Luckily he had not brought his book. It would have been impossible to read here. At least half a dozen men were ahead of him, squeezed together on the black settee that ran at right angles to the window or on the small leather seat near the door. With the exception of a good-looking lad in khaki, they were mostly middle-­aged. He found a place to stand, out of the path of anyone who might wish to enter the lavatory, and lighted a cigarette.

Of the men present, the one who stood out most prominently was the youth, and not entirely because of the uniform. Rather he was conspicuous because of the concentrated attention and admiration of the others. Grandin did not know what branch of service the young man was in, and so during a pause in the conversation he put the question into words.

One of the men looked up sharply. “Can’t you see? He’s a paratrooper!”—and there was a silent exchange of surprise that he could have been so ignorant.

He noticed, then, the patch on the boy’s shoulder. He marveled that they should have known to a man. So far as he recalled, he had never before seen that little red-and-­white symbol; even if he had, he would not have known what it stood for. Army and Navy insignia (so generally known, it seemed, to all) he was totally unacquainted with—like the mysterious tables of a racing form, who played end for Notre Dame, and batting averages.

The paratrooper was handsome in a lean-­faced way, clean-­cut, obviously of good family. He spoke readily of himself. After intensive training at a Georgia camp he was on short leave to visit his family at their summer home in Nantucket, where he had spent every summer since he was a child. Here was by no means the cutthroat young villain with an appetite for violence who, one heard nowadays, made the ideal paratrooper. This lad had aristocratic nostrils, fine hands, well-­kept nails and teeth. He was personable and well bred, and he talked freely and well, without diffidence, certain that he was interesting to the older men.