Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/349

the concert given in my house?" Her eyes rested on him with renewed timidity. "Is it—disagreeable to you to see me?" she asked.

"Disagreeable? My dear child, no." He paused, increasingly embarrassed. What did she expect him to say next? To thank her for having sent him the orderly's letter? It seemed to him impossible to plunge into the subject uninvited. Surely it was for her to give him the opening, if she wished to.

"Well, no!" she broke out. "I've never once pretended to you, have I? The money's a pretext. I wanted to see you—here, alone, with no one to disturb us."

Campton felt a confused stirring of relief and fear. All his old dread of scenes, commotions, disturbing emergencies—of anything that should upset his perpetually vibrating balance—was blent with the passionate desire to hear what his visitor had to say.

"You—it was good of you to think of sending us that letter," he faltered.

She frowned in her anxious way and looked away from him. "Afterward I was afraid you'd be angry."

"Angry? How could I?" He groped for a word. "Surprised—yes. I knew nothing . . . nothing about you and . . ."

"Not even that it was I who bought the sketch of him—the one that Léonce Black sold for you last year?"

The blood rushed to Campton's face. Suddenly he