Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/323

Sister who hurried up to say that he'd been out long enough. Campton often caught him fixing this look of serene benevolence on the people who were gradually repeopling his world, a look which seemed to say that they were new to him, yet dimly familiar. He was like a traveller returning after incommunicable adventures to the place where he had lived as a child; and, as happens with such wanderers, the trivial and insignificant things, the things a newcomer would not have noticed, seemed often to interest him most of all.

He said nothing more about himself, but with the look of recovered humanness which made him more lovable if less remotely beautiful, began to question his father.

"Boylston wrote that you'd begun to paint again. I'm glad."

"Oh, I only took it up for a while last spring."

"Portraits?"

"A few. But I chucked it. I couldn't stand the atmosphere."

"What atmosphere?"

"Of people who could want to be painted at such a time. People who wanted to 'secure a Campton.' Oh, and then the dealers—God!"

George seemed unimpressed. "After all, life's got to go on."

"Yes—that's what they say! And the only result is to make me doubt if theirs has."