It would always be the same: The minute his true identity would come to light and the first mention made of the day he had ran backward, Lefty would fly away from it all, disappearing to some other city, burning his bridges behind him, watching his dreams fade while he strove to build new air castles elsewhere. May found him in Los Angeles and broke. Jobs were scarce and meals, few and far between. All at once, the Marine Aviation recruiting poster, pasted upon the wall of the little wash room in New Haven, came to his mind. “The Marines Make Men!” he repeated, quoting the poster’s caption, verbatim. “Well, I’m going to give them a real test this time!” He searched for the nearest recruiting office, successfully passed through the preliminary examinations and in less than a week, found himself at the aviation base at San Diego, where he was put through the final paces and then told to wait in the reception room of the Senior Medical Officer’s quarters for the news of his acceptance or rejection. An hour passed, and still no word was forthcoming from within the office of the S.M.O. Lefty paced up and down the shiny, waxed floors of the spotlessly white reception room, unmindful of everything about him save the purpose behind his detention in that room and the probable outcome of his attempt to enter the air service. Just behind the narrow aisle traversed by Lefty, was an information desk, piled high with charts, behind which sat a mite of a girl, attired in the regulation nurse’s uniform. Her abundance of thick, black hair, her soft skin, tanned from the California sun and her large, vivid dark eyes were a direct contrast to the spotlessly white uniform of the service. She endeavored to center her mind upon the large volume of work before her, though the tall, nervous figure of this man, pacing back and forth in front of her desk, fascinated her and she could not but help looking up in his direction every so often. Of course, she had seen thousands of these worried boys pace the floor in this very same room, waiting the pleasure of the Senior Medical Officer in charge. She was used to their nervous anxiety—it was all part of the regular routine of things—but there was something markedly different about this boy: his manner, appearance and the way he would stop and cast his eyes hungrily in the direction of the major’s office. For the first time in her professional career, Nurse Elinor Martin found herself enveloped by the personality of a passing medical subject with just more than mere professional interest. As for the boy, under normal circumstances, he was by no means a poor judge of feminine pulchritude. Twenty-four hours earlier, he would have welcomed being left alone for over sixty minutes in the company of a lovely bit of femininity, but now, with the possibilities of really beginning life over again, women were the farthest thing from his thoughts.