And yet he was for the first time in his life earning his living. Edith would like that. He had known all along that his idle life had been a constant grief to her. No, she would not reproach him; she never did reproach him. No doubt she would be glad that he was at work. But, oh, the humiliation of the whole thing! At one moment he was eager to see her, and the next the rattling train seemed to move too fast, and he welcomed every wayside stop that delayed his arrival. But even the Long Island trains arrive some time, and all too soon the cars slowed up at the familiar little station, and Jack got out. “Quite a stranger in these parts, Mr. Delancy,” was the easy salutation of the station-keeper. “Yes. I've been away. All right down here?” “Right as a trivet. Hot summer, though. Calculate it's goin' to be a warm fall--generally is.” It was near sunset. When the train had moved on, and its pounding on the rails became a distant roar and then was lost altogether, the country silence so impressed Jack, as he walked along the road towards the sea, that he became distinctly conscious of the sound of his own footsteps. He stopped and listened. Yes, there were other sounds--the twitter of birds in the bushes by the roadside, the hum of insects, and the faint rhythmical murmur of lapsing waves on the shore. 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.