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