must go on being friends, Gilbert.”
Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.
“Friends! Your friendship can’t satisfy me, Anne. I want your love—and you
tell me I can never have that.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert,” was all Anne could say. Where, oh, where
were all the gracious and graceful speeches wherewith, in imagination, she had
been wont to dismiss rejected suitors?
Gilbert released her hand gently.
“There isn’t anything to forgive. There have been times when I thought you
did care. I’ve deceived myself, that’s all. Goodbye, Anne.”
Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines,
and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of
her life. It was Gilbert’s friendship, of course. Oh, why must she lose it after this
fashion?
“What is the matter, honey?” asked Phil, coming in through the moonlit
gloom.
Anne did not answer. At that moment she wished Phil were a thousand miles
away.
“I suppose you’ve gone and refused Gilbert Blythe. You are an idiot, Anne
Shirley!”
“Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don’t love?” said Anne
coldly, goaded to reply.
“You don’t know love when you see it. You’ve tricked something out with
your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like
that. There, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve ever said in my life. I wonder how
I managed it?”
“Phil,” pleaded Anne, “please go away and leave me alone for a little while.
My world has tumbled into pieces. I want to reconstruct it.”
“Without any Gilbert in it?” said Phil, going.
A world without any Gilbert in it! Anne repeated the words drearily. Would it
not be a very lonely, forlorn place? Well, it was all Gilbert’s fault. He had
spoiled their beautiful comradeship. She must just learn to live without it.