"I ought to go up to the League."
"Oh! bother the League. One doesn't come home from Persia every day in the year. I want to celebrate."
All New York's four millions seemed bent on the same errand, but they managed to crowd into the "elevated," and after a breathless scramble at the Battery fought their way to places on the ferry, and at last found a fairly secluded spot on the beach. He listened through the afternoon to the story of how she had spent the three and a half years of his absence. Just as at first, she still found it easy to talk to him. Sure of his quick understanding, she found herself telling him everything. She told him of Isadore's proposal. That disturbed him somewhat.
"Will it interfere with the three of us working together?" he asked.
"Why, no," she said, her eyes opening wider with surprise. "Of course not. I guess he's got over it. It was two years ago. But anyhow we've been working together all the time. He wouldn't let a thing like that interfere with work."
And Walter, judging Isadore by himself, decided that it could not have been very serious. Although Yetta did not know it, she was, in almost every word, showing Walter her love. There was a naïve directness in all her relations with people. It was always hard for her to act a part. She talked to Walter as a woman naturally talks to a man she loves. Even without Beatrice's hint, he would have understood.
It was a new sensation to feel himself loved so simply and wholly. Such love is rare in this world, and no man sees it offered without a deep feeling of awe. What should he do? Should he turn her loyalty into a derision, as had been the fate of his own? His life counted for very little to him. It had been burnt out. That the love of this fine, clean, loyal young woman might be pleasant to him seemed to count relatively little. He did not feel particularly selfish, he was only a fool. He was sorry for her, and thought he could make her happy.
Beatrice, who knew him better than any other woman did, thought he could. Of course he realized that it was not exactly a romantic proposition. He had small use for romance. But if any one had charged him with planning to seduce Yetta into marriage under pretext of love, he would have indignantly denied it. What does love mean? Undoubtedly his feeling and hers were miles apart. But, after all, he was fond of her. Even in a most impersonal way he admired her immensely. He had liked her spirit from the first. He had not listened unmoved to the story of her struggle of these three years. There was nothing he admired more than such capacity for consistent effort. And it took a serious exercise of will power to think about her impersonally. It was so much easier to lie back on the sand and refresh his senses with the charm of her youth.
Some one might have reminded him that emotionally he was very much of a wreck, that her youth had a right to demand its like, that his wearied disillusionment was no match for her fresh, exuberant faith. He would have answered that she was not a child, she was old enough to choose.
He listened and watched her and the sun slipped down among the Jersey hills.