He went through four years of college and three years of army life without appreciably changing his ways, and those who’d known him before were by degrees happy or discouraged that the “new” Henry proved to be the same as the old one. After the army he settled down in Baine City, where he’d spent his childhood, and wasted away the next sixteen months of life helping his friends get engaged and finally married, one by one—or perhaps two by two. He ran with a crowd in which every third fellow already owned either a Thunderbird or some foreign sports car, a crowd that thought it great fun to spend the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s at one of the nearby ski resorts each year. The fellows and girls always got to know each other better on such occasions, even if they didn’t get in much skiing. It was on one of these between-holiday weekends that Henry Mahon met the Clark sisters, most especially Jean Clark. They drank together on Friday night, skied together on Saturday, and slept together on Sunday.
