Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/334

Rh weakness. She felt now that what would have been an insult on other lips was only a cry of distress from his; and once more she blamed herself and forgave him.

But if she had been inclined to any morbidness of self-reproach she would have been saved from it by other cares. For the moment she was more concerned with Bessy’s fate than with her own—her poor friend seemed to have so much more at stake, and so much less strength to bring to the defence of her happiness. Justine was always saved from any excess of self-compassion by the sense, within herself, of abounding forces of growth and self-renewal, as though from every lopped aspiration a fresh shoot of energy must spring; but she felt that Bessy had no such sources of renovation, and that every disappointment left an arid spot in her soul.

Even without her friend’s conﬁdences, Justine would have had no difﬁculty in following the successive stages of the Amhersts’ inner history. She knew that Amherst had virtually resigned his rule at Westmore, and that his wife, in return for the sacriﬁce, was trying to conform to the way of life she thought he preferred; and the futility of both attempts was more visible to Justine than to either of the two concerned. She saw that the failure of the Amhersts’ marriage lay not in any accident of outward circumstances but in the lack of all natural points of contact. As she put it to [ 318 ]