Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/354

Rh Amherst glanced at her quickly. “That particular form of indebtedness, you mean?”

She smiled. “The easiest to cancel, and therefore the least galling; isn’t that the way you regard it?”

“I used to—yes; but—” He was about to add: “No one at Lynbrook does,” but the ﬂash of intelligence in her eyes restrained him, while at the same time it seemed to answer: “There’s my point! To see their limitation is to allow for it, since every enlightenment brings a corresponding obligation.”

She made no attempt to put into words the argument her look conveyed, but rose from her seat with a rapid glance at her watch.

“And now I must go, or I shall miss my train.” She held out her hand, and as Amherst’s met it, he said in a low tone, as if in reply to her unspoken appeal: "I shall remember all you have said.”

It was a new experience for Amherst to be acting under the pressure of another will; but during his return journey to Lynbrook that afternoon it was pure relief to surrender himself to this pressure, and the surrender brought not a sense of weakness but of recovered energy. It was not in his nature to analyze his motives, or spend his strength in weighing closely balanced alternatives of conduct; and though, during the last purposeless months, he had grown to brood over every spring of [ 338 ]