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 eyebrows, 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.
Campton rose with a movement of pity and laid his hand on her shoulder. “My dear child, if your husband cares for you, give up my son.”
Her face fell, and she drew back. “Oh, but you don’t understand—not in the least! It’s not possible—it’s not moral——. You know I’m all for the new morality. First of all, we must be true to self.” She paused, and then broke out: “You tell me to give him up because you think he’s tired of me. But he’s not—I know he’s not! It’s his new ideas that you don’t understand, any more than I do. It’s the war that has changed him. He says he wants only things that last—that are permanent—things that hold a man fast. That sometimes he feels as if he were being swept away on a flood, and were trying to catch at things—at anything—as he’s rushed along under the waves.... He says he wants quiet, monotony ... to be sure the same things will happen every day. When we go out together he sometimes stands for a quarter of an hour and stares at the same building, or at the Seine under the bridges. But he’s happy, I’m sure.... I’ve never seen him happier ... only it’s in a way I can’t make out....”
“Ah, my dear, if it comes to that—I’m not sure that I can. Not sure enough to help you, I’m afraid.”
She looked at him, disappointed. “You won’t speak to him then?”
“Ah, he frightens you—just as he does me!”
She pulled her hat down on her troubled brow, gathered up her furs, and took another sidelong peep at the glass. Then she turned toward the door. On the threshold she paused and looked back at Campton. “Don’t you see,” she cried, “that if I were to give George up he’d get himself sent straight back to the front?”