An old woman, Irish, wrinkled, her hands on her hips, called out to him. "Be yez the new man? If yez are, I loike yez foine!"
He laughed at and with her. "Do you? Then you'll have to become a new woman to match me!"
The November dusk was closing in when the crowd dispersed. Elizabeth with the other woman speaker faced toward the Settlement. "Can't you come with me, Hagar?"
"No, not to-night. There are letters and letters--"
Fay asked if he might go uptown with her.
She nodded. "Yes, if you like. Good-night, Elizabeth--good-night, Mary Ware; good-night, good-night!"
They took a surface car. She sat for a minute with her eyes shut.
She smiled. "No, I am not tired. After all, why should it fatigue more than standing in cathedrals, walking through art galleries? But I was thinking of something.... Let us sit quietly for a while."
The minutes went by. At last she spoke. "I liked what you said, and the way you said it. Thank you."
"You do not need to thank me. Had I been less convinced, I might have spoken because you asked me to. As it is, I was willing to serve the truth."
There was another silence; then she began to speak of the light and thunder of the city about them, and then of a book she was reading. When they left the car it was dark--they walked westward together.
"Yes. She and Robert are going first to the Riviera, then to Sicily."
"Both are very lovely. Why do you not change your mind and go?"
The evening was dark, clear and windy, with the stars trooping out.
"When," asked Hagar, "are you going to build another bridge?"
He pondered it. "I've been building for a long time and I'm going to build for another long time. Do you grudge me this half-year in between?"
"I do not. I was only wondering--" She broke off and began to talk about the Josslyns whom, it had turned out, he knew and liked. Two weeks ago she had dined there with him, and Christopher had taken occasion to tell her that John Fay was about the rightest all right he knew.... She had not really needed the telling. She had a good deal of insight herself.
They came to the great arched door of the apartment house, and there she told Fay good-night. When he was gone, she stood for a moment in the paved lobby with its palm or two, her eyes upon the clear darkness without; then she turned to the elevator.