offer you an opportunity."

Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative. "You have not seen my
other things," he said suddenly. "Come and look at them."

"Now?"

"Yes, we 'll walk home. We 'll settle the question."

He passed his hand through Rowland's arm and they retraced their steps.
They reached the town and made their way along a broad country street,
dusky with the shade of magnificent elms. Rowland felt his companion's
arm trembling in his own. They stopped at a large white house, flanked
with melancholy hemlocks, and passed through a little front garden,
paved with moss-coated bricks and ornamented with parterres bordered
with high box hedges. The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but
it had seen its best days, and evidently sheltered a shrunken household.
Mrs. Hudson, Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden of a
morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal
horticulture. Roderick's studio was behind, in the basement; a large,
empty room, with the paper peeling off the walls. This represented, in
the fashion of fifty years ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes
of a hideous pattern, and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away
in great scraps, in moments of aesthetic exasperation. On a board in
a corner was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall,
stood some dozen medallions, busts, and figures, in various stages of
completion. To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on
the end of a long packing-box, which served as a pedestal. He did so
silently, making no explanations, and looking at them himself with a
strange air of quickened curiosity. Most of the things were portraits;