"It's time to be going back," Yetta said.
"I'm quite happy here, and when we get hungry, there are restaurants about."
"I think Isadore will come to see you to-night. I told him you were due to-day."
"Oh, bother Isadore. Bother everything except this delectable breeze and the smell of the sea and you and me and the moon. Look at it, Yetta. It was at its unforgettable best last night—but it will be better to-night. It's going to be very beautiful right here where we are. And much as I like and admire Isadore, he isn't beautiful.
"Life," he went on in a moment, "and its swirl of duties will grab us soon enough, Yetta. We're going to be too busy on that paper, my friend, to hunt out such places as this. Let's sit very, very still and be happy as long as we may."
They both were very still as they watched the twilight fall over the Bay. The little red and green and white lights of the passing boats swayed softly in the gentle swell. A great liner crept up the channel towards the Narrows, row above row of gleaming portholes. Coney Island—section by section—woke to a glare of electricity. The blade of a searchlight at Fort Hamilton cut great slashes in the night. A strident orchestra in a restaurant behind them tried in vain to attract their attention.
Yetta found it easy to be happy; she felt that Walter approved of her.
"Yetta," he said, rolling over closer to where she sat, her back against the rotting beam of a wrecked ship, "Yetta, I didn't expect to find you so good to look at. I wonder if you know how very beautiful you are."
The wreck against which she leaned cast a moon-shadow across her face, and he could not see the desperate blush which flooded her cheeks and neck. Something laid hold of her heart and told it to be quiet, to beat gently and not to make a noise.
"But that's not the way to begin, Yetta. It's hard for me to say what I want to, because—well—I'm past the poetic age. I couldn't sing now—nor play on a lute—if I tried. Perhaps it's just as well to talk prose, because it's all very serious."