Two days later Beth answered a 'phone call from David Cairns…. He was just back from Nantucket … for a few days…. Very grateful to find her in…. Yes, Vina had come over, too.
Beth was instantly animate. Vina had planned to be gone a month at least.
"I'd like to come over alone first—may I, Beth?" Cairns asked.
"Yes."
"Within a half-hour?"
"Yes…. I shall prepare to listen to great happiness."
… Beth reflected that she looked a belated forty; that she had lost her charm for the eye of Jim Framtree, who had treated her like a relative. She was ashamed to show her suffering to David Cairns—ashamed that she cared—but it was part of her. Happiness was in the air. She must listen. She marveled at her capacity to endure….
The dews of joy were upon David Cairns. Between Bedient and Vina, he had been born again. He looked at her—as all who knew her did now—and then again in silence. It always made her writhe—that second stare. It gave her the sense of some foreign evil in her body—like the discovery of a malady with its threat of death in every vein.
He told her that Vina and he were to be married at once. Beth gave to the story all that listening could add to the telling of happiness.
"And, David," she said. "I claim a little bit of credit for this glorious thing——"