“Striking pair. Too bad about those rubber tires, though. And lord, his arms and shoulders—they look positively blown up!” Mrs. Howard laughed at her own notion. “I’ll bet if you stuck a pin in him, you’d hear the wheezing sigh of his collapse all the way to Woods Hole.”

“Always belittlin’,” Mr. Howard said.

“Belittlin’ my foot. I wish you were half as good.”

If the Howards had any inkling of last night’s quarrel, they gave no sign of it. John Grandin felt vastly relieved.

“We hear there’s a movie star in the vicinity,” Mrs. Howard said. “Toni Lansing or somebody.”

“Boy, Toni Lansing! Just tell me where,” Bill Howard said.

The Marine Captain was roughhousing at the edge of the surf. He scooped Billie up in his arms and flung her about while she screamed in panic. He turned handsprings along the sand, then a long series of cartwheels. Grandin got the impression, though he couldn’t have said why, that Hauman was doing this neither for his own pleasure nor for Billie’s—that his heart was not in it, in short. He raced back, ducked low, and tackled Billie’s legs, but it seemed make-­believe, somehow. She stood still, crouching, and screeched. The whole beach had heard and was watching, fascinated. Finally they ran up from the surf and began vigorously to dry one another with their towels.

Ethel introduced them to Mrs. Howard. Grandin noticed how she took them in, coldly, objectively, but interested. She glanced at her husband and raised her eyebrows in a cynical yet admiring expression. Bill Howard made a move to give up his place in the shade of the umbrella but they insisted on remaining in the sun. They knelt in the sand and took turns applying sun-­tan oil to each other’s backs.

Before he settled himself to rest, the Captain bent forward, took up a match folder, and lighted the cigarette that Grandin had just put into his mouth. Grandin was amused by these manners (which could hardly be called manners, however, when they ignored the women entirely) but they made him feel old. His own students, who had cause to seek his favors for a dozen reasons, never deferred to him to this extent.

“Were you folks on the boat John and I came over on?” Hauman asked of the Howards.

“We were.”

“Funny we didn’t see you.”

“You just weren’t paying attention to anyone but that beautiful wife of yours. We saw you.”