Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/72

luncheon-table in the high cool dining-room of the Avenue Marigny, with the famous Hubert Robert panels, and the Louis XV silver and Sèvres; while he, the father, George's father, sat alone at the soiled table of a frowsy wine-shop.

Well—it was he who had so willed it. Life was too crazy a muddle—and who could have foreseen that he might have been repaid for twenty-six years with such a wife by keeping an undivided claim on such a son?

His meal over, he hastened back to the studio, hoping to find the dancer there. Fortin-Lescluze had sworn to bring her at two, and Campton was known to exact absolute punctuality. He had put the final touch to his fame by refusing to paint the mad young Duchesse de la Tour Crenelée—who was exceptionally paintable—because she had kept him waiting three-quarters of an hour. But now, though it was nearly three, and the dancer and her friend had not come, Campton dared not move, lest he should miss Fortin-Lescluze.

"Sent for by a rich patient in a war-funk; or else hanging about in the girl's dressing-room while she polishes her toe-nails," Campton reflected; and sulkily sat down to wait.

He had never been willing to have a telephone. To him it was a live thing, a kind of Laocoon-serpent that caught one in its coils and dragged one struggling to the receiver. His friends had spent all their logic in