Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/432

then the door was pushed timidly open, and Mrs. Talkett came in. He had not seen her since the day of George’s funeral, when he had fancied he detected her in a shrunken black-veiled figure hurrying past in the meaningless line of mourners.

In her usual abrupt fashion she began, without a greeting: "I’ve come to say goodbye; I’m going to America."

He looked at her remotely, hardly hearing what she said. "To America?"

"Yes; to join my husband."

He continued to consider her in silence, and she frowned in her perplexed and fretful way. "He’s at Plattsburg, you know." Her eyes wandered unseeingly about the studio. "There’s nothing else to do, is there—now—here or anywhere? So I sail to-morrow; I mean to take a house somewhere near him. He’s not well, and he writes that he misses me. The life in camp is so unsuited to him———"

Campton still listened absently. "Oh, you’re right to go," he agreed at length, supposing it was what she expected of him.

"Am I?" She half-smiled. "What’s right and what’s wrong? I don’t know any longer. I’m only trying to do what I suppose George would have wanted." She stood uncertainly in front of Campton. "All I do know," she cried, with a sharp break in her voice, "is that I’ve never in my life been happy enough to be so unhappy!"