“They must have other plans. As a matter of fact, we know very little about them except that they’re on their honeymoon.”

“How exciting! But oh, I do hope we’ll be seeing them again,” Mr. Eklund said, “they’re such a very striking couple.” He pushed the magazine toward Ethel; it was a popular illustrated weekly of the cheaper variety. “Perhaps you’d like to look at this, Mrs. Grandin; Mother and I’ve finished with it.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Oh, by the by!” He drew back the magazine and opened it. “Let me show you something. Look, see this?”

He pointed to the photograph of a Navy flier in helmet and goggles strapped above his forehead. The face was that of a boy in his earliest twenties, possibly even his late teens, with calm clear eyes and the kind of plain American good looks that were so much more attractive, because more typical, than mere handsomeness. The boy looked like anybody; but from what followed it was clear that he was somebody indeed.

“Listen to this,” Mr. Eklund said peremptorily; “it says: ‘Flight Lieutenant Harold L. Manku— Mankie—’ Well, I can’t pronounce it, it’s something Polish with about a million syllables, but anyway: ‘One of the greatest dive-­bomber pilots the Navy ever had, Skipper Whatever-the-­name-­is was noted for his brilliant skill and daring. Although he ran up a big score of Jap battlewagons, cruisers, and even a carrier, he had a yen to sink a Jap destroyer just to round out the record. At last his big chance came in the Solomons and he dove on the leader of a tin-­can flotilla. After his bomb struck the water alongside, he calmly radioed, “My flaps won’t close.” As he headed for his carrier, Jap zeros ganged up on him and the Skipper’s SBD plunged into the sea.’ ”

He turned the magazine so they could see the picture better. He gazed intently at Ethel. “Isn’t it tragic? Isn’t it?” he said insistently. “So young, and so attractive.” With a dismayed yet oddly challenging expression, looking Ethel straight in the eye, he held out the photograph—held it a shade too long (John Grandin realized this almost with a shock), as if to make sure that the erotic thought had registered.

Disgust and a sharp hot anger rose up in him. He felt an impulse to turn savagely and say: “Look here, Eklund—if people dislike you and your kind, it’s your own damned fault!” He said nothing, of course; but he was immeasurably relieved, as if some smothering pressure had been lifted, when Eklund moved away to rejoin his mother in the sand. . . .