Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/253

Rh her view of the Lynbrook set and its estimate of herself. If Bessy’s friends were negligible to her she was almost non-existent to them; and, as against herself, they were overwhelmingly provided with tangible means of proving their case.

Such considerations, at a given moment, may prevail decisively even with a nature armed against them by insight and irony; and the mere fact that Westy Gaines did not mean to join her, and that he was withheld from doing so by the invisible pressure of the Lynbrook standards, had the effect of precipitating Justine’s ﬂoating intentions.

If anything farther had been needed to hasten this result, it would have been accomplished by the sound of footsteps which, over-taking her a dozen yards from the house, announced her admirer’s impetuous if tardy pursuit. The act of dismissing him, though it took but a word and was effected with a laugh, left her pride quivering with a hurt the more painful because she would not acknowledge it. That she should waste a moment’s resentment on the conduct of a person so unimportant as poor Westy, showed her in a ﬂash the intrinsic falseness of her position at Lynbrook. She saw that to disdain the life about her had not kept her intact from it; and the knowledge made her feel anew the need of some strong decentralizing inﬂuence, some purifying inﬂux of emotion and activity. [ 237 ]