Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/354

stand him. He says love's not the same kind of feeling to him that it was. There's something of Meredith's that he quotes—I wish I could remember it—something about a mortal lease."

"Good Lord," Campton groaned, not so much at the hopelessness of the case as at the hopelessness of quoting Meredith to her. After a while he said abruptly: "You must forgive my asking: but things change sometimes—they change imperceptibly. Do you think he's as much in love with you as ever?"

He had been half afraid of offending her: but she appeared to consider the question impartially, and without a shadow of resentment. "Sometimes I think more—because in the beginning it wasn't meant to last. And now—if he wants to marry me? Oh, I wish I knew what to do!"

Campton continued to ponder. "There's one more question, since we're talking frankly: what does Talkett know of all this?"

She looked frightened. "Oh, nothing, nothing!"

"And you've no idea how he would take it?"

She examined the question with tortured eye-brows, and at length, to Campton's astonishment, brought out: "Magnificently———"

"He'd be generous, you mean? But it would go hard with him?"

"Oh, dreadfully, dreadfully!" She seemed to need the assurance to restore her shaken self-approval.