Jeff said, as if their controversy were at an end and they might now turn to more personal things:  “You look pretty slim, Mr. Westover.  A’n’t there something I can do for you-get you?  I’ve come in with a message from mother.  She says if you ever want to get that winter view of Lion’s Head, now’s your time.  She wants you to come up there; she and Cynthia both do.  They can make you as comfortable as you please, and they’d like to have a visit from you.  Can’t you go?”

Westover shook his head ruefully.  “It’s good of them, and I want you to thank them for me.  But I don’t know when I’m going to get out again.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get out,” said Jeff.  “I’m going to look after you a little,” and this time Westover was too weak to protest.  He did not forbid Jeff’s taking off his overcoat; he suffered him to light his spirit-lamp and make a punch of the whiskey which he owned the doctor was giving him; and when Jeff handed him the steaming glass, and asked him, “How’s that?” he answered, with a pleasure in it which he knew to be deplorable, “It’s fine.”

Jeff stayed the whole evening with him, and made him more comfortable than he had been since his cold 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.