“Sure, I know: rules.”
“I’m sorry. These people are awful stiff about a lot of things.”
Jim Trebling wished again that he hadn’t come. He had an impulse to run away. “What’re you doing tonight?” he asked finally.
“I’m going to a big cocktail party.”
“Being social, eh?”
“Well, you know you have to make contacts...” he continued, explaining himself carefully.
Then Holton asked Jim about himself, and he listened as Jim talked. The cataloguing of army camps, the different duties in each, the girl he had decided to marry and then didn’t, his current leave of absence, the trip across the country, the pleasure of seeing Robert Holton again.
Trebling told this story automatically, as one always tells a much-told personal story and as he told this he wondered what had happened to Holton.
In the war he had been considered wild. He had spent most of the time laughing at things. He had been easily bored and now he was changed.
“It must be nice to be out,” Trebling repeated, not knowing what else to say.