“Why should I care what you do?” asked the painter, scornfully.

“Well, you can’t, on my account,” Durgin allowed.  “But you do care on her account.”

“Yes, I do,” said Westover, sitting down again, and he did not say anything more.

Durgin waited a long while for him to speak before he asked:  “Then that’s really your advice, is it?”

“Yes, break with her.”

“And stick to Miss Lynde.”

“If she’ll let you.”

Jeff was silent in his turn.  He started from his silence with a laugh.  “She’d make a daisy landlady for Lion’s Head.  I believe she would 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—­”