And now the house came in view—­first the big roof, and then the latticed windows, the balconies, where there were pots of flowers, and then the long veranda with its hammocks and climbing vines.  There was a pink tone in the distant water answering to the flush in the sky, and away to the west the sand-dune that made out into the Sound was a point of light.

But the house!  Jack’s steps were again arrested.  The level last rays of the disappearing sun flashed upon the window-panes so that they glowed like painted windows illuminated from within, with a reddish lustre, and the roofs and the brown sides of the building, painted by those great masters in color, the sun and the sea-wind, in that moment were like burnished gold.  Involuntarily Jack exclaimed: 

“It is the Golden House!”

He made his way through the little fore yard.  No one was about.  The veranda was deserted.  There was Edith’s work-basket; there were the baby’s playthings.  The door stood open, and as he approached it he heard singing—­not singing, either, but a fitful sort of recitation, with the occasional notes of an accompaniment struck as if in absence of mind.  The tune he knew, and as he passed through the first room towards the sitting-room that looked on the sea he caught a line: 

“Wely, wely, but love is bonny, for a little while—­when it is new.”

It was an old English ballad, the ballad of the “Cockle-shells,” that Edith used to sing often in the old days, when its note of melancholy seemed best to express her happiness.  It was only that line, and the voice seemed to break, and there was silence.

He stole along and looked in.  There was Edith, seated, her head bowed on her hands, at the piano.

In an instant, before she could turn to the sound of his quick footsteps, he was at her side, kneeling, his head bowed in the folds of her dress.

“Edith!  I’ve been such a fool!”

She turned, slid from her seat, and was kneeling also, with her arms thrown about his neck.

“Oh, Jack!  You’ve come.  Thank God!  Thank God!”

And presently they stood, and his arms were still around her, and she was looking up into his face, with her hands on his shoulders, and saying “You’ve come to stay.”

“Yes, dear, forever.”

XXIV

The whole landscape was golden, the sea was silver, on that October morning.  It was the brilliant decline of the year.  Edith stood with Jack on the veranda.  He had his grip-sack in hand and was equipped for town.  Both were silent in the entrancing scene.

The birds, twittering in the fruit-trees and over the vines, had the air of an orchestra, the concerts of the season over, gathering their instruments and about to depart.  One could detect in the lapse of the waves along the shore the note of weariness preceding the change into the fretfulness and the tumult of tempests.  In the soft ripening of the season there was peace and hope, but it was the hope of another day.  The curtain was falling on this.