Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/226

"You're satisfied?" she enquired.

"Yes. If that's the word." He stretched his hand toward her, and then drew it back. "But it's not: it's not the word any longer." He laboured with the need of self-expression, and the opposing instinct of concealing feelings too complex for Miss Anthony's simple gaze. How could he say: "I'm satisfied; but I wish to God that George were not"? And was he satisfied, after all? And how could he define, or even be sure that he was actually experiencing, a feeling so contradictory that it seemed to be made up of anxiety for his son's safety, shame at that anxiety, shame at George's own complacent acceptance of his lot, and terror of a possible change in that lot? There were hours when it seemed to Campton that the Furies were listening, and ready to fling their awful answer to him if he as much as whispered to himself: "Would to God that George were not satisfied!"

The sense of their haunting presence laid its clutch on him, and caused him, after a pause, to finish his phrase in another tone. "No; satisfied's not the word; I'm glad George is out of it!" he exclaimed.

Miss Anthony was folding away the letter as calmly as if it had been a refugee record. She did not appear to notice the change in Campton's voice.

"I don't pretend to your sublime detachment: you've never had a child," he sneered. (Certainly, if the Furies were listening, they would put that down to his credit!)