had been lovely with narcissus and violets; now golden rod 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 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. Everybody 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 very 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.
They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must
have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall—things said
and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood.
“I thought you loved Christine Stuart,” Anne told him, as reproachfully as if
she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner.
Gilbert laughed boyishly.
“Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she