still at his post, profiting by the last of the rapidly-failing light to finish his study and yet at the same time making rapid notes of the actual condition of the clouds.

"We 're going to have the biggest show the Alps can give," the little painter gleefully cried. "I should like awfully to do it." 515