His head was clear, his plan definite.

He felt years younger--almost boyish.
Laughter came easy--the sort of reasonless laughter that comes to tired men as they start out on a holiday.

He saw the strangeness of it all with some wonder and much triumph.

The Gilbert Palgrave who had been molded by money and inertia and autocracy was discarded, and the man with Joan at his side was the young Gilbert whom he had caught sight of that night in Paris, when, on his way home under the stars, Joan, with her brown hair and laughing eyes, tip-tilted nose and the spirit of spring in her breath, had come out of his inner consciousness and established herself like a shape in a dream.
His heart turned when he looked at Joan's face.

Was its unusual gravity due to the fact that she had come to the end of fooling--that she, too, had sensed the finality or the beginning?
He thought so.