Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/291

in with the fight for breath. Campton said to himself that if his own boy lived he should like some day to do something for this poor devil who was his roommate. Then he looked about him and saw that the two other beds were empty.

He drew back.

The nurse was bending over the bearded man. "He'll wake presently—I'll leave you"; and she slipped out. Campton looked again at the stranger; then his glance travelled to the scarred brown hand on the sheet, a hand with broken nails and blackened finger-tips. It was George's hand, his son's, swollen, disfigured but unmistakable. The father knelt down and laid his lips on it.

"What was the first thing you felt?" Adele Anthony asked him afterward: and he answered: "Nothing."

"Yes—at the very first, I know: it's always like that. But the first thing after you began to feel anything?"

He considered, and then said slowly: "The difference."

"The difference in him?"

"In him—in life—in everything."

Miss Anthony, who understood as a rule, was evidently puzzled. "What kind of a difference?"

"Oh, a complete difference." With that she had to be content.