She wondered if the boys in France could see the same stars if they looked up, the same, that is, six hours before. Since the war, her own usual life had dwindled to a point — it was all so unimportant compared to what was going on over there. Her best friend Jane Olney’s cousin Christopher had been with the Ambulance Corps for a year now, and wrote about having to drive thirty hours at a stretch and of seeing a boy with his face torn completely off. Whenever Lilian saw a boy in uniform she thought of how he might not come home. Charlie Sprague, whom she’d known since they’d ridden as children in the swan boats, had shipped over that fall, and Tommy Lattimore’s brother enlisted despite his father’s being against it. And there was that fellow from New York, Walter Vail …

She thought of Benjy Rogers and wondered if he were going over too. Not that she was thinking of him anymore, but he had said he was going last summer at the Promontory, though it had most likely been a boast to Nancy Cobb and, she had hoped at the time, to herself as well. But Nancy Cobb had had the advantage of having Benjy Rogers as her brother’s house guest … The loss of his attentions may have bothered her then, but she was over it now — what a thing to be thinking about with the war on! She never even saw Benjy Rogers; he was from Philadelphia. Still, he was the last boy she’d thought of, with his socks rolled loose around his ankles and the way he colored quickly …