Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/505

Rh “I’ll write the cheque at once.”

“No—no,” she protested, “there’s no hurry.”

But he went back to his room, and she turned again to the toilet—table. Her face was painful to look at still—but a light was breaking through its fear. She felt the touch of a narcotic in her veins. How calm and peaceful the room was—and how delicious to think that her life would go on in it, safely and peacefully, in the old familiar way!

As she swept up her hair, passing the comb through it, and ﬂinging it dexterously over her lifted wrist, she heard Amherst cross the ﬂoor behind her, and pause to lay something on her writing—table.

“Thank you,” she murmured again, lowering her head as he passed.

“When the door had closed on him she thrust the last pin into her hair, dashed some drops of Cologne on her face, and went over to the writing-table. As she picked up the cheque she saw it was for three hundred dollars.

XXXIV

NCE or twice, in the days that followed, Justine found herself thinking that she had never known happiness before. The old state of secure well-being seemed now like a dreamless sleep; but this new bliss, on its sharp pinnacle ringed with ﬁre—this [ 489 ]