Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/106

Rh have offered a refuge from the stern prose of his daily task. But his personal indifference to his surroundings—deliberately encouraged as a deﬁance to the attractions of the life he had renounced—proved no defence against this appeal; rather, the meanness of his surroundings combined with his inherited reﬁnement of taste to deepen the effect of Bessy’s charm.

As he reviewed the incidents of the past hours, a reaction of self-derision came to his aid. What was this exquisite opportunity from which he had cut himself off? What, to reduce the question to a personal issue, had Mrs. Westmore said or done that, on the part of a plain woman, would have quickened his pulses by the least fraction of a second? Why, it was only the old story of the length of Cleopatra’s nose! Because her eyes were a heavenly vehicle for sympathy, because her voice was pitched to thrill the tender chords, he had been deluded into thinking that she understood and responded to his appeal. And her own emotions had been wrought upon by means as cheap: it was only the obvious, theatrical side of the incident that had affected her. If Dillon’s wife had been old and ugly, would she have been clasped to her employer’s bosom? A more expert knowledge of the sex would have told Amherst that such ready sympathy is likely to be followed by as prompt a reaction of indifference. Luckily Mrs. Westmore’s course had served as a corrective for his [ 92 ]