Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/351

Rh He was conscious of no instinctive resentment, no sense that she was, as she confessed, meddling in matters which did not concern her. His ebbing spirit was revived by the shock of an ardour like his own. She had not shrunk from calling him a coward—and it did him good to hear her call him so! Her words put life back into its true perspective, restored their meaning to obsolete terms: to truth and manliness and courage. He had lived so long among equivocations that he had forgotten how to look a fact in the face; but here was a woman who judged life by his own standards—and by those standards she had found him wanting!

Still, he could not forget the last bitter hours, or change his opinion as to the futility of attempting to remain at Lynbrook. He felt as strongly as ever the need of moral and mental liberation—the right to begin life again on his own terms. But Justine Brent had made him see that his ﬁrst step toward self-assertion had been the inconsistent one of trying to evade its results.

“You are right—I will go back,” he said.

She thanked him with her eyes, as she had thanked him on the terrace at Lynbrook, on the autumn evening which had witnessed their ﬁrst broken exchange of conﬁdences; and he was struck once more with the change that feeling produced in her. Emotions ﬂashed [ 335 ]