Willie Keith reunites with May Wynn

Willie Keith reunites with May Wynn in New York after discovering that she is performing under another name and is involved with Walter Feather. Their encounter turns on competing accounts of the past: Willie acknowledges that he wrecked their love, while May insists she has not slept with Walter and resists being treated as someone who needs rescuing. Her willingness to see Willie again does not settle their future. The decisive commitment comes after he leaves her at the club: watching the Navy march down Fifth Avenue, he resolves to make her his wife without knowing whether they will be happy.

Discovery in New York

Marty Rubin brings Willie to the reunion indirectly. At Rubin’s crowded office, Willie wants to talk about May, but Rubin takes him along Forty-seventh Street and up Seventh Avenue, asking instead about the Kamikazes and minesweeping. He finally leads Willie through the revolving door of a crowded tourist hotel and points him to a sign in the lobby. The sign advertises nightly music in the Aztec Lounge and identifies the performer as Marie Minotti, described as Broadway’s Beloved Bombshell. A photograph shows her with a saxophonist at a microphone. Willie has found May, but the public name and show-business image initially frame her as someone he has to recognize anew.

Rubin explains that May changed her name because she thought the other one had brought her no luck. He also tells Willie that she has been with Walter Feather since about two weeks after Willie left, and that she is involved with him. The disclosure gives Willie the information he came seeking, but it also sets the terms of their meeting: he approaches May already aware that another man has been part of her life during their separation.

The Conversation and Proposal

When they sit together, Willie asks why May did not answer his letter. The question makes the silence between them immediate, but their reunion is not reduced to an explanation of correspondence. May observes that Willie looks different, while Willie tries to take in the situation before responding. He then asks her to marry him. His proposal is not presented as a claim that nothing has changed: he tells her that he loves her, accepts blame for what happened, and says that he believes they belong together.

May challenges the nobility of his appeal. She fears that he may reconsider in the morning and withdraw gracefully, and she recalls how badly he hurt her, to the point that she had thought their love dead and had been glad of it. Willie insists that it is not dead. When May says she has not slept with Walter, she rejects the idea that she is a lost woman whom Willie can rescue. She adds that Walter wants to marry her, but that he is not yet divorced; her Catholic objection to becoming involved with a married man is the stated reason she has not slept with him. This disclosure complicates Willie’s assumptions without erasing the hurt that preceded their meeting.

An Unsettled Future

May does not accept the proposal outright. She agrees to have lunch with Willie the next day, while noting that she has to make records at three-thirty. The arrangement is a real opening, but she warns him not to press her or build expectations from a conversation she feels has gone wrong. Her response keeps the emotional outcome provisional: neither her admission about Walter nor Willie’s declaration instantly repairs the trust damaged by their separation.

The meeting also remains entangled with May’s working life. When musicians come through the stage curtains, she looks toward them, puts away her makeup, and takes on a businesslike expression. She asks Willie to wipe off his lipstick before looking uneasily toward the musicians again. Their exchange takes place in the interval between private conversation and a performance schedule, and May’s promised lunch is bounded by her commitment to make records. Willie leaves without securing a settled answer about marriage or even about the following evening.

The Final Resolution

Outside, Willie encounters Walter and says he will have a look at the material Walter offers. Seeing Walter’s face, he thinks of Tom Keefer, though he cannot account for the resemblance beyond a possible note of mocking condescension or softness beneath brightness. The comparison belongs to Willie’s perception; the encounter gives him no new certainty about May’s decision. When he glances back, May is watching with a sheet of music in her hand, but she barely nods as he gestures goodbye.

Willie then hurries to Fifth Avenue and pushes to the front of the crowd to watch the Navy’s blue ranks march past. The brass-band music makes him straighten in his heavy bridge coat, yet he feels no regret at being a spectator rather than in the ranks. His attention has shifted from the public procession to the private future he intends to pursue. He does not know what kind of life he and May could make or whether they would be happy; he resolves nonetheless to make her his wife. Torn paper drifts over the victorious marchers and brushes the face of the Caine’s last captain, closing the novel on a commitment made amid a public celebration, without showing whether May accepts it.