Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/105

Rh turns rusty, as he undoubtedly will, the inevitable result will be his manager’s dismissal—and that thereafter there will presumably be peace in Warsaw?”

“Ah, you divinely wicked woman!” cried Mr. Langhope, snatching at an appreciative pressure of her handas the lawyer reappeared in the doorway.

VI

EFORE daylight that same morning Amherst, dressing by the gas-ﬂame above his cheap wash-stand, strove to bring some order into his angry thoughts. It humbled him to feel his purpose tossing rudderless on unruly waves of emotion, yet strive as he would he could not regain a hold on it. The events of the last twenty-four hours had been too rapid and unexpected for him to preserve his usual clear feeling of mastery; and he had, besides, to reckon with the ﬁrst complete surprise of his senses. His way of life had excluded him from all contact with the subtler feminine inﬂuences, and the primitive side of the relation left his imagination untouched. He was therefore the more assailable by those reﬁned forms of the ancient spell that lurk in delicacy of feeling interpreted by loveliness of face. By his own choice he had cut himself off from all possibility of such communion; had accepted complete abstinence for that part of his nature which might [ 91 ]