A SON AT THE FRONT
a heart," he thought, "or the war couldn't have made her so much handsomer."
Mme. de Dolmetsch leaned closer: a breath of incense floated from her conventual draperies.
"I know why you came," she continued; "you were good to that poor little Davril." She clutched Campton suddenly with a blue-veined hand. "My dear friend, can anything justify such horrors? Isn't it abominable that boys like that should be murdered? That some senile old beast of a diplomatist should decree, after a good dinner, that all we love best must be offered up?" She caught his hands again, her liturgical scent enveloping him. "Campton, I know you feel as I do." She paused, pressing his fingers hard, her beautiful mouth trembling. "For God's sake tell me," she implored, "how you've managed to keep your son from the front!"
Campton drew away, red and inarticulate. "I—my son? Those things depend on the authorities. My boy's health . . . " he stammered.
"Yes, yes; I know. Your George is delicate. But so is my Ladislas—dreadfully. The lungs too. I've trembled for him for so long; and now, at any moment . . . " Two tears gathered on her long lashes and rolled down . . . "at any moment he may be taken from the War Office, where he's doing invaluable work, and forced into all that blood and horror; he may be brought back to me like those poor creatures up-stairs, who are
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