Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/63

 to make me give him my business. Good, bad or indifferent, the boy's, as you say, an artist—an artist to his fingers' ends."

"Why then," asked Rowland, "does n't he go right in for what he can do?"

"For several reasons. In the first place I don't think he more than half suspects his ability. The flame smoulders, but it 's never fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to help him to self-knowledge. He 's hopelessly discontented, but he does n't know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people divested of all clothing. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality, and for a young man of possibly loose leanings she considers the law a much safer training. Her father was, by her account, an eminent judge, she has two brothers at the bar, and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in the same line. She wishes the tradition to be kept up. I 'm pretty sure the law won't make Roderick's fortune, and I 'm afraid it will spoil his temper."

"What sort of a temper do you call it?"

"Oh, one to be trusted on the whole. It 's subject, like our New England summer, to sudden changes—which yet don't prevent our having a summer, and a magnificent one. I have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o'clock in the evening, and soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It 's a very entertaining temper to observe. Fortunately I can observe 29