Virginia Beach is where Joe Williams and Della Matthews’s attraction takes shape and briefly becomes a shared plan for the future. Across two visits, the beach shifts from a lively group outing—swimming, a fire, and a first kiss—to a moonlit scene of intimacy, marriage talk, and Della’s unexplained tears on the trolley ride home.

Setting and First Outing

Joe first visits Virginia Beach with Will Stirp and two girls after seeing Will’s family and attending a ball game. Della is among them; Joe is drawn to her, though his crude question to Will about whether she would agree to sex prompts Will to rebuke him for failing to recognize a good girl. The episode places Joe’s uncertainty about women beside Della’s growing importance to him.

The group swims and wanders the beach in bathing suits, then builds a fire and toasts marshmallows. When Joe and Della say good night, she lets him kiss her, and he begins imagining her as his steady girl. The outing therefore gives the place an early role in their courtship: a casual gathering turns into a private possibility for Joe.

Courtship by the Water

On a later visit, Joe and Della wait for the trolley and walk up and down fighting mosquitoes. When he tells her that he is going across the country with his ship, she looks upset; before he can reconsider, he tells her he will not ship on it again and will find work in Norfolk. The beach outing is thus preceded by a choice shaped by the prospect of leaving Della, though the work he hopes to find is not yet secured.

That night, under a full moon, they spend a long time together in their bathing suits beside a small fire Joe has made to keep the mosquitoes away. Della rests her head on his knees while he strokes her hair and kisses her. She says they should marry once he has steady work and that together they could amount to something; she connects that ambition to having graduated at the head of her high-school class and to her dissatisfaction with the people around her. Joe responds by comparing her to his sister Janey, whom he describes as pretty and successful, and Della says she hopes to meet her someday.

Return and Narrative Significance

The intimacy of the moonlit beach scene does not settle the couple’s future. As the hour grows late and the beach turns chilly and lonely, Della trembles and says she needs to dress before she catches her death. They run for the last trolley. During the ride through the pine barrens, Della suddenly crumples and cries; Joe repeatedly asks what is wrong, but she does not answer. He feels relieved when he leaves her at her family’s house and walks alone back to his room.

Virginia Beach consequently holds both the promise and the fragility of the relationship. Joe and Della speak there of marriage and shared aspiration, but the unanswered crying on the return journey interrupts that apparent forward movement. Their beachside promise remains tied to practical conditions—especially Joe’s need for steady work—and the next week finds him searching unsuccessfully around Norfolk and Portsmouth before economic necessity sends him back to sea.