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Campton looked at this date with a gaze of unmixed satisfaction. His son, his onlyboy, 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 bringthe moment nearer, Campton, smiling at his weakness, tore off the leaf anduncovered the 31. Then, leaning in the window, he looked out over his untidy scrapof garden at the silver-grey sea of Paris spreading mistily below him.A number of visitors had passed through the studio that day. After years ofobscurity Campton had been projected into the light-or perhaps only into thelimelight-by his portrait of his son George, exhibited three years earlier at thespring show of the French Society of Painters and Sculptors. The picture seemed toits author to be exactly in the line of the unnoticed things he had been showingbefore, though perhaps nearer to what he was always trying for, because of theexceptional interest of his subject. But to the public he had appeared to take a newturn; or perhaps some critic had suddenly found the right phrase for him; or, thatseason, people wanted a new painter to talk about. Didn't he know by heart all theParis reasons for success or failure.