“Oh, I suppose so.” Campton slowly got to his feet. The adroit brushwork of the forged picture fascinated him, and he went up to look at it more closely. Mr. Brant pursued him with a gratified glance.
“Ah, you’re admiring my Reynolds. I paid a thumping price for it—but that’s always my principle. Pay high, but get the best. It’s a better investment.”
“Just so,” Campton assented dully. Mr. Brant seemed suddenly divided from him by the whole width of the gulf between that daub on the wall and a real Reynolds. They had nothing more to say to each other—nothing whatever. “Well, goodbye.” He held out his hand.
“Think it over—think it over,” Mr. Brant called out after him as he enfiladed the sumptuous offices, a medalled veteran holding back each door.
It was not until Campton was back at Montmartre, and throwing off his coat to get into his old studio clothes, that he felt in his pocket the weight of the forgotten concert-money. It was too late in the day to take it back to the bank, even if he had had the energy to retrace his steps; and he decided to hand the bag over to Boylston, with whom he was dining that night to meet the elder Dastrey, home on a brief leave from his ambulance.
“Think it over!” Mr. Brant’s adjuration continued to echo in Campton’s ears. As if he needed to be told to think it over! Once again the war-worn world had vanished from his mind, and he saw only George, himself and George, George and safety, George and peace. They blamed women who were cowards about their husbands, mistresses who schemed to protect their lovers! Well—he was as bad as any one of them, if it came to that. His son had bought his freedom, had once offered his life and nearly lost it. Brant was right: at all costs they must keep him from rushing back into that hell.
That Mrs. Talkett should be the means of securing his safety was bitter enough. This trivial barren creature to be his all—it seemed the parody of Campton’s own youth! And Julia, after all, had been only a girl when he had met her, inexperienced and still malleable. A man less absorbed in his art, less oblivious of the daily material details of life, might conceivably have made something of her. But this little creature, with her farrago of false ideas, her vanity, her restlessness, her undisguised desire to keep George and yet not lose her world, had probably reached the term of her development, and would trip on through an eternal infancy of fads and frenzies.
Luckily, as Mr. Brant said, they could use her for the time; use her better, no doubt, than had she been a more finely tempered instrument. Campton was still pondering on these things as he set out for the restaurant where he had agreed to meet Boylston and Dastrey. At the foot of his own stairs he was surprised to run against Boylston under the porte-cochère. They gave each other a quick questioning look, as men did when they encountered each other unexpectedly in those days.
“Anything up? Oh, the money—you’ve come for the money?” Campton remembered that he had left the bag upstairs.