"I am
so glad," she said, "that Roderick is a sculptor and not a painter."
The allusion resided chiefly in the extreme earnestness with which the
words were uttered. Rowland immediately asked her the reason of her
gladness.
"It 's not that painting is not fine," she said, "but that sculpture is
finer. It is more manly."
Rowland tried at times to make her talk about herself, but in this she
had little skill. She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant
to social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a
desire to draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and
thoughts. He told her his desire and what suggested it. "It appears,
then," she said, "that, after all, one can grow at home!"
"Unquestionably, if one has a motive. Your growth, then, was
unconscious? You did not watch yourself and water your roots?"
She paid no heed to his question. "I am willing to grant," she said,
"that Europe is more delightful than I supposed; and I don't think that,
mentally, I had been stingy. But you must admit that America is better
than you have supposed.
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