Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/487

Rh energetically rejoined; meeting Mrs. Dressel’s admonitory “Well, then?” with the laughing assurance that she meant to lead the conversation.

She knew well enough what the admonition meant. To Amherst, so long thwarted in his chosen work, the subject of Westmore was becoming an idée ﬁxe; and it was natural that Hanaford should class him as a man of one topic. But Justine had guessed at his other side; a side as long thwarted, and far less articulate, which she intended to wake into life. She had felt it in him from the ﬁrst, though their talks had so uniformly turned on the subject which palled on Hanaford; and it had been revealed to her during the silent hours among his books, when she had grown into such close intimacy with his mind.

She did not, assuredly, mean to spend the rest of her days talking about the Westmore mill-hands; but in the arrogance of her joy she wished to begin her married life in the setting of its habitual duties, and to achieve the victory of evoking the secret unsuspected Amherst out of the preoccupied business man chained to his task. Dull lovers might have to call on romantic scenes to wake romantic feelings; but Justine’s glancing imagination leapt to the challenge of extracting poetry from the prose of routine.

And this was precisely the triumph that the ﬁrst months brought her. To mortal eye, Amherst and [ 471 ]