f: 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 Wyant there came no sound: he seemed to
have disappeared from life as he had from their talk.

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 easier, because it would be nearer the truth. And at such moments
she longed to speak, to beg him to utter his mind, to go with her once
for all into the depths of the subject they continued to avoid. But at
the last her heart always failed her: she could not face the thought of
losing him, of hearing him speak estrang