From the gate, Collinwood looked the same as it had that night that he had left it, so many years ago. Somehow, on all the visits since, it had seemed different - but tonight, it looked once more like home.

From the road he could imagine the tree in the drawing room, but instead of the twinkling colored lights he knew David would have wrapped around it, he saw the hundreds of tiny candles that had enchanted him on the Christmas mornings of his own childhood. He could smell the goose roasting, hear the chestnuts popping open in the fire. He stood, snow falling around him, and sifted through his memories of Christmas past. His grandfather reading the story of that first Christmas from the huge family bible, Carl laughing as he watched his sister and brothers unwrap the lumps of coal he'd presented them with, then turning suddenly serious with affection as he brought forth the real gifts. His own excitement that year he had found his first razor and strop under the tree, and realized they no longer thought of him as a boy. Jamison and Nora rushing into the drawing room, eyes lighting up in wonder at the sight of the magic Santa had performed as they slept.

Tommy and Christina would be caught up in that same sense of magic, in just a few hours, at the first hint of morning. If he were to continue up the walk now, open the door, he could be a part of their Christmas - David's, Amy's and the children's. He could sit, sipping buttered rum, watching. as they opened the pile of presents that would be under the tree, presents that had been delivered by sleigh, from Santa, or by mail, from him, their "cousin" Quentin.

But for now he was content to stand at the gate, and remember a Collinwood of a bygone age. Time had softened the edges of memory, and he looked back on them with a fondness that had never crept into his heart when they were all together. Judith and Edward did not seem quite so forbidding, nor Carl so silly. On this Christmas Eve, he actually found himself missing them.

His nostalgia for the past amused him, but only briefly, for thoughts of his sister and brothers were quickly crowded out by the more real longings that were with him every day. As he gazed across the expanse of snow covered lawn, he could almost hear the bell's of Jamison's pony sleigh, see his nephew racing across the blanket of winter that covered the gardens. This was the Jamison he had thought about earlier, as he had laid one of the two sprigs of holly he had brought with him at the cemetery - the other he had left at Widow's Hill.

And now, with the clarity of a long held dream, he saw her walking towards him. She was dressed in white, a dusty blue shawl across her shoulders, her hair down, looking as she had on those long ago nights when he had stolen into her room. She seemed to glide along the path, leaving no footprints in the snow, until, finally, the distance between them was closed. He reached for her, and could feel the apprehension that had so long been a part of him uncoil, setting him free as she leaned into his embrace. Tears knotted in his throat, there was so much to say to her, but he couldn't trust his voice not to break. He could only hold her, but wanted nothing more. So easily, so comfortably, they molded into one another - it could have been moments rather than years they had been apart.

A sense of rightness he had never hoped to feel again spread through him, warming him, and before his lips found hers, he was at last able to speak - "My Beth."

She returned his kiss with an honesty he had never forgotten, a simplicity that reached his heart as no other woman had ever been able to. He thought of all the reasons he had ever given her to doubt him, and was overcome with tenderness at the purity of faith that was her. Pulling back, he held her face in his hands, searched her eyes.

"It's always been you."

She smiled at him, took his hand and led him through the gate. "Look, Quentin," she pointed to a spot beyond the house. above the tower, "it can be beautiful, can't it?"

For the first time, he noticed the full moon that hung in the winter sky. It cast its light on the house, on her. She was beautiful in moonlight, he remembered that now. For so long he had tried to ignore the moon and its memories, but now could think only of the nights they had shared before the moon had lost its romance.

She had taken a few steps away from him, and stood in a patch of moonlight on the quilt of snow. "Tell me your Christmas wishes."

"I wish for you."

"I'm here."

"Then I wish to be at peace."

She nodded. "I know, I wouldn't have come to you if I didn't."

Across the night, the Christmas chimes Amy had hung by the terrace stirred in the wind. As the metallic notes carried through the air, they began to change, and the tones wove into a melody far more familiar to the two of them. Quentin felt himself caught up in joy, and stretched his arm out towards her. "May I have this dance?"

She smiled at him, that smile that had once coaxed him into forgetting everything save that he loved her. She was in his arms again, and together they swept across the snow covered lawn. The wind rose, the snow swirled around them, until the house and the moon were lost behind curtains of winter, and they could see only each other. And still they danced.

Inside the house, David and Amy had assembled the last of the Christmas toys and hung the stockings. They sipped eggnog in their room listening to the church bells in the village signaling Christmas day. As the peeling died away, they looked at each other, not quite believing, but not doubting that the strains of that remembered waltz played out beneath their window. David was the first to rise, to cross the room, to look down on the grounds.

"They've found each other."

Amy joined her husband by the window, and they stood holding onto each other, watching as Quentin and Beth danced through the snow. How entrancing they were now, as they had been then, and Amy smiled to herself, remembering how their love story had been the beginning of her own.

Tommy and Christina were too lost in the exuberance of Christmas day to hear the knock at the door, or notice their parents leaving the room.

Neither David nor Amy was surprised to find the sheriff at the door, or to hear that an old man had been found outside the gate, frozen in the snow, clutching an old blue shawl around his frail shoulders. A vagrant, the sheriff was assuming, had tried to keep warm by burning his few meager possessions. Nothing much left, not enough to identify the man - only the clasp of his suitcase, a few shreds of clothing that had refused to burn completely, and a charred scrap of canvas. Sorry to bother them on the holiday.

David stood in the open doorway, watched the sheriff leave. Later he would call, offer to provide a decent Christian burial for the old man. Quentin would want that, to be laid to rest here, at home. To finally find peace at Collinwood. He gazed out across the yard - the snow had settled into a smooth carpet of brilliance, glistening with reflected sunlight, unbroken, untouched. He turned to go back inside, and just before closing the door he noticed it, a brightly wrapped package in the alcove of the entry. He stooped to pick it up, and looked at Amy. She was watching him, not daring to breath. She wanted to keep this moment, knowing that when it was broken, the story that had begun to unfold so long ago would be written. It would be time, at last, to say good-bye.

It was with sadness she took the package from David. She sat on the stair, slowly undid the ribbon, folded back the paper, lifted the lid from the box. It was exquisitely crafted, its base carved and polished by hand, the glass of its globe as fragile as a butterfly's wing. Under the dome the porcelain figures had been sculpted with such care, they almost seemed alive. Each fold of the woman's floor length gown fell in cascades delicate enough to be real silk; the tails of the man's frock coat lifted slightly, as though stirred by the motion of the waltz they were frozen in.

David sat beside her, bringing her back into the present. She turned it over, noticed the small button on the underside of the base. Gently she righted it, pressing on the button as she did so. An incandescent glow illuminated the lovers under glass, as they slowly began to revolve, the sparkling particles of glitter sifting through their crystal womb, falling around them.

Side by side David and Amy sat, captivated by this gift that had been left for them. Side by side they saw it to its end, together, as when it had begun. Amy laid her head on David's shoulder and broke the silence.

"This is how we will always remember them. Dancing in the moonlight, on new fallen snow."