Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/556

Rh you pain. But if I speak I must say everything—I must follow this thing up to its uttermost consequences. That’s what I want to make clear to you.”

Her heart sank with a foreboding of new peril. “What consequences?”

“Can’t you see for yourself—when you look about this house?”

“This house?”

He dropped her hands and took an abrupt turn across the room.

“I owe everything to her,” he broke out, “all I am, all I have, all I have been able to give you—and I must go and tell her father that you.…”

“Stop—stop!” she cried, lifting her hands as if to keep off a blow.

“No—don’t make me stop. We must face it,” he said doggedly.

“But this—this isn’t the truth! You put it as if—almost as if"

“Yes—don’t ﬁnish.——Has it occurred to you that he may think that?” Amherst asked with a terrible laugh. But at that she recovered her courage, as she always did when an extreme call was made on it.

“No—I don’t believe it! If he does, it will be because you think it yourself.… Her voice sank, and she lifted her hands and pressed them to her temples. “And if you think it, nothing matters … one way or [ 540 ]