rmed; then its perfect surface had begun to show a
flaw. Amherst had always conveniently supposed that the poet's line
summed up the good woman's rule of ethics: _He for God only, she for God
in him._ It was for the god in him, surely, that she had loved him: for
that first glimpse of an "ampler ether, a diviner air" that he had
brought into her cramped and curtained life. He could never, now, evoke
that earlier delusion without feeling on its still-tender surface the
keen edge of Mrs. Ansell's smile. She, no doubt, could have told him at
any time why Bessy had married him: it was for his _beaux yeux_, as Mrs.
Ansell would have put it--because he was young, handsome, persecuted, an
ardent lover if not a subtle one--because Bessy had met him at the fatal
moment, because her family had opposed the marriage--because, in brief,
the gods, that day, may have been a little short of amusement. Well,
they were having their laugh out now--there were moments when high
heaven seemed to ring with it....

With these thoughts at his heels Amherst strode on, overtaken now and
again by the wheels of departing guests from the garden-party, and
knowing, as they passed him, what was in their minds--envy of his
success, admiration of his cleverness in achieving it, and a little
half-contemptuous pity for his wife, who, with her wealth and looks,
might have done so much better. Certainly, if the case could have been
put to Hanaford--the Hanaford of the Gaines garden-party--it would have
sided with Bessy to a voice. And how much justice was there in what he
felt would have been the unanimous verdict of her class? Was his mother
right in hinting that he was sacrificing Bessy to the mills? But the
mills _were_ Bessy--at least he had thought so when he married her!
They were her particular form of contact with life, the expression of
her relation to her fellow-men, her pretext, her opportunity--unless
they were merely a vast purse in which to plunge for her pin-money! He
had fancied it would rest with him to determine from which of these
stand-points she should view Westmore; and at the outset she had
enthusiastically viewed it from his. In her eager adoption of his ideas
she had made a pet of the mills, organizing the Mothers' Club, laying
out a recreation-ground on the Hopewood property, and playing with
pretty plans in water-colour for the Emergency Hospital and the building
which was to contain the night-schools, library and gymnasium; but ev