“... And when I came back--it was all so different. I could pity them--my heart breaking for my father and mother, who had not the wonder, and only the fears. They were passing out--after doing their best as they saw it, for many, many years together--and I had brought them the tragedy, the crumbling of their house--a shame upon the patriarch of the long road, a blackness upon her maternities.... It was my father’s thought to bring Paul to me. As if I would have taken him, but he came--my father having given him much money.... Oh, do not be hard upon him. There is wildness in him and looseness, but the world had showed him the way and he was young. I said to him (it was within ten days after the coming and my father and mother were gone from the room), ‘I would not think of marrying you, Paul, but do not tell them. As soon as I am ready, I shall go away with you, and they will not be so unhappy--and as soon as we are well away, you shall be free. And you may keep the money, Paul.’ “... And now it is like bringing you a reward for listening so well. I tell you now of a moment of beauty and wonder--such as I had known but once before, and was more real to me than all the rest. It made that which was sorrowful and sordid of the rest seem of little account.... It was early evening in the upper room and still light. An old servant who loved me was in the room, and the Gleam was sleeping--the fourteenth day after his coming. The woman helped me to a chair and drew it to the window, and all was hushed. Even before I looked out, an unspeakable happiness began to gush into my heart. “The ravine was crowding with darkness, but the long road was full of light. The houses between seemed to dwindle but the distance was full of radiance--that perfect afterglow again. Not for twenty years had there been such a sunset, and now the sky was massed with gold of the purple martin’s breast, and the roof of Paul’s house was like two open leaves of beaten gold--everywhere the air filled with strange brightenings. The fragrance from the fields arose to meet the heaven falling from the sky. “I tried to make believe, but the road was empty. The Guest would never come again, and yet on such a night as this, he had come to me--like a saint that has finished his work, like a Master coming down a last time. All the room and the house was hushed behind me.... But the long road was empty. “The old servant at last could bear it no longer. Perhaps she thought I did not breathe. Softly she crossed the room to the cradle, lifted the Gleam and placed him in my lap--as if to call me back. Breath came quickly at the touch of him, and she must have heard a low, joyous sound as I felt the child. With one hand I held him, patting his shoulder softly, slowly, with the other, until the ecstasy of long ago flowed into my being.