Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/111

"You missed him after all———?" he said.

"I—oh, no, I didn't."

"You didn't? But I was with him all the time. We didn't see you———"

"No, but I saw—distinctly. That was all I went for," she jerked back.

He slipped his arm through hers. "This crowd terrifies me. I'm glad you waited for me," he said.

He saw her pleasure, but she merely answered: "I'm dying of thirst, aren't you?"

"Yes—or hunger, or something. Could we find a laiterie?"

They found one, and sat down among early clerks and shop-girls, and a few dishevelled women with swollen faces whom Campton had noticed in the station. One of them, who sat opposite an elderly man, had drawn out a pocket mirror and was powdering her nose.

Campton hated to see women powder their noses—one of the few merits with which he credited Julia Brant was that of never having adopted these dirty modern fashions, of continuing to make her toilet in private "like a lady," as people used to say when he was young. But now the gesture charmed him, for he had recognized the girl who had been sobbing in the station.

"How game she is! I like that. But why is she so frightened?" he wondered. For he saw that her choco-