Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/337

Rh power over her. He could not but note that the new phase in their relations had coincided with his ﬁrst assertion of mastery; and he rashly concluded that, with the removal of the inﬂuences tending to separate them, his wife might gradually be won back to her earlier sympathy with his views.

To accept this theory was to apply it; for nothing could long divert Amherst from his main purpose, and all the thwarted strength of his will was only gathering to itself fresh stores of energy. He had never been a skilful lover, for no woman had as yet stirred in him those feelings which call the finer perceptions into play; and there was no instinct to tell him that Bessy’s sudden conformity to his wishes was as unreasoning as her surrender to his ﬁrst kiss. He fancied that he and she were at length reaching some semblance of that moral harmony which should grow out of the physical accord, and that, poor and incomplete as the understanding was, it must lift and strengthen their relation.

He waited till early winter had brought solitude to Lynbrook, dispersing the hunting colony to various points of the compass, and sending Mr. Langhope to Egypt and the Riviera, while Mrs. Ansell, as usual, took up her annual tour of a social circuit whose extreme points were marked by Boston and Baltimore—and then he made his ﬁnal appeal to his wife.

His pretext for speaking was a letter from Duplain, [ 321 ]