George was gone.
 
When, with a last whistle and scream, his train had ploughed its way out of the clanging station; when the last young figures clinging to the rear of the last carriage had vanished, and the bare rails again glittered up from the cindery¹ tracks, Campton turned and looked about him.
 
All the platforms of the station were crowded as he had seldom seen any place crowded, and to his surprise he found himself taking in every detail of the scene with a morbid² accuracy of observation. He had discovered, during these last days, that his artist’s vision had been strangely unsettled. Sometimes, as when he had left Fortin’s house, he saw nothing: the material world, which had always tugged³ at him with a thousand hands, vanished and left him in the void. Then again, as at present, he saw everything, saw it too clearly, in all its superfluous⁴ and negligible reality, instead of instinctively⁵ selecting, and disregarding what was not to his purpose.
 
Faces, faces—they swarmed⁶ about him, and his overwrought vision registered them one by one. Especially he noticed the faces of the women, women of all ages, all classes. These were the wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, mistresses of all those heavily laden⁷ trainfuls of French youth. He was struck with 96the same strong cheerfulness in all: some pale, some flushed, some serious, but all firmly and calmly smiling.
 
One young woman in particular his look dwelt on—a dark girl in a becoming dress—both because she was so pleasant to see, and because there was such assurance in her serenity⁸ that she did not have to constrain⁹ her lips and eyes, but could trust them to be what she wished. Yet he saw by the way she clung to the young artilleryman from whom she was parting that hers were no sisterly farewells.
 
An immense hum of voices filled the vast glazed¹¹ enclosure. Campton caught the phrases flung up to the young faces piled one above another in the windows—words of motherly admonishment¹², little jokes, tender names, mirthful allusions¹³, last callings out: “Write often! Don’t forget to wrap up your throat.... Remember to send a line to Annette.... Bring home a Prussian helmet for the children! On les aura, pas, mon vieux?” It was all bright, brave and confident. “If Berlin could only see it!” Campton thought.
 
He tried to remember what his own last words to George had been, but could not; yet his throat felt dry and thirsty, as if he had talked a great deal. The train vanished in a roar, and he leaned against a pier¹⁴ to let the crowd flood by, not daring to risk his lameness¹⁵ in such a turmoil¹⁶.
 
Suddenly he heard loud sobs¹⁷ behind him. He turned, 97and recognized the hat and hair of the girl whose eyes had struck him. He could not see them now, for they were buried in her hands and her whole body shook with woe¹⁸. An elderly man was trying to draw her away—her father, probably.
 
“Come, come, my child——”
 
“Oh—oh—oh,” she hiccoughed, following blindly.
 
The people nearest stared at her, and the faces of other women grew pale. Campton saw tears on the cheeks of an old body in a black bonnet¹⁹ who might have been his own Mme. Lebel. A pale lad went away weeping.
 
But they were all afraid, then, all in immediate²⁰ deadly fear for the lives of their beloved! The same fear grasped Campton’s heart, a very present terror, such as he had hardly before imagined. Compared to it, all that he had felt hitherto seemed as faint as the sensations of a looker-on. His knees failed him, and he grasped a transverse bar of the pier.
 
People were leaving the station in groups of two or three who seemed to belong to each other; only he was alone. George’s mother had not come to bid her son goodbye; she had declared that she would rather take leave of him quietly in her own house than in a crowd of dirty people at the station. But then it was impossible to conceive of her being up and dressed and at the Gare de l’Est at five in the morning—and how could she have got there without her motor? So 98Campton was alone, in that crowd which seemed all made up of families.
 
But no—not all. Ahead of him he saw one woman moving away alone, and recognized, across the welter of heads, Adele Anthony’s adamantine hat and tight knob of hair.
 
Poor Adele! So she had come too—and had evidently failed in her quest, not been able to fend²¹ a way through the crowd, and perhaps not even had a glimpse of her hero. The thought smote²² Campton with compunction: he regretted his sneering²³ words when they had last met, regretted refusing to dine with her. He wished the barrier of people between them had been less impenetrable; but for the moment it was useless to try to force a way through it. He had to wait till the crowd shifted to other platforms, whence other trains were starting, and by that time she was lost to sight.
 
At last he was able to make his way through the throng²⁴, and as he came out of a side entrance he saw her. She appeared to be looking for a taxi—she waved her sunshade aimlessly. But no one who knew the Gare de l’Est would have gone around that corner to look for a taxi; least of all the practical Adele. Besides, Adele never took taxis: she travelled in the bowels²⁵ of the earth or on the dizziest omnibus tops.
 
Campton knew at once that she was waiting for him. He went up to her and a guilty pink suffused²⁶ her nose.
 
99“You missed him after all——?” he said.
 
“I—oh, no, I didn’t.”
 
“You didn’t? But I was with him all the time. We didn’t see you——”
 
“No, but I saw—distinctly. That was all I went for,” she jerked back.
 
He slipped his arm through hers. “This crowd terrifies me. I’m glad you waited for me,” he said.
 
He saw her pleasure, but she merely answered: “I’m dying of thirst, aren’t you?”
 
“Yes—or hunger, or something. Could we find a laiterie?”
 
They found one, and sat down among early clerks and shop-girls, and a few dishevelled women with swollen²⁷ faces whom Campton had noticed in the station. One of them, who sat opposite an elderly man, had drawn²⁸ out a pocket mirror and was powdering her nose.
 
Campton hated to see women powder their noses—one of the few merits with which he credited Julia Brant was that of never having adopted these dirty modern fashions, of continuing to make her toilet in private “like a lady,” as people used to say when he was young. But now the gesture charmed him, for he had recognized the girl who had been sobbing²⁹ in the station.
 
“How game she is! I like that. But why is she so frightened?” he wondered. For he saw that her chocolate 100was untouched, and that the smile had stiffened³⁰ on her lips.
 
Since his talk with Adamson he could not bring himself to be seriously alarmed. Fear had taken him by the throat for a moment in the station, at the sound of the girl’s sobs; but already he had thrown it off. Everybody agreed that the war was sure to be over in a few weeks; even Dastrey had come round to that view; and with Fortin’s protection, and the influences Anderson Brant could put in motion, George was surely safe—as safe at his depot³¹ as anywhere else in this precarious³² world. Campton poured out Adele’s coffee, and drank off his own as if it had been champagne³³.
 
“Do you know anything about the people George was dining with last night?” he enquired³⁴ abruptly³⁵.
 
Miss Anthony knew everything and everybody in the American circle in Paris; she was a clearing-house of Franco-American gossip, and it was likely enough that if George had special reasons for wishing to spend his last evening away from his family she would know why. But the chance of her knowing what had been kept from him made Campton’s question, as soon as it was put, seem indiscreet, and he added hastily: “Not that I want——”
 
She looked surprised. “No: he didn’t tell me. Some young man’s affair, I suppose....” She smirked³⁶ absurdly, her lashless³⁷ eyes blinking under the pushed-back veil.
 
101Campton’s mind had already strayed from the question. Nothing bored him more than Adele doing the “sad dog,” and he was vexed³⁸ at having given her such a chance to be silly. What he wanted to know was whether George had spoken to his old friend about his future—about his own idea of his situation, and his intentions and wishes in view of the grim chance which people, with propitiatory³⁹ vagueness, call “anything happening.” Had the boy left any word, any message with her for any one? But it was useless to speculate, for if he had, the old goose, true as steel, would never betray it by as much as a twitch⁴⁰ of her lids. She could look, when it was a question of keeping a secret, like such an impenetrable idiot that one could not imagine any one’s having trusted a secret to her.
 
Campton had no wish to surprise George’s secrets, if the boy had any. But their parting had been so hopelessly Anglo-Saxon, so curt⁴¹ and casual, that he would have liked to think his son had left, somewhere, a message for him, a word, a letter, in case ... in case there was anything premonitory in the sobbing of ............