A SON AT THE FRONT
He had his own reasons for agreeing to the Davrils' suggestion that the picture should be returned to him; and presently these reasons came back. "They'd never dare to sell it themselves; but why shouldn't I sell it for them?" he had thought, remembering their denuded rooms, and the rusty smell of the women's mourning. It cost him a pang to part with a study of his boy; but he was in a superstitious and expiatory mood, and eager to act on it.
He remembered having been told by Boylston that "The Friends of French Art" had their office in the Palais Royal, and he made his way through the deserted arcades to the door of a once-famous restaurant.
Behind the plate-glass windows young women with rolled-up sleeves and straw in their hair were delving in packing-cases, while, divided from them by an improvised partition, another group were busy piling on the cloak-room shelves garments such as had never before dishonoured them.
Campton stood fascinated by the sight of the things these young women were sorting: pink silk combinations, sporting ulsters in glaring black and white checks, straw hats wreathed with last summer's sunburnt flowers, high-heeled satin shoes split on the instep, and fringed and bugled garments that suggested obsolete names like "dolman" and "mantle," and looked like the costumes dug out of a country-house attic by amateurs preparing to play "Caste." Was it possible
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