Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/367

Rh The mockery in Bessy’s voice seemed to pass into her features, hardening and contracting them as frost shrivels a ﬂower. Justine’s face, on the contrary, was suddenly illuminated by compassion, as though a light had struck up into it from the cold glitter of her friend’s unhappiness.

“Bessy! What do you mean by not coming back?”

“I mean he’s had the tact to see that we shall be more comfortable apart—without putting me to the unpleasant necessity of telling him so.”

Again the piteous echo of Blanche Carbury’s phrases! The laboured mimicry of her ideas!

Justine looked anxiously at her friend. It seemed horribly false not to mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any departure from the conventional.

“Please tell me what has happened,” she said at length.

Bessy, with a smile, released her hand. “John has gone back to the life he prefers—which I take to be a hint to me to do the same.”

Justine hesitated again; then the pressure of truth overcame every barrier of expediency. “Bessy—I ought to tell you that I saw Mr. Amherst in town the day I went to Philadelphia. He spoke of going away for a time … he seemed unhappy … but he told me he was coming back to see you ﬁrst—” She broke [ 351 ]