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 might be low and mean in them, instead of what might be fine and high.