uld like
to try it awhile just for the fun. But after the ball was over--well,
it would be a good joke, if it was a joke. Cynthia is a woman--she a'n't
any corpse-light. She understands me, and she don't overrate me,
either. She knew just how much I was worth, and she took me at her own
valuation. I've got my way in life marked out, and she believes in it as
much as I do. If anybody can keep me level and make the best of me, she
can, and she's going to have the chance, if she wants to. I'm going to
act square with her about the whole thing. I guess she's the best judge
in a case like this, and I shall lay the whole case before her, don't
you be afraid of that. And she's got to have a free field. Why, even
if there wa'n't any question of her," he went on, falling more and more
into his vernacular, "I don't believe I should care in the long run for
this other one. We couldn't make it go for any time at all. She wants
excitement, and after the summer folks began to leave, and we'd been
to Florida for a winter, and then came back to Lion's Head-well! This
planet hasn't got excitement enough in it for that girl, and I doubt if
the solar system has. At any rate, I'm not going to act as advance-agent
for her."

"I see," said Westover, "that you've been reasoning it all out, and I'm
not surprised that you've kept your own advantage steadily in mind.
I don't suppose you know what a savage you are, and I don't suppose I
could teach you. I sha'n't try, at any rate. I'll take you on your own
ground, and I tell you again you had better break with Cynthia. I won't
say that it's what you owe her, for that won't have any effect with you,
but it's what you owe yourself. You can't do a wrong thing and prosper
on it--"

"Oh yes, you can," Jeff interrupted, with a sneering laugh. "How do you
suppose all the big fortunes were made? By keeping the Commandments?"

"No. But you're an unlucky man if life hasn't taught you that you must
pay in suffering of some kind, sooner or later, for every wrong thing
you do--"

"Now that's one of your old-fashioned superstitions, Mr. Westover," said
Jeff, with a growing kindliness in his tone, as if the pathetic delusion
of such a man really touched him. "You pay, or you don't pay, just as
it happens. If you get hit soon after you've done wrong, you think it's
retribution, and if it holds off till you've forgotten all about it, you
think it's a strange Providence, and you puzzle over it, but you don't