She blushed-automatically conferring on me the social poise I'd been missing.

"Well. Most of the Americans I've seen act like animals. They're forever punching one another about, and insulting everyone, and… You know what one of them did?" I shook my haad.

"One of them threw an empty whiskey bottle through my aunt's window. Fortunately, the window was open. But does that sound very intelligent to you?" It didn't especially, but I didn't say so. I said that many soldiers, all over the world, were a long way from home, and that few of them had had many real advantages in life.

I said I'd thought that most people could figure that out for themselves.

"Possibly," said my guest, without conviction. She raised her hand to her wet head again, picked at a few limp filaments of blond hair, trying to cover her exposed ear rims.

"My hair is soaking wet," she said. "I look a fright." She looked over at me. "I have quite wavy hair when it's dry." "I can see that, I can see you have." "Not actually curly, but quite wavy," she said. "Are you married?" I said I was.

She nodded. "Are you very deeply in love with your wife? Or am I being too personal?" I said that when she was, I'd speak up.

She put her hands and wrists farther forward on the table, and I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearing, perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.

"Usually, I'm not terribly gregarious," she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning of the word. I didn't give her a sign, though, one way or the other.

"I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face." I said she was right, that I had been feeling lonely, and that I was very glad she'd come over.