Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/388

and kissed the old woman's cheek; then he got to his feet and saw his father.

"The Chasseur Alpin," he merely said, picking up the letter and handing it to Campton. "It was the grandson she counted on most."

Mme. Lebel caught sight of Campton, smoothed herself and stood up also.

"I had found him a wife—a strong healthy girl with a good dot. There go my last great-grandchildren! For the other will be killed too. I don't understand any more, do you?" She made an automatic attempt to straighten the things on the table, but her hands beat the air and George had to lead her downstairs.

It was that day that Campton said to himself: "We shan't keep him in Paris much longer." But the heavy weeks of spring and summer passed, the inconclusive conflict at the front went on with its daily toll of dead, and George still stuck to his job. Campton, during this time, continued to avoid the Brants as much as possible. His wife's conversation was intolerable to him; her obtuse optimism, now that she had got her son back, was even harder to bear than the guiltily averted glance of Mr. Brant, between whom and Campton their last talk had hung a lasting shadow of complicity.

But most of all Campton dreaded to meet the Talketts; the wife with her flushed cheek-bones and fixed eyes, the husband still affably and continuously ar-