“Gosh, I don’t feel that at all. Do you, Johnnie? It isn’t the first time I’ve wanted to talk,” Cliff said, studying the sand he was filtering through his fingers. “I’ve wished I could talk to you seriously before, but it takes a long while before I begin to make up to people. I mean I’m not the familiar type. I like to judge people awhile before I make up my mind about them.”

Again John Grandin felt the prying inquisitiveness about Cliff’s personal life which he had experienced outside the shower a few days ago and which he knew he had no right to ask about. More than ever, but with a sinking sensation, a helplessness, he felt impelled to ask questions of this sort now. It was an acute discomfort on his part for wanting so unreasonably to know. His compulsive curiosity made him realize—and he didn’t give a damn now—that some sinister process operated within him beyond his control.

“What about your friends on Guadalcanal?” he said. “Didn’t you have some congenial companions you could talk with there—share ideas with?”

“I had some wonderful buddies,” Cliff replied effusively. “But I don’t remember that we ever talked much. But gee, we had some great times! Some of the swellest fellows I ever knew. My best buddy was Walt Farnsworth. He’s a prince, Johnnie, a prince! You couldn’t ask for a better buddy in the world. Jeepers, you should have seen him eat! Why, he could eat more than ten fellows put together. It did you good just to see him stow it away! The amount of chow he put under his belt made you feel good just to watch him. I was crazy about Walt, and you would be too. From the time we shipped out of San Diego, right up to when I was sent back, Walt and I went through everything together, and on leave, boy, the times we had, in Sydney and Melbourne and some of those places!”

Though he remembered too well the rebuke outside the stall shower, John Grandin could not help asking what about Sydney and Melbourne? He knew the danger, but he didn’t care now; recklessly he even hoped Cliff got the idea.

“What about those times,” he asked, “in Sydney and Melbourne?”

“What about them, Johnnie?”

“Did you and Walt— I mean, didn’t you—”

“If you mean did we have a high old time, we sure did. Boy, we had a circus! The food that Walt tucked away, why it would have done your heart good to see it.”

“But what about girls, Cliff?”

“Why do you ask, Johnnie?”

“I suppose I mean, after such isolation on Guadalcanal with the troops, sex must have meant—meant—”