Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/480

Rh “And just now,” he blurted out, “when you said you might not stay much longer with Cicely—I thought of the visit—and wondered if there was some one you meant to marry.…”

A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened under the veil she had lowered. “No—I don’t mean to marry,” she said, half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.

Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine—yet Amherst did not dare to speak.

She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted street. “It’s growing dark—I must go home,’ she said.

“Yes,” he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires that he heard—the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living? All within him was ﬂood-tide: this was the top of life, surely—to feel her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: “This is the mate of my mind.”

He began again abruptly. “Wouldn’t you marry, if it gave you the chance to do what you say—if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to make [ 464 ]