“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.

Chapter III

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?