Anne of the Island

“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew—I knew then—and I thought it was too late.”

“But it wasn’t, sweetheart.

Anne knew that Ruby meant that she wanted to tell Anne all about her own recent flirtations, but she promised to go, and Diana offered to go with her.

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”

Anne laughed.

“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want you.

Anne laughed—then shivered.

“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew—I knew then—and I thought it was too late.”

“But it wasn’t, sweetheart.

Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that.”

the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Phil Gordon—Phil Blake, rather—in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to ‘try again.’

I don’t see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool,” said Anne.

“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert frankly, “not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn’t—and I can’t tell you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on

There was nobody else—there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.”

I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?”

Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.