“Here’s a fallen tree with a cushion of
moss. Sit down, Anne—it will serve
for a woodland throne. I’ll climb for some
apples. They all grow high—the tree
had to reach up to the sunlight.”
The apples proved to be delicious. Under the
tawny skin was a white, white flesh, faintly veined
with red; and, besides their own proper apple taste,
they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard-grown
apple ever possessed.
“The fatal apple of Eden couldn’t have
had a rarer flavor,” commented Anne. “But
it’s time we were going home. See, it was
twilight three minutes ago and now it’s moonlight.
What a pity we couldn’t have caught the moment
of transformation. But such moments never are
caught, I suppose.”
“Let’s go back around the marsh and home
by way of Lover’s Lane. Do you feel as
disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?”
“Not I. Those apples have been as manna to a
hungry soul. I feel that I shall love Redmond
and have a splendid four years there.”
“And after those four years—what?”
“Oh, there’s another bend in the road
at their end,” answered Anne lightly. “I’ve
no idea what may be around it—I don’t
want to have. It’s nicer not to know.”
Lover’s Lane was a dear place that night, still
and mysteriously dim in the pale radiance of the moonlight.
They loitered through it in a pleasant chummy silence,
neither caring to talk.
“If Gilbert were always as he has been this
evening how nice and simple everything would be,”
reflected Anne.
Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along.
In her light dress, with her slender delicacy, she
made him think of a white iris.
“I wonder if I can ever make her care for me,”
he thought, with a pang of self-destruct.
Greeting and Farewell
Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley left
Avonlea the following Monday morning. Anne had
hoped for a fine day. Diana was to drive her
to the station and they wanted this, their last drive
together for some time, to be a pleasant one.
But when Anne went to bed Sunday night the east wind
was moaning around Green Gables with an ominous prophecy
which was fulfilled in the morning. Anne awoke
to find raindrops pattering against her window and
shadowing the pond’s gray surface with widening
rings; hills and sea were hidden in mist, and the
whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed
in the cheerless gray dawn, for an early start was
necessary to catch the boat train; she struggled against
the tears that would well up in her eyes in spite
of herself. She was leaving the home that was
so dear to her, and something told her that she was
leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge.
Things would never be the same again; coming back for
vacations would not be living there. And oh,
how dear and beloved everything was—that
little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood,
the old Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the
hollow, the Dryad’s Bubble, the Haunted Woods,
and Lover’s Lane—all the thousand
and one dear spots where memories of the old years
bided. Could she ever be really happy anywhere
else?
