Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/532

Rh Amherst did not heed this injunction. He stood motionless, gripping the back of a chair, as if his next gesture might be to lift and hurl it at the speaker.

“Ask her” Wyant repeated.

Amherst turned his head slowly, and his dull gaze rested on his wife. His face looked years older—lips and eyes moved as heavily as an old man’s.

As he looked at her, Justine came forward without speaking, and laid the little morocco case in his hand. He held it there a moment, as if hardly understanding her action—then he tossed it on the table at his elbow, and walked up to Wyant.

“You hound,” he said—“now go!”

XXXVI

HEN Wyant had left the room, and the house-door had closed on him, Amherst spoke to his wife.

“Come upstairs,” he said.

Justine followed him, scarcely conscious where she went, but moving already with a lighter tread. Part of her weight of misery had been lifted with Wyant’s going. She had suffered less from the fear of what her husband might think than from the shame of making her avowal in her defamer’s presence. And her faith in Amherst’s comprehension had begun to revive. He [ 516 ]