“I don’t know, Cliff; it’s your problem,” he said. “But there’s one thing you can do. Why, my lord, you and Billie may be separated for six months, or several years, possibly even forever. You’ve got to make her face it, Cliff. She’s headed for a dreadful unhappiness otherwise. It’s not your fault—your whole interest is taken up with getting back into the service, and I can’t say I blame you. But if you don’t see to it that Billie accepts the fact right off, then I think—and mind you, I don’t like to say this, because you haven’t got a mean hair on your head—I think you’re being very cruel to her. . . .” Then, because this kind of talk was making Cliff uncomfortable, he changed the subject to one nearer his heart. “Tell me about you and Guadalcanal, Cliff. You never have, you know.”

At once Cliff seemed relieved. “You know something,” he said, turning with a charming and touching freshness toward Grandin. “Every night just like clockwork, those rascals came over. Sure as it got to be one o’clock, right on the nose, they’d start slamming down out of the sky. If we got any sleep at all, it was only before one o’clock or after three.”

“What did you do during those hours?”

“Do! There wasn’t anything to do. When we heard the siren we’d scram out of our holes and beat it for the antiaircraft. Then we just stayed there till they went away, that’s all.”

But Grandin was unsatisfied. Here was firsthand experience, yet he was getting nothing out of it. “Didn’t you send up planes yourselves?” he asked.

Cliff laughed, delighted. “Heck, we didn’t have any to send up. We didn’t have anything. Those were the days when we had just moved in, before the Army came or the Navy or anyone else. All we had was what we brought in on our backs. Gee, last night I laughed right out loud, to think how those rascals always waited till we hit the sack before they started coming over. Billie wanted to know what I was laughing at.”

“But when the Japs were overhead—” Grandin urged—“when they were actually dive bombing—what was it really like?”

“Like?”

“For example”—he felt foolish indeed suggesting anything so obvious, but it might lead to some tangible revelation—“there must have been a lot of noise, certainly?”

“I’ll say! There was a heck of a lot of noise. Talk about excitement! But gee, it all happened so quick you didn’t begin to think about it until it was over.”

“Couldn’t you—well, see anything?”