Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/366

his safety was bitter enough. This trivial barren creature to be his all—it seemed the parody of Campton's own youth! And Julia, after all, had been only a girl when he had met her, inexperienced and still malleable. A man less absorbed in his art, less oblivious of the daily material details of life, might conceivably have made something of her. But this little creature, with her farrago of false ideas, her vanity, her restlessness, her undisguised desire to keep George and yet not lose her world, had probably reached the term of her development, and would trip on through an eternal infancy of fads and frenzies.

Luckily, as Mr. Brant said, they could use her for the time; use her better, no doubt, than had she been a more finely tempered instrument. Campton was still pondering on these things as he set out for the restaurant where he had agreed to meet Boylston and Dastrey. At the foot of his own stairs he was surprised to run against Boylston under the porte-cochère. They gave each other a quick questioning look, as men did when they encountered each other unexpectedly in those days.

"Anything up? Oh, the money—you've come for the money?" Campton remembered that he had left the bag upstairs.

"The money? Haven't you heard? Louis Dastrey's killed," said Boylston.

They stood side by side in the doorway, while Campton's darkened mind struggled anew with the