Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/433

And she threw herself down on the divan in a storm of desolate sobbing.

After he had comforted her as best he could, and she had gone away, Campton continued to wander up and down the studio forlornly. That cry of hers kept on echoing in his ears: "I've never in my life been happy enough to be so unhappy!" It associated itself suddenly with a phrase of Boylston's that he had brushed away unheeding: "You've had your son—you have him still; but those others have never had anything."

Yes; Campton saw now that it was true of poor Madge Talkett, as it was of Adele Anthony and Mr. Brant, and even in a measure of Julia. They had never—no, not even George's mother—had anything, in the close inextricable sense in which Campton had had his son. And it was only now, in his own hour of destitution, that he understood how much greater the depth of their poverty had been. He recalled the frightened embarrassed look of the young lieutenant whom he had discountenanced by his tears; and he said to himself: "The only thing that helps is to be able to do things for people. I suppose that's why Brant's always trying———"

Julia too: it was strange that his thoughts should turn to her with such peculiar pity. It was not because the boy had been born of her body: Campton did not see her now, as he once bad in a brief moment