Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/220

Rh Mr. Tredegar and Halford Gaines think your plan unbusinesslike”

“Mr. Tredegar and Halford Gaines are certain to think it so. And that is why I said, just now, that it comes, in the end, to your choosing between us; taking them on experience or taking me on faith.”

She looked at him wistfully. “Of course I should expect to give up things.… You wouldn’t want me to live here?”

“I should not ask you to,” he said, half-smiling,

“I suppose there would be a good many things we couldn’t do”

“You would certainly have less money for a number of years; after that, I believe you would have more rather than less; but I should not want you to think that, beyond a reasonable point, the prosperity of the mills was ever to be measured by your dividends.”

“No.” She leaned back wearily among the pillows. “I suppose, for instance, we should have to give up Europe this summer?"

Here at last was the bottom of her thought! It was always on the immediate pleasure that her soul hung: she had not enough imagination to look beyond, even in the projecting of her own desires. And it was on his knowledge of this limitation that Amherst had deliberately built.

“I don’t see how you could go to Europe,” he said. [ 204 ]