 Why did Rhona look sick while she was dancing with Hank?
There he sat between the mayor and a nervous young coed chosen as homecoming queen, and looked out at the police and fire department bands, the National Guard, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the Elks and Masons. Several of the churches in town had shown indecision as to how to instruct their parishioners to treat him. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. He kissed her—her neck, her cheek—and all the old jokes came to mind, the jokes of travel-weary, battle-weary men, the and- then -I'll-put-my-pack-aside jokes that spoke of terrible hunger. So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left Washington. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more so. They had feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. He and Edith sat beside each other, and he wanted badly to take her in his arms, and yet he didn't want to oppress her. But they didn't expect it of him; they wouldn't let him; they felt he had changed too much. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station. The body scars were faint, the scars running in long lines, one dissecting his chest, the other slicing diagonally across his upper abdomen to disappear under his trousers. There were several more on his back, and one on his right thigh. Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning; which was something he found distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time, he began to understand that there would be many things, previously beneath them both, which would have to be considered. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate in the dining room at the big table.
 He was not the Hank she was used to dancing with.
 She had decided she needed to stop flirting with him and was upset by this.  Hank was already very drunk and the smell of alcohol on his breath appalled her.  He was not the Hank she was used to dancing with.  She had had too much to drink and her stomach was bothered.