“Presently. I hate to end—to-day,” David answered, simply.
“So do I. Hasn’t it been a wonderful day? Doesn’t it seem like the beginning of heavenly times?”
“One of the happiest of my life,” David said, trying to lighten the words with his old friendly smile, and failing.
Gabrielle was silent, and in the stillness all the sweet sounds of a spring afternoon made themselves heard: the lisp of the sea, the chirp of little birds flying low in short curving flights among the budding shrubs, a banging door in the farmhouse and the distant sound of voices as the workmen put up their tools and started their motor engines.
The sun was sending long slanting rays down across the torn earth, and the old garden, and the piled bricks. John’s and Etta’s house, joined by the simple curve of the arch to the long, low roofs of the barn, looked everything that was homelike and comfortable in the sinking glow.
“I see summer suppers here, in the court,” Gabrielle said, presently, in a low voice, as if half to herself. “Guest rooms all fresh and airy, Sylvia’s children, and my children, drawing others here for picnics on the shore, white dresses, and the harvest moon coming up there across the sea, as we have seen it rise so many hundreds of times! I don’t know which will be most wonderful, David: the long summers with the hollyhocks and the twilights, or the winters with big fires and snow and company coming in, all cold and laughing.
“I do think of going abroad,” she added, as for sheer pain David was silent. “But I find myself thinking most often of getting home again, with all the trunks and excitement, to settle again in Wastewater!”
“You really are going abroad, Gabrielle?” David asked. And to himself he added, “Honeymoon.”
“Why, I don’t know. To-night I don’t feel as if I ever wanted to go outside these gates again; I feel as if I wanted to stay right here, watching them put every brick into place! But—you would like to go abroad again some day, wouldn’t you, David?”
“Oh, I? Yes, but that’s different,” the man answered, bringing himself into the conversation with a little self-consciousness. “Yes,” David said, slowly, frowning into space with narrowed eyes, “I think I may go, one of these days. I would like to do some painting in Florence.”