Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/536

Rh you understand. No one who was not there at the time could know what it was to see her suffer.”

“You thought it all over, then—decided deﬁnitely against telling me?”

“I did not have to think long. I felt I had d0ne right—I still feel so—and I was sure you would feel so, if you were in the same circumstances.”

There was another pause. Then Amherst said: “And last September—at Hanaford?”

It was the word for which she had waited—the word of her inmost fears. She felt the blood mount to her face.

“Did you see no difference—no special reason for telling me then?”

“Yes” she faltered.

“Yet you said nothing.“

“No.“

Silence again. Her eyes strayed to the clock, and some dim association of ideas told her that Cicely would soon be coming in.

“Why did you say nothing?”

He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he spoke; and she looked up and faced him.

“Because I regarded the question as settled. I had decided it in my own mind months before, and had never regretted my decision. I should have thought it morbid … unnatural … to go over the whole subject [ 520 ]