First, it presented a macho contrast to a President who had just visited England, where news reports recalled the letter he wrote from there to a representative of the Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University of Arkansas, explaining why many members of his generation loved their country but still found themselves "loathing" the military.

And it did not seem to fit in with the First Lady's own persona. After all, Hillary Rodham was an up-and-coming legal star involved with an up-and-coming political star. She had made a celebrated appearance in Life magazine as an anti-establishment commencement speaker at Wellesley College, where, as president of the student government, she had organized teach-ins on her opposition to the Vietnam War.

She was a Yale law school graduate who had worked on the anti-war Presidential campaigns of Eugene J. McCarthy and George McGovern.

Mrs. Clinton told friends that she had moved to Arkansas for only one reason: to be with Bill Clinton. Years later, she would tell Vanity Fair that she had stayed because "I didn't see anything out there that I thought was more exciting or challenging than what I had in front of me."

She and Mr. Clinton married on Oct. 11, 1975 in Fayetteville.

So, if she was talking to a Marine recruiter in 1975 before the marriage, was she briefly considering joining the few, the proud and the brave of the corps as an alternative to life with Mr. Clinton, who was already being widely touted as a sure thing for Arkansas Attorney General?

Neal Lattimore, Mrs. Clinton's spokesman, said her visit to the recruiter had to be seen in the context of her dedication to public service.

"I'm never surprised when Mrs. Clinton is doing something service oriented," he said. "She was just taking in all her options, saying 'This is where I am in my life, this is what fits into my life right now.' "