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James, Henry, 1843-1916

"Roderick Hudson"

But she 'll not
tell me again I am weak!"
"Are you very sure you are not weak?"
"I may be, but she shall never know it."
Rowland said no more until they reached the Corso, when he asked his
companion whether he was going to his studio.
Roderick started out of a reverie and passed his hands over his eyes.
"Oh no, I can't settle down to work after such a scene as that. I was
not afraid of breaking my neck then, but I feel all in a tremor now. I
will go--I will go and sit in the sun on the Pincio!"
"Promise me this, first," said Rowland, very solemnly: "that the next
time you meet Miss Light, it shall be on the earth and not in the air."
Since his return from Frascati, Roderick had been working doggedly at
the statue ordered by Mr. Leavenworth. To Rowland's eye he had made a
very fair beginning, but he had himself insisted, from the first, that
he liked neither his subject nor his patron, and that it was impossible
to feel any warmth of interest in a work which was to be incorporated
into the ponderous personality of Mr. Leavenworth. It was all against
the grain; he wrought without love.


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