Kent did not begin to cut the leaves.

Instead, he sat gazing into the fire, thinking. Quite unconsciously, for
years, he had been carrying a heavy burden--the fear that Allison would
marry and that his marriage would bring separation. Now he was greatly
reassured. "And yet," he thought, "there's no telling what a woman may
do."

The sense that his work was done still haunted him, and, resolutely, he
tried to push it aside. "While there's life, there's work," he said to
himself. He knew, however, as he had not known before, that Allison was
past the need of his father, except for companionship.

The old house seemed familiar, yet as though it belonged to another
life. He remembered the building of it, when, with a girl's golden head
upon his shoulder, they had studied plans together far into the night.
As though it were yesterday, their delight at the real beginning came
back. There was another radiant hour, when the rough flooring for the
first story was laid, and, with bare scantlings reared, skeleton-like,
all around them, they actually went into their own house.

One by one, through the vanished years, he sought out the links that
bound him to the past. The day the bride came home from the honeymoon,
and knelt, with him, upon the hearth-stone, to light their first fire
together; the day she came to him, smiling, to whisper to him the secret
that lay beneath her heart; the long waiting, half fearful and half
sweet, then the hours of terror that made an eternity of a night, then
the dawn, that brought the ultimate, unbroken peace which only God can
change.