Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/87

"All right! You promised me something awful for to-night," Campton grinned sardonically.

"Do you mind? I'm sorry."

"It's only Dastrey's damned chauvinism that I mind. Why don't you ask Adele to join the chorus?"

"Well—you'll like Boylston," said George.

Dastrey, after all, turned out less tragic and aggressive than Campton had feared. His irritability had vanished, and though he was very grave he seemed preoccupied only with the fate of Europe, and not with his personal stake in the affair.

But the older men said little. The youngsters had the floor, and Campton, as he listened to George and young Louis Dastrey, was overcome by a sense of such dizzy unreality that he had to grasp the arms of his ponderous leather armchair to assure himself that he was really in the flesh and in the world.

What! Two days ago they were still in the old easy Europe, a Europe in which one could make plans, engage passages on trains and steamers, argue about pictures, books, theatres, ideas, draw as much money as one chose out of the bank, and say: "The day after to-morrow I'll be in Berlin or Vienna or Belgrade." And here they sat in their same evening clothes, about the same shining mahogany writing-table, apparently the same group of free and independent youths and elderly men, and in reality prisoners, every one of