Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/289

Rh opinion about them. Amherst, seated in unsmiling endurance at the foot of the table, between Mrs. Ansell, with her carefully-distributed affabilities, and Blanche Carbury, with her reckless hurling of conversational pebbles, seemed to Justine as much of a stranger as herself among the people to whom his marriage had introduced him. So strongly did she feel the sense of their common isolation that it was no surprise to her, when the men reappeared in the drawing—room after dinner, to have her host thread his way, between the unfolding bridge—tables, straight to the corner where she sat. Amherst’s methods in the drawing-room were still as direct as in the cotton—mill. He always went up at once to the person he sought, without preliminary waste of tactics; and on this occasion Justine, without knowing what had passed between himself and Bessy, suspected from the appearance of both that their talk had resulted in increasing Amherst’s desire to be with some one to whom he could speak freely and naturally on the subject nearest his heart.

She began at once to question him about Westmore, and the change in his face showed that his work was still a refuge from all that made life disheartening and unintelligible. Whatever convictions had been thwarted or impaired in him, his faith in the importance of his task remained unshaken; and the ﬁrmness with which he held to it ﬁlled Justine with a sense of his strength. [ 273 ]