Hanging on

had this a thousand times, and I always hated it."
        After they were finished, they had red wine, which was her contribution to the evening.
        "I've never had wine from a tin cup," Beame said.
        "It would taste the same from crystal."
        "I guess it would." He wanted to kiss her, but he knew that was improper this early in their friendship. Besides, if he kissed her he would probably faint and miss the rest of what promised to be a fine evening.
        They watched the fire slowly dying, and they sipped wine. As the fire darkened, Beame's head lightened. He was able to forget the bridge, the Nazis, everything. In the weeks the unit had been here, this was the only time he had felt at ease. "More wine?" he asked, when he came to the bottom of his cup.
        She swallowed the last of hers. "Yes, please."
        When they settled back again, cups replenished, he was conscious of the silence, of his inability to engage her in trivial conversation. "You may have noticed my-"
        "Mauvaise honte?" Her voice was husky and pleasant.
        "What's that?"
        "Bashfulness," she said. "But I like it."
        "You do?"
        She nodded, looked away from him. She sipped her wine; it glistened like a candy glaze on her lips.
        A few minutes later, he said, "Say something in French. Just anything. I like the sound of it."
        She thought a moment, one long finger held to the corner of her mouth as if she were hushing him. "Je ne connais pas la dame avec qui vous avez parlé."
        The words flowed over Beame, mellowing him. "What does that mean?"
        "It means-I do not know the lady with whom you spoke," she said.
        French was a fantastic language, Beame thought. That was such an ordinary sentence in English but so poetic in her tongue.
        "Well?" she asked.
        Eyes closed, lolling against a tree, Beame said, "What?"
        "Won't you tell me who the woman was?"
        Beame opened his eyes. "What woman?"
        She met his eyes forthrightly. "This afternoon, just after you invited me to dinner, a woman came up from that bunker and called to you. We said our goodbyes, and you went to talk with her."
        "Oh, that was Lily Kain." He explained how Lily happened to be in the unit.
        "She's lovely," Nathalie said.
        "She is?"
        "Don't tell me you have not noticed. I suppose she has many suitors."
        "Lily?" Beame asked. "Oh, no. She and Major Kelly have a thing going."
        "I see," she said, brightening somewhat. She drained her cup and handed it to him. "May I have more wine?"
        When he filled her cup and returned it, their fingers touched. The contact was more electric than he would have expected. Sitting beside her again, watching the fire, he realized he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Now he was once more slightly breathless.
        She did not sit back against the tree, but knelt, using her calves for a chair. She held the wine in both hands and was very still. In time, she said, "The frogs are singing."
        "I always thought they just croaked," Beame said. But when he listened, the frogs did seem to be singing. "You're right." In the faint-orange ember glow, he suddenly saw her nipples against the tight bodice of her dress… He looked quickly away, ashamed of himself for staring even as long as he had.
        She sipped her wine. He sensed that she was staring at him, but he could not look up. He was a mess of confused emotions inside; his previous serenity had strangely vanished. "Say something else in French, will you?" he asked.
        She looked around at the trees, at the half-seen needled branches overhead. She stared at the fire and listened solemnly to the singing frogs. "Je pense que cela doit ętre la plus belle place du monde."
        "That's lovely. What does it mean?"
        She smiled. "I believe that this must be the most beautiful place in the world." She saw Beame's perplexity. "Don't you think it is?"
        "It's nice," he said, unconvinced.
        "But you can't think of it without thinking of the war," she said.
        "Yeah. I guess, otherwise, I might agree." His eyes traveled to her breasts, then rose guiltily again. He realized, suddenly, that she had seen him look at her so covetously. Their eyes met, they both blushed, and they looked away from each other.
        "Tell me about America," Nathalie said, a while later.
        "Hasn't