"Oh, don't talk about will!" Roderick answered, throwing back his head
and looking at the stars. This conversation also took place in the open
air, on the little island in the shooting Rhone where Jean-Jacques has
a monument. "The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can
answer for his will? who can say beforehand that it 's strong? There are
all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one's
will and one's inclinations. People talk as if the two things were
essentially distinct; on different sides of one's organism, like the
heart and the liver. Mine, I know, are much nearer together. It all
depends upon circumstances. I believe there is a certain group of
circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to
snap like a dry twig."

"My dear boy," said Rowland, "don't talk about the will being
'destined.' The will is destiny itself. That 's the way to look at it."

"Look at it, my dear Rowland," Roderick answered, "as you find
most comfortable. One conviction I have gathered from my summer's
experience," he went on--"it 's as well to look it frankly in the
face--is that I possess an almost unlimited susceptibility to the
influence of a beautiful woman."

Rowland stared, then strolled away, softly whistling to himself. He
was unwilling to admit even to himself that this speech had really the
sinister meaning it seemed to have. In a few days the two young men made
their way back to Italy, and lingered a while in Florence before
going on to Rome. In Florence Roderick seemed to have won back his old
innocence and his preference for the pleasures of study over any others.
Rowland began to think of the Baden episode as a bad dream, or at