There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.

An older woman would have seen that, although they were little more than children, they were shifting out of the days of clutching love and into the long haul of married life.

Even in the few days he had been gone, he seemed changed. She touched him and sat very close, waiting for the familiar oneness to lock them together.

—Annie Proulx, Them Old Cowboy Songs