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won't be; if there were, though, I shouldn't hesitate to do what was necessary . . . use any influence. . . "

"Oh, then we agree!" broke from her in a cry of wonder.

The unconscious irony of the exclamation struck him, and increased his irritation. He remembered the tone—undefinably compassionate—in which Dastrey had said: "I perfectly understand a foreigner's taking that view" . . . But was he a foreigner, Campton asked himself? And what was the criterion of citizenship, if he, who owed to France everything that had made life worth while, could regard himself as owing her nothing, now that for the first time he might have something to give her? Well, for himself that argument was all right: preposterous as he thought war—any war—he would have offered himself to France on the instant if she had had any use for his lame carcass. But he had never bargained to give her his only son.

Mrs. Brant went on in excited argument.

"Of course you know how careful I always am to do nothing about him without consulting you; but since you feel about it as we do———" She blushed under her faint rouge. The "we" had slipped out accidentally, and Campton, aware of turning hard-lipped and grim, sat waiting for her to repair the blunder. Through the years of his poverty it had been impossible not to put up, on occasions, with that odious first person