Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/280

Rh and the Telfers thought. She had her own criteria of conduct, unintelligible to Bessy, but giving her an independence of mind on which her friend leaned in a kind of blind security. And that even her faith in Justine should suddenly be poisoned by a jealous thought seemed to prove that the consequences of her marriage were gradually infecting her whole life. Bessy could conceive of masculine devotion only as subservient to its divinity’s least wish, and she argued that if Amherst had really loved her he could not so lightly have disturbed the foundations of her world. And so her tormented thoughts, perpetually circling on themselves, reverted once more to their central grievance—the failure of her marriage. If her own love had died out it would have been much simpler—she was surrounded by examples of the mutual evasion of a trouble-some tie. There was Blanche Carbury, for instance, with whom she had lately struck up an absorbing friendship.… it was perfectly clear that Blanche Carbury wondered how much more she was going to stand! But it was the torment of Bessy’s situation that it involved a radical contradiction, that she still loved Amherst though she could not forgive him for having married her.

Perhaps what she most suffered from was his too-prompt acceptance of the semi-estrangement between them. After nearly three years of marriage she had [ 264 ]