Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/251

his legs should fail him, and signing to her to take a chair.

"Well—he was not there!" she repeated excitedly. "It's what we might have known—since he's changed his address."

"Then he didn't see him?" Campton interrupted, the ferocious joy of the discovery crowding out his wrath and wonder.

"Anderson didn't? No. He wasn't there, I tell you!"

"The H. Q. has been moved?"

"No, it hasn't. Anderson saw one of the officers. He said George had been sent on a mission."

"To another H. Q.?"

"That's what they said. I don't believe it."

"What do you believe?"

"I don't know. Anderson's sure they told him the truth. The officer he saw is a friend of George's, and he said George was expected back that very evening."

Campton sat looking at her uncertainly. Did she dread, or did she rather wish, to disbelieve the officer's statement? Where did she hope or fear that George had gone? And what were Campton's own emotions? As confused, no doubt, as hers—as undefinable. The insecurity of his feelings moved him to a momentary compassion for hers, which were surely pitiable, whatever else they were. Then a savage impulse swept away every other, and he said: "Wherever George was, Brant's visit will have done him no good."