. . . If any human attribute exercised over him a charm more potent than the charm of youthful well-­being, he did not know what it was; his imagination could not transcend the resplendent young manhood of Cliff Hauman or the physical fact of him. . . . Youth large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination. . . . Too long shut away from the livelier pursuits of the young, confined too exclusively to the classroom and study, he had forgotten the pull of the athletic ideal, that pull which drew thousands upon thousands to the basketball courts, the football games, the swimming matches, the track meets, the fights. Add good looks to this ideal and John Grandin found himself, in Hauman’s overpowering presence, an unprotesting captive, taking delight in merely being an onlooker. Did the holiday have something to do with it, the sea and the sun and the weather? Or was it the power of the uniform, which, though discarded, had made itself felt even on the beach? (He could see it still—the skivvy shirt, the stiff pants, the shirt with the silver bars on the collar—neatly folded on the chair over there by the bureau.) For every thousand who cheered on the athlete with passionate cries, ten thousand others backed the soldier with love; and indeed, regardless of the splendor of Hauman’s physique, he was somehow not nearly so compelling a figure in bathing trunks as he had been when clothed from chin to foot in the cheapest khaki. At the beach he was just another well-­built young man, a little on the big side, so that Sarah Howard’s crack about the Michelin-­tire man, for all its exaggeration, had had some basis in fact. In uniform, Hauman presented a different personality altogether. Composed though he had become since their first meeting, he was yet charged with some inner tension which tactlessly cried out his relief that any day now he would be off; and the poignancy of the figure lay in one’s certainty that he would not be leaving his heart behind with Billie or anyone, but would take, instead, the hearts of all who knew him—of those, indeed, who had barely met him. . . . How often had John Grandin encountered on a bus, a street corner, or merely in a photograph, some uniformed youth for whom he had felt instantly a personal concern, an actual anxiety for his welfare. Because it took him each time unawares, he was always unprepared for this unreasonable response. Now he had time to adjust himself to the reaction, examine it, question it. In the person of Cliff Hauman on the beach that morning (not Hauman at all, but a vivid symbol, an abstract larger than life), the once-­fleeting concern became an active emotion, neither ephemeral nor momentary; and remembering the way the guests had watched with pleasure his antics in the sand—a soldier, clearly, from the dog tag around his neck and the GI boots upright in the sand—he sensed that the whole beach had begun to fall a little in love with Cliff. . . .