“We don't know all the ins and outs of that business,” said Westover, after a moment. “I've puzzled over it a good deal. The man was the brother of that girl that Jeff had jilted in Boston. I've found out that much. I don't know just the size and shape of the trouble between them, but Jeff may have felt that he had got even with his enemy before that day. Or he may have felt that if he was going in for full satisfaction, there was Jombateeste looking on.”
“That's true,” said Whitwell, greatly daunted. After a while he took refuge in the reflection, “Well, he's a comical devil.”
Westover said, in a sort of absence: “Perhaps we're all broken shafts, here. Perhaps that old hypothesis of another life, a world where there is room enough and time enough for all the beginnings of this to complete themselves—”
“Well, now you're shoutin',” said Whitwell. “And if plantchette—” Westover rose. “Why, a'n't you goin' to wait and see Cynthy? I'm expectin' her along every minute now; she's just gone down to Harvard Square. She'll be awfully put out when she knows you've be'n here.”
“I'll come out again soon,” said Westover. “Tell her—”
“Well, you must see your picture, anyway. We've got it in the parlor. I don't know what she'll say to me, keepin' you here in the settin'-room all the time.”
Whitwell led him into the little dark front hall, and into the parlor, less dim than it should have been because the afternoon sun was burning full upon its shutters. The portrait hung over the mantel, in a bad light, but the painter could feel everything in it that he could not see.
“Yes, it had that look in it.”
“Well, she ha'n't took wing yet, I'm thankful to think,” said Whitwell, and he spoke from his own large mind to the sympathy of an old friend who he felt could almost share his feelings as a father.