Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/238

"But your son will." She looked at him profoundly. "You know I know your son—we're friends. And I'm sure he would feel as I feel—he would tell you to go back to your painting."

For months past any allusion to George had put Campton on his guard, stiffening him with improvised defences. But this appeal of Mrs. Talkett's found him unprepared, demoralized by the spring sweetness, and by his secret sense of his son's connivance with it. What was war—any war—but an old European disease, an ancestral blood-madness seizing on the first pretext to slake its frenzy? Campton reminded himself again that he was the son of free institutions, of a country in no way responsible for the centuries of sinister diplomacy which had brought Europe to ruin, and was now trying to drag down America. George was right, the Brants were right, this young woman through whose lips Campton's own secret instinct spoke was right.

He was silent so long that she rose with the anxious frown that appeared to be her way of blushing, and faltered out: "I'm boring you—I'd better go."

She picked up her hat and held its cataract of feathers poised above her slanted head.

"Wait—let me do you like that!" Campton cried. It had never before occurred to him that she was paintable; but as she stood there with uplifted arm the long line flowing from her wrist to her hip suddenly wound itself about him like a net.