A SON AT THE FRONT
As Campton turned to go the physician laid a hand on his shoulder and spoke with sudden fierce emotion.
"Yes: Jean is an only son—an only child. For his mother and myself it's not a trifle—having our only son in the war."
There was no allusion to the dancer, no hint that Fortin remembered her; it was Campton who lowered his gaze before the look in the other father's eyes.
VII
A son in the war———"
The words followed Campton down the stairs.
What did it mean, and what must it feel like, for parents in this safe denationalized modern world to be suddenly saying to each other with white lips: A son in the war?
He stood on the kerbstone, staring ahead of him and forgetting whither he was bound. The world seemed to lie under a spell, and its weight was on his limbs and brain. Usually any deep inward trouble made him more than ever alive to the outward aspect of things; but this new world in which people talked glibly of sons in the war had suddenly become invisible to him, and he did not know where he was, or what he was staring at. He noted the fact, and remembered a story of St. Bernard—he thought it was—walking beside a beautiful lake in supersensual ecstasy, and saying afterward: "Was there a lake? I didn't see it."
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