“No,” Eben said, “we are going to toast Christina before we do anything else or say another word.” Silently he lifted his glass, catching a swift glance, half amused, not giving him what he wanted, before her eyes and Cornelius’s met down the table.

Everyone at the table felt this glance in his own way. Joel had Cathy’s hand in a firm grip under the table, her fingers clasped in his. Eben pondered how a marriage such as this creates a sort of loneliness around it—at least there is a space no one should try to cross. He had wanted to toast Christina to bring her close to him, her dazzling look. But it had not been like that after all. And Olivia, faced by Joel and Cathy opposite, and with her mother and father on either side, was thinking about middle age and how it is swung between young and old, and may be the period of life that asks the most strength of any. But she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself as a single woman, as she might have even a few years earlier. She enjoyed her singularity and her freedom. There was in it, she felt, the openness of growth, of deepening a self she found more interesting than ever before. This had all taken thirty seconds, and now Christina was busy carving, and sending plates down the table.

But Olivia was still considering—considering Joel, a little flushed, his dark blue eyes very bright. It was clear that he felt quite at ease here and didn’t mind being the focus of attention, or being needled. Probably he was enjoying it—enjoying saying his say before Cathy’s admiring eyes. He was not exactly showing off, but he was at ease with himself. And this was, as one thought about it, interesting, for, after all, he had left college, had no real job, and was about to be drafted. He would have had some reason to be bitter, Olivia considered, but was not. But of course he was in love, a state of delightful madness when all values have to be revised in that brilliant light.

“I’ve been thinking of what you said about being rather than achieving. Am I right in supposing that for you and Cathy being appears so rare that it becomes a kind of achievement in itself?” she asked.

“Nuts,” Eben said.

“Well”—Cathy looked shyly up and down the table—“you see, Joel means achievement as the world sees it—making money, getting ahead—all that. We would like to join the Peace Corps or VISTA and work together when he gets out of the army.”

“All very well,” Cornelius said, “I presume you mean to marry. What about the child or children? Is it to be dragged to some primitive village with its parents?”