“Very well, if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said, “if that’s the way you feel.” Then he added, suddenly very angry: “Jesus Christ, the way women can hang onto these things . . .”

“I’m afraid I’m not hanging onto very much at all. . . .”

Infuriated he turned away and lighted a cigarette. It was a fine start for an evening he hadn’t been looking forward to in any case. Through the window at his back he heard the Haumans talking to the Howards, who had stopped at their table. As he took in the conversation, he was almost shaken out of his chair with astonishment.

“Hey, Bill,” Hauman said gleefully, “I want you to lay off that pretty boy over there, the fag. You can’t have him—he’s mine!”

Howard laughed, while the women tittered. “The blond with his mother? Now, Cliff, I marked him for my own the first time I saw him, so you’re a little late.”

“Want to lay any bets about who makes him first?”

Hauman’s laugh, then, was so hearty and good-natured that John Grandin was nonplused. Considering Hauman’s embarrassment the first time the subject came up, he was totally unprepared for the little exchange. In spite of his own reaction against Arne Eklund on the beach, it seemed to him outrageous and cruel; and bitterly he wished he had not heard it. . . .

The Haumans joined them on the porch. “Say, Johnnie, that’s a nice topcoat you’ve got there.” He picked up the coat from the arm of a chair and fingered it admiringly. “My daddy would look nice in a coat like that. He loves good tweeds and things, and so do I. Mind if I try it on?”

It was an English Burberry in the full loose raglan style, the kind of coat that would fit anyone, even the wide shoulders of Hauman. He had bought it in London many years ago and expected or hoped to have it for the rest of his life, for he was very fond of it.

Hauman put on the topcoat and turned to see the reflection of himself in one of the windows. Standing profile to Grandin, he buttoned it down the front. The sleeves were a good four inches too short, but it fitted his shoulders and back very well. He held his arms straight and admired himself in the glass of the window.

John Grandin looked at the reflection too, and at the figure itself. He had a curious prevision of the future. It wasn’t Captain Hauman of the Marine Corps who stood here but a young roughneck in a borrowed topcoat.

Above the reflection of his shoulders, Hauman caught Grandin’s­ glance. He pulled off the coat at once and said no more about it.