Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) _BY EDITH WHARTON_ A SON AT THE FRONT THE GREATER INCLINATION THE TOUCHSTONE CRUCIAL INSTANCES THE VALLEY OF DECISION SANCTUARY THE DESCENT OF MAN THE HOUSE OF MIRTH THE FRUIT OF THE TREE THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS ETHAN FROME THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY XINGU IN MOROCCO FIGHTING FRANCE ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS A MOTOR FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE ARTEMIS TO ACTÆON THE DECORATION OF HOUSES _CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_ A SON AT THE FRONT BY EDITH WHARTON _Something veil’d and abstracted is often a part of the manners of these beings._—WALT WHITMAN NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS MCMXXIII COPYRIGHT, 1922, 1923, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1923 [Illustration] IN MEMORY OF RONALD SIMMONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BOOK I A SON AT THE FRONT I John Campton, the American portrait-painter, stood in his bare studio in Montmartre at the end of a summer afternoon contemplating a battered calendar that hung against the wall. The calendar marked July 30, 1914. Campton looked at this date with a gaze of unmixed satisfaction. His son, his only boy, who was coming from America, must have landed in England that morning, and after a brief halt in London would join him the next evening in Paris. To bring the moment nearer, Campton, smiling at his weakness, tore off the leaf and uncovered the 31. Then, leaning in the window, he looked out over his untidy scrap of garden at the silver-grey sea of Paris spreading mistily below him.