He remembered the building of it, when, with a girl's golden head
upon his shoulder, they had studied plans together far into the night.
As though it were yesterday, their delight at the real beginning came
back. There was another radiant hour, when the rough flooring for the
first story was laid, and, with bare scantlings reared, skeleton-like,
all around them, they actually went into their own house.
One by one, through the vanished years, he sought out the links that
bound him to the past. The day the bride came home from the honeymoon,
and knelt, with him, upon the hearth-stone, to light their first fire
together; the day she came to him, smiling, to whisper to him the secret
that lay beneath her heart; the long waiting, half fearful and half
sweet, then the hours of terror that made an eternity of a night, then
the dawn, that brought the ultimate, unbroken peace which only God can
change.
Over there, in front of the fireplace in the library, the little mother
had lain in her last sleep. The heavy scent of tuberoses, the rumble of
wheels, the slow sound of many feet, and the tiny, wailing cry that
followed them when he and she went out of their house together for the
last time--it all came back, but, mercifully, without pain.
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