“. . . I’m sorry but I guess you folks are going to get a more or less cold dinner tonight on account of it’s so late and we’re short of help anyway. We like to close the dining room at eight-­thirty but still we can’t very well do you good people out of your dinner just because the boat was late, now can we? In normal times we kept the dining room open till nine but then of course we had more help. Like old Mrs. Westermeier was saying only this noon—and I want you folks to meet her, she’s a real person—good servants don’t grow on trees any more or even any servants for that matter. We can’t get any help nowadays you know in any way shape or form except these high school kids. C’est la vie of course. Well let’s hope it won’t last forever . . .”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, as Miss Fly moved away.

“Amazing. . . .”

They dispensed with the soup out of consideration for the help and the lateness of the hour. While waiting for the high school girl to bring the meat course, Grandin looked at the young man near by with his mother. He wore a sky-­blue linen jacket with large white bone buttons, over a red-­and-­white striped basque shirt. His elbows were on the table and his long fingers interlaced on a level with his chin. Even from this distance the fingernails gleamed and glinted brightly in the reflected light, as if they had been enameled with some garish lacquer.

“I don’t hear the sea at all,” Grandin said.

“I guess it’s some distance away . . .”

“Besides, they’ve got the windows closed. I suppose because of the bugs.”

“Yes . . .”

“. . . Wasn’t it funny the way he blushed when I said ‘hell-­bent’?”

“Who? Oh. I didn’t notice . . .”

As they had done on similar occasions, they made conversation. He wondered why they bothered. Pride, perhaps; they would have felt silly indeed sitting in silence opposite one another in that vast quiet room, the more so because laughter and lively talk came continually from the Howards’ corner, Miss Fly slowly circled their table at a discreet distance but always with one eye on their progress with the meal, and the yellow-­haired young man bent upon them a fixed if abstracted gaze. To finish their dinner without speaking would have been to declare publicly: we’ve had, are having, or are about to have, a quarrel.

“I wonder how Hauman was wounded. He didn’t say.”

“I suppose he never does.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He was willing enough to talk about himself once he got started.” Then he added: “Odd how he seems to feel guilty for being out of the war. A real guilt. He of all people.”

“Imagine.”