Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/362

Mr. Brant's look seemed to say that making Julia understand had proved a no less onerous task for his maturity than for Campton's youth.

"If you don't object—perhaps the matter might, for the present, continue to be kept between you and me," he suggested.

"Oh, by all means. What I want," Campton pursued, "is to get him out of this business altogether. They wouldn't be happy—they couldn't be. She's too much like———" He broke off, frightened at what he had been about to say. "Too much," he emended, "like the usual fool of a woman that every boy of George's age thinks he wants simply because he can't get her."

"And you say she came to you for advice?"

"She came to me to persuade him to give up the idea of a divorce. Apparently she's ready for anything short of that. It's a queer business. She seems sorry for Talkett in a way."

Mr. Brant marked his sense of the weight of this by a succession of attentive nods. He put his hands in his pockets, leaned back, and tilted his dapper toes against the gold-trellised scrap-basket. The attitude seemed to change the pale panelling of his background into a glass-and-mahogany Wall Street office.

"Won't he be satisfied with—er—all the rest, so to speak; since you say she offers it?"

"No; he won't. There's the difficulty. It seems it's