One day, toward the very last, Durgin found himself pretty well fagged in the old pulp-mill clearing on the side of Lion’s Head, which still belonged to Whitwell, and he sat down on a mouldering log there to rest.  It had always been a favorite picnic ground, but the season just past had known few picnics, and it was those of former years that had left their traces in rusty sardine-cans and broken glass and crockery on the border of the clearing, which was now almost covered with white moss.  Jeff thought of the day when he lurked in the hollow below with Fox, while Westover remained talking with Whitwell.  He thought of the picnic that Mrs. Marven had embittered for him, and he thought of the last time that he had been there with Westover, when they talked of the Vostrands.

Life had, so far, not been what he meant it, and just now it occurred to him that he might not have wholly made it what it had been.  It seemed to him that a good many other people had come in and taken a hand in making his own life what it had been; and if he had meddled with theirs more than he was wanted, it was about an even thing.  As far as he could make out, he was a sort of ingredient in the general mixture.  He had probably done his share of the flavoring, but he had had very little to do with the mixing.  There were different ways of looking at the thing.  Westover had his way, but it struck Jeff that it put too much responsibility on the ingredient, and too little on the power that chose it.  He believed that he could prove a clear case in his own favor, as far as the question of final justice was concerned, but he had no complaints to make.  Things had fallen out very much to his mind.  He was the Landlord at Lion’s Head, at last, with the full right to do what he pleased with the place, and with half a year’s leisure before him to think it over.  He did not mean to waste the time while he was abroad; if there was anything to be learned anywhere about keeping a summer hotel, he was going to learn it; and he thought the summer hotel could be advantageously studied in its winter phases in the mild climates of Southern Europe.  He meant to strike for the class of Americans who resorted to those climates; to divine their characters and to please their tastes.

He unconsciously included Cynthia in his scheme of inquiry; he had been used so long to trust to her instincts and opinions, and to rely upon her help, and he realized that she was no longer in his life with something like the shock a man experiences when the loss of a limb, which continues a part of his inveterate consciousness, is brought to his sense by some mechanical attempt to use it.  But even in this pang he did not regret that all was over between them.  He knew now that he had never cared for her as he had once thought, and on her account, if not his own, he was glad their engagement was broken.  A soft melancholy for his own disappointment imparted itself to his thoughts of Cynthia.  He felt truly