"Besides," he said, "I'm disappointed if you're lonely here with me, just for a little while, because I'm enjoying it a whole lot. Haven't you ever noticed that when two people that love each other first get married, there's a kind of _glow_ to their happiness, like the glow of a sunrise? It's mighty beautiful and splendid. Then the burden and heat of the day, as the Bible says, comes along. It doesn't mean that they don't care for each other any more. But they're so tired and so pressed and so worried that they don't say much about their feelings, and sometimes they even avoid talking to each other, or quarrel. But when the hard hours are over, and the sun's gone down--not so bright as it was in the morning, maybe, but softer, and spreading its color over the whole sky--the stars come out--and they know the best part of the day's ahead of them still. They can take time then to sit down, and take each other's hands, and thank God for all his blessings, but most of all for the life of a man and a woman together. Austin and Sylvia think they're going to have the best part now, in the little brick cottage. But they're not. They'll be having it thirty years from now, just as you and I are, in the Old Gray Homestead." Mary Gray wiped her eyes. "Why, Howard," she said, "you used to say you wanted to be a poet, but I never knew till now that you _was_ one! I'd rather you'd ha' said all that to me than--than to have been married to Shakespeare!" she ended with a happy sob, and put her white head down on his shoulder. CHAPTER XXI Uncle Mat, whose long-postponed visit was at last taking place, sat talking in front of the fire in Sylvia's living-room with the "new minister." The room was bright with many candles, and early fall flowers from her own garden stood about in clear glass vases. In the dining-room beyond, they could see the two servants moving around the table, laid for supper. A man's voice, whistling, and the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, came up the footpath from the Homestead. And at the same moment, the door of Sylvia's own room opened and shut and there was the rustle of silk and the scent of roses in the hall. A moment later she came in, her arm on Austin's. Her neck and arms were bare, as he loved to see them, and her white silk dress, brocaded in tiny pink rosebuds, swept soft and full about her. A single string of great pearls fell over the lace on her breast, and almost down to her waist, and there was a high, jewelled comb in her low-dressed hair. She leaned over her uncle's chair. "Austin says the others are on their way. Am I all right, do you think, Uncle Mat?" "You look to me as if you had stepped out of an old French painting," he said, pinching her rosy cheek; "I'm satisfied with you. But the question arises, is Austin? He's so fussy."