"Oh, Walter, Walter, I'm such a little fool to cry. But if I hadn't cried, I'd have died."
They forgot all about the moon they had waited out to see. Like dozens of other lovers on the beach that night, they forgot about supper. They missed the one o'clock boat and sat outside of the ferryhouse in the shadow of some packing-cases till two o'clock. They decided that it would be fun to walk home through the deserted streets. When they could think of no further reason to pass and repass her door, she kissed him "a really truly good night."
"I'll wake you up by telephone in the morning," she said, "and come round and make your coffee."
For half an hour after she had undressed she sat in her window looking up at the moon above the airshaft. She did not want ever to forget how the moon looked that night. But fearing that she might oversleep and lose the chance to breakfast with him, she at last went to bed.
For an hour more Walter paced up and down in Washington Square, between the sleeping figures huddled up on the park benches or stretched uneasily on the hard dry ground. He was ill at ease. He wished he might go to a hotel, some place less saturated with memories of Mabel than his own diggings. Had he lied when he had used the past tense about Mabel? Did he love her still? Was it fair to talk marriage to Yetta with this uncertainty in his mind?
"Morbid scruples!" he told himself disgustedly, and went to bed. But he dreamed about Mabel.
Far away in Stamford, she also was late in falling asleep. That evening she and Eleanor had played together for several hours. But at first the music had gone wrong. Mabel, like Beatrice, like Isadore—like everybody—knew that Yetta was in love with Walter. She was thinking about them, wondering about their meeting, and it had thrown her into discord with Eleanor. They had almost had a quarrel over it, for Eleanor guessed the cause. At last, with an effort of will, Mabel had lost herself in the music, a closer harmony than usual had sprung up between the two friends—it had ended as a very happy evening. But after Eleanor fell asleep, the thought of Walter and Yetta came back again disturbingly. Eleanor, Mabel told herself, was a fool to be jealous. She did not love Walter. She would not have left the city except that she wanted to give Yetta a clear field. She hoped they would marry, for she liked them both. But how she envied Yetta! There was no treasure she could dream of which she would not have sacrificed to feel herself in love as Yetta was.
A little after eight in the morning, Walter was shaken out of sleep by the noisy din of his telephone bell.
"Good morning, Beloved," Yetta's fresh voice came to his sleepy ears. "I couldn't call you up before—not till my room-mate went out. I could get dressed and round to your room in three minutes, but I'll give you ten. Put the water on. You can't have slept much, because a lot of times I felt you kiss me."
"Well, don't waste time talking about it," he interrupted. "Hurry."