Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/549

Rh about her cheek: “Don’t talk, dear … let us never talk of it again.…” And in the clasp of his arms her terror and anguish subsided, giving way, not to the deep peace of tranquillized thought, but to a confused wellbeing that lulled all thought to sleep.

UT thought could never be long silent between them; and Justine’s triumph lasted but a day.

With its end she saw what it had been made of: the ascendency of youth and sex over his subjugated judgment. Her ﬁrst impulse was to try and maintain it—why not use the protective arts with which love inspired her? She who lived so keenly in the brain could live as intensely in her feelings; her quick imagination tutored her looks and words, taught her the spells to weave about shorn giants. And for a few days she and Amherst lost themselves in this self-evoked cloud of passion, both clinging fast to the visible, the palpable in their relation, as if conscious already that its ﬁner essence had ﬂed.

Amherst made no allusion to what had passed, asked for no details, offered no reassurances—behaved as if the whole episode had been effaced from his mind. And from VVyant there came no sound: he seemed to have disappeared from life as he had from their talk. [ 533 ]