Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/209

Rh that Amherst should give us an idea of the changes hewishes to make at Westmore.”

Amherst, as he turned to answer, remembered with what ardent faith in his powers of persuasion he had responded to the same appeal three years earlier. He had thought then that all his cause needed was a hearing; now he knew that the practical man’s readiness to let the idealist talk corresponds with the busy parent’s permission to destructive infancy to “run out and play." They would let him state his case to the four corners of the earth—if only he did not expect them to act on it! It was their policy to let him exhaust himself in argument and exhortation, to listen to him so politely and patiently that if he failed to enforce his ideas it should not be for lack of opportunity to expound them … And the alternative struck him as hardly less to be feared. Supposing that the incredible happened, that his reasons prevailed with his wife, and, through her, with the others—at what cost would the victory be won? Would Bessy ever forgive him for winning it? And what would his situation be, if it left him in control of Westmore but estranged from his wife?

He recalled suddenly a phrase he had used that afternoon to the dark-eyed girl at the garden-party: “What risks we run when we scramble into the chariot of the gods!" And at the same instant he heard her retort, and saw her ﬁne gesture of deﬁance. How could he [ 193 ]