Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/231

in paintless boxes, all heaped up like the scenery of a bankrupt theatre, he felt the pang of Nature's obstinate renewal in a world of death. Yet he also felt the stir of the blossoming trees in the form of a more restless discontent, a duller despair, a new sense of inadequacy. How could war go on when spring had come?

Mrs. Brant, having reduced her household and given over her drawing-rooms to charity, received in her boudoir, a small room contrived by a clever upholsterer to simulate a seclusion of which she had never felt the need. Photographs strewed the low tables; and facing the door Campton saw George's last portrait, in uniform, enclosed in an expensive frame. Campton had received the same photograph, and thrust it into a drawer; he thought a young man on a safe staff job rather ridiculous in uniform, and at the same time the sight filled him with a secret dread.

Mrs. Brant was bidding good-bye to a lady in mourning whom Campton did not know. His approach through the carpeted antechamber had been unnoticed, and as he entered the room he heard Mrs. Brant say in French, apparently in reply to a remark of her visitor: "Bridge, chère Madame? No; not yet. I confess I haven't the courage to take up my old life. We mothers with sons at the front . . ."

"Ah," exclaimed the other lady, "there I don't agree with you. I think one owes it to them to go on as if one were as little afraid as they are. That is what