Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/330

"Not human?"

"I don't mean that you're inhuman. But you see things differently."

"I don't want to see anything but one; and that's my own son. How shall I ever see George if he's at the Avenue Marigny?"

"He'll come to you."

"Yes—when he's not at Mrs. Talkett's!"

Miss Anthony frowned. The subject had been touched upon between them soon after Campton's return, but Miss Anthony had little light to throw on it: George had been as mute with her as with every one else, and she knew Mrs. Talkett but slightly, and seldom saw her. Yet Campton perceived that she could not hear the young woman named without an involuntary contraction of her brows.

"I wish I liked her!" she murmured.

"Mrs. Talkett?"

"Yes—I should think better of myself if I did. And it might be useful. But I can't—I can't!"

Campton said within himself: "Oh, women———!" For his own resentment had died out long ago. He could think of the affair now as one of hundreds such as happen to young men; he was even conscious of regarding it, in some unlit secret fold of himself, as a probable guarantee of George's wanting to remain in Paris, another subterranean way of keeping him, should such be needed. Perhaps that was what Miss Anthony