Willie Keith and May Wynn

Willie Keith and May Wynn’s relationship is shaped by separation, unanswered communication, and a late attempt at reconciliation. When Willie returns from war and assumes command of the USS Caine, he is proud of what he has accomplished but distressed that May has not answered him. His eventual reunion with her brings a proposal and a renewed declaration of love, but not a settled engagement: May agrees only to see him again, and their future remains uncertain.

Love Across Distance

At Okinawa, Willie’s pride in becoming captain of the USS Caine is inseparable from his wish to share the news with May. He knows the ship is a worn-out hulk, and that its condition has affected his appointment, but he still regards command as a lasting achievement after his uncertain beginnings as a midshipman. That pride sharpens the pain of May’s silence. In a note to her, he refers to a long letter sent three months earlier and acknowledges that he has received no reply. He allows for the possibility that the letter never reached her, but also recognizes that her silence may be an answer in itself. Even so, he says he will look for her when he comes home and wants to speak face to face.

The note connects a professional change to a private hope: Willie has come through the war and believes he has finally been useful, yet the person with whom he most wants to share that change is absent. He tells May that he has taken over as captain from Tom Keefer. The news does not resolve their separation, and his declaration of love at the note’s end does not receive a response in the evidence shown. For Willie, command is a public fact that will remain in Navy records; his relationship with May, by contrast, depends on a reply he cannot compel.

Silence and the Search for May

After the USS Caine is decommissioned, Willie has still been unable to find May. He has called Marty Rubin’s office repeatedly, but Rubin has been away. On the drive from Bayonne, Willie tells his mother that he wrote to May in June asking her to marry him and received no answer. He explains that he and May had broken up, that he did not write for five months afterward, and that he eventually wrote again. His account makes clear that the renewed proposal followed a period in which he had himself withdrawn from the relationship; May’s silence is not the only separation between them.

Willie’s mother has avoided raising May’s name. He reads her silence as evidence that she assumes May has definitively won their struggle, but he is mistaken: his mother has withheld the subject because she fears the effect of the conversation and does not want to prompt him to declare his independence from her. When Willie asks whether she will be upset if he marries May, he answers his own uncertainty with a firm intention: if May will have him, he will marry her. His mother recognizes that he has grown up and accepts that his continued pursuit of May must rest on qualities she herself has not had the chance to see. The exchange shows Willie’s decision becoming more definite even as the woman he wants remains unreachable.

May with Walter Feather

Marty Rubin finally takes Willie to a crowded hotel in New York City and points out a sign advertising nightly music in the Aztec Lounge. May is there, pictured with a saxophonist at a microphone. Rubin explains that she has been with Walter Feather since about two weeks after Willie left, and that she has changed her name because, as Rubin reports it, she considered the former name unlucky. Willie learns that her absence has not meant simply that she remained alone and waiting. Rubin also describes Feather as a twice-married, twice-divorced man and says he has tried to oppose the relationship, without success.

The news sickens Willie, who studies Feather’s photograph and reacts to the man’s appearance. His response exposes the gap between his private expectation and May’s life during his absence: he has been holding on to the idea of a future meeting, while she has formed an attachment elsewhere. The information comes through Rubin before Willie speaks with May directly, so the first stage of the reunion is mediated by an agent who knows both the couple and the circumstances that have separated them.

Reunion and an Unsettled Proposal

When Willie and May meet, she remarks that he looks different. He asks why she did not answer his letter, but initially refuses to make Rubin’s account the basis of the conversation. May says she had believed their love was over and had been glad of that conclusion, while also making clear that Willie’s return and renewed proposal have reopened pain she had thought settled. His answer is not to deny what he did: he tells her that he broke what might have been a lasting love, accepts responsibility for what happened, and says he believes they belong together. He asks her to marry him.

May doubts the purity and durability of this sudden appeal. She suspects that Willie is acting nobly and may later withdraw, rather than making a decision he will sustain. Willie answers that he loves her and that the failure of their earlier relationship was his fault. Yet the scene does not present his certainty as uncomplicated: even as he presses his case, he recognizes that the force of his emotions is carrying him forward. May, for her part, tells him that she has taken a severe emotional blow from their past and had thought their love dead. Her resistance is therefore not simply an obstacle to his proposal; it records the cost of the separation he now wants to overcome.

May also makes clear that her association with Walter Feather does not make her a helpless figure awaiting rescue. She tells Willie that her relationship with Feather has not become sexual, and insists that this does not alter what she is saying or obligate her to accept Willie’s offer. The disclosure unsettles Willie, but it gives their conversation a more complicated shape than a simple return to the past: May has been involved with another man, while still distinguishing that attachment from what she once imagined with Willie.

The meeting ends in a tentative movement toward intimacy rather than a decision to marry. May allows a kiss and says that, before the rupture, she had imagined having children with Willie, an image she does not associate with Feather. At the same time, she warns that the history between them cannot be erased and that Willie’s return has disturbed a fragile state she had reached. When he promises a life defined by happiness rather than comfort or money, she does not accept the promise as proof; she says she will see him the following day. Willie asks to meet at breakfast and says he will check into the hotel to be nearby. The ending thus renews the possibility of the relationship while withholding its outcome: May agrees to another meeting, not to marriage, and Willie must wait for an answer rather than treating his proposal as a reconciliation already achieved.