Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/270

Rh it was easier for both to communicate through the veil of deepening obscurity.

“But, good heavens, she might be there with me—she’s as much needed there as I am!” Amherst exclaimed.

“Yes; but you must remember that it’s against all her habits—and against the point of view of every one about her—that she should lead that kind of life; and meanwhile”

“Well?”

“Meanwhile, isn’t it expedient that you should, a little more, lead hers?”

Always the same answer to his restless questioning! His mother’s answer, the answer of Bessy and her friends. He had somehow hoped that the girl at his side would ﬁnd a different solution to the problem, and his disappointment escaped in a bitter exclamation.

“But Westmore is my life—hers too, if she knew it! I can’t desert it now without being as false to her as to myself!”

As he spoke, he was overcome once more by the hopelessness of trying to put his case clearly. How could Justine, for all her quickness and sympathy, understand a situation of which the deeper elements were necessarily unknown to her? The advice she gave him was natural enough, and on her lips it seemed not the counsel of a shallow expediency, but the plea of [ 254 ]