Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/343

Rh apply his ideas. Yes, it was Duplain’s chance—if indeed it might not be his own!… Amherst sat upright, dazzled by the thought. Why Duplain—why not himself? Bessy had spoken the illuminating word—what he wanted was to get away—to get away at any cost! Escape had become his one thought: escape from the bondage of Lynbrook, from the bitter memory of his failure at Westmore; and here was the chance to escape back into life—into independence, activity and usefulness! Every atrophied faculty in him suddenly started from its torpor, and his brain throbbed with the pain of the awakening.… The servant came to tell him that his horse waited, and he sprang up, took his riding-whip from the rack, stared a moment, absently, after the man’s retreating back, and then dropped down again on the sofa.…

What was there to keep him from accepting? His wife’s affection was dead—if her sentimental fancy for him had ever deserved the name! And his passing mastery over her was gone too—he smiled to remember that, hardly two hours earlier, he had been fatuous enough to think he could still regain it! Now he said to himself that she would sooner desert a friend to please him than sacriﬁce a fraction of her income; and the discovery cast a stain of sordidness on their whole relation. He could still imagine struggling to win her back from another man, or even to save her from some [ 327 ]