Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/66

effigy of a young knight"—though he had instinctively changed the word as it formed itself. He leaned in the doorway, the sketch-book in hand, and continued to gaze at his son. It was the clinging sheet, no doubt, that gave him that look . . . and the white glare of the electric burner.

If war came, that was just the way a boy might lie on a battle-field—or afterward in a hospital bed. Not his boy, thank heaven; but very probably his boy's friends: hundreds and thousands of boys like his boy, the age of his boy, with a laugh like his boy's. . . The wicked waste of it! Well, that was what war meant. . . what to-morrow might bring to millions of parents like himself.

He stiffened his shoulders, and opened the sketchbook again. What watery stuff was he made of, he wondered? Just because the boy lay as if he were posing for a tombstone!. . . What of Signorelli, who had sat at his dead son's side and drawn him, tenderly, minutely, while the coffin waited?

Well, damn Signorelli—that was all! Campton threw down his book, turned out the sitting-room lights, and limped away to bed.