The letter was a veritable god from the machine, the one thing lacking to complete their happiness.
"I don't know how this looks to you," Condy began, trying to be calm, "but it seems to me that this is--that this--this--" But what they said then they could never afterward remember.

The golden haze of the sunset somehow got into their recollection of the moment, and they could only recall the fact that they had been gayer in that moment than ever before in all their lives.
Perhaps as gay as they ever were to be again.

They began to know the difference between gayety and happiness.

That New Year's Day, that sunset, marked for them an end and a beginning.

It was the end of their gay, irresponsible, hour-to-hour life of the past three months; and it was the beginning of a new life, whose possibilities of sorrow and of trouble, of pleasure and of happiness, were greater than aught they had yet experienced.