Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/386

Rh decision once reached, hope ﬂowed back to her heart—the joy of action so often deceived her into immediate faith in its results!

“Dear Mr. Amherst,” she wrote, “the last time I saw you, you told me you would remember what I said. I ask you to do so now—to remember that I urged you not to be away too long. I believe you ought to come back now, though I know Bessy will not ask you to. I am writing without her knowledge, but with the conviction that she needs you, though perhaps without knowing it herself.…”

She paused, and laid down her pen. Why did it make her so happy to write to him? Was it merely the sense of recovered helpfulness, or something warmer, more personal, that made it a joy to trace his name, and to remind him of their last intimate exchange of words? Well—perhaps it was that too. There were moments when she was so mortally lonely that any sympathetic contact with another life sent a glow into her veins—that she was thankful to warm herself at any ﬁre.

XXV

ESSY,languidly glancing through her midday mail some ﬁve days later, uttered a slight exclamation as she withdrew her ﬁnger-tip from the ﬂap of the envelope she had begun to open. [ 370 ]