Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/128
A SON AT THE FRONT
sored, and that a soldier can't always blurt out everything he thinks."
Miss Anthony followed his glance about the room, and her eyes paused with his on her own portrait, now in the place of honour over the mantelpiece, where it hung incongruously above a menagerie of china animals and a collection of trophies from the Marne.
"I dropped in at the Luxembourg yesterday," she said. "Do you know whom I saw there? Anderson Brant. He was looking at George's portrait, and turned as red as a beet. You ought to do him a sketch of George some day—after this."
Campton's face darkened. He knew it was partly through Brant's influence that George had been detached from his regiment and given a staff job in the Argonne; but Miss Anthony's reminder annoyed him. The Brants had acted through sheer selfish cowardice, the desire to safeguard something which belonged to them, something they valued as they valued their pictures and tapestries, though of course in a greater degree; whereas he, Campton, was sustained by a principle which he could openly avow, and was ready to discuss with any one who had the leisure to listen.
He had explained all this so often to Miss Anthony that the words rose again to his lips without an effort. "If it had been a national issue I should have wanted him to be among the first: such as our having to fight Mexico, for instance———"
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