"Are you ill, darling? I didn't mean to be so late."
"No, not ill—just a little more tired than usual." She drew his head down to her breast, and for some minutes they held each other so, silently, their hearts beating together. "But I think it would be better if we sent for the doctor now—I didn't want to until you came home."
She slipped out of bed, and walked over to the open window, his arm still around her. The river shone like a ribbon of silver in the moonlight; the green meadows lay in soft shadows for miles around it; in the distance the Homestead stood silhouetted against the starlit sky.
"What a year it's been!" she whispered, "for you and me alone together!
And how many years there are before us—and our children—and the
Homestead—and all that we stand for—as long as the New England farms
and the Great Glorious Spirit which watches over them shall endure!"
A cloud passed over the moon dimming its brightness. It brought them to the realization that the long, hard hours of the night were before them both, to be faced and conquered. The New York doctor, whom Sylvia had once before refused to send for, and the fresh-faced, rosy nurse, who had both been staying at the brick cottage for the last few days, were called, the servants roused to activity. There came a time when Austin, impotent to serve Sylvia, marvelling at her bravery, wrung by her suffering, felt that such agony was beyond endurance, beyond hope, beyond anything in life worth gaining. But when the breathless, horrible night had dragged its interminable black length up to the skirts of the radiant dawn, the mist rose slowly from the quiet river and still more quiet mountains, the first singing of the birds broke the heavy stillness, and Austin and Sylvia kissed each other and their first-born son in the glory of the golden morning.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Gray Homestead, by Frances Parkinson Keyes