At one point, Alex’s father caught her eye during dinner and saw the look on her face. It was one of sad dismay, listening to the people she had grown up with and how insensitive they were to what the war really meant to the people suffering in Europe, and dying in the trenches. She felt as though she was constantly out of step with them, and she knew they considered her pathetically eccentric, and a rebel, to have enlisted to do whatever she could to help turn the tides. To these people she had known all her life, and no longer had any respect for, it was only about buying cars, French wine, and the unavailability of Japanese domestic help on the West Coast. She found it profoundly shocking and realized that she’d had nothing in common with them for years. Her parents had wanted her to select a husband among them, and she couldn’t even remotely imagine it now. Even Eustace, who was a decent guy, only thought of himself and his spoiled self-indulgent wife. They had a house full of maids and nannies and a butler in Connecticut. Charlotte never lifted a finger for anyone but herself. She was beautiful, but Alex didn’t think that was enough. She didn’t care about her own looks, and never thought about it.

Alex had worn a black velvet evening gown to dinner, with a big white satin bow at the low-cut waist in the back, to please her mother. She looked lovely in it, but she was almost sorry she hadn’t worn her uniform to remind them that there was a war on in the real world. They didn’t live in the real world, and never had. They were trapped in another century. The only thing they had noticed was the unpleasantness of the stock market crash fourteen years before, which had removed some of their friends from their social circle when they lost their money. But they were quickly forgotten, and others with larger, more stable fortunes had taken their place.