RODERICK HUDSON
"It certainly seems more."
"It seems ten years. What an exquisite ass I was so short a time ago!"
"Do you feel," Rowland asked all amusedly, "so tremendously wise now?"
"Wise with the wisdom of the ages and the taste of a thousand fountains. Don't I look so? Surely I have n't the same face. Have n't I different eyes, a different skin, different legs and arms?"
"I can hardly say, because I've been too near you to catch the moments of change. But it 's very likely. You're, in the literal sense of the word, more civilised. I dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland would think so."
"That's not what she would call it; she would say I'm spoiled; I'm not sure she wouldn't say that I'm already hideously corrupted."
Rowland asked few questions about Mary Garland, but he always listened narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations. "Are you very sure?"
"Why, she's a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance that I had become a gilded profligate." Roderick had in fact a Venetian watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third finger of his left hand.
"Shall you feel I take a liberty," said his companion, "if I tell you I don't think you quite see her all round."
"For heaven's sake," cried Roderick, laughing, "don't tell me she's not a moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her—and with security and sanity,
86
