Free The Glory by Herman Wouk

Dado’s chief of operations.” She showed Amos into a cubicle decorated
     with French fashion posters, where a lean curly-headed boy was writing in a copybook at the desk. “And this is our son. Aryeh,
     this is Major Pasternak, a valiant warrior. I’ll tell Dvora you’re here.”
    The boy peered at Amos’s tank corps emblem, and at the beret strapped on his shoulder. “If you’re in tanks, why do you have
     a red beret?”
    Sharp kid, this. “I’m qualified both as a tankist and paratrooper, Aryeh.”
    “But which are you?”
    “Well, that’s a story.”
    “Tell it to me.”
    Amos sat down in a wicker chair. “What are you doing?”
    “English homework. My father is in the tank corps.”
    “I know. Colonel Nitzan is a famous tank commander.”
    Aryeh’s face lit up. He had Yael’s blue-gray eyes and snub nose, and with his thick blond curls he was pretty as a girl. He
     read from his open book in stumbling English.
    Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
    To the last syllable of recorded time …
    “Zeh nifla, lo?”
(“That’s wonderful, isn’t it?”)
    “You think so? You have good taste.”
    “What do you really do in the army?”
    “Special things.”
    “What things?
    “You have to be clever and strong to do them. Maybe you will one day, Aryeh. Do you know what ‘elite’ means?”
    “Sure. The chosen. The best. That’s what I’ll be.”
    “Then get back to your homework. First elite rule is, whatever you’re doing, do it with all your might.” The boy saluted,
     bent over his notebook, and resumed careful writing.
    Amos sat drumming his fingers on the wicker. Three months was a long time to be without a girlfriend, and he had not found
     one at Stanford. He had met Dvora when she was finishing her draft service in the armor corps, and for a year they had shared
     a flat in Ramat Gan for weekends of shattering lovemaking. She had been given to kvetching — so Amos had dismissed her persistent
     protests — about this sporadic arrangement. She had wanted something more committed and positive, if not yet binding. Amos
     didn’t. She was beautiful and sweet, but uneducated and lightweight, and as a companion for an academic year at Stanford University,
     all wrong. So he had judged, and he had been tough about it, resisting her cajoling, her tears and her threats. Now he had
     to make it up to her. He was thinking over an affectionate approach when here she came in a red bathrobe, her face all painted
     up for modelling, her lovely brown ringlets exquisitely arranged. “So you’re back.”
    “Dvora!”
    He jumped up with open arms. She threw a glance toward the boy and beckoned to Amos. He followed her into a small multi-mirrored
     dressing room, where she shut the door and stood with her back to it, hands behind her. “Didn’t you get my letter?”
    “What letter? I never heard from you.”
    “I wrote you a very long letter, Amos, back in September.”
    “It hadn’t arrived by the time I left.”
    “What made you come back?”
    “The
Eilat
news. I flew home as soon as I could.”
    “I see. So how was Stanford?”
    “What was the letter about,
motek
[sweet]?” She was acting strangely, a bit stunned, perhaps.
    “Oh, what you would call kvetching, I guess.” Amos decided to cut through this nonsense, and made to take her in his arms,
     whereupon she whipped a hand from behind her back, and held it clenched under his nose. “About this, actually, if you want
     to know.”
    “L’Azazel!” The plain gold band was the very long letter in one stark fact. “You didn’t really marry Ben, Dvora?”
    “I said I would. I swore I would. You knew that.” Her voice began to break, and her eyes to brim. “And I love Ben, and I’m
     happier than I ever thought I could be, and I’m two months pregnant.
B’seder
[Okay]? And I’ll have to quit this job soon, and I don’t care a bit, Ben makes a fine living with his filling station. So