“This won’t spoil our friendship, will it, Dorothy?” Anne had asked wistfully.

“No, indeed.  You’re too good to lose.  If I can’t have you for a sister I mean to keep you as a chum anyway.  And don’t fret over Roy.  He is feeling terribly just now—­I have to listen to his outpourings every day—­but he’ll get over it.  He always does.”

“Oh—­always?” said Anne with a slight change of voice.  “So he has ’got over it’ before?”

“Dear me, yes,” said Dorothy frankly.  “Twice before.  And he raved to me just the same both times.  Not that the others actually refused him—­they simply announced their engagements to some one else.  Of course, when he met you he vowed to me that he had never really loved before—­that the previous affairs had been merely boyish fancies.  But I don’t think you need worry.”

Anne decided not to worry.  Her feelings were a mixture of relief and resentment.  Roy had certainly told her she was the only one he had ever loved.  No doubt he believed it.  But it was a comfort to feel that she had not, in all likelihood, ruined his life.  There were other goddesses, and Roy, according to Dorothy, must needs be worshipping at some shrine.  Nevertheless, life was stripped of several more illusions, and Anne began to think drearily that it seemed rather bare.

She came down from the porch gable on the evening of her return with a sorrowful face.

“What has happened to the old Snow Queen, Marilla?”

“Oh, I knew you’d feel bad over that,” said Marilla.  “I felt bad myself.  That tree was there ever since I was a young girl.  It blew down in the big gale we had in March.  It was rotten at the core.”

“I’ll miss it so,” grieved Anne.  “The porch gable doesn’t seem the same room without it.  I’ll never look from its window again without a sense of loss.  And oh, I never came home to Green Gables before that Diana wasn’t here to welcome me.”

“Diana has something else to think of just now,” said Mrs. Lynde significantly.

“Well, tell me all the Avonlea news,” said Anne, sitting down on the porch steps, where the evening sunshine fell over her hair in a fine golden rain.

“There isn’t much news except what we’ve wrote you,” said Mrs. Lynde.  “I suppose you haven’t heard that Simon Fletcher broke his leg last week.  It’s a great thing for his family.  They’re getting a hundred things done that they’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t as long as he was about, the old crank.”

“He came of an aggravating family,” remarked Marilla.

“Aggravating?  Well, rather!  His mother used to get up in prayer-meeting and tell all her children’s shortcomings and ask prayers for them.  ’Course it made them mad, and worse than ever.”

“You haven’t told Anne the news about Jane,” suggested Marilla.

“Oh, Jane,” sniffed Mrs. Lynde.  “Well,” she conceded grudgingly, “Jane Andrews is home from the West—­came last week—­and she’s going to be married to a Winnipeg millionaire.  You may be sure Mrs. Harmon lost no time in telling it far and wide.”