Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/299

Rh noting the intimate appurtenances of Bessy’s life. He was at ﬁrst merely conscious of a soothing harmony of line and colour, extending from the blurred tints of the rug to the subdued gleam of light on old picture-frames and on the slender ﬂanks of porcelain vases; but gradually he began to notice how every chair and screen and cushion, and even every triﬂing utensil on the inlaid writing—desk, had been chosen with reference to the whole composition, and to the minutest requirements of a fastidious leisure. A few months ago this studied setting, if he had thought of it at all, would have justified itself as expressing the pretty woman’s natural afﬁnity with pretty toys; but now it was the cost of it that struck him. He was beginning to learn from Bessy’s bills that no commodity is taxed as high as beauty, and the beauty about him ﬁlled him with sudden repugnance, as the disguise of the evil inﬂuences that were separating his wife’s life from his.

But with her entrance he dismissed the thought, and tried to meet her as if nothing stood in the way of their full communion. Her hair, still wet from the bath, broke from its dryad-like knot in dusky rings and spirals threaded with gold, and from her loose ﬂexible draperies, and her whole person as she moved, there came a scent of youth and morning freshness. Her beauty touched him, and made it easier for him to humble himself. [ 283 ]