More parts from Anne of the Island

When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Anne waiting for him, fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the preceding night. She wore a green dress - not the one she had worn to the wedding, but an old one which Gilbert had told her at a Redmond (their college) reception, he liked especially.  It was just the shade of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry gray of her eyes and the iris like delicacy of her skin. Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath, thought she had never looked so lovely. Anne, glancing sideways at Gilbert, now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness.  It was as if he had put boyhood behind him forever.

The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Anne was almost sorry when they reached Hester Gray's garden and sat down on the old bench.  But it was beautiful there, too - as beautiful as it had been on the far-away day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and she had found it.  Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets; not goldenrod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely.  The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement; the mellow air was full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and the long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west wind old dreams returned.

"I think," said Anne softly, "that the land where dreams come true is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley."

"Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?" asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone - something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's Place - made Anne's heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly. "Of course. Everyone has. It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead  if we had nothing left to dream about.  What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns.  I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them.  I'm sure they would be beautiful."

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.  "I have a dream," he said slowly. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends - and you!"

Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave.  It almost frightened her.

"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.