Two days later, to Campton’s surprise, Anderson Brant appeared in the morning at the studio.  
Campton, finishing a late breakfast in careless studio-garb, saw his visitor peer cautiously about, as though fearing undressed models behind the screens or empty beer-bottles under the tables. It was the first time that Mr. Brant had entered the studio since his attempt to buy George’s portrait, and Campton guessed at once that he had come again about George.
 
He looked at the painter shyly, as if oppressed by the indiscretion of intruding¹ at that hour.
 
“It was my—Mrs. Brant who insisted—when she got this letter,” he brought out between precautionary coughs.
 
Campton looked at him tolerantly: a barrier seemed to have fallen between them since their brief exchange of words about Benny Upsher. The letter, as Campton had expected, was a line from George to his mother, written two days after Mr. Brant’s visit to Sainte Menehould. It expressed, in George’s usual staccato style, his regret at having been away. “Hard luck, when one is riveted² to the same square yard of earth for weeks on end, to have just happened to be somewhere else the day Uncle Andy broke through.” It was always the same tone of fluent banter³, in which Campton fancied he detected a lurking⁴ stridency, like the scrape 249of an overworked gramophone containing only comic disks.
 
“Ah, well—his mother must be satisfied,” Campton said as he gave the letter back.
 
“Oh, completely. So much so that I’ve induced her to go off for a while to Biarritz. The doctor finds her overdone⁵; she’d got it into her head that George had been sent to the front; I couldn’t convince her to the contrary.”
 
Campton looked at him. “You yourself never believed it?”
 
Mr. Brant, who had half risen, as though feeling that his errand was done, slid back into his seat and clasped his small hands on his agate-headed stick.
 
“Oh, never.”
 
“It was not,” Campton pursued, “with that idea that you went to Sainte Menehould?”
 
Mr. Brant glanced at him in surprise. “No. On the contrary——”
 
“On the contrary?”
 
“I understood from—from his mother that, in the circumstances, you were opposed to his asking for leave; thought it unadvisable, that is. So, as it was such a long time since we’d seen him——” The “we,” pulling him up short, spread a brick-red blush over his baldness.
 
“Not longer than since I have—but then I’ve not your opportunities,” Campton retorted, the sneer⁶ breaking out in spite of him. Though he had grown kindly⁷ disposed toward Mr. Brant when they were apart, the old resentments⁸ still broke out in his presence.
 
Mr. Brant clasped and unclasped the knob of his stick. “I took the first chance that offered; I had his mother to think of.” Campton made no answer, and he continued: “I was sorry to hear you thought I’d perhaps been imprudent.”
 
“There’s no perhaps about it,” Campton retorted. “Since you say you were not anxious about the boy I can’t imagine why you made the attempt.”
 
Mr. Brant was silent. He seemed overwhelmed by the other’s disapprobation, and unable to find any argument in his own defence. “I never dreamed it could cause any trouble,” he said at length.
 
“That’s the ground you’ve always taken in your interference with my son!” Campton had risen, pushing back his chair, and Mr. Brant stood up also. They faced each other without speakin............