Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/550

Rh Toward the end of the week Amherst announced that he must return to Hanaford; and Justine at once declared her intention of going with him.

He seemed surprised, disconcerted almost; and for the ﬁrst time the shadow of what had happened fell visibly between them.

“But ought you to leave Cicely before Mr. Langhope comes back?” he suggested.

“He will be here in two days.”

“But he will expect to ﬁnd you.”

“It is almost the ﬁrst of April. We are to have Cicely with us for the summer. There is no reason why I should not go back to my work at Westmore.”

There was in fact no reason that he could produce; and the next day they returned to Hanaford together.

With her perceptions strung to the last pitch of sensitiveness, she felt a change in Amherst as soon as they re-entered Bessy’s house. He was still scrupulously considerate, almost too scrupulously tender; but with a tinge of lassitude, like a man who tries to keep up under the stupefying approach of illness. And she began to hate the power by which she held him. It was not thus they had once walked together, free in mind though so linked in habit and feeling; when their love was not a deadening drug but a vivifying element that cleared thought instead of stiﬂing it. There were moments when she felt that open alienation would be [ 534 ]