In all this Rowland took a generous pleasure; he felt an especial kindness for his comrade's radiant youthfulness of temperament.

He was so much younger than he himself had ever been! And surely youth and genius, hand in hand, were the most beautiful sight in the world.

Roderick added to this the charm of his more immediately personal qualities.

The vivacity of his perceptions, the audacity of his imagination, the picturesqueness of his phrase when he was pleased,--and even more when he was displeased,--his abounding good-humor, his candor, his unclouded frankness, his unfailing impulse to share every emotion and impression with his friend; all this made comradeship a pure felicity, and interfused with a deeper amenity their long evening talks at cafe doors in Italian towns.
They had gone almost immediately to Paris, and had spent their days at the Louvre and their evenings at the theatre.

Roderick was divided in mind as to whether Titian or Mademoiselle Delaporte was the greater artist.