Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/425

Rh “You feel better tonight?”

“I breathe … better …” The words came brokenly, between long pauses, but without the hard agonized gasps of the previous night.

“That’s a good sign.” Justine paused, and then, letting her ﬁngers glide once or twice over the back of Bessy’s hand—“You know, dear, Mr. Amherst is coming,” she leaned down to say.

Bessy’s eyes moved again, slowly, inscrutably. She had never asked for her husband.

“Soon?” she whispered.

“He had started on a long journey—to out-of-the-way places—to study something about cotton growing—my message has just overtaken him,” Justine explained.

Bessy lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so long without speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back into the somnolent state that intervened between her moments of complete consciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again, and her lips stirred.

“He will be … long … coming?”

“Some days.”

“How … many?”

“We can’t tell yet.”

Silence again. Bessy’s features seemed to shrink into a kind of waxen quietude—as though her face [ 409 ]