Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/313

so he had to. She had to be thanked, of course . . . but it seems to me so dreadful, so very dreadful. . . our boy . . . that woman. . .

Campton did not press her further. He sat dumb-founded, trying to take in what she was so obviously trying to communicate, and yet instinctively resisting the approach of the revelation he foresaw.

"George—Mrs. Talkett?" He forced himself to couple the two names, unnatural as their union seemed.

"I supposed you knew. Isn't it dreadful? A woman old enough———" She drew a letter from her bag.

He interrupted her. "Is that letter what you want to show me?"

"Yes. She insisted on Anderson's keeping it—for you. She said it belonged to us, I believe. . . It seems there was a promise—made the night before he was mobilised—that if anything happened he would get word to her. . . No thought of us!" She began to whimper.

Campton reached out for the letter. Mrs. Talkett—Madge Talkett and George! That was where the boy had gone then, that last night when his father, left alone at the Crillon, had been so hurt by his desertion! That was the name which, in his hours of vigil in the little white room, Campton had watched for on his son's lips, the name which, one day, sooner or later, he would have to hear them pronounce. . . How little he had thought, as he sat studying the mysterious