The two men return to Rome where, one fateful day, Christina Light enters Roderick's studio to peruse his artwork. Christina has grown up on the Continent, tended by her ambitious mother and the mother's aging Italian escort, the Cavaliere. She is, by general agreement, one of the most startlingly beautiful young women in Europe, and her mother is determined to marry Christina to a wealthy and titled gentleman. The impoverished Roderick is nonetheless instantly infatuated with Christina, eventually obtaining approval to sculpt her bust and thereby ingratiating himself with the family. Although the prematurely world-weary Christina is slow to show her feelings for Roderick, she comes increasingly to be attracted to him and to his status as an artistic "genius". Mallet finds himself in a wrenching emotional bind – attempting to prevent Roderick from consummating his love with Christina so as to protect Mary Garland from emotional injury; knowing all the while that doing so will foreclose forever any possibility that he himself can marry the only woman he has ever loved.