I had experience to match his virginity, age was as good a card to play in the sexual game as youth, but now I hadn’t even the limited future of twelve more months to offer, and a future was trumps. I envied the most homesick officer condemned to the chance of death. I would have liked to weep, but the ducts were as dry as the hot-water pipes. Oh, they could have home—I only wanted my room in the rue Catinat.
