Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/61

the story, was curious to know him, and asked, one day, when their friendship had progressed, to see the sketches he had brought back from his fugue.

"Comme je vous comprends!" she had murmured, her grey eyes deep in his; but perceiving that she did not allude to the sketches, but to his sentimental adventure, Campton pushed the drawings out of sight, vexed with himself for having shown them.

He forgave the Russian lady her artistic obtuseness for the sake of her human comprehension. They had met at the loneliest moment of his life, when his art seemed to have failed him like everything else, and when the struggle to get possession of his son, which had been going on in the courts ever since the break with Julia, had finally been decided against him. His Russian friend consoled, amused and agitated him, and after a few years drifted out of his life as irresponsibly as she had drifted into it; and he found himself, at forty-five, a lonely thwarted man, as full as ever of faith in his own powers, but with little left in human nature or in opportunity. It was about this time that he heard that Julia was to marry again, and that his boy would have a stepfather.

He knew that even his own family thought it "the best thing that could happen." They were tired of clubbing together to pay Julia's alimony, and heaved a united sigh of relief when they learned that her second choice had fallen, not on the bankrupt "foreign Count"