"Because, though I saw her but for a moment yesterday, she struck me as
a very intelligent person, and I am sure she has opinions."

The smile on Roderick's mobile face passed rapidly into a frown. "Oh,
she thinks what I think!" he answered.

Before the two young men separated Rowland attempted to give as
harmonious a shape as possible to his companion's scheme. "I have
launched you, as I may say," he said, "and I feel as if I ought to see
you into port. I am older than you and know the world better, and
it seems well that we should voyage a while together. It 's on my
conscience that I ought to take you to Rome, walk you through the
Vatican, and then lock you up with a heap of clay. I sail on the fifth
of September; can you make your preparations to start with me?"

Roderick assented to all this with an air of candid confidence in
his friend's wisdom that outshone the virtue of pledges. "I have no
preparations to make," he said with a smile, raising his arms and
letting them fall, as if to indicate his unencumbered condition. "What I
am to take with me I carry here!" and he tapped his forehead.

"Happy man!" murmured Rowland with a sigh, thinking of the light
stowage, in his own organism, in the region indicated by Roderick, and
of the heavy one in deposit at his banker's, of bags and boxes.

When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia. She
was sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low
chintz-covered chair. He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with
her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder. At
last he told her of Roderick's decision and of his own influence in