Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/395

The words thrust Campton back into new depths of perplexity. "A pretext?" he echoed.

"My dear old Dad—don't you guess? She's come to care for me awfully; if we'd gone all the lengths she wanted, and then I'd got killed, there would have been nothing on earth left for her. I hadn't the right, don't you see? We chaps haven't any futures to dispose of till this job we're in is finished. Of course, if I come back, and she can make up her mind to break with everything she's used to, we shall marry; but if things go wrong I'd rather leave her as she is, safe in her little old rut. So many people can't live out of one—and she's one of them, poor child, though she's so positive she isn't."

Campton sat chilled and speechless as the motor whirled them on through the hushed streets. It paralyzed his faculties to think that in a moment more they would be at the station.

"It's awfully fine: your idea," he stammered at length. "Awfully—magnanimous." But he still felt the chill down his spine.

"Oh, it's only that things look to us so different—so indescribably different—and always will, I suppose, even after this business is over. We seem to be sealed to it for life."

"Poor girl—poor girl!" Campton thought within himself. Aloud he said: "My dear chap, of course you can count on my being—my doing———"