e was sure then that she _had_ known, and that the beds and the barrier
between them were her own choice, if only an unconscious choice. He went
to the bed near the window, stripped off his Air Force blue jacket,
began to take off his shirt, but then remembered that some arm scars
still showed. He waited for her to leave the room.

She said, "Well then, rest up, dear," and went out.

He took off his shirt and saw himself in the mirror on the opposite
wall; and then took off his under-shirt. The body scars were faint, the
scars running in long lines, one dissecting his chest, the other slicing
diagonally across his upper abdomen to disappear under his trousers.
There were several more on his back, and one on his right thigh. They'd
been treated properly and would soon disappear. But she had never seen
them.

Perhaps she never would. Perhaps pajamas and robes and dark rooms would
keep them from her until they were gone.

Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter
Reed Hospital early this morning; which was something he found
distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time,
he began to understand that there would be many things, previously
beneath them both, which would have to be considered. She had changed;
Ralphie had changed; all the people he knew had probably
changed--because they thought _he_ had changed.

He was tired of thinking. He lay down and closed his eyes. He let
himself taste bitterness, unhappiness, a loneliness he had never known
before.

But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began
filtering into his mind. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same
man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and
friends which was, if anything, stronger than before. Once he could
communicate this, the strangeness would disappear and the First One
would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for--a
return to old values, old relationships, the normalcies of the backwash
instead of the freneticisms of the lime-light. It would certainly be
granted to him.

He slept.

* * * * *

Dinner was at seven P.M. His mother came; his Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille
came. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate
in the dining room at the big table.

Before he'd become the First One, it would have been a noisy affair. His
family had never been noted for a lack