“I dare say not. You are not used to understanding such things--you are not used to hearing me talk of my feelings. You are altogether too much taken up with your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose to leave you an open field, don’t, by way of thanking me, come and call me an idiot.” “Oh, you claim then that you have made sacrifices?” “Several! You have never suspected it?” “If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed it?” cried Roderick. “They were the sacrifices of friendship and they were easily made; only I don’t enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth.” This was, under the circumstances, a sufficiently generous speech; but Roderick was not in the humor to take it generously. “Come, be more definite,” he said. “Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched.” Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity, he should have full justice. “It ‘s a perpetual sacrifice,” he said, “to live with a perfect egotist.” “I am an egotist?” cried Roderick. “Did it never occur to you?” “An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?” He repeated the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem) a sudden violent curiosity for news about himself. “You are selfish,” said Rowland; “you think only of yourself and believe only in yourself. You regard other people only as they play into your own hands. You have always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure of your mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse. But if one believed in you, as I have done, one paid a tax upon it.” Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and crossed them, shadewise, over his eyes. In this attitude, for a moment, he sat looking coldly at his friend. “So I have made you very uncomfortable?” he went on. “Extremely so.” “I have been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent, cruel?” “I have accused you, mentally, of all these things, with the exception of vanity.” “You have often hated me?” “Never. I should have parted company with you before coming to that.” “But you have wanted to part company, to bid me go my way and be hanged!” “Repeatedly. Then I have had patience and forgiven you.” “Forgiven me, eh? Suffering all the while?” “Yes, you may call it suffering.” “Why did you never tell me all this before?” “Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because I preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had, myself, in a measure, launched you in the world and thrown you into temptations; and because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could have made me say these painful things.”