"As you say, you can but try," said Rowland. "Success is only passionate
effort."

"Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely.
It came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since
I left Northampton. I can't believe it!"

"It certainly seems more."

"It seems like ten years. What an exquisite ass I was!"

"Do you feel so wise now?"

"Verily! Don't I look so? Surely I have n't the same face. Have n't I a
different eye, a different expression, a different voice?"

"I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition. But it 's very
likely. You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized. I
dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland would think so."

"That 's not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted."

Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened
narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations.

"Are you very sure?" he replied.

"Why, she 's a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance
that I had become a cynical sybarite." Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian
watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third