Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/352

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

A SON AT THE FRONT

parted she had given him the half-promise that if they met abroad during the summer she would perhaps . . . after all. . .

Then came the war. George had been with her during those few last hours in Paris, and had dined with her and her husband (had Campton forgiven her?) the night before he was mobilised. And then, when he was gone, she had understood that only timidity, vanity, the phantom barriers of old terrors and traditions, had prevented her being to him all that he wanted. . .

She broke off abruptly, put in a few conventional words about an ill-assorted marriage, and never having been "really understood," and then, as if guessing that she was on the wrong tack, jumped up, walked to the other end of the studio, and turned back to Campton with the tears running down her ravaged face.

"And now—and now—he says he won't have me!" she lamented.

"Won't have you? But you tell me he wants you to be divorced."

She nodded, wiped away the tears, and in so doing stole an unconscious glance at the mirror above the divan. Then, seeing that the glance was detected, she burst into a sort of sobbing laugh. "My nose gets so dreadfully red when I cry," she stammered.

Campton took no notice, and she went on: "A di-

[ 340 ]