RODERICK HUDSON
more, and as well as ever, and even about the things that had formerly interested him; but, taking a vicious twist always, it ended for the most part in some abrupt profession of despair and disgust. When this current set in our friend straightway turned his back and stopped his ears, and Roderick now witnessed these movements with perfect indifference. When the latter was absent from the starlit circle in the garden, as often happened, they knew nothing of his whereabouts: Rowland supposed him to be in Florence but never learned what he did there. All this was not enlivening; yet with an even, muffled tread the days followed each other and brought the month of August to a close. One particular evening at this time was admirable; there was a perfect moon, looking so extraordinarily large that it made everything its light fell on turn pale and shrink; the heat was tempered by a soft west wind and the air laden with the breath of the early harvest. The hills, the vale of the Arno, the yellow river, the domes of Florence, were not so much lighted as obscured by the white glow. Rowland had found the two ladies alone at the villa, and he had dropped into a seat as discreetly as if they had been, as he said, at a "show." He felt hushed by the solemn splendour of the scene, but he risked the remark that, what ever life might yet have in store for either of them, this was a night they would never forget.
"It 's a night that makes a success," Mary Garland replied, "of one's having lived at all."
"'At all,' dear?" Mrs. Hudson echoed. "You surely have n't waited till this evening to feel that
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