“I’m not sure that I should have any.”

“And doesn’t that make you feel badly?”

“Very.”  Jeff’s confession was a smiling one.

“You don’t show it!”

“I don’t want to grieve you.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that would grieve me.”

“Well, I thought I wouldn’t risk it.”

“How considerate of you!”

They had come to a little barrier, up that way, and could go no further.  Jeff said:  “I’ve just been interviewing another reformed pessimist.”

“Mr. Westover?”

“You’re preternatural, too.  And you’re not mistaken, either.  Do you ever go to his studio?”

“No; I haven’t been there since he told me it would be of no use to come as a student.  He can be terribly frank.”

“Nobody knows that better than I do,” said Jeff, with a smile for the notion of Westover’s frankness as he had repeatedly experienced it.  “But he means well.”

“Oh, that’s what they always say.  But all the frankness can’t be well meant.  Why should uncandor be the only form of malevolence?”

“That’s a good idea.  I believe I’ll put that up on Westover the next time he’s frank.”

“And will you tell me what he says?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”  Jeff lay back in his chair at large ease and chuckled.  “I should like to tell you what he’s just been saying to me, but I don’t believe I can.”

“Do!”

“You know he was up at Lion’s Head in February, and got a winter impression of the mountain.  Did you see it?”

“No.  Was that what you were talking about?”

“We talked about something a great deal more interesting—­the impression he got of me.”

“Winter impression.”

“Cold enough.  He had come to the conclusion that I was very selfish and unworthy; that I used other people for my own advantage, or let them use themselves; that I was treacherous and vindictive, and if I didn’t betray a man I couldn’t be happy till I had beaten him.  He said that if I ever behaved well, it came after I had been successful one way or the other.”

“How perfectly fascinating!” Bessie rested her elbow on the corner of the table, and her chin in the palm of the hand whose thin fingers tapped her red lips; the light sleeve fell down and showed her pretty, lean little forearm.  “Did it strike you as true, at all?”

“I could see how it might strike him as true.”

“Now you are candid.  But go on!  What did he expect you to do about it?”

“Nothing.  He said he didn’t suppose I could help it.”

“This is immense,” said Bessie.  “I hope I’m taking it all in.  How came he to give you this flattering little impression?  So hopeful, too!  Or, perhaps your frankness doesn’t go any farther?”

“Oh, I don’t mind saying.  He seemed to think it was a sort of abstract duty he owed to my people.”

“Your-folks?” asked Bessie.