Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/428

Rh in need of change, and having installed himself at Lynbrook he gave up his days and nights to Mrs. Amherst’s case.

“If any one can save her, Wyant will,” Dr. Garford had declared to Justine, when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons held their third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He had seen cases—they had all seen cases … but just at present the signs might point either way.… Meanwhile Wyant’s conﬁdence was an invaluable asset toward the patient’s chances of recovery. Hopefulness in the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient-contact with such faith had been known to work miracles.

Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope. But whichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. She believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery—that conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant’s imagination, of his boyish ambition to achieve the impossible—and every hopeful symptom pointed, in her mind, only to a longer period of useless suffering.

Her hours at Bessy’s side deepened her revolt against the energy spent in the ﬁght with death. Since Bessy had learned that her husband was returning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except for a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicely [ 412 ]