“Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town.  I knew it and she knew I knew it.  When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely.  So I did.  And then I liked Christine for her own sake.  She is one of the nicest girls I’ve ever known.  I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other.  I didn’t care.  Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne.  There was nobody else—­there never could be anybody else for me but you.  I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.”

“I don’t see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool,” said Anne.

“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert frankly, “not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene.  But I couldn’t—­and I can’t tell you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced.  I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever.  I got a letter from Phil Gordon—­Phil Blake, rather—­in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to ‘try again.’  Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that.”

Anne laughed—­then shivered.

“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert.  Oh, I knew—­I knew then—­and I thought it was too late.”

“But it wasn’t, sweetheart.  Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything, doesn’t it?  Let’s resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us.”

“It’s the birthday of our happiness,” said Anne softly.  “I’ve always loved this old garden of Hester Gray’s, and now it will be dearer than ever.”

“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert sadly.  “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course.  And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”

Anne laughed.

“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls.  I just want you.  You see I’m quite as shameless as Phil about it.  Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more ‘scope for imagination’ without them.  And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter.  We’ll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—­and dreaming.  Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.”

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her.  Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.