Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/340

Rh her belief in justice and goodness and decency? If he takes those and destroys them, he’d better have had a mill-stone about his neck. But nobody has a word to say till he touches her dividends—then he’s a calculating brute who has married her for her fortune!”

He had come close again, facing her with outstretched hands, half-commanding, half in appeal. “Don’t you see that I can’t go on in this way—that I’ve no right to let you keep me from Westmore?”

Bessy was looking at him coldly, under the half-dropped lids of indifference. “I hardly know what you mean—you use such peculiar words; but I don’t see why you should expect me to give up all the ideas I was brought up in. Our standards are different—but why should yours always be right?”

“You believed they were right when you married me—have they changed since then?”

“No; but” Her face seemed to harden and contract into a small expressionless mask, in which he could no longer read anything but blank opposition to his will.

“You trusted my judgment not long ago,” he went on, “when I asked you to give up seeing Mrs. Carbury”

She ﬂushed, but with anger, not compunction. “It seems to me that should be a reason for your not asking me to make other sacriﬁces! When I gave up Blanche [ 324 ]