Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/385

Rh At any rate, the moment was a critical one, and Justine remembered with a pang that Mrs. Ansell had foreseen such a contingency, and implored her to take measures against it. She had refused, from a sincere dread of precipitating a definite estrangement—but had she been right in judging the situation so logically? With a creature of Bessy’s emotional uncertainties the result of contending inﬂuences was really incalculable—it might still be that, at this juncture, Amherst’s return would bring about a reaction of better feelings.…

Justine sat and mused on these things after leaving her friend exhausted upon a tearful pillow. She felt that she had perhaps taken too large a survey of the situation—that the question whether there could ever be happiness between this tormented pair was not one to concern those who struggled for their welfare. Most marriages are a patch-work of jarring tastes and ill-assorted ambitions—if here and there, for a moment, two colours blend, two textures are the same, so much the better for the pattern! Justine, certainly, could foresee in reunion no positive happiness for either of her friends; but she saw positive disaster for Bessy in separation from her husband.…

Suddenly she rose from her chair by the falling ﬁre, and crossed over to the writing-table. She would write to Amherst herself—she would tell him to come. The [ 369 ]