old began. Westover now talked seriously and
frankly with him, but no longer so harshly, and in his relenting he felt
a return of his old illogical liking for him. He fancied in Durgin's
kindness to himself an indirect regret, and a desire to atone for what
he had done, and he said: "The effect is in you--the worst effect. I
don't think either of the young Lyndes very exemplary people. But you'd
be doing yourself a greater wrong than you've done then if you didn't
recognize that you had been guilty toward them."

Jeff seemed struck by this notion. "What do you want me to do? What can
I do? Chase myself out of society? Something like that? I'm willing.
It's too easy, though. As I said, I've never been wanted much, there,
and I shouldn't be missed."

"Well, then, how would you like to leave it to the people at Lion's Head
to say what you should do?" Westover suggested.

"I shouldn't like it," said Jeff, promptly. "They'd judge it as you
do--as if they'd done it themselves. That's the reason women are not fit
to judge." His gay face darkened. "But tell 'em if you want to."

"Bah!" cried the painter. "Why should I want to I'm not a woman in
everything."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Westover. I didn't mean that. I only meant that
you're an idealist. I look at this thing as if some one else had done
it; I believe that's the practical way; and I shouldn't go in for
punishing any one else for such a thing very severely." He made another
punch--for himself this time, he said; but Westover joined him in a
glass of it.

"It won't do to take that view of your faults, Jeff," he said, gravely.

"What's the reason?" Jeff demanded; and now either the punch had begun
to work in Westover's brain, or some other influence of like force
and quality. He perceived that in this earth-bound temperament was the
potentiality of all the success it aimed at. The acceptance of the moral
fact as it was, without the unconscious effort to better it, or to hold
himself strictly to account for it, was the secret of the power in the
man which would bring about the material results he desired; and this
simplicity of the motive involved had its charm.

Westover was aware of liking Durgin at that moment much more than he
ought, and of liking him helplessly. In the light of his good-natured
selfishness, the injury to the Lyndes showed much less a sacrilege than
it had seemed; Westover began to see it with Jeff's eyes, and to see it
with reference to what