Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/378

"If we're giving all we care for so that those little worms can reopen their dance-halls on the ruins, what in God's name is left?" Campton questioned.

Dastrey sat looking at the ground, his grey head bent between his hands. "France," he said.

"What's France, with no men left?"

"Well—I suppose, an Idea."

"Yes. I suppose so." Campton stood up heavily.

An Idea: they must cling to that. If Dastrey, from the depths of his destitution, could still feel it and live by it, why did it not help Campton more? An Idea: that was what France, ever since she had existed, had always been in the story of civilization; a luminous point about which striving visions and purposes could rally. And in that sense she had been as much Campton's spiritual home as Dastrey's; to thinkers, artists, to all creators, she had always been a second country. If France went, western civilization went with her; and then all they had believed in and been guided by would perish. That was what George had felt; it was what had driven him from the Argonne to the Aisne. Campton felt it too; but dully, through a fog. His son was safe; yes—but too many other men's sons were dying. There was no spot where his thoughts could rest: there were moments when the sight of George, intact and immaculate—his arm at last out of its sling—rose before his father like a reproach.

The feeling was senseless; but there it was. Whenever