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RODERICK HUDSON
made one more attempt. "You won't mind me the least little bit?"
"Be so good as not to mind me!"
"There 's one more point: that you should make and keep a resolve not to go back—for the present at least—to Mrs. Light's."
"I shall go back this evening."
"That too is fatal folly."
"Well," Roderick smiled, "when one's a fatalist as well as a fool—!"
"You talk like a slave, not like a free agent."
"Why then do you make me talk?"
Rowland meditated a moment. "Are your fatalism and your folly prepared to lose you the best friend you have?"
Roderick looked up; he still smiled. "I defy them to rid me—!"
His best friend clapped on that gentleman's hat and strode away; in a moment the door sharply closed.
306
