. Not till you do!" And she grasped his arm with both hands.

Roderick shook her off and pointed with a violent gesture to her former
place. "Go there!" he cried fiercely.

"You can never, never!" she murmured beseechingly, clasping her hands.
"I implore you!"

Roderick turned and looked at her, and then in a voice which Rowland had
never heard him use, a voice almost thunderous, a voice which awakened
the echoes of the mighty ruin, he repeated, "Sit down!" She hesitated
a moment and then she dropped on the ground and buried her face in her
hands.

Rowland had seen all this, and he saw more. He saw Roderick clasp in
his left arm the jagged corner of the vertical partition along which he
proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for
a resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the
possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil.
The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains
apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had
long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets
and grasping with his hands at certain mouldering protuberances on a
level with his head, that Roderick intended to proceed. The relics of
the cornice were utterly worthless as a support. Rowland had observed
this, and yet, for a moment, he had hesitated. If the thing were
possible, he felt a sudden admiring glee at the thought of Roderick's
doing it. It would be finely done, it would be gallant, it would have
a sort of masculine eloquence as an answer to Christina's sinister
persiflage. But it was not possible! Rowland left his place with a
bound, and scrambled down some neighboring steps, and the next moment
a stronger pair of hands than Christina's were laid upon Roderick's
shoulder.

He turned, staring, pale and angry. Christina rose, pale and staring,
too, but beautiful in her wonder and alarm. "My dear Roderick," said
Rowland, "I am only preventing you from doing a very foolish thing. That
's an exploit for spiders, not for young sculptors of promise."

Roderick wiped his forehead, looked back at the wall, and then closed
his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. "I won't resist
you," he said. "But I have made you obey," he added, turning to
Christina. "Am I weak now?"

She had recovered her composure; she looked straight past him and
addressed Rowland: "Be so good as to show me the way out