Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/363

Rh sympathy with her own fears; and a sense of this tacit understanding made her examine with sudden interest the face of her unexpected ally.… After all, what did she know of Mrs. Ansell’s history—of the hidden processes which had gradually subdued her own passions and desires, making of her, as it were, a mere decorative background, a connecting link between other personalities? Perhaps, for a woman alone in the world, without the power and opportunity that money gives, there was no alternative between letting one’s individuality harden into a small dry nucleus of egoism, or diffuse itself thus in the interstices of other lives—and there fell upon Justine the chill thought that just such a future might await her if she missed the liberating gift of personal happiness.…

Neither that night nor the next day had she a private word with Bessy—and it became evident, as the hours passed, that Mrs. Amherst was deliberately postponing the moment when they should ﬁnd themselves alone. But the Lynbrook party was to disperse on the Monday; and Bessy, who hated early rising, and all the details of housekeeping, tapped at Justine’s door late on Sunday night to ask her to speed the departing visitors.

She pleaded this necessity as an excuse for her intrusion, and the playful haste of her manner showed a nervous shrinking from any renewal of conﬁdence; but [ 347 ]